Envisioning Worlds in Late Antique Art: New Perspectives on Abstraction and Symbolism in Late-Roman and Early-Byzantine Visual Culture (c. 300-600) 9783110546842, 9783110543742

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Envisioning Worlds in Late Antique Art

Envisioning Worlds in Late Antique Art New Perspectives on Abstraction and Symbolism in Late-Roman and Early-Byzantine Visual Culture (c. 300–600) Edited by Cecilia Olovsdotter

ISBN 978-3-11-054374-2 e-ISBN (PDF) 978-3-11-054684-2 e-ISBN (EPUB) 978-3-11-054650-7 Library of Congress Control Number: 2018958063 Bibliografische Information der Deutschen Nationalbibliothek Die Deutsche Nationalbibliothek verzeichnet diese Publikation in der Deutschen Nationalbibliografie; detaillierte bibliografische Daten sind im Internet über http://dnb.dnb.de abrufbar. © 2019 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston Typesetting: Integra Software Services Pvt. Ltd. Printing and binding: CPI books GmbH, Leck

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Acknowledgements This volume springs from a research project on architectural representation and symbolism in Late-Roman and Early-Byzantine visual culture which I conducted at the Swedish Research Institute in Istanbul between 2010 and 2014 as part of a senior research fellowship sponsored by the Bank of Sweden Tercentenary Foundation and the Royal Swedish Academy of Letters, History and Antiquities. I am greatly indebted to these institutions, and to the following foundations for their generous support of my project in its earlier stages and of my work with preparing this volume for publication: Fondazione Famiglia Rausing, Rome; Enboms Donationsfond, Stockholm; Kungl. Vetenskaps- och Vitterhets-Samhället i Göteborg; Torsten och Ingrid Gihls Fond, Stockholm; and Stiftelsen Lars Hiertas Minne, Stockholm. A very special thanks is owed to the Bank of Sweden Tercentenary Foundation who also sponsored the conference which inaugurated this book project: without them that fruitful meeting and the collaboration that developed from it would not have been possible. My gratitude naturally also goes to the Swedish Research Institute in Istanbul, in whose inspiring environment I have conducted my research over the last eight years. Special thanks go to Prof. Elisabeth Özdalga, who has taken such stimulating interest in my research throughout, and to Helin Topal and Birgitta Kurultay who have assisted me in so many valuable ways. Last but not least I want to express my warm-hearted thanks to my co-authors in this book project – it has been a privilege to collaborate with you all! – and to my husband, Ulf R. Hansson, my most precious reader.

https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110546842-201

Contents Acknowledgements 

 V

Cecilia Olovsdotter Introduction   1 Sarah Bassett 1 Late Antique Art and Modernist Vision 

 5

John Onians 2 The Other Hippocampus: Neuroscience and Early Christian Art 

 29

Anne Karahan 3 Image and Meta-Image: Byzantine Aesthetics and Orthodox Faith  Bente Kiilerich 4 Abstraction in Late Antique Art 

 45

 77

Beat Brenk 5 The Twelve-Silver-Column Programme in the Martyrium Church in Jerusalem   95 Rainer Warland 6 Defining Space: Abstraction, Symbolism and Allegory on Display in Early Byzantine Art   120 Cecilia Olovsdotter 7 Architecture and the Spheres of the Universe in Late Antique Art 

 137

Hjalmar Torp 8 Christus Verus Sol – Christus Imperator: Religious and Imperial Symbolism in the Mosaics of the Rotunda in Thessaloniki   178 Josef Engemann 9 A “Modern Myth”: The Sixth-Century Starting Date of the “Eastern” Representation of Christ’s Ascension   199

VIII 

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Livia Bevilacqua 10 Symbolic Aspects of the Mosaics in the Church of the Multiplication of the Loaves and Fishes at Tabgha   208 Index 

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Cecilia Olovsdotter

Introduction

The beginnings of this book were a conference on abstraction and symbolism in Late Roman and Early Byzantine art organised at the Swedish Research Institute in Istanbul in May 2013. The aim was to present some new and critical perspectives on what is universally considered to be the most defining, yet arguably also the most multifaceted, aspect of late antique and early medieval art: its abstracted and symbolic nature. The specific ambition was to draw a more nuanced picture than is generally conveyed in the literature of the ideals, principles and means by which symbolic (intrinsic, metaphorical, allegorical) meaning was communicated in various contexts of late-antique visual culture, to discuss the methods and theories by which modern scholars have sought to understand the abstraction and symbolisation of art in late antiquity, and to suggest fresh subjects and angles through which we might seek to re-examine and extend our comprehension of them. The problem of how to analyse and explain the abstracted and “un-classical” visual language that developed in Roman art towards the end of the 3rd century is one that has engaged many archaeologists, art historians, philologists and theologians over the last century. Since the decades around 1900, when scholarship began to shift from a predominantly negative and form-oriented to a more positive and meaning-oriented analysis of late antique art in general and abstracted art in particular, the attention has principally rested on conceptions of the human form and spatio-temporal aspects of composition and narration, and how and why these diverge from the representational modes and interests that characterised the Greco-Roman art from which they grew. Interpretational models that still today underpin much of what is written on late-antique visual culture were those advanced by among others Alois Riegl (1858–1905), Wilhelm Worrringer (1881–1965) and Hans Peter L’Orange (1903–1983), who in their different ways held that the abstracted modes of representation that evolved from the last decades of the 3rd century resulted not from a general decline of the arts and artistic competency as crisiswrecked antiquity faltered to its end, but from a positive and creative response to the challenges of the times; a communal impulse, more or less concerted and controlled, to develop a “new” visual aesthetic through which the concerns and ideals of a “new” era might be conveyed. As reasoned by L’Orange in e.g. Apotheosis in ancient portraiture (1947) and Fra principat til dominat (1958) (English edition: Art forms and civic life in the Late Roman Empire (1965)), and variously affirmed in works such as – to name but a few – Ranuccio Bianchi-Bandinelli’s Organicità e astrazione (1956) and Roma. La fine dell’arte antica (1970), James D. Breckenridge’s Likeness: a conceptual history of ancient portraiture (1968), Rudolf Arnheim’s Art and visual perception (2nd edition 1974), the two Age of spirituality volumes edited by Kurt Weitzmann (1979, 1980), Ernst Kitzinger’s Byzantine art in the making (1980), Jás Elsner’s Art and the Roman viewer (1995), Giselle de Nie’s et al. (eds) Seeing the invisible in late antiquity and the early Middle Ages (2005), and Anastasia Lazaridou’s (ed.) Transition to Christianity (2011), the major upheavals experienced in the late antique period – political https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110546842-001

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and religious strife, incursions, disintegration of the Roman empire and state, economic decline – caused a collective insecurity that drove people to seek certainty and meaning in the inner and eternal truths of philosophy and religion. In the terms of visual representation this inner-directed search, first and most influentially channelled through imperial art and reaching its full expression in Christian art, was translated as a renouncement of the physical and material in favour of the a-physical and immaterial. It is thought (often by drawing on philosophical and Christian writings of the period and beyond) that an abstract approach to visual conception, of the human form in particular, enabled artists to reach beyond the living individual to capture the superindividual, essential or “true” man and the moral and spiritual qualities by which he hoped or claimed to transcend the human state; by relinquishing the aesthetic principles of naturalism, the makers of abstracted art could rise above the transience of this world and give shape to the eternal order of the divine. The artists are inferentially credited with the insight and imagination (whether spontaneous or acquired through training is mostly unclear) needed to identify and express such intangible essences through artistic media – “expression”, “imagination” and “vision” are variously used to designate the creative impulse and process as well as the resulting work and the viewer’s reception of it. Whether one agrees or not with this comprehensive “spiritual” explication of late antique art, and independently of the fact that the naturalistic conventions of Greco-Roman art were not abandoned wholesale but evolved and interacted with the new abstracted forms of artistic expression throughout late antiquity, the phenomena of abstraction and symbolism in late antique art have since the mid 20th century almost unanimously been construed as expressions of eschatological meaning, and as motivated by a collective and period-specific desire to give visual form to the hyperphysical and eternal essence of reality. My own interest in the abstract and symbolic modes of representation cultivated in late-antique art was raised through my investigations into the imagery of the consular diptychs, a prominent category of Late-Roman and Early-Byzantine official art in which Roman representational conventions were carefully integrated with the abstracted and hieratic image forms developed under the Tetrarchy, combining a close attention to documentary detail with a conceptual approach to physical and optical relations and a high level of symbolic imagery (motifs, configurations, patterns). Although the iconography of the consular diptychs – here I chiefly refer to the fully figural category – was naturally influenced by the artistic currents witnessed in the imperial and other public art of the period (c. 370–541), it evolved as a distinct and increasingly self-contained form of visual communication in which the high tradition of Roman commemorative art was condensed and reconfigured into a topical, exceptionally complex and stereotyped iconographic scheme for the glorification of official status; a scheme that would, significantly, come to be adopted by Christian art as a pattern for representing Christ and his apostles as teachers of God’s law and the gospels. The hallmarks of “spiritual” abstraction are very much in evidence in the consular diptychs, perhaps most so in the works created for eastern consuls appointed under Anastasius I (491–518) in Constantinople: the iconic impersonality and incorporeality of the consuls’ figures; the hieratic frontality and frozen schematism of their postures; the optically ambiguous

Introduction 

 3

or infeasible relations between the consuls and surrounding motifs; the systematic manner in which depictive and symbolic motifs have been juxtaposed and synthesised; the advanced degree to which the principles of centrality, symmetry, stratification and value-related differentiations determine the overall compositions. Observing and unravelling the dense and complex weaves of factual realism and ideational unrealism, representation and symbol, physical tempo-spatiality and metaphysical stasis, earthly and heavenly, human and divine, that epitomise these high-status and large-output secular works, one is aware of the inherent limitations of the paradigmatic notion of “spirituality” as a primary mover behind and blanket explanation for the abstracted and symbolic language of late antique art, hence also of the need to strive towards an understanding that better reflects its heterogeneous nature, motives and meanings.

The aim and content of this volume The aim of this book is to contribute some new and diverse material to the greater discourse on the nature and meanings of abstraction and symbolism in Mediterranean visual culture from c. 300 to iconoclasm. By approaching the phenomena from several different perspectives and critical angles – historical, theoretical, methodological, iconographical, iconological, interdisciplinary – and by highlighting some motifs, themes and artworks that do not ordinarily stand in the centre of scholarly attention, it purposes to add to our understanding of late-antique visual symbolism and the various contextual factors – political, intellectual, religious, social, local – that contributed to the overall abstraction and symbolisation of art in the Late Roman and Early Byzantine period. As is perhaps inevitable, and as is reflected in the title of this volume, all contributions concern or touch upon metaphysical themes in one way or other, the majority dealing with contextually defined examples or types of abstraction and symbolism where figural and narrative elements are either component parts of some greater symbolic configuration, rendered in a highly conceptual form, or wholly absent. The first three chapters present different aspects on the study of Late Roman and Early Byzantine art. The opening chapter by Sarah Bassett is a critical and historiographical examination of the familiar inner-directed, spiritual or psychological approach to interpreting late-antique art as it was first, and variously, formulated among modernist theorists and artists in the decades around 1900. It is followed by two chapters that present apparently quite diverse approaches to perceiving and interpreting the visual expressions of late antiquity. The first, by John Onians, has an interdisciplinary profile and applies an art-analytical method influenced by neuroscientific research which the author has named neuroarthistory, and which aims at reconstructing the cognitive processes by which the people of, in our case, late antiquity conceived, used and experienced art. The second, by Anne Karahan, is informed by Early-Byzantine religious aesthetics, and considers the modal differentiation and interplay between image and

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meta-image (or figural and abstract motifs) in a range of late-antique and early-medieval religious artworks from notions of “incarnate physicality” and “perfected spirituality”. Next are two chapters devoted to abstraction as an independent and intrinsically meaningful form of artistic expression in late-antique visual culture. The first is by Bente Kiilerich and offers a problem-oriented discussion of how to analyse and attribute meaning to a category of abstract motifs and compositions in early Christian mosaics that is commonly regarded as little more than ornamental space-fillers, focussing on some prominent examples from Ravenna and Hispanian Centcelles. The second, by Beat Brenk, examines the motive factors behind the conception of aniconic art, notably apse programmes, in the eastern half of the Late-Roman empire, with a special case study on the twelve-silver-column arrangement in the apse of Constantine’s Martyrium church in Jerusalem. The greater repertoire of late-antique symbolism, and the visual forms and methods by which artists could convey symbolic meaning in different contexts, are investigated in two chapters. The first, by Rainer Warland, presents reflections on the diverse and correlative means developed in the Late-Roman East to lend visual manifestation to the spatial framework that was ostensibly perceived to encompass, differentiate and interconnect earth and heaven. The second, which is my own contribution to the volume, analyses similar macrocosmic concepts through the microcosmic lens of a specific, widely diffused and creatively multifarious motif category in late-antique visual culture: architectural motifs, or imaged architecture. The book is concluded with three chapters devoted to the analysis and interpretation of specific symbolic images and compositions, and to the tracing of their iconographical and contextual origins. Two of these are concerned with the creation of symbolic formulae for the cosmic representation of Christ: the first, by Hjalmar Torp, offers a comprehensive elucidation of the celestial medallion enclosing the solar-imperial image of Christ that forms the centrepiece of the dome mosaics in the church of Hagios Georgios in Thessaloniki; the second, by Josef Engemann, examines the formally related “ascension type” as it appears on a group of terracotta oil-lamps from North Africa, problematising the genealogical, chronological and contextual aspects of its distinctive imagery. In the last chapter, Livia Bevilacqua presents an iconographical and contextual investigation into a Nilotic floor mosaic in the 5th-century Church of the Multiplication of the Loaves and Fishes at Tabgha (mod. Israel), discussing the associative aspects by which this much-favoured mosaic theme of Greco-Roman art could be infused with Christian eschatological meaning. Together, the ten chapters that make up the volume convey a variegated and multi-focal image of late antique abstraction and symbolism in art. Hopefully it is an image that does not only contribute towards relativising and extending our past and present notions about how one may go about interpreting the diverse and complex nature of the phenomena, but one that illuminates its own negotiability and expandability. Note on the abbreviation system: The abbreviations used through the volume follow those recommended by the The American Journal of Archaeology, supplemented by those of L’Année Philologique and The Oxford Classical Dictionary.

Sarah Bassett

1 Late Antique Art and Modernist Vision It is a truth universally observed that Roman art in the period between the 1st-century rule of Augustus and the 6th-century reign of Justinian follows a distinct stylistic trajectory, one that moves from “naturalism” to “abstraction”. In the context of this conversation style as a general concept is defined as the manipulation of the formal elements of artistic practice – line, color, and composition – while the particular stylistic categories of naturalism and abstraction are understood, respectively, to denote the imitation of the world as we see it and the simplified interpretation of that same reality.1 Comparison of the sculptured reliefs of the Julio-Claudian dynasty from the 1st-century BCE Altar of Augustan Peace in Rome (Fig. 1.1) and the 6th-century mosaic of Justinian and members of his retinue in the church of San Vitale, Ravenna (Fig. 1.2), demonstrates the change. In the Augustan relief the Julio-Claudians, male and female, young and old, process along the two long sides of the altar. Figures in varying levels of relief fill the frame in three superimposed ranks. The children and heirs to the dynasty stand at the forefront in the highest relief. Behind them in lower relief are the family’s major players. Still further back, merely sketched, are other, unnamed members of the procession. No two figures share the same pose, and the participants appear to shuffle forward, turn and converse, stop and start in the way of all such ceremonial events. The garments, wrapped and stretched in broad swaths and close folds, interact with the bodies they clothe, confirming the sense of motion by creating a series of complex undulating lines that weaves in and out of the composition. With its emphasis on three-dimensional form, the appearance of spatial recession, and the sense of implied motion, the Julio-Claudian procession is seen to convey not only the look of the material world, but also the experience of vitality and transience that stands at the heart of naturalistic representation. The Justinianic mosaic offers no such vision. As with the altar reliefs, the mosaic depicts a procession. Justinian stands at the center of his retinue against a neutral green and gold ground. He carries a gold paten and sports the sartorial insignia of his office, the diadem, a purple chlamys with gold-embroidered tablion, and jewelencrusted red boots. A nimbus completes the look. To his left are members of the clergy: the bishop Maximianus, identifiable by inscription, and two deacons carrying

1 Beginning with Giorgio Vasari’s none too complimentary remarks about art in the age of Constantine, the transformation of Roman style has been the subject of art historical observation. See Vite 1.15. For recent considerations of the issue see L’Orange (196); Kitzinger 1977; Brendel (1979); and Elsner (1995). Note: Research for this chapter was made possible in part by support from the Indiana University New Frontiers in the Arts and Humanities Program. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110546842-002

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objects for celebration of the Eucharist, a censer and a codex. Court members appear to Justinian’s right and left. Still farther to his right are soldiers. In direct contrast to the serried rows of richly sculptured figures in the Ara Pacis reliefs these figures are laid out on a flat plane: there is no sense of depth, volume or motion, an impression enhanced by the shift to the mosaic medium. Although the faces are certainly individualized, and costume distinguishes the rank and status of the participants, each of the figures shares the same frontal pose and confronts the viewer with only minor variation. The garments, which fall in wide blocks of color articulated by straight unbroken lines, not only underscore the planar composition, but also create a sense of stasis. Enhancing this still, two-dimensionality are the overlapping figures that collide with one another and trod on the feet of their cohort to make any sense of directional movement ambiguous. It is not clear whether the group moves forward in a v-shaped configuration with Justinian at the apex or towards the emperor’s left and under the guidance of the clergy. These simplified, static forms, so planar and linear in their construct, define what we understand to be late antique abstraction. Observing this shift is one thing, making something of it another. In current understanding, both natural and abstract styles are seen to connote meaning, with naturalism being equated with the material and the rational, abstraction, the spiritual and the mystical. Correspondingly, this shift in appearances also is linked to a larger change in cultural orientation, one that is understood to abandon the material world and with it rational thought for the embrace of the immaterial and the spiritual. It is, in other words, a stylistic change understood to align with the turn from the polytheistic religious practices of Greco-Roman tradition to those of Christian monotheism, from antiquity to the Middle Ages.2 As with all such generalizations, there is truth to this observation: specifically, from the late 3rd century on the visual arts show a greater propensity for the use of this simplified manner of representation than those of the 1st and 2nd centuries. A brief comparison of two imperial portrait busts makes the case; an early 3d-century image of Caracalla,3 in white marble (Fig. 1.3), and the porphyry portrait of a Tetrarch4 from about 300 (Fig. 1.4). Both figures share a similar pose and iconography: in each the head turns sharply to the right and both sitters sport the short hair and beard of a Roman military man. It is here, however, that the similarity ends. In the Caracalla portrait, the artist marshals all of his artifice to sculpture a figure that imitates natural form and movement. He does so by rendering the short hair and beard in three-dimensional waves of tousled curls that frame a square face itself conceived 2 On the correlation between style and meaning and the equation between abstraction and spirituality see L’Orange (1965); Kitzinger (1977); Elsner (1995). 3 Berlin, Altes Museum inv. Sk. 384. See Staatliche Museen zu Berlin (1980) 32 no. 37; and Wiggers & Wegner (1971) 57. 4 Berlin, Altes Museum inv. Sk. 384. See Staatliche Museen zu Berlin (1980) 32 no. 37; and Wiggers & Wegner (1971) 57.

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and carved as a series of modulated, merging surfaces designed to capture the texture of skin and the shape of its underlying flesh. Careful observation of the sitter’s physiognomy and the rendering of the varying textures of hair and flesh, create the image of a distinct individual and with it the sense of life and motion. A completely different sense of artifice regulates the Tetrarchic bust where a complex interaction between mass, surface, and line characterizes the image. Three clearly articulated but integrated masses – the head, the neck and the shoulders – establish the visual field. The raised, uniformly stippled surfaces of hair and beard contrast with the regular contours of the polished face on which a series of sharp but thick projecting lines defines and emphasizes the eyes and brows. This stark treatment and the strange color of the porphyry medium eschews naturalistic observation for a type of representation so reduced and simplified that even the basic identification of the figure is unclear. While this comparison demonstrates a clear shift from naturalism to abstraction, it tells only part of the story. For example, a portrait of a Tetrarch (Fig. 1.5)5 from the same period as the porphyry bust, shows an altogether different stylistic sensibility, one much more in keeping with the kind of representational tradition manifest in the Ara Pacis with its use of contrapposto and light and shade modeling. Further, if we fast forward to the 6th century, there is ample evidence of the persistence of naturalism in works as diverse as the icon of Christ from the Monastery of St Catherine at Mt. Sinai (Fig. 1.6)6 and the peristyle mosaic of the Great Palace (Fig. 1.7).7 Finally, as comparison of the Christ with another 6th-century image from Sinai, the apse mosaic of the Transfiguration (Fig. 1.8)8 demonstrates, these two styles, the natural and the abstract, continue to coexist, suggesting a problem with respect to established interpretive strategy. Such a coexistence of styles not only indicates a far more complex visual culture than that expressed by the standard equation, but also suggests that the established associations between style and meaning are not necessarily obvious or correct. Complicating this problem is the issue of terminology. While it is clear from literary sources that ancient artists, their viewers and patrons, admired naturalistic illusionistic representation as an end of art, the fact is that there is no real term for such a visual tradition in the language of ancient art criticism: neither Greek nor Latin offers

5 Istanbul, Istanbul Archaeological Museum, inv. 4864. See Inan & Rosenbaum (1966) 94–95 no. 80; and Prusac (2011) 146 no. 281. 6 Weitzmann (1976)13–15 no. B1. 7 Dating has been a thorny issue, with suggestions ranging from the 4th through the 7th centuries. Current opinion favors the 6th century. For an outline of the Great Palace and its history, see Müller-Wiener (1977) 229–37. For the initial excavation campaigns of the 1930s and 1950s, see Brett et al. (1947) 64–97; and Talbot Rice (1958) 121–54. Subsequent studies include Hiller (1969); Jobst (1987); Trilling (1989); Bardill (1999); Jobst, Kastler & Scheibelreiter (1999); Jobst (2006). 8 On the mosaic and its restoration, see Forsyth & Weitzmann (1973) 11–18.

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a word that specifically denotes “naturalism”.9 Even more problematically, neither language includes a word to convey the idea of visual abstraction.10 Given the difficulties posed by the material and the literary record, how is it that we have come to use this vocabulary and to make these associations? My purpose in this essay is to consider this question by examining the explorations of late antique art that emerged in the last decades of the 19th century and first decades of the 20th in the writings of Franz Wickhoff (1853–1909), Alois Riegl (1858–1905) and Wilhelm Worringer (1881–1965) in light of contemporary cultural developments, for it is, I suggest, at this moment that the identification of the two poles of visual experience defined as “naturalistic” and “abstract” first emerged as the categories by which we  evaluate this art together with the associations between the material and the spiritual that have come to be associated with them. In considering this issue I shall follow three interlocking paths of inquiry. The first explores the contributions of the 19th-century disciplines of psychology and aesthetic philosophy. The second follows late 19th- and early 20th-century art practice and its theory, and the third examines the role of spiritualist movements in creating a Modernist aesthetic vision.

Late 19th and early 20th century modernism As a prelude to this discussion I would first like to consider the question of “modernism”, the umbrella concept covering these various strands. As developed in the 19th 9 Although there is no actual term for naturalism in Greek or Latin it is clear that on some level the imitation of the natural world was considered normative and desirable for classical viewers, although perhaps not for the same reasons mooted in later criticism. See Pollitt (1979) 2–4; and Elsner (1995) 15–48. “Mimesis” or “imitation”, is the term used in ancient discussion for art that imitates the world as we see it. Its own definition changes over the course of time. In the 5th century BCE Greek context when the concept of mimesis first emerged as a category of aesthetic evaluation it may be understood to mean an exact copy of an original. Subsequently under the influence of Plato and Aristotle the definition, explored first and foremost in the context of language and theater, expanded to include ideas of interpretation that also allowed the possibility of an ethical component. For discussion see Else (1958); and Pollitt (1974) 37–41. Naturalism as a category of critical evaluation is allied with mimesis in modern historiography. According to Pollitt (Pollitt (1979) 3) it first appeared in the critical vocabulary when the Italian art historian Giovanni Pietro Bellori used it to describe the work of Caravaggio and his followers; see Bellori (1672/2006) 201–216. Here it was opposed to “idealism” a corrected imitation of nature which Renaissance critics saw as the defining feature of ancient art; see Pollitt (1979) 2–4. 10 Aphairesis (n) and aphaireo (v) may be understood to mean “abstraction” and “to abstract”. The literal meaning of the verbal form is “to take away from”, “to rob”, “to deprive someone of something”, the verbal noun suggesting deprivation or subtraction; see Liddel & Scott. The Latin abstrahere may be understood as “to draw away from”, “to withdraw”, “to divert”, “to alienate from”; see Lewis & Short. In neither Greek nor Latin is the word used in the context of visual criticism. In the Aristotelian corpus the corollary to aphaeresis is prosthesis (addition), and the sense is largely that of subtraction; see Cleary (1985).

