What was the ante-Nicene Fathers' view on image veneration?

What was the ante-Nicene Fathers' view on the veneration of images and its use inside churches?

The real problem with this particular question is that the Early Church was under persecution during the first four centuries and churches rarely existed in the sense that we know them now. Early Christians often met in homes (house churches) or Catacombs. Persecuted the Early Church writers are silent on this issue. But the Early Christian art exists from the catacombs. Their art has been preserved!

The earliest surviving Christian art comes from the second to early fourth centuries on the walls of Christian tombs in the catacombs of Rome.

Early Christian art is generally divided into two periods by scholars: before and after either the Edict of Milan of 313, bringing the so-called Triumph of the Church under Constantine, or the First Council of Nicea in 325. The earlier period being called the Pre-Constantinian or Ante-Nicene Period.

Early Christian art and produced by Christians from the earliest period of Christianity to, depending on the definition used, sometime between 260 and 525. In practice, identifiably Christian art only survives from the 2nd century onwards.

It is hard to know when distinctly Christian art began. Prior to 100, Christians Were constrained by their position as a persecuted group from producing durable works of art. Since Christianity was largely a religion not well endeared in the Roman world, the lack of surviving writings is more than understandable. Some of these catacombs are over 10 miles (16 kilometres) long!

The veneration of images

Distinct from the admission of images is the question of the way they are treated. What signs of reverence, if any, did the first Christians give to the images in their catacombs and churches? For the first period we have no information. There are so few references to images at all in the earliest Christian literature that we should hardly have suspected their ubiquitous presence were they not actually there in the catacombs as the most convincing argument. But these catacomb paintings tell us nothing about how they were treated. We may take it for granted, on the one hand, that the first Christians understood quite well that paintings may not have any share in the adoration due to God alone.

Christian images before the eighth century

Two questions that obviously must be kept apart are those of the use of sacred images and of the reverence paid to them. That Christians from the very beginning adorned their catacombs with paintings of Christ, of the saints, of scenes from the Bible and allegorical groups is too obvious and too well known for it to be necessary to insist upon the fact. The catacombs are the cradle of all Christian art. Since their discovery in the sixteenth century — on 31 May, 1578, an accident revealed part of the catacomb in the Via Salaria — and the investigation of their contents that has gone on steadily ever since, we are able to reconstruct an exact idea of the paintings that adorned them. That the first Christians had any sort of prejudice against images, pictures, or statues is a myth that has been abundantly dispelled by all students of Christian archaeology. The idea that they must have feared the danger of idolatry among their new converts is disproved in the simplest way by the pictures even statues, that remain from the first centuries.

The idea that the Church of the first centuries was in any way prejudiced against pictures and statues is the most impossible fiction. After Constantine (306-37) there was of course an enormous development of every kind. Instead of burrowing catacombs Christians began to build splendid basilicas. They adorned them with costly mosaics, carving, and statues. But there was no new principle. The mosaics represented more artistically and richly the motives that had been painted on the walls of the old caves, the larger statues continue the tradition begun by carved sarcophagi and little lead and glass ornaments.

The Dura-Europos church is known as the earliest identified Christian house church.

The church was uncovered by a team of archaeologists during two excavation campaigns in the city from 1931 to 1932. The frescos were removed after their discovery and are now preserved at Yale University Art Gallery.

The Dura-Europos church (or Dura-Europos house church) was the earliest-identified Christian house church. It was located in Dura-Europos, Syria, and was one of the earliest-known Christian churches, and seems to have occupied an ordinary house that was converted for worship some time between 233 and 256.

Conversion to a church

During the conversion of the private house into a church, a wall between two small rooms was demolished to make space for the large assembly room. This signified the shift to "church houses", which were more permanently adapted for religious use. As noted in The Oxford History of Christian Worship; "one of the larger rooms served as a baptistery, another for the celebration of the Eucharist, and a third possibly for the instruction of catechumens".

Paintings

The surviving frescoes are probably the oldest-known Christian paintings. The "Good Shepherd", the "Healing of the paralytic" and "Christ and Peter walking on the water" are considered the earliest depictions of Jesus. A much larger fresco depicts three women approaching a large sarcophagus; this most likely depicts the three Marys visiting Christ's tomb or the Parable of the Ten Virgins. There were also frescoes of Adam and Eve, and David and Goliath. The frescoes clearly followed the Hellenistic Jewish iconographic tradition but they are more crudely done than the paintings of the nearby Dura-Europos synagogue.