The Apse Mosaic In Early Medieval Rome

This book focuses on apse mosaics in Rome and engages topics including time, intercession, materiality, repetition, and vision.

Revision of the author's thesis (Johns Hopkins University, 1999).

This book deals with the apse as a showcase for images in the early Christian and early Byzantine periods. Two opposed traditions, harking back to early imperial times, nourished the invention of the Christian apse image: on the one hand there were statues in apses of pagan temples and imperial cult rooms which were venerated during cult ceremonies, on the other hand, there were apse mosaics in nymphaea where aquatic myths and figures celebrated the amenities of water. Christian apse mosaics originated within this context and in spite of the Old Testament prohibition of the image. The functions and effects of apse mosaics in Christian cult rooms were explored step by step and invented afresh. The participants of this delicate process of Christian image inventions were not only ecclesiastical but also private patrons. Without any qualm, emperors and representatives of the ruling class decorated their mausolea (S. Costanza in Rome, S. Aquilino in Milan) and representational rooms in villas (Centcelles) with Christian images. Because of the Mosaic prohibition of images, the Church could not attribute to the image a biblically grounded role, it behaved cautiously towards the decoration of churches with images during the fourth century. Only during the fifth century did it relax, and start to invent high brow theological programs (S. Maria Maggiore in Rome), understandable only to few believers. Some bishops gave special treatment to the promotion of aniconic programs (Paulinus of Nola, baptistery of the Lateran in Rome, Casaranello, church of Paraskevi in Salonica). Others rejected images in churches categorically (Epiphanius of Salamis). The Church admitted images and programs representing and portrayed Jesus Christ as God and as a human being that private patrons and artists had invented together with theologians; it provoked thereby a conflict (never really argued out) between the pagan representation of gods and emperors and the representation of Christ whose image should never recall images of gods nor of emperors, though points of contact were unavoidable. Highly original creations of apse mosaics resulted from this fertile conflict that were never repeated. All early Christian apse mosaics are unprecedented, one of creations without any succession. Their treatment as iconographic types is a blind ally. The Church sat back and watched how mosaics and frescoes in apses of cult rooms generated very particular effects, evoking in the viewer respect, admiration, awe and maybe even veneration. The representation of the Virgin with the child in a large apse evoked something like visual worship. The capacity of the image to have an impact on the viewer could not be decreed by the Church, but this was an affair manifested more or less casually according to the inventive power of the artist. For several centuries, the Church was not in a situation to create an official image of Christ. It cared for having apse mosaics not being adored. But the Church could not prevent images from being adored by private persons and/or control private concerns, such as setting-up of ex votos, in official church apses (S. Venanzio in Rome). Private persons first launched the cult of the Virgin (sarcophagus of Adelphia, gold glass). From the sixth century on, images - apse-mosaics, frescoes and panel paintings - were installed for ''cult-propaganda'' (SS. Cosma e Damiano, Hag. Demetrius in Salonica). In some cases, perhaps, images promoted a devotion on the part of the private believers. This process was a novelty for the sixth century. But a real cult around an apse mosaic was never instituted, even though the altar for the celebration of the Mass was installed in the apse. The early Christian period had no interest in representing the sacrifice of the Mass in an apse mosaic. Official ecclesiastical prayers were not addressed to divine figures and saints represented in apse mosaics. Apse mosaics are never mentioned in liturgies. Apse mosaics are, therefore, a very specific species which developed in constant dialogue with other categories of images (icons, ex votos, memorial images), representing contemporaneously specific theological issues.

Per Jonas Nordhagen's work on the frescoes of S. Maria Antiqua in Rome is of fundamental importance to the study of early medieval art in Italy. This volume brings together for the first time Professor Nordhagen's work on medieval Roman mosaics and fresco painting. The book begins with a section on Mosaics and Techniques, covering the mosaic techniques in use during this period in Rome. The subsequent section, on S. Maria Antiqua, includes the author's papers on the fresco decoration of this church, one of the most important monuments of early medieval art in Italy. There follows a selection of papers on iconography, derived from a study of the subjects treated in the mosaic and fresco cycles of this period. Four subsequent articles deal with various themes involved in studying the art of the early medieval period in Rome, and its links with the art of the British Isles. The author has added supplementary notes to correct mistakes in the earlier articles, and to draw attention to subsequent research on the monuments.