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century, the idea of “modernism” implied rupture with the past across the full range of human experience. In terms of art and the aesthetic questions aligned with it, modernism meant the rejection of the classical tradition and what was understood to be its emphasis on a literary canon that determined appropriate subject matter, theories that placed beauty at the center of the artistic endeavor, and a prescriptive approach to artistic practice. In place of these established values, Modernist artists and theorists proposed a new range of subject matter that would better reflect the exigencies of modern life, a subject matter that released artists from the mandate to create beauty according to an established norm thus allowing the development of new kinds of representational techniques and with them new theories of practice.11 Also, and crucially, there developed new theories of perception, theories designed to explain how, in the absence of a representational canon, art might be best understood.12

Theories of perception These theories of perception represent the first strand of inquiry. That artists of the second half of the century were absorbed with questions of optics is well known from such Impressionist works as Claude Monet’s 1872 painting, Impression Sunrise.13 But Monet’s efforts represent but one manifestation of an intellectual concern that preoccupied late 19th-century thinkers across a range of disciplines. Foremost among them was the German aesthetic philosopher, Robert Vischer (1847–1933). Vischer was interested in understanding the ways in which people responded to and made sense of inanimate objects. This question stood at the center of his dissertation, Über das optische Formgefühl: ein Beitrag zur Aesthetik (Leipzig 1873), and his answer was what he called “Einfühlung”, “in-feeling”, or empathy, the projection on the part of a viewer of individual experience and emotion onto inanimate form, a projection that infused the object with meaning and life.14 Vischer worked out this theory in a general way in his dissertation, but it was only in the work of Theodor Lipps (1851–1914) that the theory of empathy found direct application to the problem of art. Lipps summarized his position in his study

11 The bibliography of modernism is vast, encompassing not only the visual arts but also developments in literature and music. Recent studies focusing on the definition of modernism in the visual arts include Clark (1984) and Varnedo (1990), both of whom deal with 19th- and early 20th-century developments. For an overview of developments in the range of disciplines see Waltz (2008). 12 For an overview see Barasch (2000); Mallgrave & Ikonomou (1994) 5–17. 13 Impression, soleil levant; Musée Marmottan inv. no. 4014. For bibliography and illustration, see Wildenstein (1974) 226 no. 263, fig. 263. 14 For “Einfühlung”, see Vischer (1873) 21–24. For an English translation (On the Optical Sense of Form: A Contribution to Aesthetics), see Vischer p. 92 in Mallgrave & Ikonomou (1994) 89–123. On Vischer himself: Mallgrave & Ikonomou (1994) 17–29; and Barasch (2000) 99-108.

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Grundlegung der Aesthetik (1903), arguing that an observer understands form on the basis of his own experience by projecting that experience into what he or she sees to complete the image. Thus, according to Lipps, when a viewer asserts that he sees an eye that expresses pride in a sculptured portrait, he does not actually see pride itself but something he understands to be the physical manifestation of pride. As such the viewer participates by means of empathy in creating the image of pride.15 Lipps’ application of Vischer’s theory of empathy to artistic experience was important in two respects: it redefined aesthetic experience by making the viewer a participant in the creation of the image, and it set emotion at the heart of the viewing experience, for the goal of empathetic viewing was to understand not the material essence of an object, but the ideas and feelings that that object expressed.

Artistic practice The effect of the Modernist canon rejection was to open artistic practice to a range of possibility, and there were, as a result, many modernisms: Symbolism, Fauvism, Expressionism, Vorticism, Futurism, and Suprematism to name but a few. In this second strand of inquiry I shall consider late 19th- and early 20th-century artistic practice. My purpose is not to provide a historical overview of the various groups and their practices, but to discuss one of their shared concerns, the idea that art could and should reveal inner states of mind and feeling through the combined forces of subject matter and style.16 There were of course various types of inner states to be evoked and an equally large number of strategies for achieving that end. For example, the French Symbolist

15 Lipps based his theory of empathy on the experience of seeing what he referred to as “expressive movements” (“Ausdruksbewegungen”). The flickering of an eye or the waving of an arm could signal an emotional state and thus a response from the viewer akin to participation. Lipps linked this participation (“Mitmachen”) to “Einfühlung”, a topic he took up in chapter two, “Die Ausdruksbewegungen und Einfühlung”; Lipps (1903) 107–26, esp. 111 (on the link between participation and empathy: “Dies Mitmachen ist aber “Einfühlung”. Einfühlung also ist Bedingung der Freude an dem in der wahrgenommen Ausdruksbewegung legenden inneren Varhalten eines Anderen”. For a summary of Lipps’ thought and work, see Barasch (2000) 111–113. 16 The idea that art could and should reveal inner states of mind and feeling was of course an extension of the empathy theory that had developed and manifested itself in a variety of ways. The relationship between visual appearance and inner life was itself without canonical definition with some artists exploring what they deemed to be the spiritual underpinnings of artistic creation, others the links to sexuality, and still others a range of psychological states to name but a few. On the relationship between modernist art and the spiritual see Tuchman & Freeman (1986) which observes the tie between the development of abstract visual form and late 19th- and early 20th- century spiritualist ideas. For intellectual background and artistic manifestation stressing the link between Viennese scientific and medical developments, art and art history, see generally Kaendel (2012).

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painter Odilon Redon (1840–1916) suggested the dream life of the unconscious in works such as Winged head above the waters (1878) (Fig. 1.9),17 an image that was deceptively familiar in its use of a naturalistic individual forms, and perplexing in its juxtaposition of images and manipulations of space and scale. Redon’s dreamy fictions contrast markedly with paintings by such artists as Edvard Munch (1863–1944) whose 1893 painting, The scream (Fig. 1.10), defines the concept of Expressionism.18 Like Redon, Munch based his painting on visible reality, but in contrast to Redon he interpreted that world by manipulating line, color, and composition in ways that totally upended the established conventions of representation to use landscape and human subjects as a visual essay expressive of a tormented psychological state. A particular aspect of this modern interest in the exploration of inner life was the desire on the part of many artists to tap into and reveal what were described as the spiritual underpinnings not only of human experience, but also of physical form. Practitioners of this type of Modernist art which developed in the early decades of the  20th century included the Bauhaus painter Vassily Kandinsky (1866–1944), the Dutch De Stijl artist Piet Mondrian (1872–1944), and the Russian Suprematist Kazimir Malevich (1879–1935). With Kandinsky taking the lead in paintings such as Improvisation 28 of 1912 (Fig. 1.11),19 and Mondrian and Malevich following suit over the course of the next decade, a new kind of art, independent of representational tradition developed, a manner of expression described by Kandinsky in his treatise of 1912 Über das Geistige in der Kunst as “spiritual” (“geistige”) painting.20 The treatise built on the belief in the relationship between interior life and exterior form. As Kandinsky put it, “form is the external expression of… inner meaning”,21 and throughout the treatise he opposes material reality to the world of thought and emotion. He argues that a material object cannot be absolutely reproduced noting, “Many genuine artists, who cannot be content with an inventory of material objects, seek to express objects by what was once called “idealization”, then “selection”, and which to-morrow will

17 Tête ailée au-dessus des eaux; Art Institute of Chicago no 50.1428. See Lacau St. Guily & Decroocq (1966) 196f no. 1129. Text illustration after this volume fig. 1129. 18 Der Schrei; Nasjonalmuseet for Kunst, Arkitektur og Design, Oslo. See Woll (2009) 316 no. 333. 19 Improvisation 28; Solomon K. Guggenheim Museum, New York. See Roethel & Benjamin (1982) 443 no. 443. 20 Throughout the treatise (Kandinsky (1970)), Kandinsky describes non-representational painting based on color, line, and geometric form as “geistig”, a term frequently translated as “abstract”; see Kandinsky (2006). The first English translation of Über das Geistige in der Kunst was by Michael Sadler in 1914. Now known as Concerning the Spiritual in Art, Sadler initially published the translation under the title The Art of Spiritual Harmony. All English citations are from the original Sadler translation (Kandinsky (2006)). Kandinsky actively pursued an English edition of the book and worked with Sadler; for details, see Kandinsky (1970) vi-xxv. 21 Kandinsky (1970) 69 (“Die Form ist also die Äußerung des inneren Inhaltes”); Kandinsky (2006) 57.

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again be called something different”.22 That something else was “abstraction”, which by the 1920s was the term used to describe works by modern artists as diverse as Kandinsky, Mondrian, and Picasso, artists whose work was seen to annihilate the material in the search for what they referred to as spiritual expression.23

Spiritualism Kandinsky’s search for the spiritual introduces the third strand of inquiry, a consideration of the late 19th- and early 20th-century fascination with occult, esoteric, and/ or spiritualist practice. Across Europe an interest in mysticism emerged as one of the responses to the industrialization and materialism that had so radically transformed modern life in the wake of the Industrial Revolution.24 This interest was expressed in a variety of ways: the study of such historical figures as the 13th-century theologian and mystic Meister Eckhart or his 16th-century counterpart, Jakob Böhme25; a fascination with non-western religions such as Hinduism and Buddhism26; the development of new, esoteric organizations such as the Theosophical Society. Among these options, adherence to Theosophy was especially popular. The Theosophical Society, founded in New York in 1875 by Helena P. Blavatsky (1831–1891) and Colonel Henry Steel Olcott (1832–1907), was the most widely influential organization for the promotion of occult teaching in North America and Europe at the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th.27 Its mission, promoted through local societies and the dissemination of the writings of its founder, Madame Blavatsky, was all-encompassing: to combat materialism in science and dogmatism in religion;

22 Kandinsky (1970) 71: “Der bewußte Künstler aber, welcher mitdem Protokollieren des materiellen Gegenstandes sich nicht begnügen kann, sucht unbedingt dem darstellenden Gegenstande einen Ausdruck zu geben, was man früher idealisieren hieß, später stilisieren un morgen noch irgendwie anders nennen wird” (Kandinsky (2006) 59. 23 In 1917 Gustav Hartlaub also referred to the new manner of artistic form, calling it “symbolic” painting; see Washton Long (1986) 207. Discussing Picasso and Cubism, Kandinsky noted that the new trend represented an “annihilation of materiality” (“Vernichtung des Materiellen”); see Kandinsky (1970) 52 (Kandinsky (2006) 38, which reads “destruction of matter.”). 24 Washton Long (1986) 201. As she points out, these artists aimed at nothing less than the transformation of society. Their enterprise was therefore to discover an art form that would effect that transformation. 25 See Watts (1986) 239–55 on Meister Eckhart and Jakob Boehme as subjects of study in the 19th century; and Ringbom (1986) 134 for the connections between immateriality, spirituality and artistic representation. 26 Tuchman (1986) 19; Bolt (1986) 165–183, esp. 174; also Ringbom (1986) 132–138. 27 On theosophy generally, see Galbreath (1986) 388f. On theosophy and the occult, see Tuchman (1986) 17–61. On the relationship between art, the occult, and theosophy, see Ringbom (1966); Ringbom (1970); and Ringbom (1986).

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to investigate the laws of the universe, including the concept of the fourth dimension, and develop the latent powers of human beings; to make known the esoteric teachings of the oriental religions; and to promote the brotherhood of humanity.28 Especially interesting in these teachings was the belief that each human being generates a potentially visible aura, or thought-form, which reveals thoughts and emotion through distinctive patterns and colors. A second generation of Theosophists, Annie Besant and Charles W. Leadbeater disseminated these ideas in two publications, a joint publication, Thought-Forms (1901), and a single-author volume by Leadbeater, Man Visible and Invisible (1902).29 Theosophy was central to the development of the artistic ideas and attitudes that lead to the development of non-objective painting across Europe in the first decades of the 20th century in that many of the most influential Modernist painters either peripherally explored or overtly embraced its tenants. Kandinsky, a practitioner of yoga as early as 1900, frequented a group interested in mysticism while living in Munich, and is known to have read the writings of Blavatsky, Besant and Leadbeater. Moreover, he paid tribute to Theosophical teaching when he noted that he wanted to depict the spiritual reality behind physical form as the world entered in to what he referred to in Theosophical terms as the “Epoch of the Great Spiritual”.30 Seemingly different on the face of things, the varieties of intellectual endeavor I have sketched here  – the study of empathy that emerged in scientific and philosophical circles in the last decades of the 19th century, the development of a Modernist aesthetic in painting and sculpture, and the interest in occult spirituality – share common ground to the extent that all built on the premise that it was possible to see and understand some sort of higher truth – the truth of human emotion or spiritual essence – through the objects of the material world.

The early interpreters of late antique art With this background in mind it is to the writings of those great interpreters of Roman and late antique art, Franz Wickhoff, Alois Riegl, and Wilhelm Worringer that I would now like to turn. It is, I suggest, with these critics, thinkers who spearheaded the revival in the fortunes of late antique art, that the conversation about the relationship between naturalism and abstraction, and the association of these styles with the material and the spiritual, the rational and the mystical begins. Further, I propose

28 Galbreath (1986) 388. 29 Galbreath (1986) 390; Ringbom (1986) 136f, 149f. Besant (Besant & Leadbeater (1901)) was published by the Theosophical Publishing House, as was Leadbeater (Leadbeater (1902)). The popularity of Besant’s work was such that it was subsequently reprinted in 1905 and 1925. 30 Ringbom (1986) 131.

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that the conversation that they inaugurated should be understood in the broader context of the intellectual trends we have been considering: the developing theory of empathy, the desire to understand painting and sculpture as a means of access to hidden emotional states, the trend towards the exploration of the occult.

Franz Wickhoff In 1895 Franz Wickhoff (1853–1895) published Römische Kunst: Die Wiener Genesis together with Wilhelm, Ritter von Härtel. The men divided the project, with von Härtel providing the codicological analysis and Wickhoff the art historical content. Although intended to classify the manuscript as an example of Roman art, Wickhoff’s project, which was in fact a discussion of Roman art from the period of Augustus to Constantine, also had the far more ambitious aim of establishing the viability of Roman art as a legitimate artistic phenomenon against the claims circulating from the time of Johann Joachim Winckelmann (1717–1768) that it was merely a failed offshoot of Greek art. In making his argument Wickhoff observed two elements that he felt identified a specific Roman method of representation: the use of continuous narrative and the creation of an art that he categorized as “illusionistic” (“illusionistisch”) against the “naturalism” (“Naturalismus”) of Greek art. Wickhoff characterized Roman illusionism as a formal technique in which a series of impressions gathered by the artist were then united into a single image by the viewer. Naturalism, by contrast, resulted from the accumulation of individual observations, meticulously detailed and unified by a perspective system.31 Wickhoff considered this impressionistic illusionism, which he observed in both painting and sculpture, as the surpassing achievement of Roman art. By it he meant the kind of representation that demands “that the spectator transform and concentrate into a spatial unity [the subject of his viewing] by means of his own complementary experience”.32 To illustrate the problem he used the example of a relief of a rose bush from the late 1st-century Tomb of the Haterii (Fig. 1.12), a relief which he argued did not faithfully copy every detail of the rose as would be the case in a

31 The text was soon translated into English in consultation with Wickhoff by Eugenia Strong (Mrs. S. Arthur Strong) as Roman Art: Some of Its Principles and Their Application to Early Christian Painting. All English citations are from the Strong translation (Wickhoff (1900)). On continuous narrative, see Wickhoff (1895) 7–10 (Wickhoff (1900) 8–13). On the impressionistic and illusionistic aspects of Roman art, see Wickhoff (1895) 20f and 52–130 (Wickhoff (1900) 18f and 46–116). On the naturalistic traditions of Roman art, see Wickhoff (1895) 25–51 (Wickhoff (1900) 22–45). On the difference between naturalism and illusionism especially as evidenced in painting, see Wickhoff (1895) 132–137 (Wickhoff (1900) 118–121). 32 “Bezeichneten wir es als das Wesentliche der Illusionsmaleriei, daß sie den Beschauer affordert, unverbunden nebeneinander gestellte Farbtöne durch die supplierende Erfahrung zu zusammenhänger Raumwirkung umzuschaffen...”: Wickhoff (1895) 161 (Wickhoff (1900) 149).

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naturalistic representation, but rather gave the impression of the rose through techniques of carving that manipulated light and shadow in such a way as to invite viewers to complete the picture from their own knowledge of what a rose bush might be like.33 My purpose here is not to discuss the validity of Wickhoff’s assessment, but rather to point out the extent to which his thinking relies on the theories of empathetic viewing promoted by Vischer and Lipps. Like his contemporaries Wickhoff underscored the role of the viewer in creating the image.

Alois Riegl Alois Riegl (1858–1905) shared Wickhoff’s interests. Riegl’s extended essay on late Roman art, Die spätrömische Kunst-Industrie, published in 1901, took up where Wickhoff left off to examine art and architecture in the period between the reign of Constantine (305–337) and the accession of Charlemagne (768) and to define with these chronological limits the periods we now know as late antiquity.34 His stated purpose was to observe and describe the laws governing the development of late Roman style, specifically the style of such works as the Constantinian friezes from the Arch of Constantine and the Justinianic panels in San Vitale. In so doing Riegl argued that this newly defined period’s artistic production, then universally vilified as one of decline from the naturalistic standards of Greco-Roman classicism, be accepted on its own aesthetic merits as something new, different, and equally valid, a visual expression of the culture it served.35 To argue his case Riegl developed a critical language based on sets of opposing values that were designed to make the case for a distinct late antique aesthetic. Riegl worked from the premise that all art strives for the true imitation of nature, but that each person, and by extension each historical period, has its own concept of natural imitation based on two broad categories of conception and perception, “Nahesicht” (near-sight) and “Fernsicht” (far-sight), with near-sight defined as the planar conception of art, such as that seen in Egypt, and far-sight as a spatial approach interested in shape and structure such as that seen in Greco-Roman tradition. In the former, that is in near-sight, representation was understood to be tactile and perception literal. In the latter, far-sight, representation was defined as optical and perception 33 Wickhoff (1895) 55–60 (Wickhoff (1900) 49–53). For the Haterii reliefs, see Helbig (1963) 773–781. 34 Although published at the turn of the 20th century, Riegl’s text was translated into English only in 1985 by Rolfe Winkes as The Late Roman Art Industry; all English citations are from this edition (Riegl (1985)). Riegl states that he was building on Wickhoff’s work, picking up where his older colleague had left off, and that his aim was to demonstrate that the Vienna Genesis represented progress in the arts; Riegl (1901) 10f (Riegl (1985) 13–15). Riegl himself has been of great interest to scholars; see especially Gubser (2006); Iversen (1993); also Olin (1992). 35 See Riegl’s introductory remarks: Riegl (1901) 1–13 (Riegl (1985) 5–17).

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imaginative, with an individual’s experience of the world providing the missing doses of reality.36 In essence these terms and the concepts that underpinned them represented an elaboration of Wickhoff’s opposition of naturalism and illusionism, and, like Wickhoff, Riegl’s own theory of perception relied upon the work of Vischer and Lipps in the area of empathy. Within these broad categories Riegl applied two other terms, “crystalline” (“kristallinisch”) and “organic” (“organisch”), the former referring to works of art that were symmetrical in composition, two-dimensional and linear in form, the latter referring to those that were asymmetrical and gave the appearance of three-dimensionality by dint of their method of carving or as a result of painting by modulating color with the introduction of light and shade. According to Riegl’s scheme crystalline form embodied the immutable and eternal aspects of inorganic, dead matter, while organic form expressed the accidental transience of nature and living beings.37 Governing this concept of imitation  – both its implementation and its perception – was the larger force he termed “Kunstwollen” (“art-will”), in this instance the set of underlying rules characteristic of a given period that determine a culture’s creative force.38 As observed by Riegl, the leading characteristics of late Roman “Kunstwollen” as seen in a work of art such as the Justinian mosaic (Fig. 1.2) were an orientation towards the pure perception of individual shape which involved what he called rigid crystallization, symmetry, and a suppression of modeling; rhythm, or the sequential repetition of the same appearances for the purposes of achieving unity through simplification and a creation of the sense of massiveness; planar composition, and a desire to see shape in full spatial boundaries resulting in the isolation of the figure both from the ground and from other shapes.39 These values stood in opposition to the rhythms established by the organic composition in such works of classical art as

36 The discussion is taken up in chapter two on sculpture: Riegl (1901) 45–123, esp. 47–57 (Riegl (1985) 51–131, esp. 53–63). See also Riegl (1985) xxii for Winkes’ commentary on near-sight and far-sight. 37 For definitions, see Riegl (1966) 75–81 (Riegl (2004) 123–129). Although Riegl used the terms in Die Spätrömische Kunst-Industrie he offers no precise definition of them there, assuming instead a familiarity with them on the part of his reader. Riegl does, however, define the terms in other contexts, particularly the set of lectures that became known as Historische Grammatik der bildenden Künste (Historical Grammar of the Visual Arts) (Riegl (1966); Riegl (2004)). Riegl produced the initial text during the 1897–98 academic year while on leave from the University of Vienna. In the following academic year (1898–99) he presented his work in a revised format as a lecture course. Publication occurred only posthumously under the aegis of his students Karl Swoboda and Otto Pächt; see Riegl (1966); for the recent English translation, see Riegl (2004). 38 In Die Spätrömische Kunst-Industrie, Riegl refers to “Kunstwollen” first in his introductory remarks; see Riegl (1901) 5f (Riegl (1985) 9f). Subsequently he devotes Chapter V to a discussion of the term.; see Riegl (1901) 209–217 (Riegl (1985) 223–234). 39 For leading characteristics of Late Roman “Kunstwollen”, see Riegl (1901) 209–217 (Riegl (1985) 223f). On the particular qualities of Late Roman “Kunstwollen” as manifest in San Vitale, see Riegl (1901) 132f (Riegl (1985) 139f).

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the Ara Pacis frieze that emphasized motion, integration of forms in space and the juxtaposition of opposites in such compositional artifices as contrapposto. In keeping with his desire to understand artistic form as a visual expression of its culture and turning to the example of portraiture, Riegl observed that the aim of this late antique “Kunstwollen”, was “the visualization of spiritual life per se, and not of some kind of individual emotion within it”,40 a purpose distinctly at odds with what he saw as the interest in individual experience seen to characterize earlier Roman art. Thus, to return to the initial comparison, using the criteria of Riegl’s analysis, the relief from the Ara Pacis reveals individual psychological characteristics and emotional experience that corresponded to Wickhoff’s idea of naturalism as a precise copy, while the mosaic of Justinian and his retinue, its individualized portraits notwithstanding, offered a generalized, illusionistic vision. Riegl’s exploration of late antique style represented an attempt to create a universally valid method of visual analysis that would explain what for late 19th-century viewers, himself included, was the irredeemable ugliness of late Roman art by finding a method to explain what he and his contemporaries saw as the stylistic madness that shaped late antique form.41 In his bid to take late Roman art on its own terms, Riegl proposed the suspension of classical aesthetic value, which he viewed as external to the historical image. What he failed to address was the fact that even as he was attempting to take this art on its own terms his own language was similarly alien to the material at hand. Indeed, Riegl’s fascination with the process of perception and the role of human agency in processing the artistic image was fully consistent with the 19th-century interest in the subject. In a similar vein, his equation of material form with underlying psychological and spiritual states was of a piece with the aims of contemporary artistic production, as was his sense that ugliness represented a legitimate representational category, one whose larger purpose was to reveal not beauty, but truth.

Wilhelm Worringer Throughout this discussion Riegl, although willing to make conclusions about the relationship between visual form and psychological states, never used the terms 40 “Nur war das Ziel die Versinnlichung des Geistes-lebens an sich und nicht irgend einer individuellen Regung desselben”: Riegl (1901) 111 (Riegl (1985) 119). 41 Riegl has a good deal to say about the perceived ugliness of late antique art, particularly in the Historical Grammar (Riegl (1966); Riegl (2004)). He recognizes it as a product of late antique “Kunstwollen” and suggests that “Kunstwollen” allows modern viewers the means of understanding things we understand as ugly in more historically accurate terms (Riegl (1901) 5f; Riegl (1985) 11). Further in the Historical Grammar he argues that the ugliness of late antique art is a vehicle for the transmission of the spiritual values that were the main concern of the later Roman Empire’s growing Christian population (Riegl (1966) 37f; Riegl (2004) 74f).

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‘naturalistic’ or ‘abstract’ to describe and define his stylistic categories. That equation was left to a scholar of the next generation, Wilhelm Worringer. In 1907 Worringer, who had followed Riegl’s lectures in Vienna for a period, submitted his dissertation, Abstraktion und Einfühlung: Ein Beitrag zur Stilpsychologie, (Abstraction and Empathy: A Contribution to the Psychology of Style) to the University of Bern.42 In it he took up the issue of what we have seen to be one of the central questions of late 19th- and early 20th-century aesthetic philosophy, the viewer’s role in the interpretation and understanding of a work of art. Worringer began by engaging with Theodore Lipps’ work on the theory of empathy. Although he found the theory interesting, he also considered it incompletely argued to the extent that Lipps’ aesthetic of empathy found beauty only in what he referred to as the naturalistic traditions of imitation.43 As such his was not and could never be a comprehensive aesthetic theory because it failed to account for the full range of artistic production, specifically images produced at the non-naturalistic end of the spectrum. It was Worringer’s purpose to engage that neglected end and in so doing create a comprehensive aesthetic system.44 To do so, he took Riegl’s newly defined period of late antiquity and with it the stylistic categories of the organic and the crystalline as his starting point. Following the example of Lipps, he continued by associating representational styles with the mental and emotional states identified and defined by the emerging discipline of psychology. Thus, as Lipps had before him, he equated psychological empathy, the ability to identify and engage with the world, with the imitation of nature, a process he described using Riegl’s term “organic”. Hoping to complete what Lipps had left unfinished, he then argued that Riegl’s crystalline style represented a visual corollary to another psychological state, that of abstraction, a detached, intellectual approach to the world, against the full, empathetic engagement with material reality implied by organic form.45 Finally, to demonstrate his case he commented on the appearance of these styles in the later Roman world, proposing that the rise of what he now referred to as “abstract style” could be associated with the success of monotheistic Christianity and its retreat from the materialist world in the face of the uncertainty brought on by the disintegration of the Roman social order at the end of antiquity. Abstract art opined Worringer was a

42 Worringer’s study was published first as a dissertation in 1907 and then as a book in 1908 (Worringer (1908)). English citations are from the 1953 translation by Michael Bullock (Worringer (1953)). 43 Worringer (1908) 17 (Worringer (1953) 4). 44 Worringer (1908) 17 and 19f (Worringer (1953) 4 and 7f). 45 “Wie der Einfühlungsdrang als Voraussetzung des ästhetischen Erlebens seine Befriedigung in der Schönheit des Organischen findet, so findet der Abstraktionsdrang seine Schönheit im lebenverneinenden Anorganischen, im Kristallinischen oder allgemein geprochen in aller abstrakten Gesetzmäßigkeit und Notwendigkeit”; Worringer (1908) 17 (“Just as the urge to empathy as a pre-assumption of aesthetic experience finds its gratification in the beauty of the organic, so the urge to abstraction finds its beauty in the life-denying inorganic, in the crystalline, or, in general terms, in all abstract law and necessity”; Worringer (1953) 4).

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clear manifestation of the descent of the middle ages and the rise of the mystical and the spiritual in the face of the collapse of reason and rational Roman order.46

Conclusions I began this essay by calling attention to the stylistic changes, long recognized, that characterize the difference between Roman art of the 1st and 6th centuries. What I would like to suggest in closing is that the ways in which we understand these changes are grounded less in ancient and late ancient ways of thinking and more in Modernist aesthetic thought. It was the work of Wickhoff, Riegl, and Worringer that set the terms for the observation and interpretation of late antique art, creating its vocabulary of description, its categories of analysis, and methods of interpretation in the absorption and distillation of contemporary ideas about the relationship between form and meaning that derived from Modernist thinking and artistic practice. In so doing they took the first steps towards legitimating the representational traditions of a field of study that at best had been overlooked and at worst vilified. For this they should be commended. At the same time, however, their work is open to criticism in that their methods of thinking, so rooted in contemporary intellectual concerns, created a way of seeing late antique form that is not necessarily consistent with late antique thought. There is, for example, no evidence that the forms they described as abstract and spiritual were understood as such in late antiquity, and it may well be that such an interpretation fails to connect us to the true purpose and meaning of late antique style. How that purpose might be uncovered and understood is beyond the scope of this project, a question to be considered at another time.47 In closing this essay I would like instead to consider an observation made by Riegl in his introduction to Spätrömische Kunst-Industrie: “Modern art, with all its advantages, would never have been possible if late Roman art with its un-classical tendency had not prepared the way”.48 I suggest the opposite to be the case. It was Modernism with its interests

46 Worringer notes that abstraction is a psychic disposition for retreat from the world; Worringer (1908) 27f (Worringer (1953) 15f). Quoting his older contemporary August Schmarsow (1853–1936), he observes that naturalistic, empathetic art represents that which is temporal and fleeting, while abstract art represents the eternal; Worringer (1908) 93–103 (Worringer (1953) 83–92). As such it is equated with spirituality in general and Christianity in particular (Worringer (1908) 106f; Worringer (1953) 96) and religion in general (Worringer (1908) 111f; Worringer (1953) 101). 47 This essay represents an initial foray into a larger study dealing with the relationship between style and meaning in late antique art. 48 Riegl (1901) 7 (Riegl (1985) 11): “Ja, dass die neuere Kunst mit ihren Vorzügen überhaupt niemals möglich gewesen wäre, wenn ihr nicht die spätrömische Kunst mit ihrer unclassischen Tendenz die Bahn gebrochen hätte”.

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in the perception, description, and creation of form that gave scholars like Wickhoff, Riegl and Worringer the means to see value in and grapple with late antique art.

References Barasch (2000): Barasch, M. (2000), Theories of art, 3: from Impressionism to Kandinsky, New York & London. Bardill (1999): Bardill, J. (1999), “The mosaics of the Great Palace and the Walker Trust excavations”, JRA 12, 216–260. Bellori (1672/2006): Bellori, G.P. (1672/2006), Le vite de’ pittori, scultori et architetti moderni (2006 reprint of 1672 edition), Bologna. Besant & Leadbeater (1901): Besant, A. & C. Leadbeater (1901), Thought – forms, London. Bolt (1986): Bolt, J. (1986), “Esoteric culture and Russian society”, in M. Tuchman & J. Freeman (eds), The spiritual in art: abstract painting 1890–1985, Los Angeles, 165–83. Brendel (1979): Brendel, O. (1979), Prolegomena to the study of Roman art, New Haven. Brett et al. (1947): Brett, G., W.J. Macaulay and R.B.K. Stevenson (1947), The Great Palace of the Byzantine emperors. Being a first report on the excavations carried out in Istanbul on behalf of the Walker Trust (The University of St. Andrews) 1935–38, London. Clark (1984): T.J. Clark, The painting of modern life: Paris in the art of Manet and his followers, Princeton. Cleary (1985): Cleary, J.J. (1985), “On the terminology of ‘abstraction’ in Aristotle”, Phronesis 30:1, 13–45. Delbrück (1912): Delbrück, R. (1912), Antike Porträts, Bonn Else (1958): Else, G.F. (1958), “‘Imitiation’ in the fifth century”, CP 53, 73–90. Elsner (1995): Elsner, J. (1995), Art and the Roman viewer. The transformation of art from the pagan world to Christianity, Cambridge. Forsyth & Weitzmann (1973): Forsyth, G. and K. Weitzmann (1973), The Monastery of Saint Catherine at Mount Sinai. The church and fortress of Justinian (Plates), Ann Arbor, MI. Galbreath (1986): Galbreath, R. (1986), “Theosophy”, in M. Tuchman and J. Freeman (eds), The spiritual in art: abstract painting 1890–1985, Los Angeles, 388–389. Gubser (2006): M., Gubser (2006), Time’s visible surface: Alois Riegl and the discourse on history and temporality in fin-de-siècle Vienna, Detroit. Helbig (1963): Helbig, W. (1963), Führer durch die öffentlichen Sammlungen klassicher Altertümer in Rom, Tübingen. Hiller (1969): Hiller, S. (1969), “Divino sensu agnoscere. Zur Deutung des Mosaikbodens im Peristyl des Grossen Palästes zu Konstantinopel”, Kairos 11, 275–305. Inan & Rosenbaum (1966): Inan, J. and E. Rosenbaum (1966), Roman and Early Byzantine portrait sculpture from Asia Minor, London. Iversen (1993): Iversen, M. (1993), Alois Riegl: art history and theory, Cambridge. Jobst (1987): W. Jobst (1987), “Der Kaiserpalast von Konstantinopel und seine Mosaiken”, Antike Welt 18:2, 22. Jobst (2006): Jobst, W. (2006), “Il mosaico del palazzo imperiale di Costantinopoli, restauroiconographia-cronologia”, Bizantinistica: rivista di studi bizantini e slavi 8, 1–18. Jobst et al. (1999): Jobst, W., R. Kastler and V. Scheibelreiter (eds.) (1999), Neue Forschungen und Restaurierungen im byzantinischen Kaiserpalast von Istanbul, Wien. Kandinsky (1970): Kandinsky, W. (1970), Über das Geistige in der Kunst, Bern.

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Kandinsky (2006): Kandinsky, W. (2006), Concerning the spiritual in art, (transl. M. Sadler), Boston. Kaendel (2012): Kaendel, E. (2012), The age of insight: the quest to understand the unconscious in art, mind, and brain from Vienna 1900 to the present, New York. Kitzinger (1977): Kitzinger, E. (1977), Byzantine art in the making: main lines of development in Mediterranean art, 3rd – 7th century, Cambridge. Lacau St. Guily & Decroocq (1966): St. Guily, A. Lacauand M.-C. Decroocq (1966), Odilon Redon. Catalogue raisonné de l’oeuvre peint et dessiné, 2: mythes et légends, Paris. Leadbeater (1902): Leadbeater, C. (1902), Man visible and invisible; examples of different types of men as seen by means of trained clairvoyance, London. Lipps (1903): Lipps, Th. (1903), Grundlegung der Aesthetik, Hamburg & Leipzig. L’Orange (1965): L’Orange, H.P. (1965), Art forms and civic life in the Later Roman Empire, Princeton. Müller-Wiener (1977): Müller-Wiener, W. (1977), Bildlexikon zur Topographie Istanbuls, Tübingen. Mallgrave & Ikonomou (1994): Mallgrave, H.F. and E. Ikonomou (1994), Empathy, form, and space: problems in German aesthetics 1873–1893, Santa Monica, CA. Olin (1992): Olin, M. (1992), Forms of representation in Alois Riegl’s theory of art, University Park, PA. Pollitt (1974): Pollitt, J.J. The Ancient View of Greek Art, New Haven. Pollitt (1974): Pollitt, J.J. (1974), The ancient view of Greek art: criticism, history, and terminology, New Haven. Prusac (2011): Prusac, M. (2011), From face to face. Recarving of Roman portraits and the late antique portrait arts, Leiden & Boston. Riegl (1901): Riegl, A. (1901), Die Spätrömische Kunst-Industrie (reprint Unikum, Bremen 2011), Wien. Riegl (1966): Riegl, A. (1966), Historische Grammatik der bildenden Künste, Graz & Köln. Riegl (1985): Riegl, A. (1985), The Late Roman art industry, (transl. R. Winkes), Roma. Riegl (2004): Riegl, A. (2004), Historical grammar of the visual arts, (transl. J. Jung), New York. Ringbom (1966): Ringbom, S. (1966), “Art in the ‘Epoch of the Great Spiritual’: occult elements in the early theory of abstract painting”, JWCI 29, 384–418. Ringbom (1970): Ringbom, S. (1970), The sounding cosmos: a study in the spiritualism of Kandinsky and the genesis of abstract painting, Åbo. Ringbom (1986): RingbomS. (1986), “Transcending the visible: the generation of abstract pioneers”, in M. Tuchman and J. Freeman (eds), The spiritual in art: abstract painting 1890–1985, Los Angeles, 131–53. Staatliche Museen zu Berlin (1980): Staatliche Museen, zu Berlin (1980), Römische Porträts, Berlin. Talbot Rice (1958): Rice, D. Talbot (1958), The Great Palace of the Byzantine emperors. Second report, Edinburgh. Roethel & Benjamin (1982): Roethel, H.K. and J.K. Benjamin (1982), Kandinsky: catalogue raisonné of the oil paintings, 1: 1900–1915, Ithaca. Trilling (1989): Trilling, J. (1989), “The soul of Empire: style and meaning in the mosaic pavement of the Byzantine imperial palace in Constantinople”, DOP 43, 27–72. Tuchman (1986): Tuchman, M. (1986), “The hidden meaning in abstract art”, in M. Tuchman and J. Freeman (eds), The spiritual in art: abstract painting 1890–1985, Los Angeles, 17–61. Tuchman & Freeman (1986): Tuchman, M. and J. Freeman (eds) (1986), The spiritual in art: abstract painting 1890–1985, Los Angeles. Varnedo (1990): Varnedo, K. (1990), A fine disregard. What makes modern art modern, New York. Vasari (1966): Vasari, G. (1966), Le vite de’ più eccellenti pittori scultori e architettori scritte nelle redazioni del 1550 e 1568, R. Bettarini and P. Barocchi (eds), Firenze. Vischer (1873): Vischer, R. (1973), Über das optische Formgefühl: ein Beitrag zur Aesthetik, Leipzig. Walz (2008): Walz, R. (2008), Modernism, Harlow & New York. Washton Long (1986): Washton Long, R.-C. (1986), “Expressionism, abstraction, and the search for Utopia in Germany”, in M. Tuchman and J. Freeman (eds), The spiritual in art: abstract painting 1890-1985, Los Angeles, 201–217.

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Watts (1986): Watts, H. (1986), “Arp, Kandinsky, and the legacy of Jakob Boehme”, in M. Tuchman and J. Freeman (eds), The spiritual in art: abstract painting 1890-1985, Los Angeles, 239–255. Weitzmann (1976): Weitzmann, K. (1976), The Monastery of St. Catherine at Mt. Sinai. The icons, Princeton, MA. Weitzmann (1977): Weitzmann, K. (ed.) (1977), The age of spirituality: late antique and early Christian art, third to seventh century: catalogue of the exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, November 19, 1977, through February 12, 1978, New York. Welsch (1986): Welsh, R.P. (1986), “Sacred geometry: French symbolism and early abstraction”, in M. Tuchman and J. Freeman (eds), The spiritual in art: abstract painting 1890–1985, Los Angeles, 63–87. Wickhoff (1895): Wickhoff, F. (1895), Die Wiener Genesis, Wien. Wickhoff (1900): Wickhoff, F. (1900), Roman art: some of its principles and their application to early Christian painting, (transl. S. Arthur Strong), London. Wiggers & Wegner (1971): Wiggers, H.P. and M. Wegner (eds) (1971), Das römische Herrscherbild, 3: 1.Caracalla bis Balbinus, Berlin. Wildenstein (1974): Wildenstein, D. (1974), Claude Monet. Biographie et catalogue raisonné, 1: 1840-1881, peintures, Lausanne & Paris. Woll (2009): Woll, G. (2009), Edvard Munch: complete paintings, 1: 1880–1897, London. Worringer (1908): Worringer, W. (1908), Abstraktion und Einfühlung: ein Beitrag zur Stilpsychologie, München. Worringer (1953): Worringer, W. (1953), Abstraction and empathy: a report on the psychology of style, (transl. M. Bullock), New York.

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Fig. 1.1: Julio-Claudian procession, Ara Pacis Augustae, Rome, 9 BCE; photo S. Bassett.

Fig. 1.2: Justinian and attendants, San Vitale, Ravenna, c. 546–548; photo S. Bassett.

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Fig. 1.3: Caracalla, early 3rd century; Berlin, Altes Museum, inv. Sk. 384; photo S. Bassett.

Fig. 1.4: Tetrarch (Maximian Hercules), c. 300; Cairo, Egyptian Museum, inv. 7257; photo Borromeo/Art Resource, NY.

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Fig. 1.5: Diocletian, c. 300; Istanbul, Istanbul Archaeological Museums, inv. 4864; photo S. Bassett.

Fig. 1.6: Christ, 6th century; Mt. Sinai, Monastery of St. Catherine; photo Michigan-Princeton-Alexandria expeditions to Mount Sinai.

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Fig. 1.7: Great Palace Mosaic, 6th century; Istanbul, Mosaic Museum; photo S. Bassett.

Fig. 1.8: Transfiguration of Christ on Mt. Tabor, 550–565; Mt. Sinai, Monastery of St. Catherine; photo Michigan-Princeton-Alexandria Expeditions to Mount Sinai.

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Fig. 1.9: Odilon Redon, Guardian Spirit of the Waters, 1878; Chicago, Art Institute of Chicago, inv. 50.1428; photo The Art Institute of Chicago/Art Resource, NY.

Fig. 1.10: Edvard Munch, The Scream, 1893; Oslo, Nasjonalmuseet for kunst, arkitektur og design, Oslo; © 2017 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York; photo Erich Lessing/Art Resource, NY.

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Fig. 1.11: Wassily Kandinsky, Improvisation 28 (second version), 1912; New York, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum; © 2017 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York; photo the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation/Art Resource, NY.

Fig. 1.12: Relief from the Tomb of the Haterii, Rome 1st century CE; Città del Vaticano, Museo Gregoriano Laterano Profano, inv. 10,117; photo S. Bassett.

John Onians

2 The Other Hippocampus: Neuroscience and Early Christian Art When most people think of a hippocampus in the context of late antique and early Christian art they probably visualise a creature from the sea thiasos, a half-fish halfhorse that we often see accompanying the soul on its journey to the Islands of the Blessed. They are less likely to think of an organ found near the centre of each hemisphere of their own brain. Nor would I have done until a few years ago, when I first learned of the hippocampus’ function in our mental life, a function that in Late Antiquity served to support one of the most important and innovative of Christian beliefs, the trust that they would gain access not to the pagan Islands of the Blessed, but to the Heavenly Jerusalem. What led me to find out about this other hippocampus was the desire to explore how the latest neuroscience might contribute to the solution of art historical problems. Earlier writers on art, from Aristotle to Baxandall, had already exploited what they knew of the brain, but I was inspired by the vast wave of new knowledge in that area, to embark on a larger project, the development of a new sub-discipline of art history, neuroarthistory.1 The foundation of this approach is the idea that a knowledge of neuroscientific principles can enable us to reconstruct salient aspects of the neural formation of individuals in any time or place, so allowing us to use such reconstructions to help to explain why those individuals made or used art in particular ways. Its most obvious advantages over existing approaches is that it gives us an access to the minds of those individuals which depends neither on the traditional use of texts, nor on speculative postmodern theory. Most strikingly, it gives us insight into the mental processes of both the makers and viewers of art of which they themselves could not be aware. Neuroscience, in other words, provides the art historian with an additional new tool of exceptional value.

The neural formation of early Christians This tool is particularly helpful when it comes to understanding the emergence of new art-related behaviours, such as the appearance of new styles and new forms of visual expression. To apply it, the first thing we need to do is to establish what was saliently new in the neural formation of those involved in the innovation. Sometimes it is exposure to a new physical environment, or to new technologies and new economic and

1 Onians (2007); Onians (2016). https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110546842-003

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social formations. That is what applies in the context of the emergence of new forms of art in the Upper Palaeolithic, ancient Greece, or ancient Rome. At other times what is most saliently new is exposure to new belief systems and religious practices. This is what applies to the arrival of Buddhism in China and Japan or of Islam in the Eastern Mediterranean. It also applies in the early Christian world, when a single new religion rapidly replaced a whole range of earlier practices. There is widespread agreement that Christianity’s sudden rise to dominance brings dramatic transformations in all art-related activities, from the layout of buildings to the style and subject matter of the paintings and mosaics with which their surfaces were decorated and the artefacts with which they were filled. There is much about the role of the new religion in bringing about those changes that we can already understand through the study of texts and the analysis of social and economic processes. Neuroarthistory allows us to deepen that understanding by revealing something of the neural activity on which those processes depended.

The early Christian brain: The hippocampus and spatial memory It was in my own pursuit of an appreciation of such neural activity that I became interested in the other hippocampus. I was struck by the findings of experiments studying the hippocampi of London taxi drivers and wondered whether they might shed light on the role of that organ in the early Christian world.2 The role of the hippocampus in the formation of memories has been known for some time, including the fact that the anterior hippocampus is more concerned with the memory of events and the posterior with that of topography. What the latest experiments were designed to explore is the extent to which the development of the posterior hippocampus was differentially affected by experience. To measure this the brains of London taxi drivers were scanned before and after their completion of the three-year training in London’s complex geography, the acquisition of the so-called “knowledge” needed to obtain a taxi permit. The results were startling. While those who passed the test experienced a major enlargement of their posterior hippocampus, in those who failed the test (or those who never took it) there was no change. The reason for the enlargement can be explained using one of the most basic neuroscientific principles. This is the rule that the more an activity of any sort is repeated, the more the connections between the neurons involved will multiply and the better they will become insulated, both processes causing an increase in their mass. To which it can be added that

2 Woolett & Maguire (2011) 2109–2114.

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in this particular case there may have been some growth of new neurons, since the hippocampus is one of the few areas of the brain where that has been shown to occur. In applying these results to early Christians, we should not expect their posterior hippocampus to have become similarly enlarged. If anything, in Rome at least, with the decay of a city, which had been by far the largest and most complex in Europe, there is likely to have been some shrinkage. Instead we can consider what might have been the consequences for the internal organisation of the posterior hippocampus of the acquisition of the specific type of topographical knowledge that was particularly vital to a Christian. After all, just as a specific knowledge of London’s street plan is essential for a London taxi driver who wants the financially valuable qualification of an operator’s licence, so a knowledge of various forms of religion-related topography was vital for the Christian who wanted to improve his/her chances of admission to the Heavenly Jerusalem. Of these topographies none was more important than that of the buildings that provided the settings for the rituals on whose successful performance such admission depended, first the baptistery and then the church. We can sense the importance of understanding the relation between the layout of a baptistery and the ritual it served by considering the complex layout of that of the Lateran. There the combination of variation in the column capitals and in the commentaries inscribed on the architrave sections shows that the effectiveness of the rite depended on changes in catachumens’ experience as they moved through the building turning successively to face in different directions.3 Equally important was the topography of the church to which the baptised now had access, with the movement from the outside world through the door and along the nave bringing the worshipper ever closer to the altar, the place where the bread and wine would be consumed in memory of the last supper and where often, as at St Peters, Rome, the promise of Paradise was re-enforced by the presence of the tomb of an important saint. Often, as at Sts Cosmas and Damian in the same city, that Paradise was represented in the apse. Holding this layout in the worshipper’s head was reassuring in itself, but this topography gained further authority from the way it related to others of a much larger scale. Thus, the baptistery recalled Christ’s baptism in the river Jordan and the altar his sacrifice in Jerusalem, which meant that it was impossible to grasp the significance of the gospel narratives without acquiring a more detailed knowledge of the topography both of the Holy Land as a whole and of Jerusalem in particular. Christ had urged people to “follow” him and do things in his memory, so visiting sacred sites and physically navigating that topography on pilgrimage was also beneficial. So too was visiting the Christian topography of a city such as Rome, rich in the sites of the martyrdom and burial of the Saints, with whom the believer wished to rise on the Last Day. Not everybody, of course, knew all these topographies, but as with the London taxi drivers, the better you knew them the

3 Onians (1988) 62f.

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more confident you would be of arriving in the ultimate topography, that of Heaven as detailed in Revelation. Knowledge of such topography was as viscerally necessary for an early Christian as the “knowledge” was for London taxi drivers. In the taxi driver’s case the knowledge was needed to get a meal ticket in this world, in the Christian’s it was needed to obtain well-being in the next. The critical nature of the Christian’s new need of topographic knowledge is brought out by comparing it with the needs of practitioners of the most widespread pre-Christian religion, that involving worship of the Olympian deities. This required no more than the sponsoring and witnessing of sacrifices at any relevant altar. Other practices, such as Judaism, Mithraism or the mystery religions made some call on spatial memory, but the demands were far less than those of the new religion. Each religion nourishes by its specific practices particular neural resources. The Olympian religion, for example, nourished rich resources for the categorisation of sacrificial animals and their behaviour on the way to the altar, because these were seen as critical for the effectiveness of the rite. In the case of Christianity one set of resources that became highly developed was that of those relating to spatial topography in the posterior hippocampus. One reason why recognising this consequence of Christian practices for the formation of neural pathways is important is because it helps us to understand the process by which those practices became ever deeper embedded. Because movement through a church, movement imagined or experienced through the Holy Land or through Jerusalem, and movement from life on earth to that in the Heavenly Jerusalem were all mutually reinforcing, the separate neural resources they nourished necessarily became interlinked during an individual’s life. This process of neural consolidation brought the believer direct benefits. As the neural pathways involved became stronger, so did the certainty of the associated benefits. The posterior hippocampus of early Christians is likely to have been distinguished not by enlargement but by the formation of a set of separate neural pathways all of which were interconnected.