In this book, Liz James offers a comprehensive history of wall mosaics produced in the European and Islamic middle ages. Taking into account a wide range of issues, including style and iconography, technique and material, and function and patronage, she examines mosaics within their historical context. She asks why the mosaic was such a popular medium and considers how mosaics work as historical 'documents' that tell us about attitudes and beliefs in the medieval world. The book is divided into two part. Part I explores the technical aspects of mosaics, including glass production, labour and materials, and costs. In Part II, James provides a chronological history of mosaics, charting the low and high points of mosaic art up until its abrupt end in the late middle ages. Written in a clear and engaging style, her book will serve as an essential resource for scholars and students of medieval mosaics.

Integrates the evidence for ninth-century Rome derived from standing remains and their decorations, objects in museum and library collections, contemporaneous documents, and recent archaeology in order to create an interdisciplinary space defined as 'history in art'. A sequel to the author's Rome in the Eighth Century (Cambridge, 2020).

Emerging Iconographies of Medieval Rome examines the development of Christian iconographies that had not yet established themselves as canonical images, but which were being tried out in various ways in early Christian Rome. This book focuses on four different iconographical forms that appeared in Rome during the eighth and ninth centuries: the Anastasis, the Transfiguration, the Maria Regina, and the Sickness of Hezekiah—all of which were labeled “Byzantine” by major mid-twentieth century scholars. The trend has been to readily accede to the pronouncements of those prominent authors, subjugating these rich images to a grand narrative that privileges the East and turns Rome into an artistic backwater. In this study, Annie Montgomery Labatt reacts against traditional scholarship which presents Rome as merely an adjunct of the East. It studies medieval images with formal and stylistic analyses in combination with use of the writings of the patristics and early medieval thinkers. The experimentation and innovation in the Christian iconographies of Rome in the eighth and ninth centuries provides an affirmation of the artistic vibrancy of Rome in the period before a divided East and West. Labatt revisits and revives a lost and forgotten Rome—not as a peripheral adjunct of the East, but as a center of creativity and artistic innovation.

Between the late seventh and the mid-ninth centuries, a debate about sacred images – conventionally addressed as ‘Byzantine iconoclasm’ – engaged monks, emperors, and popes in the Mediterranean area and on the European continent. The importance of this debate cannot be overstated; it challenged the relation between image, text, and belief. A series of popes staunchly in favour of sacred images acted consistently during this period in displaying a remarkable iconophilia or ‘love for images’. Their multifaceted reaction involved not only council resolutions and diplomatic exchanges, but also public religious festivals, liturgy, preaching, and visual arts – the mass-media of the time. Embracing these tools, the popes especially promoted themes related to the Incarnation of God – which justified the production and veneration of sacred images – and extolled the role and the figure of the Virgin Mary. Despite their profound influence over Byzantine and western cultures of later centuries, the political, theological, and artistic interactions between the East and the West during this period have not yet been investigated in studies combining textual and material evidence. By drawing evidence from texts and material culture – some of which have yet to be discussed against the background of the iconoclastic controversy – and by considering the role of oral exchange, Iconophilia assesses the impact of the debate on sacred images and of coeval theological controversies in Rome and central Italy. By looking at intersecting textual, liturgical, and pictorial images which had at their core the Incarnate God and his human mother Mary, the book demonstrates that between c.680–880, by unremittingly maintaining the importance of the visual for nurturing beliefs and mediating personal and communal salvation, the popes ensured that the status of sacred images would remain unchallenged, at least until the Protestant Reformation in the sixteenth century.