The Early Christian brain. Magic rituals Applying the same basic neuroscientific principle, that the more an action is repeated and performed with attention the more the neural resources that support it will be reinforced, we can consider which other pathways would have become differentially consolidated in early Christians. One set were those associated with the rituals that were performed in the buildings we have just been considering, rituals such as baptism and the Eucharist. We can approach an enquiry into their neural foundations by considering one of the features they share, the requirement of a belief that a present action in one domain has a future impact on another. Identification of this feature is useful because outside Christianity such a belief would be understood as

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magic, and magic in these terms is practiced in different forms in all human populations.4 This means that it must be rooted in our biology, and more specifically in our neural makeup.5 Viewing Christian practices as magic thus helps us as we seek to explore its neural correlates. Before we do so it is worth noting that, while the omnipresence of magic in all human populations around the globe provides a clear indication that it is rooted in structural processes in the brain, the variation in its importance is an indication that the neural networks on which those processes depend can be either strengthened or weakened in proportion to its relative prominence in the particular community. In the ancient Near East and Egypt, for example, magic had been widespread because of the strength of anxieties in those regions that could not be met by human efforts. In ancient Mesopotamia there were deep anxieties about the instability of the cities built of mudbrick in an unstable climate. To meet this there was little practical that humans could do, but they could perform a ritual by, for example, inserting secret objects in foundation deposits. In Egypt the greatest anxieties were about the survival of the complete body after death. By accompanying the body with inscriptions and such magic objects as Djed amulets people felt reassured. In ancient Greece the greatest anxieties related to the survival of the state in wartime. Since that could be met by military training, there was little need of magic. Indeed, there was much scepticism about it.6 In Rome both streams of thought came together. Although many Etruscan practices which depended on superstition survived, the majority of the elite who were trained in Greek thought viewed sceptically both these inherited practices and those newly arrived from the East. The authority of this scepticism among the elite was one of the reasons why many of the Christian fathers went out of their way to insist that magic and their religion belonged in different worlds. So, as Christianity became first accepted under Constantine and then recognised as the only authorised religion under Theodosius, and the belief in the efficacy of rituals designed to ensure access to Paradise strengthened, the new religion was increasingly distanced from the world of magic to which it naturally belonged. This then became the prevailing view, and it was so strong that when J.G. Frazer, building on the work of E.B. Tylor, recognised the omnipresence of magic in all cultures he, on principle, excluded Christian practices from his ambitious overarching framework of Sympathetic Magic, with its subcategories, the Homoeopathic and the Contagious, the Homoeopathic being founded on the association of ideas by similarity, the Contagious on the association of ideas by contiguity.7 We, on the other hand, don’t need to share his reluctance. We can note, for instance, that one reason why people found baptism effective was because it combined both Homoeopathic 4 Flint (1991) 3–35. 5 Geertz & Thomas (1975–1976) 71–109. 6 Lloyd (1979) 10–58. 7 Tylor (1971) 116; and Frazer (1922) 52–54.

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and Contagious magic. It was Homoeopathic because their belief in it as a means of “washing away sins” (Acts 22.16) was founded in their familiarity with the use of water in many forms of cleaning. It was Contagious because their belief that being anointed with oil made them a permanent member of the Church was based in their familiarity with the way that being touched by oil left traces that were difficult to remove. Indeed, we can go further by indicating the neural basis of such belief. Repeated observation of the effects of washing lays down ever more robust neural resources supporting an ever more robust conviction that the ritual works, and the same is true with repeated observation of the effects of being touched by oil. Feeling water on one’s body makes one feel clean, and feeling oil on one’s body makes one feel that one is being affected by something that will not rub off. It is because the neural networks involved are so robust that the rituals in which they are reactivated are so effective. Another aspect of Christian rituals that exploited existing neural networks was the belief that one material can be transformed into another, as happens most strikingly at Communion, when wine becomes blood and bread becomes flesh. This belief was facilitated by neural structures that ensure that objects that are similar in appearance can easily be felt to share similar properties. Thus, the appearance and texture of wine is similar enough to blood, and those of bread sufficiently similar to those of flesh, for it to be believable that the one changes into the other. The neural basis for such believability can be traced to the way the brain has been structured by evolution. In order to speed up processing of information coming through the perceptual system, materials are grouped together by categories in separate areas in the temporal lobes.8 A substance is thus first recognised as a liquid before it is identified as wine or blood, water or oil, on the basis of colour, texture or odour. The more similar one material is to another the easier it is for the two to be confused. It is only because wine and blood, being similar in colour, are processed by the same neural networks until the moment when they are sorted into one category or another, that the magic transformation at the centre of the ritual is believable. The effectiveness of Christian rituals was also reinforced by the building up of neural networks supporting the common element between the acceptance of such transformations, that is metaphor. Both the Old and New Testaments are full of metaphors, as when Christ at different times says he is the “way”, “light of the world”, “bread of life”, “good shepherd”, “vine”, and so on. Listening to, reading and meditating on those texts will have encouraged the habit of metaphorical interpretation strengthening the neural resources involved. Significantly, too, since metaphor was so essential to Christianity, those resources will have been primed each time an individual entered a church or merely thought about any aspect of the Christian life, and this would have made it more likely that they would have been fully experienced, with

8 Prass et al. (2013).

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the result that at that time Christ really could become the “way”, “light of the world”, “bread of life”, “good shepherd”, “vine”. The same applies to the metaphorical interpretation of movement. For the Christian, whose neural resources were primed to interpret actions metaphorically, the movements made at baptism, descending into a basin and then climbing out, could mean much more, making it easier for the catachumen to feel first “buried” with Christ, as St Paul said at Romans 6.4, and then go on to share in his Resurrection. Or it might apply to the passive response to the action of another person, as in anointing with oil. Being anointed turned the catachumen into another “christ”, the Greek translation of the Hebrew Messiah, “the anointed one”. In this process a crucial role is played by desire. If one desires the water of baptism to clean, or its benefits to be permanently attached by anointing, one is more likely to experience those benefits. If one would like Christ to be the way, the light, bread, the good shepherd, or the vine one is more likely to experience him in that role. If one wishes wine to become blood or bread flesh one is more likely to taste them as such. Desire was certainly a shared drive behind all these experiences because a principal shared emotion among Christians was the desire for salvation and entry into Paradise. Two recent experiments suggest ways in which such desire might be understood neuroscientificallly. One, conducted by Kawabata and Zeki, indicated that the neural correlates of desire whether in the field of events, of people or of objects consist in linkages between the cingulate cortex and the supra orbital frontal cortex (SOFC), an area associated with reward.9 It may be that the desire category most relevant to the Christian experience was that related to the places where significant events took place. If so it is no surprise that this was associated with activation of the parhippocampal place area (PPA), with its known connections to the posterior hippocampus. If Paradise was the most desirable place it will have evoked the strongest response from the SOFC’s reward system. Even more important for an understanding of the broader role of desire in supporting all magical transformations is the salience of the common neural correlates in the anterior and medial cingulate and in the SOFC. If there was as much similarity in the neural correlates of desire in early Christians as in the Japanese subjects of Zeki and Kawabata’s study, then it is easier to see how all desired transformations depended on activation of a common pathway and how repeated activation of that pathway would have only confirmed the rewards with which they were associated. Another pointer in the same direction was an experiment on “brand preference” designed to establish the role of the affective as opposed to the rational element in decision making.10 A principal finding was that while, in general, presentation of different brands of beer and coffee provoked activity in brain areas associated with analysis, only the sight of a product already identified as an

9 Kawabata & Zeki (2008). 10 Ahlert et al. (2008).

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individual’s “first choice brand” caused activation of areas of the ventromedial prefrontalcortex (vmPFC) which is particularly associated with an emotional decision. Most striking was that it was only the “first choice brand” that caused such activation, not a second or third choice brand. In other words, the emotionally based attachment to a favourite brand was made on a “winner takes all” basis. Considering that the influence of imperial patronage turned Christianity into the most heavily marketed religion, and that through its emphasis on feelings such as love and hope, it was also most heavily emotionally driven it may not be inappropriate to apply this last experiment’s findings to the early Christian experience. If marketing made Christianity, in the field of religion, a “first choice brand”, the decision to believe in the effectiveness of its practices may have been driven by emotion rather than analysis and so also taken on a “winner takes all” basis. The neural pathways of desire that this opened up and consolidated would have made it easier for a Christian to believe that something could become something it wasn’t, wine become blood, poverty wealth and death life, and this would have led to the formation of a single new set of new pathways supporting such belief. Crucial to the instilling of these beliefs was the use of words. This was most obvious in the verbal commentaries that accompanied the Chuch’s rituals. The words of the priest, which partly repeated those of Christ in the case of the eucharist, or, in the case of baptism, those of St John the Baptist or of St Paul, played an important part in convincing the believer that the transformation had really taken place. In this sense their function was much like that of spells in the context of what is traditionally thought of as magic, and we can explore the neural underpinnings of receptivity to such spells by reference to three other recent neurological experiments. One set was developed by Danish neuroscientists at Aarhus University, who were interested in identifying those parts of the brain that are differentially active during serious prayer. They took members of a very devout Christian church and compared scans of their brains when they prayed to God and when they prayed to father Christmas.11 The big difference that they discovered was that when they prayed to God, but not when they prayed to Santa Claus, the scans showed considerable activity in the caudate nucleus, an area of the dorsal striatum, which has been shown by neuroeconomists interested in risk taking, to be associated with trust, i.e. the belief that someone will fulfil a bargain. This activity of the caudate nucleus is almost certainly selected for by evolution, since throughout our childhood and youth a belief that our parents, elders and betters are passing on true knowledge and giving us good advice greatly improves our chances of survival by reducing the risk of dangerous experiment. Christians who pray can thus be seen to draw particular confidence from the practice because it activates the same area as that activated by the words of a parent. Indeed, the importance of that association is confirmed by the way they address as “father” not just God, but

11 Schjødt et al. (2008); and Schjødt et al. (2009).

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the pope and all priests. Because the invocation of a “father” would have activated all the neural networks passing through the caudate nucleus on which people relied when young, everything that the person so invoked said would be more likely to be believed. The other two sets of experiments that shed light on the role of words in Christian magic were carried out by neuroscientists interested in the evaluation of quality in art and wine. Many experiments have shown that an intense positive experience of a work of art, a food or a loved one is associated with high activation in the nucleus accumbens, part of the brain’s reward system in the ventral striatum, and the adjoining medial orbital fontal cortex (mOFC), the power of this response being demonstrated by its involvement in the production and absorption of the neurochemical dopamine in a process also central to drug addiction. This role of the mOFC in the reward system, has now been qualified by the discovery by researchers in Oxford and California that the degree of the reward could be fundamentally affected by verbal commentary. Thus, in the case of the Oxford experiments relating to art, when people were looking at images of a fake Rembrandt, if they were told that it was genuine their medial orbital frontal cortex reacted in the same way as it would have done to a real masterpiece.12 The findings of the California studies on response to wines were very similar.13 Their results showed that, regardless of the real quality of the wine, if the experimental subjects were told it was expensive, e.g. $40 instead of $5, they had a correspondingly high response from the mOFC. Since the mOFC is closely connected with the striatum, both dorsal and ventral, as a key centre in the brain’s reward system, the correlation is highly significant. The brain’s anticipation of a reward can be greatly increased by the receipt of information, especially if it comes from a trusted source. What such research suggests is that the verbal element in a ritual such as baptism or the eucharist could have a powerful effect on how the material ingredients of the ritual were experienced. The mechanism that causes someone to have a $40 response to a $5 wine, could effectively make the experience of water like the experience of wine and could certainly cause the worshipper to get such a neurochemical reward that they would want to repeat the experience, as they would when consuming a drug. Much of the magic on which the Christian experience depended was rooted in the brain’s neural make-up. Nor are these the only implications for an understanding of the early Christian experience of these experiments revealing the power of words to alter neural response. Inscriptions or tituli, had an important role in organising the worshipper’s or pilgrim’s experience. Indeed, they directly influenced the choice of a place of burial, both in catacombs and in the floors of churches. An inscription bearing the name of a martyr, who was sure to enter heaven, or one identifying an important relic, did the same for

12 Huang et al. (2011). 13 Baba et al. (2008).

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the value of a piece of land as an appropriate place of pilgrimage or burial as did the designation Rembrandt for the sense of value of a painting or the label $40 for that of a wine. Such names were crucial to the viewer’s unconscious mental experience. This impact could then be multiplied through the circulation of relics. The attaching of a powerful name to an object such as a bone, a flask of oil or just an empty box would have brought all who saw it a predictable neurochemical reward. A knowledge of the way a verbal cue such as an inscription can by itself activate the brain’s reward system has implications for our understanding not just of Christian cult objects, but of Christian art. As the experiments with praying believers today show, standing in front of an image of Christ, the Virgin, a saint or a martyr would always have been liable to activate the caudate nucleus. To this observation we can add the recognition that the presence of a painted or carved name would substantially have intensified the sense of benefit experienced. The worshipper could not have known that the sense of well-being that he felt when he prayed before such an image had its roots not in the response of the sacred figure invoked but in his or her own neural resources. The existence of this correlation helps us to appreciate why inscriptions are much more important in Christian art than in that of paganism.

The visual cortex of the Christian artist: Visual experience The way the specific character of the Christian’s neural response to such images helps us to explain this difference between the images of Christian and pagan deities brings us to one of the themes of this conference, Abstraction. Pagan deities act on this world using physical powers like those of humans, but incomparably greater in scale. A statue of Zeus or Neptune was all the more convincing if its muscles were enlarged to the scale necessary for the hurling of lightning or the generation of earthquakes. Since Christ and the Christian saints did not physically act on the world they had no need of such bodies, indeed for them to be shown with a body of flesh and blood would only distance them from the domain of the spiritual and the heavenly in which their aid was sought. The solidity so necessary in a pagan deity was a liability in a saint, which is why, while pagan images of deities are almost always sculpted, Christian images were after the 4th century almost always painted. These reasons for the distinction in the mediums favoured by the two religions remind us of how different the neural formations of the pagan sculptor and the Christian painter were. The neural resources in the visual cortex on which the pagan sculptor drew when making his representation were those built up either by looking at the real human body, as happened typically under the Greeks, or, in the context of the Roman period, by looking at earlier Greek images shaped by such looking. Pagan sculptors thus possessed neural resources in their visual cortex rich in detail relating to the modelling of flesh, hair and drapery.

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Christian painters typically looked neither at real human bodies, nor at their representations in sculpture. Instead they looked at earlier painted representations of the figures concerned, representations which were two-dimensional and in which the details of body and drapery were irrelevant. The neural resources of the successive generations of painters and mosaicists who made the new images would have been increasingly shaped by exposure to the linear and schematic, so predisposing them more and more to what we call abstraction. The only specific details they needed to engage with in the earlier images were such features as a saint’s standard facial traits, for example, St Peter’s grey beard, or the instruments of their martyrdom, for example, the grill of St Lawrence. It was these, along with a painted name, that gave their images their power. They would not have disappointed their viewers who shared a similar unconscious mental formation.

Christian art and the visual cortex: The imagination In this account of the neural formation of artists, we have been emphasising the way the visual cortex was shaped by truly visual exposure, either to the outside world as in the case of Greek artists, or in the case of the Christian artist, to earlier images. But this is only a part of the story. One of the most important discoveries of neuroscience is that the visual cortex is as active when we just imagine something as when we look at it. A simple test of this is that if you were to ask someone to imagine a tiny dot, and scanned their brain as they did so, you would only observe a tiny activation in the centre of area V1 at the back of the brain, while if you scanned their brain when they were imagining a large mountain the activation would spread to a much larger area. Equally, if you were to read a book about a face, the area of the brain that deals with faces, the fusiform face area (FFA) would light up and if you read or hear about the colour red, the colour area V4 would be activated. All this was of little importance under paganism, because both ordinary people and artists were primarily concerned with the outside world, but all that changed under Christianity. Instead of looking at the outside world everybody now paid more attention to written texts and spoken words, using their imaginations to visualise what they read or heard. This had profound importance for the neural formation of the visual cortex, which was now principally concerned with helping them to visualise scenes from the gospels. Of course, they could have done this using neural resources laid down by exposure to the people, buildings, and landscapes around them, but they had no reason to believe that that is what the people buildings and landscapes of the gospels really looked like. What was much more natural was to imagine those phenomena using the neural resources laid down by looking at earlier representations of such things. Since such representations, as we still see them in places like the catacombs were crude and schematic, compositions in which the various elements were set down separately

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instead of being integrated into a three-dimensional scene, looking at them would have caused the formation of neural resources in which those properties were maintained. Since both artists and viewers would have had their neural resources shaped by the same exposures, viewers would have been happy with the work the artists produced. The result would be compositions such as the apse of Sts Cosmas and Damian in Rome in which the separate characters involved are lined up between two palms representing Paradise above a river named Jordan with twelve sheep coming from two cities identified by inscriptions as representing Bethlehem and Jerusalem, cities respectively of Gentiles and Jews. Such an image represents not a real view, but the visualisation of elements described in a text.

The power of Christian art and visceral experience: Changes in neural formation and the meaning of the ambo of Haghia Sophia It might be thought that by emphasising the importance for unconscious mental formation in the Early Medieval world of internal mental activity, I am minimalising the importance of the lived experience of the external world, but that is not my intention. In fact, experience of the real world always is, and was then, critical for unconscious mental formation, because it was often the source of the visceral emotions most critical to neural formation. Take for example the familiar description by Paul the Silentiary of the ambo or pulpit in front of the altar of Haghia Sophia, composed on the occasion of the completion of a restoration of the church’s dome in 562: And as an island rises amid the waves of the sea, adorned with cornfields, and vineyards, and blooming meadows, and wooded heights, while the travellers who sail by are gladdened by it and are soothed of their anxieties and the exertions of the sea; so in the midst of the boundless temple rises upright the tower-like ambo of stone adorned with its meadows of marble, […] Thus, like an isthmus beaten by the waves on either side, does this space stretch out, and it leads the priest who descends from the lofty crags of this vantage point to the shrine of the holy table. The entire path is fenced on both sides with the fresh green stone of Thessaly, whose abundant meadows delight the eye. […] When to soothe your sorrows, you cast your eyes there, you might see snake-like coils twining over the fair marble in beauteous wavy paths, […] (Descr. Ambonis, 224–235).

We might take this reverie on the landscape properties of the island pulpit and the evocation of the psychological reassurance it offered merely as rhetorical display, demonstrating how both oratory and art had by this date become divorced from daily experience, but we would be wrong to do so. The response to the structure that Paul imagines would have been a real one for his audience, one embodied in neural resources shaped by their daily experience. The emotion of reassurance associated

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with the sight of a rocky peninsula projecting into the sea would have been habitual for the officials, the traders and sailors who lived in Constantinople. Since the city was itself such a peninsula, the scenario Paul sketches is one that would have been familiar to each of them as they approached it on their return home. The only difference between that experience and that in the church was that in the latter context the evocation of an emotion of solace after danger became the key to a religious experience, the reassuring anticipation of the possibility of entry into Paradise offered by the gospel message delivered from the same pulpit. Paul the Silentiary did not need to think up his rhetorical image of the traveller being comforted on return to port. The experience he drew on was his own, and one that he would have been aware of unconsciously sharing with those to whom his poem was addressed.

The power of Christian art and visceral experience: Changes in neural formation and changes in the meaning of the cross An awareness of the importance of the emotions generated by lived experience is also the key to my last analysis of unconscious neural formation, that is in the context of a discussion of the magic power of the cross. The potential importance of the cross was already signalled by St Paul when, at Corinthians 1.1.18, he calls the gospel “the word of the Cross”, but it was Constantine who took the lead in establishing the cross’s magic role. Although there is uncertainty about the details of the event, our sources agree that Constantine had a dream involving a vision either of the cross or of the chi-rho monogram and that this inspired him to attach a version of the cross to his battle standards. Constantine himself evidently realised that the power of the cross depended on the neural resources with which it was perceived, which is why he banned the use of crucifixion as a punishment. Clearly it was more difficult to mobilise people around the visual sign of the cross as an emblem of salvation and victory over death if in the neural resources of their visual memory it continued to be associated with the punishment of felons. Constantine’s awareness of the role of visual experience in shaping the response to the cross was probably rooted in his personal neural exposure. Thus, the starting point for his adoption of the cross was almost certainly a recognition that the traditional Roman standard type which consisted of a square embroidered cloth hanging from a cross bar already suggested a cross shape. Indeed, Christian soldiers in the Roman armies may have already seen it that way. Since seeing such a standard was viscerally associated with the hope of victory over the enemy and the Christian cross was associated with the hope of victory over death it was clearly clever of Constantine to combine them. Each acquired a magic power from the other. The same was true of the assimilation of the cross to a trophy, as seen

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on a mid-4th century sarcophagus. As a trophy the cross arouses the emotions associated with a victory that is not just hoped for but achieved. Its power depended on viewers having had frequent and intense exposure to trophies, which were usually built around a vertical post and a cross bar, either on battlefields, or in the form of monumental representations in cities. The neural resources of those who had had such an experience ensured that the visceral emotions associated with the trophy were now evoked by the cross. Nor was the Constantinian period the first when the cross acquired visceral significance from the viewer’s recognition of its similarity to a form charged with emotional meaning from lived experience. Earlier, in the first three centuries of Christianity, when any display of the cross could invite persecution, the anchor, whose connotations of hope and security were noted by St Paul at Hebrews 6.19, was regularly used in its place. Like the Constantinian standard or trophy, the anchor with cross bar activated two neural networks, one shaped by daily exposure to real anchors and relating to survival in this world, and the other shaped by exposure to the cross in a religious context and relating to survival in the next. With the expansion of Christianity northwards in the centuries after Constantine the response to the cross was inflected by neural networks formed by very different exposures, as when it was related to different types of tree. Thus Venantius Fortunatus, a 6th-century bishop of Poitiers, describes the cross as a tree bearing a remarkable fruit, a vine, an image that would be highly reassuring in a relatively warm environment where fruit trees and vines brought promise of sweet nourishment. In Britain farther to the north, on the other hand, the context of lived experience was very different. There fruit-trees were rare, and the neural resources of converts had been shaped by the worship of wild forest trees, which Christianity only with difficulty displaced. Now the experience of the cross had other dimensions, as we find in the great Anglo-Saxon poem, the Dream of the Rood, later inscribed on the Ruthwell Cross. The Dream begins with a vision of the rood or cross as a jewelled relic, before it turns into a tree which becomes Christ-like, having a wound in its side and suffering when the nails were knocked into it. This wound brings the tree to life so that it can tell how it was uprooted from the forest before being re-erected as the gallows-tree of victory on which Christ the hero died, how it was cut down and buried and then dug up again before being encased in gold and gems. For people who had only recently worshipped trees the assimilation between Christ and the tree and the sense that the jewelled relic in Jerusalem, the cross of victory, was like one of their own sacred trees was profoundly reassuring, while its resemblance to their own gallows gave it a further resonance. Contemplation of the cross activated neural networks habituated to the sight of both forest trees and gibbets. This review of changing attitudes to the cross illustrates several of the important points at issue in this chapter. First and foremost, it shows how its magic power of reassurance depends not just on its Christian reference, but on its sharing properties with objects of visceral importance to viewers in their daily lives. In doing so it illustrates

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the benefit of directly addressing the issue of unconscious mental formation in the context of the study of late antique and Early Medieval art. It also demonstrates the value of thinking of such formation in neural terms. The principles of neuroscience tell us that if a person’s visceral engagement with something is strong enough to make him or her look at it frequently or attentively enough to affect their neural formation, that person will acquire an unconscious inclination to look for other things that share some of its formal attributes, and as a result will view the new object with something of the same visceral emotional interest that caused his or her visual engagement with the first. The principles of neuroscience thus tell us something we could never find from books, they tell us where to look for that visceral interest, that is in the particular environment of an individual’s life. Neuroarthistory doesn’t replace our existing approaches to the study of art, but as a new tool it does add to them a new and physically vital dimension. Finally, these observations on the universal rules governing the relation between visual exposure and neural formation allow us to return to the other hippocampus of the paper’s title, and to the origin of that name. It was only because the 16th-century doctor who named this organ lived in Venice, where the sea horse, being a fish whose habitat is shallow water, frequents the lagoon, that it bears that creature’s name. It was only because his personal neural resource had been shaped by exposure to the sea horse that that is what he saw in the brain he was anatomising.

Conclusion Most research into the mental processes associated with the production and consumption of art is based on knowledge of the consciously expressed ideas of those involved combined with an understanding of the context, cultural, economic and social, in which they were operating. Today, though, we can add to these approaches one made available by the latest neuroscience. A knowledge of the brain’s functional organisation and of the principles governing neural formation thus enables us to reconstruct the consequences for people’s neural make-up of exposure to all aspects of context and provides a basis for inferring the probable influences of such neural make-up on all aspects of art-related behaviour. In terms of the study of early Christian art such an approach has important advantages. One is that it liberates us from the constraints of traditional frameworks which artificially separate fields of cultural activity such as art, religion and magic, allowing us instead to build up a more integrated picture of the relation between the behaviours with which they are associated by reference to the complexity and interconnection of our neural processes. Another is that it shifts attention away from mental activity that is consciously articulated to that which can never be expressed because we cannot be conscious of it, that is the mental activity that guides most of our lives most of the time.

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References Ahlert et al. (2008): Ahlert, D., M. Deppe, P. Kenning, H. Kugel, H. Plassman and W. Schwindt (2008), “How brands twist heart and mind: neural correlates of the Affect Heuristic during brand choice”, European Advances in Consumer Research, May 13. Baba et al. (2008): Baba, S., H. Plassmann, A. Rangel and J. O’Doherty (2008), “Marketing actions can modulate neural representations of experienced pleasantness”, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, January 14. Flint (1991): Flint, V.I.J. (1991), The rise of magic in early medieval Europe, Oxford, 3–35. Frazer (1922): Frazer, J.G. (1922), The Golden Bough, 1. The Magic Art, London, 52–54. Geertz & Thomas (1975–1976): Geertz, H. and K. Thomas (1975–1976), “An anthropology of religion and magic. Two views”, The Journal of Interdisciplinary History 6, 71–109. Huang et al. (2011): Huang, M., H. Bridge, M. J. Kemp and A. J. Parker (2011), “Human cortical activity evoked by the assignment of authenticity when viewing works of art”, Frontiers in Human Neuroscience, 28 November. Kawabata & Zeli (2008): Kawabata, H. and S. Zeki (2008), “The neural correlates of desire”, PLOS ONE 3 (8), e3027. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0003027. Lloyd (1979): Lloyd, G.E.R. (1979), Magic, reason and experience. Studies in the origin and development of Greek science, Cambridge. Onians (1988): Onians, J. (1988), Bearers of meaning. The classical orders in antiquity, the middle ages and the renaissance, Princeton. Onians (2007): Onians, J. (2007), Neuroarthistory. From Aristotle and Pliny to Baxandall and Zeki, New Haven & London. Onians (2016): Onians, J. (2016), European Art. A Neuroarthistory, New Haven & London. Prass et al. (2013): Prass, M., C. Grimsen, M. König and M. Fahle (2013), “Ultra Rapid Object Categorization: effects of level, animacy and context”, PLOS ONE, June 28, DOI: 10.1371/ journal.pone.0068051. Schjødt et al. (2008): Schjødt, U., H. Stødkilde-Jørgensen, A. W. Geertz and A. Roepstorf (2008), “Rewarding prayers”, Neuroscience Letters 443, 165–168. Schjødt et al. (2009): Schjødt, U., H.Stødkilde-Jørgensen, A. W. Geertz and A. Roepstorf (2009), “Highly religious participants recruit areas of social cognition in personal prayer”, Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience, June 4 (2), 199–207. Tylor (1971): Tylor, E.B. (1971), Primitive culture, London. Woolett & Maguire (2011): Woolett, K., K and E. Maguire (2011), “Acquiring “the knowledge” of London’s layout drives structural brain changes”, Current Biology 21, December 20, 2109–2114.

Anne Karahan

3 Image and Meta-Image: Byzantine Aesthetics and Orthodox Faith Orthodox faith not only recognizes holy images as verifications of the incarnation and its witnesses personified in the saints, but also demands orthodox perception and orthodox mimesis of Christ and the saints that is perception and mimesis in line with Orthodoxy, the traditional and universal doctrine of the Church, right opinion and sound doctrine (ὀρθοδοξία). In an Orthodox sense, the religious efficacy of an image depends on doctrinal accuracy, while perception of right belief (ὀρθόδοξος) demands both an object and a receiver familiar with the lore of religious standards and the Orthodox system of faith. Faith and aesthetics are thus cognate matters in Byzantine sacred art, hereinafter termed holy images. With regard to holy images – panel icons, monumental mural paintings and mosaics, Kleinkunst, as well as church architecture – holy relates to criteria consistent with faith in the incarnation of the second person of the Trinity in Christ, but also to an unknowable, transcendent triune Divinity. A holy image, in contrast to a profane image, has to verify not only Christology, Christ perceived as truly human and truly God, but also, in an apophatic sense, trinitarian theology, God the Trinity perceived as unintelligible, belonging to an infinite, supramundane, unseen world.

Points of departure Based on how the seminal 4th-century church fathers Basil of Caesarea, Gregory of Nazianzus, and Gregory of Nyssa discuss Christology and trinitarian theology, and on how the image defender John Damascene polemicizes in favor of holy images in the first era of Byzantine iconoclasm,1 this article explores how and why Byzantine visual culture answers to orthodox faith. Special focus will be on how Byzantine aesthetics relates to faith in Christ the God-Man, and how apophatic symbolism and abstractions, a kind of artistic non-identifications, acknowledge faith in divine presence. The notion I use for these artistic devices is meta-image. In light of the 6th-7nth-century church father Maximus the Confessor’s shaping ideas on God’s grace (χάρις)2 and power (δύναμις),3 this chapter will also explore the role of meta-images for deification

1 An established opinion is that iconoclasm lasted on an off in Byzantium between 726 and 843. Cf. Brubaker & Haldon (2001); Brubaker & Haldon (2011); and Karahan (2014) 75–94. 2 Maximus the Confessor, Quaestiones Thalassium 22, in PG 90, 321A. 3 Maximus the Confessor, Opuscula, in PG 91, 33C. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110546842-004

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in an orthodox sense, a process of transformation towards likeness to God.4 Deification concerns direct experience of Christ but also necessary apophatic, i.e. incomprehensible, experience of the unknowable, transcendent divinity of Father, Son and Holy Spirit.5 Faith in the unintelligible triune God is essential; however, its divine nature is entirely unfathomable to human understanding since it reaches into the infinite depths of the uncreated nature of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.6 Visual focus is primarily on the image programs of the Early Byzantine churches of Ravenna and the Late Byzantine Chora church in Istanbul, but also the Middle Byzantine churches of Cappadocia (Turkey), Nea Moni and Daphni (Greece), as well as some Early Byzantine examples from Saint Catherine’s monastery at Mount Sinai. My hypothesis is that meta-images, in line with the apophatic idea that humans can only know God in terms of what God is not, acknowledge the inter-are of the incarnation of the second person of the Trinity and of Divinity. To overlook the orthodox axiom of human and divine interaction in Christ, either in sacred writings or in images, would pioneer for non-orthodox, “wrong” faith.7 In a religious sense, narratology infused with sublime symbolism and abstractions celebrates the prerequisite of both divine and human: didactic omission of the divine would short-circuit salvation. Given that, as Gösta Hallonsten has emphasized, a believer must not only follow the cataphatic concept,8 not only aim for the gifts of God, but also seek God, which is an apophaticism, the method of approaching God by means of negations. Vital meta-images are the actual or symbolic brilliance of metals, gems and pearls, the light of mandorlas and haloes, and the radiance and light permeating tripartite windows or other architectural elements.9 Other examples are: imploded gravitation, inconsistent kinetics, inverted perspectives, de-materialized and hovering yet perfectly poised bodies, compressed architecture and props, distorted forms of nature, geometric abstractions, and circular distribution of figures and cyclic shapes,10 all of

4 Maximus the Confessor, Capitum 1.42, in PG 90, 1193D. 5 Gregory of Nazianzus, Or. 21.2, in PG 35, 1084C. 6 Gregory of Nazianzus, Or. 28.3, 38.8 and 39.11–12. 7 Cf. Basil of Caesarea: “we confess one God, not in number but in nature […] God is universally acknowledged to be simple and uncompounded. Yet God is not therefore one in number”, Epistula 8 in Letters 53. 8 Hallonsten (1991) 46. Cataphatic theology concerns the positive statements about God’s nature and the incarnation. Cf. also Karahan (2010a) 69, 180, 211, 213, 218–226, 266. On apophatic theology, see Karahan (2010a) 47, 53f, 69, 121–123, 127, 211–219, 221, 225, 235, 239, 259, 262f; on apophatic indications in holy images, Karahan (2010a) 47, 54, 91, 94f, 107, 121–135 passim, 179, 195, 207–225 passim, 235–245 passim, 259–265. 9 On created matter – gold, silver, bronze, precious stones, carnelians, red, scarlet, aquamarine, porphyry, and other colors, see John Damascene, Contra imaginum 2.13–14 (Kotter (ed.) (1975); transl. Louth (2003) 69–71). 10 Cf. Karahan (2017); also Karahan (2013b).

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which mold a divine ambience of a cosmos outside the temporal system.11 In addition, there is a plethora of borders, ornate with patterns of gems, pearls, geometry, foliage, or less complex varieties with plain strokes of white, red, or blue. The Byzantine border does not frame but interacts with the epic narrative of the holy drama. In theory, it is beyond circumscription, since its patterns have neither beginning nor end.12 A significant Early Byzantine example is the image program in the church of San Vitale, Ravenna (Fig. 3.1). I suggest that meta-images relate to apophatic theology, the via negativa that non-explains divine nature through negations and paradoxes. It is a sublime way of making the unknowable, transcendent God accessible to human contemplation. Negative theology is molded into symbolism and abstractions, to signify divine presence without categorizing the divine. Meta-images not only transform the holy drama into a witnessing of the incarnation and the mystical union between Christ and humanity, but also acknowledge disembodied teachings on God’s unintelligible ever-presence, that God the Logos is active in creation, revelation, and redemption.13 In this way, the holy image encourages mimesis of the sacred state that leads to deification, salvation, and eternal life. In a similar manner to a hagiographer practicing imitatio through authorship and nourishment of that which does not perish, the creator of a holy image practices imitatio through paintwork, aesthetics, and narratology that enact a reality beyond the ephemeral. Reconstructing, distilling, and contextualizing Byzantine aesthetics with the support of patristics will enable us to grasp the religious role and impact of a holy image, but also why a Byzantine holy image is distinguished from Classical Greek, Hellenistic, and ancient Roman art.14 Images counteracting faith would not have been worth investing interest in for a Christian Byzantine, since “wrong” conceptions would lead astray, and maybe even pave the way to Hell, at least not to Heaven.

Image veneration and trinitarian theology Of conceptual value for a study of the bond between Byzantine aesthetics and Orthodox faith are Gregory of Nazianzus’ one-in-three constructions, systematically studied by Christopher Beeley. Beeley emphasizes that Gregory does not only clarify the eternal dynamic life of the Trinity, based on the monarchy of the Father, but also draws attention to the revelation of the Trinity in the history of salvation. With Gregory, we

11 See also Karahan 2015a. 12 On the Byzantine border, see Karahan (2016) 213–214, 218f, 226, 233–240. 13 Compare how the First Council of Constantinople (381) decided that the Logos is God, distinguishable in thought yet not separable in fact. See also John 1.1 and 14, 10.30, 14.6, 14.28, 20.28. 14 Cf. Karahan, (2010a) 157f, 174; and Karahan (2013a).

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meet the complicated and dynamic reality of the Trinity in terms of the theology of the economy of salvation15: Christians worship the Father “in the Son” and the Son “in the Holy Spirit”,16 and God is glorified “in the Son and the Holy Spirit”.17 In their respective modes of generation (begetting and procession), the Son and the Spirit possess the uniqueness that is characteristic of the divine nature18 […] the Holy Spirit is holy in a sense that is proper to it, even though the Divinity, and thus the Trinity as a whole, is also holy19 […] the Son is […] the divine Word on account of his declaratory function with respect to the Father (διὰ τὸ ἐξαγγελτικόν), like a definition compared to the thing defined, because he is the “concise explanation (ἀπόδειξις) of the Father’s nature”,20 even though God as a whole is also rational and wise. The Son, moreover, is able to take on human flesh and suffering in a way that the Father, as pure Mind, is not, even though the divine nature and the eternal Son himself are incorporeal.21 Faith acknowledges Christ as truly human but also as truly divine. Christ is the image of God (εἰκὼν τοῦ θεοῦ) – circumscribed in flesh, yet not in divinity. The God-Man exists both within and beyond intervals of time (διάστημα). This axiom, I suggest, is essential for the development of Byzantine aesthetics and for the necessity of apophatic theology in order that the didactic dilemma of the uniqueness of divine nature be solved. Compare the fervent image defender John Damascene,22 who when discussing the Divinity stresses that “God does not show forth his nature but the things that relate to his nature (τὰ περὶ τὴν φύσιν)”.23 In addition, John acknowledges a doctrine of “two births”: We must say that the Virgin bore God the Word and that the Son and Word of God was not born of a woman. For we know two births of the only-Begotten Son and Word of God, one from before the ages, immaterially and divinely, from the Father alone, according to which birth he was not born of a woman and is motherless, and the other, in the last days from a mother alone in the flesh in accordance with the divine economy and four our salvation, according to which birth he 15 The economy of salvation (oikonomia, “ministration”, “dispensation”) refers to God’s revelation and dispensation in creation and ordering of the world in time. It concerns God’s creating and governing activity in the world, particularly with regard to salvation in Christ and through his body the Church, in its life and sacraments. The church fathers distinguish oikonomia (God’s actions in time) from theologia (mystical knowledge of God beyond time). On the notion of theologia, literally and with regard to the existence, nature, and attributes of God, insofar as these are accessible to human cognition, see Gregory of Nazianzus, Or. 28. Cf. also Karahan (2010a) 84, 110, 136, 149, 155, 178–193 passim, 211, 221, 265, 268–270. 16 Or. 24.16. 17 Or. 15.12. 18 Or. 25.16. 19 Or. 25.16. 20 Or. 30.20. 21 Gregory of Nazianzus, Carminum 1.1.1.28–29; 1.1.2.36–38; Beeley (2008) 222f. 22 See also Karahan (2008) 7–41. 23 John Damascene, Expositio fidei 1.4. Compare beauty of relationship, in a statue and God in creation, as expressed by Basil in Hexaemeron 3.10.

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is fatherless. According to the first birth, he was not born of a woman; according to the second birth, he was born of a woman. For he does not have the beginning and principle of his divine existence from a woman, but form the Father alone, but the beginning of his Incarnation and becoming human is from the Holy Spirit and the Virgin Mary.24

If we consider Gregory of Nazianzus’ unwavering conviction and methodological emphasis on the unity and unchanging identity of the Son of God in his eternal and incarnate states,25 it is evident that to be in line with faith a holy image has to acknowledge both natures, in one way or another. Only an imaged narrative that recognizes the epic mystery beyond the ephemeral has religious potential to create its own aesthetic endorsement. Compare how John Damascene, in an established image-defending manner, in his seminal third treatise in favor of holy images polemicizes against the iconoclasts in light of the perception that Christ is both truly human and truly God – to human perception both comprehensible and incomprehensible. On the other hand, he considers the Divinity belongs to the uncreated unseen world26: […] the first natural and undeviating image of the invisible God is the Son of the Father, showing in himself the Father. “For no one has ever seen God,”27 and again, “it is not the case that anyone has seen the Father.”28 That the Son is the image of the Father is affirmed by the apostle: “who is the image of the invisible God,”29 and, [in his epistle] to the Hebrews, “who being the radiance of his glory and the express image of his person,”30 and that he shows in himself the Father [we discover] in the Gospel according to John, when Philip says, “show us the Father and it is enough for us,” and the Lord replies “[…] Whoever has seen me has seen the Father.”31 The Son is the Father’s image, natural, undeviating, in every respect like the Father, save for being unbegotten and possessing fatherhood; for the Father is the unbegotten begetter, and the Son is begotten, not the Father. And the Holy Spirit is the image of the Son32; “for no one can say that Jesus is Lord, save in the Holy Spirit.”33 It is […] because of the Holy Spirit that we know Christ, the Son of God, and God, and in the Son we behold the Father; for by nature the word [logos] is a messenger of mind [or meaning], and the spirit discloses the word. The Spirit is therefore a like and undeviating image of the Son, being different only in proceeding; for the Son is begotten but does not proceed.34

John seeks orthodox justification for creation and veneration of holy images based on a convoluted enigma that acknowledges the Son as the image of the Father, the invisible God – the Son shows in himself the Father, while the Holy Spirit is the image 24 John Damascene, De fide 49.1–11 (transl. Louth (2002) 173). 25 Cf . Karahan (2015a) 574f; and Karahan (2015b) 159–184. 26 Cf. Karahan (2015c); and Karahan, (2015e) 213–227. 27 Jn. 1.18. 28 Jn. 6.46. 29 Col. 1.15. 30 Heb. 1.3. 31 Jn. 14.8–9. 32 Cf. John Damascene, Expositio fidei 13.75; and Athanasius, To Serapion, 1.24. 33 1 Cor. 12.3 34 John Damascene, Contra imaginum 3.18 (transl. Louth (2003) 96f).

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of the Son. The Divinity that is the immaterial three beings (ὑποστάσεις) of Father, Son and Holy Spirit, who in an orthodox sense share one substance (οὐσία)35 and the incarnated Son inter-are. In this way, a holy image celebrates the Word incarnated in the second person of the Trinity, but also the unity of the unknowable, transcendent God the Father-Son-Holy Spirit. For further orthodox authorization of image veneration, John Damascene turns to the hard core of patristic influence, Basil of Caesarea and his treatise On the Holy Spirit. When discussing the trinitarian issue, Basil had used the image of the emperor as an analogy for God not being “one, two, or three” or “first, second, and third”: We have never to this present day heard of a second God […] The Son is in the Father and the Father in the Son; what the Father is, the Son is likewise and vice-versa – such is the unity. As unique Persons, they are one and one; as sharing a common nature, both are one. How does one and one not equal two Gods? Because we speak of the emperor, and the emperor’s image – but not two emperors. The power is not divided, nor the glory separated […] the honor given the image passes to the prototype. The image of the emperor is an image by imitation, but the Son is a natural image; in works of art the likeness is dependent on its original form, and since the divine nature is not composed of parts, union of the persons is accomplished by partaking of the whole. The Holy Spirit […] is united to the Father and the Son as unit dwells with unit.36

Andrew Louth has rightly drawn attention to the fact that John Damascene agrees with the Nestorians in their insistence on the immutability of the divine, but that John objects to their failure to distinguish properly between hypostasis (person) and nature.37 It is imperative for the Damascene that only personal (hypostatic) union make it possible to affirm the incarnation of the Word (Logos), without making the Father and the Spirit incarnate as well.38 Without affecting God’s transcendent union of persons, the second person of the Trinity is dressed in human flesh. In an orthodox sense, human and divine coexist in Christ without breaking the causative union of divine action. By considering one of the three “universal teachers” (οἰκουμενικοὶ διδάσκαλοι) of the Eastern Church, Gregory of Nazianzus, Beeley has untangled the relationship of Father, Son and Holy Spirit, the incarnation, and the economy of salvation: the Trinity contains – and is – an eternal movement or dynamic, based on the monarchy of God the Father. In a way similar to his Christology and Pneumatology,39 then, we find as the root of Gregory’s doctrine of the Trinity a 35 On Orthodox belief in “of the same substance” (ὁμοούσιος) and “one substance three beings (μία οὐσία τρεῖς ὑποστάσεις)”, see Karahan (2010b) 27–34. 36 Basil, Spiritu sancto 18.44–45 (SC 17, 192–195; Basil, Holy Spirit, 72f). Basil’s wording was quoted, in part, at the Second Council of Nicaea (787). On image – emperor, see also Gregory of Nyssa, Opificio 4, in PG 44, 136C. On Byzantine aesthetics and the idea of beauty in Basil of Caesarea, see Karahan (2012) 165–212. 37 John Damascene, Adversus Nestorianos, in Basil, CPG 8053, 2 (transl. Louth (2002) 173). 38 John Damascene, Adversus Nestorianos in Basil, CPG 8053, 21. 39 The doctrine of the Holy Spirit.

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kind of narrative – that the Father eternally begets the Son and emits the Holy Spirit, by which the divine life is constituted; it is precisely God’s generativity of his coequal Son and Spirit that makes God worthy honor,40 so that there is a deep correspondence in Gregory’s work between the narrative character of the economic revelation of God and the narrative character of the theological meaning of that revelation; the monarchy of God the Father is thus the foundational principle of the Trinitarian logic, the fundamental dynamic that gives meaning to the grammatical aspects of unity and distinctness within the Trinity, and also the basic shape of the divine economy, by which the eternal God is known.41 Orthodox faith leaves no room for doubt of its axiom; the Trinity is the foundational principle for human salvation in Christ.

Apophatic theology: The via negativa of contemplation Apophatic theology plays a vital role already in the early history of Christianity, declaring that God’s essence is unknowable, pointing to the insufficiency of human perception and language. One of the first to articulate the via negativa is the Apostle Paul. His reference to the unknown God42 forms the basis of apophatic theology. Another seminal declaration is in the Gospel of John – “No one has ever seen God”,43 and in the First Letter of Paul to Timothy – “He (God) […] dwells in unapproachable light, whom no one has ever seen or can see”.44 Vital advocates of apophatic theology, but also for the shaping of Christian theology, are the prominent bishops and ecumenical teachers Basil of Caesarea (“the Great”), Gregory of Nazianzus (“the Theologian”), and John Chrysostom (“of the golden mouth”), as well as Gregory of Nyssa. Gregory of Nyssa stresses that true knowledge and vision of God consist in seeing that God is invisible. What we seek lies beyond all knowledge; the darkness of incomprehensibility separates us from it.45 Compare how holy images draw Satan, Hades, and devils in black and other murky colors, to emphasize their spiritual darkness. The 7th-8th-century father John Damascene, whose influence on Byzantine theology was ultimately determinative, and whose hymns are still part of the Divine Liturgy celebrated by Orthodox Christians,46 stresses that all that is comprehensible

40 Or. 23.6. 41 Beeley (2008) 216f. 42 Acts 17.23. 43 Jn. 1.18. 44 1 Tim. 6.16. 45 Gregory of Nyssa, Vita Mosis, in SC 1bis. This way of discussing the darkness of incomprehensibility and knowledge reoccurs in his writings on the Beatitudes. 46 In an Orthodox sense, the liturgy is an icon/holy image of the economy of salvation.

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about God is his incomprehensibility and infinity – affirmative statements concerning God can only reveal the things around his nature.47 Seminal for apophatic theology during the 6th and 7th centuries was also the Christian Neo-Platonist Dionysius the Areopagite,48 but also Maximus the Confessor, a major Byzantine thinker, theologian, and philosopher. Maximus, who insists that apophatic theology and hesychasm, the practice of keeping tranquility and silence, pave the way for deification, is particularly known for his animosity against monothelitism (μονοθέλητος “of one will”),49 an expansion of monophysitic Christology that enjoyed considerable support at the beginning of the 7th century, yet had already been condemned at the Sixth Ecumenical Council (680). So, what was irreconcilable with Orthodox faith? Well, monothelitism taught that Christ has only one will (θέλημα), which is on a par with heresy – Christ is both human and divine, thus he has both a human and a divine will. This, I suggest, is the doctrinal nucleus of Byzantine aesthetics.

The meta-image as apophatic signification It is self-evident that the Man-God is the protagonist of the epic narrative of the holy drama, and thus of holy images. The didactic dilemma is, however, that faith recognizes the protagonist as equally human and divine that is at once intelligible and unintelligible. The unfeasibility of manifesting or explaining divine nature is a repeated keynote: uncreated divine nature is beyond the realm of language and concepts, impossible to signify (σημαίνειν) – only God can understand God.50 Yet for a fact, the fathers discuss the incomprehensibility of divine nature through myriads of words, treatises, homilies, ecclesiastical teachings, hymns, and poems. In a similar manner, I suggest, Byzantine aesthetics discloses myriads of sublime meta-images, a kind of apophatic non-explanations or non-categorizations to tackle the didactic dilemma.51 The monumental mosaic of the Transfiguration52 that constitutes the focal point of the apse of the basilica of Sant’ Apollinare in Classe, Ravenna, is a salient example of this (Fig. 3.2). Flanked by the titulus Α and ω, out of a golden panorama appears an outsized pearl and gem-sparkling Transfiguration cross within an outsized pearl and gem-sparkling wide circle.53 The blue-colored sphere within the wider circle is studded with stars, and in the center of the cross protrudes Christ 47 John Damascene, Expositio fidei 1.4 (in Kotter (1973)). 48 Cf. Karahan (2016) 210f, 214, 221, 224, 240. 49 On Maximus the Confessor and Christology, see Tollefsen (2008). 50 On apophatic ways of acknowledging divine activity, see Karahan (2015d); Karahan (2017) 51 On meta-image, see Karahan (2015a); also Karahan (2010a) 4, 24, 31–42 passim, 45–48; and Karahan (2012). 52 Matthew 17.1–5. 53 On the Byzantine gem border, see Karahan (2012).

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transfigured in a minute gem-sparkling medallion with rays of white pearls that form another radiant circle. Cyclic shapes, brilliance and light phenomena, but also the titulus delineated in gold, acknowledge, in an apophatic sense, divine presence, while the radiant cross recognizes eternal life through Christ’s death on the cross.54 In the context of dissolved gravitation, further, these meta-images sublimate the drama into a transcendent narrative, but also into an eternal paradisiacal vista inhabited by Saint Apollinaris and the twelve apostles – Peter, James, and John, appearing twice – personified as lambs, Moses, Elijah, and God’s hand appearing in radiant golden light at the apex of the composition. Notice how the tripartite setting of blue (heaven), gold (uncreated/divine light), and green (paradise) sublimates the motif into a triune apophatic reality. The monumental mosaic of the Annunciation at the Koimesis Church, Daphni,55 in comparison, has its setting entirely in gold. In this way, the divine protagonist, non-defined within the meta-image of radiating gold, is as real and present, in an apophatic sense, as Virgin Mary and the archangel. Considering the meta-image of cyclic shape, compare also Emperor Justinian and his soldiers emphasizing victory in the name of Jesus Christ through a circular shield inscribed with the Greek letters Ι, Χ, and Ρ (Ἰησοῦς Χριστός) in San Vitale, Ravenna, and again the 5th-century circular monogram of Christ in the Mausoleum of Galla Placidia (c. 425–426). In the latter, the monogram with the Greek letters X, P, A and ω in golden tesserae, is inscribed within two golden narrow circles that frame a wider festoon-like circle of leaves colored in red and blue. Cyclic shapes signifying eternity and the color combination of red, blue and gold signifying the shedding of blood, the revelation of God within the created sphere56 and divine presence, acknowledge, in an apophatic sense, salvation through interaction of human and divine. Another example is the radiant celestial sphere held by two fluttering, yet perfectly poised, angels on the triumphal arch in San Vitale. Within the sphere radiates four beams, colored in red and white and shaped as the Greek letters Ι and X (Ἰησοῦς Χριστός) and a cross (Fig. 3.1). At the center of the sphere appears a minute dark red-colored circle inscribed with the Greek letter Alpha in radiating white to acknowledge, in an apophatic sense, the blood of Christ as prerequisite for eternal life57 and the Logos as both human and divine. In a golden setting, flanked by the cities of Bethlehem (Birth) and Jerusalem (Death) adorned with borders of pearls, gems, and gold, the sphere motif celebrates the twofold gate of Heaven (baptism and eschatology). Above the lunettes devoted to the Hospitality of Sarah and Abraham, Abel and Melchisedec in the apse of San Vitale appears another kind of sparkling medallion held by two 54 Cf. Karahan (2017) 55 Dated to late 11th-century (Comnenian dynasty, 1081–1185). 56 According to Orthodox faith, Virgin Mary is created whereas Christ is not created but generated. 57 Cf. Gregory of Nazianzus who says God’s incarnation restores all destroyed by the fall, the drops of blood shed by the Lord remodels the whole world; Or. 45.29, in PG 36, 664A. Cf. also Karahan (2015a) 572, 584f; and Karahan (2010a) 85, 99f, 115f, 119–121, 128, 156f.

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levitating yet perfectly poised angels. In line with the motifs’ sacrificial themes, traditionally regarded as prefigurations of Christ, the medallions exhibit gem-patterned crosses, brilliance and cross-form thus acknowledging faith in salvation through the death of Christ on the cross. Artistic devices such as tripartite windows and other architectural tripartitions allowing triune light to unify in space as hazy white light, and also creating kinetics within image programs through scintillating effects of brilliance, are other subtle ways of making the unknowable Father, Son and Holy Spirit accessible to human contemplation. An example is the Theotokos Pammakaristos church in Istanbul (Fig. 3.3). In its epic narrative of the holy drama, with Christ adorned with his emblematic threearmed glimmering cross-halo, signifying both cross-death and triune divine constitution,58 tripartition, light and brilliance acknowledge, in an apophatic sense, coinherence (περιχώρησις) in a trinitarian as well as Christological sense.59 In support of this conclusion I refer to John Damascene, generally considered as the last of the church fathers, who by stressing “acknowledged” (γνωριζομένην) and “without confusion” (ἀσύγχυτως) with reference to co-inherence (περιχώρησις) of Father, Son and Holy Spirit, transfers the notion of περιχώρησις from Christological terminology to trinitarian theology.60 To sanction holy images, the Damascene emphasizes that Christ is a union of humanity and divinity, in one individual existence (hypostasis).61 Christ assumed both body and soul,62 thus holy images have a twofold signification. A subtle pictorial example is also the monumental mosaic of the Virgin fed by an angel in the Chora Church (Fig. 3.4). An angel approaches the Virgin, enthroned in a cyclic temple, ready to feed her with a round piece of bread. In a religious sense, the Virgin signifies the body where the incarnation took place, the temple, the Church and spiritual teaching, and the round bread the sacrament of the Eucharist that is the body and blood of Christ that paves the way for salvation. Note that faith identifies angels as bodiless, invisible to the human eye, and in need of no salvation, since already immortal.63 Narratology and meta-images of cyclic shapes, golden settings, mysterious wind phenomena,64 elaborated borders and large medallions with shimmering crosses, on the flanking intrados, make the mystery of the drama accessible to human contemplation.

58 Cf. Karahan (2015a) 581–584; and Karahan (2015d) 85–105. 59 Cf. Karahan (2010b) 27–34; and Karahan (2013b) 97–111. 60 John Damascene, Expositio fidei, 8.23–26. Cf. Louth (2002) 104, 174; and Karahan (2010b) 27–34. 61 Orthodox faith identifies: (a) Father, Son and Holy Spirit as three persons (ὑποστάσεις); (b) Christ as a hypostatic union of humanity and divinity in one person (ὑπόστασις); see Karahan (2014) 75–94; Karahan (2015b) 159–184; and Karahan (2015e) 213–227. 62 Cf. John Damascene, Contra imaginum 3.11. 63 See Gregory of Nyssa, Vita Mosis 2.45 and 51. 64 Other examples of enigmatic gravity are the monumental murals of The Birth of Christ, at the 11th-century Karanlık Kilise (Göreme 23), and the mid-10th-century Old Tokalı Kilise (Göreme 7).

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The famous 6th-century encaustic icon devoted to the enthroned Theotokos, the Christ-child, Saints Theodore and George and two angels in Saint Catherine’s monastery at Mount Sinai distributes the protagonists within two spheres: an inner sphere devoted to Virgin Mary the Theotokos inter-is with an outer sphere inhabited by saints presenting radiant golden crosses and angels drawn in a white-grayish haze, all with the Christ-child, enthroned on his mother’s lap, as corporeal foundation. By bestowing on the Theotokos the largest halo whilst making her a human throne, and by integrating the back of the throne into both spheres, thus connecting the angels’ light phenomena with the Christ-child and the saints’ presenting two radiant crosses, the image celebrates, in an apophatic sense, incarnation as well as salvation through the inter-are of human and divine in Christ.65 Another example is the 11th-century dome devoted to Christ Pantokrator with the Gospel in the Karanlık kilise (Göreme 23) in Cappadocia, with its multitude of cyclic shapes (Fig. 3.5). Halos, tondi, borders, circular distribution of protagonists, and also the dome itself, which in Byzantium signifies Heaven, bring together Christ Pantokrator at the apex with Jesus Christ Emmanuel, surrounded by five angels, in the cylindrical drum. Adding to symbolic emphasis on the incarnation are the four evangelists Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, who appear in the four supporting pendentives. Compare also the mid 10th-century so-called Harbaville ivory triptych66 devoted to the Deesis and the saints, with martyr portraits within circles. A golden setting, inverted perspectives, borders, indecipherable gravitation yet with perfectly poised figures, cyclic forms, and a distribution of figures that acknowledges faith in divine presence, appear for example in the monumental mosaics devoted to the Annunciation, the Virgin blessed by the priests, and the Virgin caressed by her parents, in the Chora church (Fig. 3.6–3.8). The 6th-century mosaic of the Transfiguration in the apse of the church of the Virgin at Saint Catherine’s monastery is yet another example. Out of a golden setting, encircled by a border of holy persons in tondi with a radiant cross at the apex, and surrounded by the figures of Peter, John, James, Moses and Elijah, Christ appears, dressed in white and gold and standing in a poised contrapposto, within a tripartite mandorla to acknowledge, in an apophatic sense, not only that Christ bridges Heaven and Earth,67 but also how the intelligibility of Christ the God-Man and the unintelligibility of the Divinity inter-are according to the Orthodox faith in God being triune and one.68 A remarkable variation on the apophatic acknowledgement of faith, the inter-are of Christ and the divine

65 Cf. John Damascene, Homiliae 1.8, 10; 1.2, 8, 16–17. On the humanity of the Theotokos and the humanity and divinity of Christ, see also Karahan (2010a) 83–134. 66 Constantinople, mid 10th century, ivory with polychrome traces, W. 28.20 cm; H. 24.20 cm; D. 1.20, now in Paris, Musée du Louvre, inv. OA3247. 67 On faith in the Transfiguration, see Lee (2005) 2. 68 Cf. Karahan (2010b) 27–34; Karahan (2012) 165–212; Karahan (2015b) 159–184; Karahan (2015d) 85–105.

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triune constitution, is the cross motif with three circles in St. Nicholas’ church at Myra (mod. Demre) in Turkey (Fig. 3.9). Many exquisite examples of borders of gems, pearls, gold, flowers, foliage, fruits and geometric patterns as part of visual narratologies and architectural semantics are found in Early Byzantine mosaic programs, such as in San Vitale and Sant’ Apollinare in Classe in Ravenna, and in the church of the Virgin in Saint Catherine’s monastery at Mount Sinai. A plethora of borders also appear in the rock-cut chapels in Cappadocia from the Middle Byzantine era, in the churches of Thessaloniki from the 4th to the 14th centuries and elsewhere in the Byzantine religious sphere, and the Late-Byzantine image program of the Chora church in Istanbul. Byzantine borders, lavishly patterned or plain, do not frame but interact with the epic narratives and the tectonics. Consider for example the paradisiacal border that encircles, but also radiates in four directions from, the motif of Christ the Lamb, golden-haloed, at the apex of the cross vault in the presbytery of San Vitale (Fig. 3.1). The paradisiacal border continues down the four pendentives, then changes into four borders studded with pearls and gems that symbolically radiate all the way down to the marble floor, originally the place of the altar; here the radiant borders, which emanate from the Lamb, interact with other, natural light phenomena, such as the reflecting brilliance from marble floor, the light entering through the apse’s two tripartite windows, and, when the liturgy and the Eucharist were still celebrated in San Vitale, with flickering candlelight. In theory, the borders are beyond circumscription since their patterns have neither beginning nor end. Together with Christ the Lamb, cyclic shapes, profuse paradisiacal symbols and phenomena of light, but also the four angels that support the wreath encircling the Lamb, the borders, the cities of Bethlehem and Jerusalem on the triumphal arch, acknowledge faith in salvation and a future paradise. Compare the yet more sublime and abstract choice of meta-imagery around a crux gemmata in one of the smaller domes in the 11th-century Theotokos Pammakaristos church in Istanbul, where the configuration of the radiant smaller cross set within a golden border divaricating in four directions to form a larger cross celebrates faith in the incarnation as a prerequisite for eternal life in paradise (Fig. 3.10). In the dome of the early 14th-century mortuary chapel of the Chora church, in a setting of lavish borders that emanate from a diamond-patterned medallion at the apex, devoted to the Theotokos, twelve attending angels appear (Fig. 3.11). The angels accompany and protect Mother and Child, while the medallion, in the colors of the rainbow, and the multicolored and multi-figured borders verify, apophatically, a paradisiacal cosmos.69 Latticed by twelve windows, the number corresponding to Christ’s twelve apostles, the dome and its image program celebrate faith in the intercessory prayer of both Mother and Son. In support of my interpretation here I refer to the Akathistos hymn, one of the most appreciated services within the Orthodox Church,

69 On rainbow and light in Byzantine art, see James (1991) 81–87.

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in which the Theotokos is greeted with “Hail, gate of salvation”, and where the Virgin is addressed as “key to the gates of Paradise”.70 For Theodoros Metochites, who built the chapel for his own use, didactics and function thus coincided.71 In the 6th-century church of Hagia Sophia in Istanbul, blazing light enters through latticed walls and domes to create an inter-are of light and architecture that is further reinforced in the emblematic, latticed white-marble capitals (Fig. 3.12): light and architecture share in the role of protagonist in order to equate the importance of spirit and body. A somewhat similar example are some 6th-century chancel screens in white marble formerly belonging to Early Byzantine churches of Ravenna and now in the Museo Nazionale di Ravenna.72 The latticework in which these screens are executed allows light to pierce through to create kinetics that would have appeared spectacular when the screens were part of the liturgy. Brilliance permeating carnality, garments, borders and props; light filtering through domes, walls, chancel screens, windows and tripartitions, or symbolically indicated through stars, pearls, precious metals and gems; light effects in golden settings and multicolor technique, cruces gemmatae, cyclic shapes and borders; enigmatic gravitation, inverted perspectives, levitating kinetics and transmuted corporeality: they all create the ambiance of a divine cosmos. As devices they impart anagogic meaning in a similar way that the church fathers apply apophatic theology, viz. knowledge of God by way of negation (ἀποφατικός), or cataphatic (καταφατικός) theology, viz. affirmations and positive statements about God and the incarnation, in order to emphasize that both the unknowable, transcendent God and Christ act in the world. In a similar sense, Christ materializes as Kosmokrator in a star-spangled triune light mandorla in the Anastasis in the Chora church (Fig. 3.13), and in the setting of a celestial sphere of sparkling light against a glimmering heaven, flanked by Saint Vitalis, two archangels, and the bishop Ecclesius in the apse of San Vitale (Fig. 3.1). Compare John Damascene: “only God can act everywhere at the same time […] the Divinity being everywhere and beyond all at the same time acts in different places by one simple operation”.73 The meta-image, thus, is a kind of metaphorical aphorism or minimalistic, symbolic articulation that makes God accessible to human 70 Cf. also how the Akathistos hymn greets the Virgin: “Hail, beam of the spiritual sun” (transl. Peltomaa (2001) 17). 71 On Metochites and the Chora Church, see Karahan (2010a) 11, 18–23, 27, 31–33, 112, 114, 136, 150, 190f, 197, 199, 201–203, 208, 213, 244, 251. 72 Three mid-6th-century chancel screens in white/Proconnesan marble from San Vitale: (1) (No inv. number). Iconography: patterns of geometry and foliage, double cornice with Lesbian kyma and acanthus leaves; (2) Inv. 412. Iconography: facing rows of stylized small palms consisting of three branches; (3) Inv. 413. Iconography: patterns of geometry and foliage and a cross with two birds. One chancel screen in Proconnesan marble, dated 500–550, from San Michele in Africisco, inv. 414. Iconography: patterns of foliage and plants with a golden central cross, encircled by a frieze with Lesbian kyma (lanceolate-shaped leaves). 73 Expositio fidei, 1.13; transl. https://archive.org/details/AnExactExpositionOfTheOrthodoxFaith.

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contemplation. It is not like God, not identical but analogous with. While the narrative image concerns historicity, the meta-image concerns the unintelligibility of divine nature. The meta-image relates to anagoge, the exegesis that stresses a secret heavenly meaning or a hidden reference to a future life in heaven; compare Acts 17.29: “we ought not to think that the deity is like gold, or silver, or stone, an image formed by the art and imagination of mortals”.

Paragon versus non-paragon The representations of Herod’s soldiers in the Massacring of the innocent children, Satan in the Temptations of Christ, and the Idols falling from the walls of the temple in the Chora church74 (Fig. 3.14) constitute a cast of non-paragons. The Byzantine religious paradigm of who and what is or is not a paragon is here clear. In these three monumental mosaics, and in line with faith in a divine cosmos that is God’s ordered universe, imbalanced75 or grotesque postures and physiognomies, inverse proportions, lop-sided or abnormal corporeality, flapping and mismatched limbs, frantic expressions and lack of mental equilibrium emphasize the outcome of spiritual darkness and deviation from the path towards God.76 Like representations of souls, the temple idols are portrayed as nude children, yet they are in the undesirable state of helplessly falling head down so as to demonstrate that idols are heretic and inappropriate subjects for the mimesis of that which does not perish viz. things and actions that lead away from the path towards God and eternal life.77 Note also how the distorted, lost souls stumbling down into the Fiery Stream and the Lake of Fire (Fig. 3.15) whilst the saved soul awaiting heaven stands in a perfect contrapposto (Figs. 3.16–3.17). Similarly, the dichotomy between the aggressively grinning little dark figure with teeth like a terrier running and tilting in boiling agitation towards an unaffected, vertically poised and dignified Christ, in the midst of the River Jordan in the representation of the Baptism in Karanlık kilise (Göreme 23) in Cappadocia (Fig. 3.17). The classic Greco-Roman river god Jordan is of course a frequent personification in images of Jesus’ baptism well into the Middle Ages; see for example the Neonian or Orthodox baptistery in Ravenna, the so-called Pala d’Oro in San Marco in Venice, Nea Moni on Chios, the Daphni monastery northwest of Athens, the Hosios Loukas monastery in Boeotia, the eastern lunette mosaic in the Theotokos Pammakaristos church 74 Detail of the motif devoted to the Flight into Egypt. The narrative of the idols occurs in paraphrases within the Syrian tradition, but also in the twelfth strophe of the Akathist hymn. Cf. Karahan (2010a) 164f. 75 Cf. Karahan (2010a) 69, 85–89, 143–158 passim, 161–178, 183, 185f, 188f, 206, 208, 216, 218, 229, 256, 270f. 76 Karahan (2010a) 146–178. 77 Karahan (2012) 207–211; Karahan (2016) 223–227; Karahan (2010a) 88f, 94, 102, 154, 203f, 243, 260.

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in Istanbul, as well as the Elmalı kilise (Göreme 19). In the Karanlık kilise, however, the fanatically wild looks and generally threatening representation of the dark river figure single it out from the more regular way of personifying Jordan; in contrast with the other named examples, in the Jordan of Karanlık kilise there is a significant ideological emphasis on the non-paragon aspect of dark forces, and on the futility of trying to introduce chaos by threatening or attacking Jesus Christ. In line with faith, the didactic message is clear: those who baptize in the Holy Spirit and have faith in Christ will experience the divine and eternal order of God’s cosmos. Satan, Hades, devils, evildoers and lost souls represent Tartaros’ chaos, not God’s cosmos. Kosmos in Greek denotes both universe and order. In the Chora church, the angel with the Scroll of Heaven, who soars in dignified balance in the uncreated heaven that replaces the created heaven in the Deesis scene at the Last Judgment,78 epitomizes divine order (Fig. 3.18). Compare Christ in the same church, who appears poised in a mandorla of light between the Theotokos and John the Baptist and encircled by the twelve apostles, the archangels Michael and Gabriel, and a choir of angels, similarly poised. Other apophatic significations of divine order and activity are exemplified by the maidservant’s shawl, fluttering vividly in the shape of a perfectly poised volute, in the representation of the First Seven Steps of the Virgin (Fig. 3.19),79 and the hovering whilst perfectly poised Virgin Mary in the Annunciation (Fig. 3.6).80 In both these scenes, an obscure wind blows props, branches, needles and leaves in the action-direction of the Virgin, towards her enthroned mother Anne and the angel of the Annunciation respectively, to emphasize that the Virgin’s action has a divine and cosmic effect. Thus, these monumental Chora mosaics associate Virgin Mary with actions that pave way for salvation and a return to God. Another example of cryptic and unfathomable kinetics is witnessed in the already-mentioned representation of the Resurrection (Anastasis) in the same church (Fig. 3.13). Nothing in Christ’s human corporeality or disposition explicates the cataclysm or the harrowing of Hell in this scene. So, what causes the mountains to implode? In Chora, Christ in his garments of radiant white appears perfectly poised in the tripartite, star-studded and shimmering mandorla that radiates out of the mountains behind; in the 11th-century church of Nea Moni Christ appears with golden sparkles radiating from his stable body within a golden setting. In these ways light, brilliance and balance share the role of protagonist with Christ and his emblematic, sparkling cross-halo to celebrate the Divinity that is Father, Son and Holy Spirit,81 and that only the Son is like God by nature.82

78 Karahan (2010a) 100, 106–108, 112–114, 117, 131, 136, 144, 166–171, 175f, 178f, 183, 186, 191, 205–208, 229, 239, 322–327. For a systematic descriptive and illustrative record of all the mosaics and murals and layout of the iconographical program in the Chora church, see Underwood (1966) (vols. 1–3). 79 Karahan (2010a) 147f. 80 Karahan (2010a) 85–87. 81 Gregory of Nazianzus, Or. 28.3, 38.8 and 39.11–12. 82 Basil, Hexaemeron 9.6.

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Faith in God’s unintelligible presence is acknowledged in an the apophatic sense that God the Logos is active in creation, revelation and redemption. The characteristic parataxis of figures, props, architecture, flora and fauna, borders, dissolved gravitation and spatial disarticulation present Christ, the Virgin and the saints as living in an anagogic reality. In line with faith, Heaven is not a place in the heavens, but a being with God and deification (θέωσις), the transformative process of a believer striving for likeness to and union with God. True greatness is to be “called to be a god”, writes Gregory of Nazianzus,83 while Basil of Caesarea associates “the goal of our calling” to become like God.84 In line with this, the beauty paragon for mimesis relates to what is beauty in the eyes of God.85 The seminal impact of light in Byzantine holy images and architecture corresponds to a necessity to acknowledge faith in the twofold, inter-are reality of human and divine in Christ. Didactic visual significations of this unfathomable axiom of faith are prerequisite in some way or other, since salvation depends not only on belief in the incarnation of the second person of the Trinity, but also on the unintelligible, indissoluble triune God of Father, Son and Holy Spirit. To lend depth to my conclusion, I refer to Gregory of Nyssa, who stresses that God’s uncreated light is only visible when the Holy Spirit is present in a person.86 In line with Gregory, light and brilliance play a vital role for divine association, but also for noesis, cognition of the Divinity through apophatic knowledge, and salvation as an effect of divine agency. In further support of this, I refer to Torstein Tollefsen, an authority on the Greek Church Fathers’ philosophy 300–900 CE, who perceptively stresses Gregory’s impact on Gregory Palamas’ doctrine of uncreated light and his notion of divine activity as a transforming power of uncreated grace in believers.87 Note also the 4th-century Athanasius of Alexandria declaring “God became human so that humanity may become God”88: by taking human form, Christ bestows grace on humanity, who can now ascend to God. The first Adam deprived humanity of its union with God, while the second Adam, the divine Logos, is a union of divine and human in one person. Compare also John Meyendorff, a modern theologian of the Orthodox Church, who states: “The “hypostatic union” of divinity and humanity in Jesus Christ is the very foundation of salvation, and therefore of deification”.89 Deification (θέωσις), in an orthodox sense God’s greatest gift to humankind, concerns the transformation of a person through the living God by divine grace –

83 Gregory of Nazianzus, Funeral oration, in PG 36, 560A. 84 Basil of Caesarea, On the Holy Spirit 1.2. 85 Karahan (2012) 165–212. 86 Gregory of Nyssa, In sanctum Stephanum I, in Gregorii Nysseni Opera X/1 (1990) 89f. 87 Tollefsen (2010) 381f. Gregory Palamas lived 1296–1357. 88 Athanasius, De incarnatione 54.1.13, in SC 199, 458: Αὐτὸς γὰρ ἐνηνθρώπησεν, ἵνα ἡμεῖς θεοποιηθῶμεν. 89 Meyendorff (1964) 182.

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the descending (καταβαίνω) of God in Christ grants created order the gift to ascend (ἀναβαίνω) to the Divine in the Holy Spirit. This formulation is not found in the Bible but is based on the command of 2 Peter 1:4 “to become participants of the divine nature”. And the 7th-century Anastasius of Sinai writes: Deification is the elevation to what is better, but not the reduction of our nature to something less, nor is it an essential change of our human nature. A divine plan […] which He did for the salvation of others. That which is of God is that which has been lifted up to a greater glory, without its own nature being changed.90

“That which is of God is that which has been lifted up to a greater glory”, Anastasius states in an established orthodox manner and a formulation crucial for the present study. In holy images, similarly, upward motion acknowledges faith in divine communication and participation, while downward motion epitomizes Hades, Satan, devils and evildoers, lost souls and pagan idols. In the 12th-century panel icon devoted to The Ladder of Divine Ascent, now in Saint Catherine’s monastery at Mount Sinai (Fig. 3.20),91 a great number of theists try to climb a ladder of thirty rungs whilst being incessantly threatened, some dragged down, by demons. At the top of the image Christ emerges in the celestial sphere, stretching out his hands to receive those who do not listen to the demons but to Christ through faith in God. Upward motion and balance versus downward motion and imbalance function as aesthetic semiotics that serve to dichotomize between paragon and non-paragon. Downward motion is not a sign of evil per se, but of deficient will and faith. Compare Gregory of Nazianzus, who emphasizes that human beings should seek direct experience of God’s activity (ἐνέργεια). It is not enough to approach God intellectually, Gregory states, but “faith, in fact, is what gives fullness to our reasoning (ἡ γάρ πίστις τοῦ καθ’ ἡμᾶς λόγου πλήρωσις)”, and he “prays that the opponents will be changed by God from logic-choppers (τεχνολόγοι) to believers (πίστοι)”.92 In a similar sense, the absence of spiritual light of non-paragons equals deviation from God’s energeia.

Prospect of life or death Orthodoxy is concerned with the unknowable, transcendent God as much as with Christ the image of God (εἰκὼν τοῦ θεοῦ). In spite of its immaterial (ἄüλος) and

90 Anastasius, Word, in PG 89, 77BC, 66. 91 The representation of the Ladder of Divine Ascent derives from the Heavenly Ladder of Saint John Klimakos, a treatise from c. 600 for monasticism in the Eastern Church. Constantinople or Sinai, late 12th-century. 92 Gregory of Nazianzus, Or. 29.21.

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uncircumscribed (ἀπερίγραπτος) constitution,93 divine nature is as real, actual and present as is the image of God: the unseen world and the seen world inter-are and interact. In Byzantium this is an immediate, certain, synthetic and a priori proposition, to paraphrase the Kantian world of ideas, A recurrent theme is that divine nature is unintelligible, since if it were encompassed by human comprehension, it would, like created nature, exist within the intervals of time (διάστημα), which is transient – God would be mortal, salvation hence unattainable.94 In line with this, meta-images transmute the holy drama into a cosmos of anagogic significance, detached from perfected ephemeral corporeality and everyday realism. Compare how Gregory of Nazianzus recognizes salvation and life in Christ as something promoted by God the Trinity.95 Aesthetic preferences such as those manifested in Classical Greek, Hellenistic and, Roman art would not meet the requirements for salvation, since mimesis of phenomena that embody ephemeral realities would impede salvation.96 Neither the beauty and strength of Apollo di Belvedere or an Aphrodite, nor the the athletic force of Laocoön and his sons,97 the flamboyant sensuality of the Barberini Faun,98 stretching out his perfected torso and limbs, and with his velvety skin and gorgeously coiling locks of hair, nor even the lofty appearance of Augustus as Pontifex Maximus,99 would work for mimesis of that which does not perish. In the eyes of a Byzantine Christian these sculptures celebrate ephemeral beauty and strength, while holy images celebrate a transfigured cosmos of eternal beauty.100 Judas, for example, in the monumental mosaic devoted to the Betrayal of Judas in the Daphni monastery,101 resembles Alexander the Great in the Romano-Hellenistic mosaic devoted to the Battle at Issos from Pompeii.102 Gervase Mathew emphasized that Byzantine painters “styled themselves the zoographoi, the depictors of the living”, but that “they were never to show that impelling desire to reproduce what the eye perceives which is the mark of antique illusionist painting”.103 Mathew additionally concluded, based on André Grabar, that “the 93 Cf. John Damascene, Expositio fidei 1.13 and 1.14, in PG 94, 852A and 860A. 94 Cf. Basil of Caesarea’s attack on “the heresy of Sabellius” in Spiritu sancto 59: “I am referring to those who use intervals of time (διαστήμασι) to separate the Son from the Father, saying there was a time when the Son was not, or the Spirit from the Son calling the Spirit a created being” (transl. D. Anderson in Basil, Holy Spirit 92). 95 See also, Beeley (2008) viii-ix. On Byzantine aesthetics and Gregory of Nazianzus’ emphasis on the unity and singularity of Christ, see Karahan (2015b) 159–184. On trinitarian theology and the motif of The Old Testament Trinity (filoxenia), see Karahan (2015d) 85–105. 96 Cf. Karahan (2013a) 77–98. 97 Now in the Octagonal Court, Musei Vaticani. 98 Roman copy, now in the Glyptothek in Munich. 99 Dated to c.12 BCE. Now in the Museo Nazionale Romano – Palazzo Massimo alle Terme, Rome. 100 Cf. Karahan (2012) 165–212. 101 For photo reproduction, see Bakirtzis (2012) 31. 102 Roman mosaic, 1st century CE. From the House of the Faun at Pompeii, now in the Museo Archeologico Nazionale di Napoli. 103 Mathew (1963) 19.

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aesthetics of Plotinus provide the formulae which render all periods of Byzantine art intelligible”.104 In an orthodox sense, for a fact, painters are depictors of the living God and the living saints. When the orthodox believer contemplates a holy image of Christ, the Theotokos or the saints, the holy person is virtually alive and there for imitation, as a path towards salvation in Christ. In this sense, imitation of the ephemeral figures of classical illusionist painting relates to death, not life. Things begun in time also end in time, Basil of Caesarea stresses. As the creation began in time, we cannot doubt its end105: “as the present life has a nature akin to this world, so also the future existence of our souls will receive a lot consistent with its state”.106 In addition, and following Mathew’s inference that Plotinus is the vehicle through which Byzantine art becomes intelligible, I want to underscore that the protagonist is missing in the Neo-Platonic system Christ, as God incarnate, has no analogy in either Plotinus’ or Proclus’ transcendental monotheism, or in any other ideology or belief system. The core idea of Christianity, the God-Man, is simply missing.

Final remarks In a Byzantine church and its constructed fabric of orthodox religious significance, holy images constitute media of divine transport. The aggregate of rite, aesthetics, narratology, and material culture nourish faith in and imitation of that which leads from ephemeral to eternal existence, from death to life. To work as a proof of God’s presence, a holy image has to conform to the orthodox template “of right belief” (ὀρθόδοξος) and its liturgical fabric. Compare Basil of Caesarea: “the mind, being imprisoned in the flesh and filled with the phantasies therefrom, needs only faith and right conduct, and these make its feet like the feet of harts and set it upon high places” (Ecclesiasticus 11.3).107 To create a living re-enactment of the holy drama, the semiotic and aesthetic principles of holy images, following the orthodox faith in an eternal cosmos, takes control of the majesty of the temporal. In order to acknowledge the incarnation of the second person of the Trinity in Jesus Christ as prerequisite for salvation and eternal life, without making Father and Holy Spirit incarnate as well, Byzantine aesthetics transforms created existence by way of meta-images that introduce apophatic theology, viz. the knowledge of God through negation. Thus, in accordance with faith, divine grace and narrative affirmations of cataphatic theology inter-are. As apophatic theology nonexplains the Divinity through innumerable words, so the holy image non-identifies divine presence and action through a plethora of meta-images. These meta-images are

104 Mathew (1963) 19. 105 Homiliae in Hexaemeron 1.3 (transl. Way (1963) 7). 106 Homiliae in Hexaemeron 1.4 (transl. Way (1963) 8). 107 Epistula 8, in Basil, Letters 1.91.

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a kind of Orthodox semiotics – signs, abstractions, symbols, indications, designations, analogies – to acknowledge faith in God’s grace (χάρις)108 and power (δύναμις).109 Their didactic conception and apophatic structure correspond to faith in the indecipherable nature of the divine. Meta-images are apophatic signs and symbols for faith in a hypostatic union of divine and human in Christ, emphasizing the indivisibility of the triune Divinity. Meta-images thus serve as testimonies of God’s twofold identification, but also as incitements for the transformative process of deification and union with God,110 as well as inexplicable experiences of the incomprehensibility of God.111 In his polemics against the iconoclasts, John Damascene quotes earlier fathers advocating Orthodox authorization of holy images.112 Anchored in synodical Orthodoxy, and in the historical adherence of Palestinian monasticism to this tradition, John refines, defines and celebrates Orthodoxy.113 For Orthodox vindication of holy images, John extends and develops the notion of the image of God (εἰκὼν τοῦ θεοῦ). He does not only emphasize that the image of God appears in the theophanies, the manifestations of God in the Old Testament, and above all in the incarnation of the Word, but also that deification (θέωσις) is to partake in the grace that surrounds the nature (οὐσία) of God. Deification is to enter into the economy (οἰκονομία) of salvation, into the dispensation of the natural order and the interpositions of God’s grace and mercy, based on the eternal generation of the Word.114 Repudiation of holy images, the Damascene stresses, not only deprives humans of the experience of God, but it negates salvation. An illumination of Psalm 21 in the 9th-century Chludov Psalter115 is pictorial evidence for how demolition of an image of Christ is on a par with crucifying Christ (Fig. 3.21). In the lower register of the manuscript page, John VII Grammatikos, the last iconoclast patriarch of Constantinople, rubs out a painting of Christ as he stands beneath Golgotha and the Crucifixion: to destroy an image of Christ equals elimination of the only-begotten Son, thus, in an Orthodox sense, the elimination of potential salvation. If we want to grasp the religious momentum of Byzantine aesthetics, we need to explore the religious conditions and qualifications of not only what is “right belief” in an Orthodox sense, but also of what was worth investing religious interest in for a Christian Byzantine. Detached from Christology, soteriology, trinitarian theology,116 108 Cf. Maximus the Confessor, Quaestiones Thalassium 22, in PG 90, 321A. 109 Cf. Maximus the Confessor, Opuscula, in PG 91, 33C. On Byzantine aesthetics and the 4th-century three Cappadocian Fathers’ theological discussions on divine activity and cyclic phenomena, see Karahan (2017). 110 Maximus the Confessor, Capitum 1.42, in PG in the worldly sense 90, 1193D. 111 Gregory of Nazianzus, Or. 21.2, in PG 35, 1084C. 112 Cf. Karahan (2010a) passim. 113 Cf. Louth (2002). 114 John Damascene, Expositio fidei 88.18. 115 Byzantine, mid or second half of the 9th-century; Moscow, State Historical Museum, inv. MS. D. 129, fol. 67 v. 116 Cf. Karahan (2015d) 85–105.

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and and their expectations of a beneficial religious life, the characteristic lack of naturalism and realism of Byzantine sacral art might pass for artistic ignorance, and not pictorial semiotics developed to avoid too close a connotation with that which will perish. In an Orthodox sense, Christ, the Theotokos and the saints are virtually present and alive in the holy image every time it is looked upon. The purpose of a holy image is on the one hand to testify to the incarnation and thus serve for contemplation and mimesis of the God-Man and the saints, on the other hand to verify beauty in the eyes of God, a beauty that equals perfected spirituality, not perfected physicality.117 In support of my conclusion, I refer to Basil of Caesarea: The very beginning of the soul’s purgation is tranquility (hesychia), in which the tongue is not given to discussing the affairs of men, nor the eyes to contemplating rosy cheeks or comely bodies […] For when the mind is not dissipated upon extraneous things, nor diffused over the world about us through the senses, it withdraws within itself, and of its own accord ascends to the contemplation of God […] it becomes forgetful even of its own nature; no longer able to drag the soul down to thought of sustenance or to concern for the body’s covering, but enjoying leisure from earthly cares, it transfers all its interest to the acquisition of the eternal goods (ton aionion agathon).118

In line with this influential 4th-century Cappadocian church father, Byzantine aesthetics dissociates from such beauty as could trigger sensual perception of and preoccupation with ephemeral qualities in favor of pictorial semiotics that transforms created transience into a vehicle for contemplation of God. The core element of and rationale for salvation concerns eternal life, and have, in an Orthodox sense, little to do with earthly cares; thus, the life-like has no raison d’être.

References Primary sources Anastasius, Word: Anastasius of Sinai, Concerning the Word, in Patrologiae cursus completus, Series Graeca (hereinafter PG) 89, 77BC, 66, J.P. Migne (ed.), Paris 1865. Athanasius, De incarnatione: Athanasius of Alexandria, De incarnatione verbi, in Sources Chrétiennes (hereinafter SC) 199, C. Kannengiesser (ed.), Paris 1973. Athanasius, To Serapion: Athanasius of Alexandria, Letters to Serapion 1.2, (transl. A. Louth), Crestwood, NY 2003. Basil, Hexaemeron: Basil of Caesarea, Exegetic Homilies, in The Fathers of the Church, vol. 46, (transl. A.C. Way), Washington 1963. Basil, Hexaemeron: Basil of Caesarea, Homiliae in hexaemeron, in SC 26bis, S. Giet (ed.) Paris 1968. Basil, Spiritu sancto: Basil of Caesarea, Liber de Spiritu Sancto, in SC 17, B. Pruche (ed.), Paris 1947.

117 Karahan 2012. 118 Epistula 2, in Letters 1.12–15.

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Basil, Holy Spirit: Basil of Caesarea, On the Holy Spirit, (transl. D. Andersson), New York 1997. Basil, Letters: Basil of Caesarea, The Letters, transl. R.J. Deferrari (ed.) (Loeb Classical Library), London & Cambridge, Mass. 1926-1934. Basil, CPG: Basil of Caesarea, Clavis Patrum Graecorum, M. Geerard and F. Glorie (eds.), (Corpus Christianorum, Series Graeca), Turnhout 1974-1987; supplement, M. Geerard & J. Noret (eds.), Turnhout 1998. Gregory of Nazianzus, Carminum: Gregory of Nazianzus, Carminum libri duo, in PG 37, Paris 1862. Gregory of Nazianzus, Funeral oration: Gregory of Nazianzus, Funeral oration for St Basil, in PG 36, 560A, Paris 1858. Gregory of Nazianzus, Or.: Gregory of Nazianzus, Orationes (various eds). Gregory of Nyssa, Opificio: Gregory of Nyssa, De hominis opificio 4, in In sanctum Stephanum I, G. Heil et al (eds.), (Gregorii Nysseni Opera, 10:1), Leiden 1990. (=PG 44.136C). Gregory of Nyssa, Vita Mosis: Gregory of Nyssa, De vita Mosis, in SC 1bis, J. Daniélou (ed.), Paris 2007. John Damascene, Adversus Nestorianos: John Damascene, Adversos Nestorianos 2 and 21 (CPG 8053; Kotter iv. 263-88), M. Geerard and F. Glorie (eds.), Turnhout 1974–1987. John Damascene, Contra imaginum: John Damascene, Contra imaginum calumniatores orationes tres, B. Kotter (ed.), Berlin & New York 1975. John Damascene, De fide: John Damascene, De fide contra Nestorianos 49. 1–11(CPG 8054; Kotter iv. 238-253), M. Geerard and F. Glorie (eds.), Turnhout 1974-1987. John Damascene, Expositio fidei, in Die Schriften des Johannes von Damaskos. Ekdosis akribēs tēs orthodoxou pisteōs, 2, B. Kotter (ed.), (Patristische Texte und Studien, 12), Berlin & New York 1973. John Damascene, Homiliae: John Damascene, Homiliae I-III Dormitionem Beata Maria Virgo, in Homélies sur la nativité et la dormition. Texte grec, introduction, traduction et notes par P. Voulet (SC 80), Paris 1961. Maximos the Confessor, Capitum: Maximos the Confessor, Capitum quinque centuriae 1.42 (PG 90.1193D), Paris 1860. Maximos the Confessor, Opuscula: Maximos the Confessor, Opuscula theologica et polemica (PG 91.33C), Paris 1865. Maximos the Confessor, Quaestiones Thalassium: Maximos the Confessor, Quaestiones ad Thalassium 22 (PG 90.321A), Paris 1860. PG: Patrologiae Cursus Completus, Series Graeca, 162 vols., J.-P. Migne (ed.), Paris 1857–1866. SC: Sources chrétiennes, (various eds) Paris 1942-.

Secondary sources Bakirtzis (2012): Bakirtzis, Ch. (ed.) (2012), Mosaics of Thessaloniki 4th-14th century, Athens. Beeley (2008): Beeley, C.A. (2008), Gregory of Nazianzus on the trinity and the knowledge of God: in your light we shall see light, Oxford & New York. Brubaker & Haldon (2001): Brubaker, L. and J-F. Haldon (2001), Byzantium in the Iconoclast era (c. 680–850): the sources. An annotated survey, with a section on ‘The architecture of Iconoclasm: the buildings’ by R. Ousterhout, (Birmingham Byzantine and Ottoman monographs, 7), Aldershot. Brubaker & Haldon (2011): Brubaker, L. and J.F. Haldon (2011), Byzantium in the Iconoclast era c. 680–850: a history, Cambridge. Hallonsten (1991): Hallonsten, G. (1991), “Östkyrkan förr och nu. Studier i den ortodoxa traditionen”, Religio 34, 67–82. James (1991): James, L. (1991), “Colour and the Byzantine rainbow”, Byzantine and Modern Greek Studies 15, 66–94.

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Karahan (2008): Karahan, A. (2008), “Inledning”, in O. Andrén (transl.), Johannes Damaskenos. Tre försvarstal mot dem som förkastar de heliga bilderna, Skellefteå. Karahan (2010a): Karahan, A. (2010a), Byzantine holy images – transcendence and immanence: the theological background of the iconography and aesthetics of the Chora church (Orientalia Lovaniensia Analecta, 176), Leuven, Paris & Walpole, MA. Karahan (2010b): Karahan, A. (2010b), “The issue of περιχώρησις in Byzantine holy images”, in Papers presented at the Fifteenth International Conference on Patristic studies held in Oxford 2007, (Studia Patristica, 44-49), 27–34. Karahan (2012): Karahan, A. (2012), “Beauty in the eyes of God: Byzantine aesthetics and Basil of Caesarea”, Byzantion 82, 165–212. Karahan (2013a): Karahan, A. (2013a), ”Skönhet, tillbedjan, och bildning i bysantinskt trosperspektiv”, in S. Rise and K.-W. Saether (eds), Skjønnhet og tilbedelse, Trondheim, 77–98. Karahan (2013b): Karahan, A. (2013b), “The image of God in Byzantine Cappadocia and the issue of supreme transcendence”, in Papers presented at the Sixteenth International Conference on Patristic studies held in Oxford 2011 (Studia Patristica, 59), 97–111. Karahan (2014): Karahan, A. (2014), “Byzantine iconoclasm: ideology and quest for power”, in K. Kolrud and M. Prusac (eds), Iconoclasm from antiquity to modernity, Farnham Surrey, 75–94. Karahan (2015a): Karahan, A. (2015a), “Patristics and Byzantine meta-images: molding belief in the divine from written to painted theology”, in B. Bitton-Ashkelony, T. de Bruyn and C. Harrison (eds), Patristic Studies in the Twenty-First Century, Turnhout, 571–594. Karahan (2015b):Karahan, A. (2015b), “The impact of Cappadocian theology on Byzantine aesthetics: Gregory of Nazianzus on the unity and singularity of Christ”, in N. Dumitrascu (ed.), The ecumenical legacy of the Cappadocians, New York, 159–184. Karahan (2015c): Karahan, A. (2015c), “Johannes Damaskenos – de heliga bildernas förkämpe”, in S.J. Kristiansen and P.K. Solberg (eds), Gud er alltid større. Kirkefedrenes teologiske språk, Oslo, 273–288. Karahan (2015d): Karahan, A. (2015d), “En betraktelse av östkristen treenighetstro och motivet filoxenia i den bysantinska klippkyrkan Çarıklı i Kappadokien”, in G. Innerdal and K-W. Sæther (eds), Trinitarisk tro og tenkning – Festskrift til Svein Rise, Kristiansand, 85–105. Karahan (2015e): Karahan, A. (2015e), “Johannes Damaskenos – de heliga bildernas försvarare och förklarare”, in C.J. Berglund and D. Gustafsson (eds), Ad fontes. Festskrift till Olof Andrén på 100-årsdagen, Skellefteå, 213–227. Karahan (2016): Karahan, A. (2016), “Byzantine visual culture: conditions of ‘right’ belief and some Platonic outlooks”, Numen 63, 210–244. Karahan (2017): Karahan, A. (2017), “Cyclic shapes and divine dynamics: a Cappadocian inquiry into Byzantine aesthetics”, in Vincent, M. (ed.), The fourth-century Cappadocian writers, (Studia Patristica, 95 vol. 21), Leuven, 405–420. Lee (2005): Lee, D. (2005), Transfiguration, New York. Louth (2002): Louth, A. (2002), St John Damascene: tradition and originality in Byzantine theology, Oxford. Louth (2003): Louth, A. (2003), St John of Damascus: Three treatises on the divine images, New York. Mathew (1963): Mathew, G. (1963), Byzantine Aesthetics, London. Meyendorff (1964); Meyendorff, J. (1964), A study of Gregory Palamas, Leighton Buzzard. Peltomaa (2001): Peltomaa, L.M. (2001), The image of the Virgin Mary in the Akathistos hymn, (Greek ed. with English transl.), Leiden. Tollefsen (2008): Tollefsen, T.T. (2008), The Christocentric cosmology of St Maximus the Confessor, Oxford. Tollefsen (2010): Tollefsen, T.T. (2010), “Gregory of Palamas”, in L.F. Mateo-Seco and G. Maspero (eds), The Brill Dictionary of Gregory of Nyssa, Leiden, 381–382. Underwood (1966): P.A. Underwood, The Kariye Djami, I-III, London.

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Fig. 3.1: Apse and choir of San Vitale, Ravenna; photo Fabio Poggi/Wikimedia Commons.

Fig. 3.2: The Transfiguration, Sant’ Apollinare in Classe, Ravenna; photo Berthold Werner/Wikimedia Commons.

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Fig. 3.3: Interior of the Theotokos Pammakaristos church, Istanbul; photo Anne Karahan.

Fig. 3.4: The Virgin fed by an angel, Chora church, Istanbul; photo Anne Karahan.

Fig. 3.5: Christ Pantokrator, Karanlık kilise (Göreme 23), Cappadocia; photo Anne Karahan.

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Fig. 3.6: The Annunciation, Chora church, Istanbul; photo Anne Karahan.

Fig. 3.7: The Virgin blessed by the priests; Chora church, Istanbul; photo Anne Karahan.

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Fig. 3.8: The Virgin caressed by her parents, Chora church, Istanbul; photo Anne Karahan.

Fig. 3.9: Cross with three circles, St Nicholas church, Myra (mod. Demre, Turkey); photo Anne Karahan.

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Fig. 3.10: Crux gemmata, Theotokos Pammakaristos church, Istanbul; photo Anne Karahan.

Fig. 3.11: Dome of the parekklesion, Chora church, Istanbul; photo Anne Karahan.

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Fig. 3.12: Capitals, Hagia Sophia, Istanbul; photo Anne Karahan.

Fig. 3.13: The Anastasis, Chora church, Istanbul; photo: Gunnar Bach Pedersen/Wikimedia Commons.

Fig. 3.14: The idols falling from the walls of the Temple: detail of the Flight into Egypt, Chora church, Istanbul; photo Anne Karahan.

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Fig. 3.15: Lost souls stumbling down into the Fiery Stream and the Lake of Fire: detail of the Last Judgment, Chora church, Istanbul; photo Anne Karahan.

Fig. 3.16: Saved soul awaiting heaven: detail of the Last Judgment, Chora church, Istanbul; photo Anne Karahan.

Fig. 3.17: The Baptism, Karanlık kilise (Göreme 23), Cappadocia; photo Anne Karahan.

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Fig. 3.18: The Scroll of Heaven: detail of the Last Judgment, Chora church, Istanbul; photo Astronomy at Stevens/Wikimedia Commons.

Fig. 3.19: Virgin Mary’s first seven steps, Chora church, Istanbul; photo Anne Karahan.

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Fig. 3.20: The Ladder of Divine Ascent, icon in St. Catherine’s monastery at Mt. Sinai; photo unknown/Wikimedia Commons.

Fig. 3.21: Iconoclast Patriarch of Constantinople John VII Grammatikos rubs out a painting of Christ by the Crucifixion: detail of Psalm 21 of the Chludov Psalter; Moscow, State Historical Museum, inv. MS D.129, fol. 67 v; photo Wikimedia Commons.

Bente Kiilerich

4 Abstraction in Late Antique Art In the cupola mosaics at Centcelles in north-eastern Spain, non-figurative imagery plays an important role in framing representational scenes. In Galla Placidia’s mausoleum at Ravenna, abstractions are even more dominant, with one particularly striking perspectival meander being wholly in the Hellenistic tradition. The dense mosaic weave of the neighbouring church of San Vitale presents a multitude of colourful, non-figurative images, some of which are quite complex abstractions. Such imagery warrants closer study. Unfortunately, the appreciation and understanding of non-figurative images as significant visual manifestations in late antique art is hampered by the fact that images are generally categorised according to a hierarchical system that treats figuration as primary. Moreover, since frames and borders are often perceived as parergonal or secondary – a notion that dates back at least to Kant – non-figurative images with a framing function tend to be seen as secondary to the figurative scenes they frame.1 Contrary to this view, I argue here that abstract images in sacred contexts are important in their own right.

Methodological questions Depending on which encyclopaedia or dictionary one consults, various definitions of the concept of abstraction can be found. A common definition of abstract art is: “art unconcerned with the literal depiction of things from the visible world” (Encyclopaedia Britannica). However, it can also be an image “which has been distilled from the real world”. Continuing along this line, the abstract form can be claimed to “reshape the natural world”, or “reduce the form”.2 Visual abstraction is chiefly associated with modern art from the late 19th/early 20th century onwards.3 Still, abstraction is also found to varying degree in antiquity. Indeed, a remarkable example of purely non-figurative art is a 9th-century BCE floor mosaic from the royal palace of Gordion in Phrygia.4 Set in black, white, red and yellow pebbles in various configurations, this composition – which at first glance might be mistaken for a 20th-century artwork – resists any attempt at description. There being no recognizable features, the complex

1 Kiilerich (2001a); Kiilerich (2001b). In the present article I do not distinguish between the adjectives abstract, non-figurative and non-representational. 2 For discussions of the concept of abstraction in relation to the visual arts, see e.g., Arnheim (1947); Langer (195); Gortais (2003); Zimmer (2003). 3 For abstraction in the visual arts as a modern “invention”, see the MoMA exhibition Inventing Abstraction 1910–1925, 23. December 2012 – 15. April 2013. 4 Young (1957); Trilling (2001) fig. 36; Assimakopoulou-Atzaka (2003) fig. 2 on p. 12. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110546842-005

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geometrical formations were presumably not intended to represent anything in particular. It is perhaps most likely that they had an apotropaic function. It is, however, not always easy to determine whether a given image should be perceived as representational or non-representational. Sometimes it depends on the way in which we view it. Experiments with viewing familiar shapes, such as a stylised “5” shape in a field of stylised “2” shapes, have shown that these figures can easily be detected in abstracted form when they are presented in the upright position, but when the image is rotated 90 degrees, the figures lose their familiarity and are not as easy to recognise.5 They may be perceived as meaningless patterns. This exemplifies the problems we face when trying to decide whether a given ancient image should be perceived as representational – that is, whether it was originally conceived and intended thus, or intended not to represent anything at all. So-called ornament is quite often abstracted natural form. As Theodor Lipps claimed long ago, all geometrical forms are stylised plant motifs.6 To categorise this kind of imagery is difficult. Although an ornament may be defined as an image with qualities that are primarily aesthetic, in most cases one cannot rule out aspects beyond the purely decorative.7 That is, an ornament may be an abstraction, but an abstraction need not be an ornament. Moreover, an image does not exist in a vacuum; it acquires various meanings according to the context in which it appears. The “starry sky” mosaic in the barrel vaults of the cross arms on the main axis of Galla Placidia’s mausoleum at Ravenna may serve as an example (Fig. 4.1). Because of the abstracted form of the symmetrically laid out flowers, they may be taken as a representation of twinkling stars.8 Had the same motif been used for a mosaic pavement in a secular building, it might have been read as a meadow, and a botanist might perhaps identify Carline thistles (carlina acaulis) or another species among the varieties. The question of potential figurative imagery therefore also depends on contextual factors. The placement of an image conditions how it is understood and interpreted. Some abstractions may actually be perceived as figurations. In the 3rd century, Philostratus the Elder mentions the tendency to recognise resemblances in clouds: “these shapes are without meaning and carried through the heavens without any divine intervention and it is we who having an inborn mimetic faculty turn them into forms…” (Life of Apollonius of Tyana, 2.22).9 Humans are attracted to face-like stimuli

5 Gilbert et al. (2001) 688 with fig. 3. 6 Lipps (1903) 25f. 7 Gombrich (1979) 62, avoids the question by stating that “[t]he relations between decoration and abstraction are too complex to be summed up in any formula”. For discussions and examples of ornaments and abstractions, see Trilling (2001); Buci-Glucksmann (2008). 8 Swift & Alwis (2010) 193–217 (on p. 207 suggesting that the stars “became in the mind of the viewer actual stars and shone upon them”, on p. 217 conjecturing that the starry sky could have been seen as an embodiment of the saints in heaven). 9 Onians (2007) 35.

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and tend to see faces even where there may be none. Indeed, it seems somehow embedded in our genes: “the visual system wants to see faces and animals”.10 Particularly instructive, with regard to late antiquity and Byzantium, are the bookmatched marble panels that decorate church walls in Constantinople, Ravenna and many other sites (Fig. 4.2). Both to the ancient and the modern viewer, the veining of these carefully joined panels may suggest various kinds of imagery such as “il Monaco”, the monk that appears in Proconnesan marble on a pilaster in San Vitale.11 Viewing random patterns, we tend to recognise and identify something. The anthropomorphic, theriomorphic and phytomorphic figurations seen in naturally occurring patterns are known as pareidolia.12 An interesting thesis is that the first art made by humans were modifications of natural patterns, figurative images being created by adapting ready-made forms found in the environment.13 Yet given the lack of precise chronology for Pleistocene material, it may be impossible to give priority to figurative or abstract images. Plausibly no such distinction was originally made. To some extent all art is abstracted (even the most naturalistic or realistic picture is obviously an abstraction inasmuch as the subject is rendered in a different medium and has different properties than the substance from which it is made). But there are different levels of abstraction. Possibly the art of late antiquity can be claimed to be more abstract than, say, that of the Augustan age. Thus Rudolf Arnheim notes that “the superindividual dignity of the divine ruler, which is untouched by the contingencies of time, requires the generality of highly abstract representation”.14 One need only mention the imperial images on Theodosius’ silver missorium, dating from 388 (Madrid, Real Academia de la Historia). The extreme flatness of the imperial bodies, their tiny feet, the strictly symmetrical fringes and the exaggerated size of the eyes are totally abstracted forms. The very same formula can be seen in the marble portrait 10 Melcher & Cavanagh (2011) 365. There is probably a phylogenetic explanation for this; since a dangerous animal might be lurking in the bushes, the propensity to recognise its form behind the leaves is useful for survival. According to Ishai et al. (2007) 322, object recognition is activated primarily by the ventral occipitotemporal cortex, also known as the “what” pathway. 11 Fiorentini & Orioli (2003) 35, fig. 19. Discussing the marbles in Hagia Sophia, Antoniadis 1909 pointed to the many face-like figurations that appeared in the book-matched panels; see also Fobelli (2005); Kiilerich (2012). Many artists from different periods have noted the same effect, e.g. Alberti, Della Pittura, II, 28: “nature herself seems to delight in painting, for in the cut faces of marble she often paints centaurs and faces of bearded and curly headed kings”; Onians (2007) 43. Leonardo da Vinci noted that: “if you look at any walls soiled with a variety of stains, or stones with variegated patterns...” in Cod.Urb. 35v; Onians (2007) 50. Cozens: “when you look at the odd appearance of some streaked stones, you may discover several things like landscapes, battles, clouds, uncommon attitudes and humorous faces”; Kiilerich (2012) 20. 12 Hadjikhani et al. (2009); Voss et al. (2012); Schott (2013). 13 Cutting & Massironi (1998) 137–168 (on p. 138 referring to cave paintings). In the Altamira cave a bison head was made by painting eyes on a rock protuberance; similar imagery is found in the older Chauvet cave; cf. Melcher & Bacci (2008). 14 Arnheim (1966); also Arnheim (1947) 44.

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of an emperor from the Beyazıt area of Constantinople (Istanbul Archaeological Museum).15 Here abstraction obviously serves a purpose: when the aim is to elevate the emperor above the mundane and place him in a superhuman context a realistic image would have been less effective. A related purpose can underlie the abstractions in the imagery of sacred buildings.

Abstractions in sacred contexts To illustrate the occurrence of abstractions in late antique art, I focus here on wall- and vault mosaics from sacred contexts, using as case studies the fourth-century so-called mausoleum at Centcelles near Tarragona in north-eastern Spain, the 5h-century so-called mausoleum of Galla Placidia in Ravenna and the 6th-century church of San Vitale in Ravenna. Rather than surveying the large number of non-figurative images in these buildings, I have selected examples that have salient uniqueness or typicality, paying most attention to abstractions that stand out in one way or another.

Centcelles The enigmatic villa complex at Centcelles, the date and function of which are still debated includes a large circular room that presumably at some point served as a mausoleum.16 The badly preserved cupola mosaics of this room are divided into four (representational) zones: a hunting frieze, a zone with a score of biblical motifs, a frieze with four ceremonial scenes separated by the four seasons, and finally, a barely extant central medallion, which might have given some clue to the meaning of the pictorial programme. Abstract motifs separate these zones. The choice of non-figurative elements and the space accorded to them suggest that in this particular context the non-figurative images played an important role. The frieze between the biblical zone and the one above is particularly imposing: it shows an orthogonal pattern of adjacent “scales” in various colours radiating in opposite directions from a central row of circles (height: 87 cm). In effect, the motif is made up of intersecting superimposed discs (Fig. 4.3).17 This Schuppenfries, set in various shades of white, pink, red-brown,

15 See Kiilerich (1993) 19–26, 68–70 (missorium), and 87–89 (portrait). 16 Arbeiter & Korol (2015). Torp (2015) and Kiilerich (2015) both argue for the second half of the 4th century, based on respectively technical and stylistic/visual criteria. Thanks are due to Achim Arbeiter and Dieter Korol for access to their lift at Centcelles in September 2011, which made it possible to study the mosaics more closely. 17 Schlunk & Arbeiter (1988) 48, 71, 92–94, esp. fig. 32, 98 n. 51, and pls. 16a, 57. The closest correspondence is probably a 5th-century floor mosaic from Pupput, Tunisia; Ben Abed (1982) pl. XLIII.

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dark brown and a metallic blue, displays sophisticated colour shifts; for a stretch, the white/pink/light terracotta/dark reddish-brown hues give way to a predominantly white area, which then changes to blue. It is as if the artists tried to indicate light and shade falling on the various sections of the cupola. Is this design meant to represent something, or has a figurative motif been abstracted into a non-representation? If one imagines the decoration folded horizontally along the middle of the central row of circles, it would form the imbrication of a sloping roof. Thus the motif could be meant to draw associations to an imbricated sarcophagus roof, with the brownish red of terracotta tiles, and the white of marble tiles. Whether one sees the motif as figurative or non-figurative partly depends on whether one views the motif in isolation or in combination with the mosaics next to it. The spiral columns, which separate the biblical scenes in the zone below, bring to mind the layout of a column sarcophagus. In combination with these, thus, the imbrication forms a potential lid to a potential sarcophagus.18 This comparatively simple example indicates that antithetical terminology such as “figurative” versus “non-figurative”, and “representational” versus “non-representational” is quite problematic. I submit that it is feasible to regard the form as being simultaneously figurative and non-figurative; that is, ambiguous.

Galla Placidia’s mausoleum The mosaics in the so-called mausoleum of Galla Placidia, c. 425–450, which possibly served as an Oratory of Saint Laurentius, range from representations of holy figures to abstract imagery. Among the latter, a very fine multi-coloured meander (Greek key, fret) in white, yellow, orange-red, green and two tones of blue stands out (Fig. 4.4).19 Placed on the intrados of the barrel vault over the south lunette depicting Laurentius with the grill, the meander can be viewed simply as a beautiful ornament. Alternatively, it can be interpreted as representing something, for instance, the Meandros River, or a maze or labyrinth, and so be a symbol of artistic craftsmanship and ingenuity. Sometimes the meander has been used to demarcate sacred space and may in some cases signify a courtly environment.20 On account of the perspectival drawing, the Ravenna meander appears three-dimensional. If, however, one focuses on the Related scales in various colours and gradations, e.g. the barrel vault in the small south-Italian church of Sa Maria della Croce, Casaranello, c. 450–500 or 6th century; Bovini (1964); Falla Castelfranchi (2005) 13–24. For the ornaments in general, see Biedermann (2015). 18 Proposed already by Camprubí (1942). 19 Fourlas (2012) 248f, fig. 425 and 431. 20 For mazes and meanders, see Daszewski (1977); Guimier-Sorbets (1982); Philips (1992) 322 (stating that “all the mazes occurring in antiquity are meander mazes”); Polito (2002) 102 (pointing to meanders demarcating sacred spaces, and on p. 109 to an aulic significance of the motif).

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white lines, the image tends to become flat. Consequently, it wavers between being two- and three-dimensional. To some extent, it behaves not unlike the figures that can be seen in alternate ways, such as the Necker cube.21 The meander is a frequent motif in ancient pavements. A meander surprisingly close to the one in Ravenna is partly preserved in a Hellenistic floor mosaic from Thmouis in Egypt. Signed by Sophilos, it dates from around 200 BC, and therefore was made some six hundred years before the Ravenna mosaics.22 Framing a personification of Alexandria, also read as a portrait of Queen Berenike, the Hellenistic meander was plausibly meant to be apotropaic; it forms a protective band that one would be wary of transgressing lest one should lose ones way in the labyrinthine abyss. Although a shade of the apotropaic meaning may linger on, the late antique meander can hardly be understood in the exact same manner as the Hellenistic one. It is basically a re-formulation of a conventional motif that was given a new function and thus acquired a new significance. But does it carry a specific meaning, or can it be reduced to a “simple nonfigurative decorative motif” that mainly serves to make “representational scenes stand out more vividly in contrast”, as Giuseppe Bovini puts it?23 I would suggest that there is more to the image than what immediately meets the eye; that its meaning goes beyond the surface. Placed on the intrados of the cross arms of the east-west axis, there is another less spectacular but no less interesting mosaic. This abstraction is clearly extracted from nature: it is basically a modified green leaf.24 Since the motif also is found in the mosaics of Neon’s baptistery – dating from the 450s, and therefore possibly made by the same mosaicists – it belongs to a common Ravenna repertoire. In Galla Placidia’s mausoleum, each leaf is stylised and arranged in six or seven rows within a regular, symmetrical grid (Fig. 4.5). There are two variants; one contains more of blue than the other. Subtle transitions, from light yellow, through bright green to darker green to dark blue, turn the mosaic fields into studies in colour and shading, the naturalistic giving way to the abstract, the particular being subordinated to the general. The abstracted leaf mosaic makes use of another important artistic principle, namely symmetry. Humans prefer images with a high level of symmetry and regularity.25 Symmetry can be both a naturally occurring phenomenon (as in butterflies and snowflakes) and an artistic device. On the Ara Pacis Augustae in Rome, the vegetal frieze – which incidentally takes up more space than the procession above –

21 E.g. Gregory (2009) 121–138 for ambiguity, with Necker cube on p.126, fig. 17; also Cutting & Massironi (1998) fig. 4, p. 162. That some parts of an image may appear to recede, and other parts to come forward, is noted by Swift & Alwis (2010) 209, in connection with the “starry sky”. 22 Andreae (2003) 28, 32–34 (c. 210–200); Guimier-Sorbets (2011) 93 (c. 200–190). The colours differ in the painted reconstructions: red and yellow with blue and either brown or green. 23 Bovini (1971) 38 (text to the accompanying illustration on pl. 12). 24 Deichmann (1974) 88; Fourlas (2012) 249f, figs. 435–438. 25 Jacobsen et al. (2005); Westphal-Fitch et al. (2012).

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has been rendered in a highly abstract manner.26 The sculptors have carefully ordered nature, arranging the naturalistic details in an overall abstract symmetry so that there is unity in variety. Symmetry suggests kosmos: order and beauty. Similarly, in the Ravenna abstractions, there is a fine balance between order (kosmos) and complexity (varietas). By arranging the leaves in a grid, it is as if the artists wanted to tame and control nature by making it strictly regular. If this suggestion has something in it, then there is a definite meaning to these abstractions; they are stylised nature, and the stylisation has been done in order to elevate the imagery from our earthly world into the supernatural world. The abstraction can thus be claimed to have a strong spiritual component: the stylising of nature idealises it by seeking to exalt pure form.27

San Vitale Some of the most intricate abstractions can be seen on the bright, colourful walls and vaults in the Basilica of San Vitale, inaugurated in 547. It seems that a horror vacui made the artists fill every available space of the presbytery and sanctuary with imagery. In the southern triforium, the intrados have different designs: respectively a three-dimensional wavy ribbon, a three-dimensional zigzag and a scale pattern (Fig.  4.6).28 Seen in isolation, the unassuming zigzag panel, set mainly in green, yellow and red on a dark blue ground, looks almost like a piece of modern art. Visually, it brings to mind certain works by the American painter Frank Stella, the mid 1970s composition “Furg” in particular.29 The mosaic may derive ultimately from the zigzag motif of the Hellenistic rainbow-style, which remained popular in the Roman period and was later adopted for Christian commissions.30 If so, it is basically a textile pattern. This would be in line with the general impression of the walls and vaults of San Vitale as totally clad in rich, multicoloured textiles. On the intrados of the sanctuary arch, the crossed cornucopiae with the Chi-Rho monogram at the apex are bordered on one side by multicoloured discs and volutes in a repeated formation. The colour shifts, a device already noted at Centcelles, from blue to brown to red in the volutes and the red and yellow circles inscribing a disc divided into four different vivid colours turn this design into a fine abstract configuration.

26 Sauron (2000); Caneva (2010). 27 Cf. Rothenberg (2013) 181. 28 Fourlas (2012) 278f, figs. 504–506. 29 American artists have been influenced by Byzantine art in various ways, see e.g. Peers (2010). 30 For instance, on Cyprus, the early 5th-century Basilica of Agia Trias near Yialousa has a nave floor with zigzag rainbow panels and rainbow meander. Related imagery can be seen in the 5th-century Eustolios complex; Michaelidis (1992) 78–85.

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One could describe the impression as poikilos, a word with meanings ranging from subtle and intricate to variegated and wrought in various colours (Fig. 4.7).31 At the opposite side of the intrados, the cornucopia design is set off by a rainbow border.32 A continuous band along the architectural arch would have alluded perfectly to the arch of the rainbow (arcus, arc-de-ciel), the border between heaven and earth: “I do set my bow in the cloud, and it shall be a token of a covenant between me and the earth”.33 But this rainbow does not form a continuous band; it is divided into smaller sections, turning in alternate directions (Fig. 4.8). From this it can be inferred that the intention was to avoid a naturalistic representation. So, by being cut into sections, as it were, the rainbow suggests a more abstracted reality. Although the rainbow is a natural phenomenon produced by sun and rain, its appearance is abstract and evanescent inasmuch as it evaporates: one moment it is clearly visible, the next it has faded away. The colours of the rainbow are difficult to pin down; they have subtle shifts not unlike the Galla Placidia leaf motif and the Centcelles discs. The aesthetic impact of the rainbow lies in its multiple shifting colours, the iris being a manifestation of coloured light, which again is a symbol of divine presence: “As the appearance of the bow that is in the cloud in the day of rain, so was the appearance of the brightness round about. This was the appearance of the likeness of the glory of the Lord”.34 By far the most intricate abstract design in San Vitale is the magnificently complex one that lines the intrados of the presbytery arch containing the medallions of apostles and saints including Saint Vitalis and his alleged sons Gervasius and Protasius.35 Whereas some motifs, such as the meander, are familiar and follow a long tradition dating back to pre-Greek art, this particular imagery is unique. Standing out from a dark blue ground, the colourful border presents an unprecedented poikilia in its repeated, symmetrical design of two basic elements (Fig. 4.9). The complexity makes it difficult to describe in a few words. Irina Andreescu-Treadgold takes some fifty words, characterising it as follows: “four-corner, concave-sided, purse-like flower coming out of a circle, with two kinds of trifids on the sides, and a four petalled, smaller flowerette in the center, alternating with a circular, shiny, multi-coloured disk; between disks, two segmented multi-coloured bands cross diagonally, meeting under the four-cornered “purse” flower.”36 There may be remnants of flowers here, and the discs could possibly be orbs, but on the whole, the imagery resists any attempt to decipher

31 Grand-Clément (2013). 32 For the rainbow, see James (1996) 92–109; Bradley (2009) 36–55. 33 Genesis 9.13. 34 Ezekiel 1.28. 35 Andreescu-Treadgold (1992) 34f; Fiori & Muscolini (1990); Muscolini (1992). When discussing these images, I am of course aware that they are heavily restored. Still, this fact does not alter the general design of the imagery. 36 Andreescu-Treadgold (1992) 34.

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it or interpret it in concrete terms (Fig. 4.10). And that was presumably the artists’ intention. In this instance, it seems that the mosaicists have gone out of their way to dispense with recognisable subject matter and make something purely abstract. Its appearance is self-sufficient. It is sheer colourful beauty and wonder, thauma. In this intricate abstraction, with its colour shifts and alternating two- and three-dimensional effects, some parts rendered in perspective, others flattened into a single plane the artists have composed a dynamic visual expression. They have succeeded in freeing the visual forms from any, or at least most, association to something familiar. In addition to constituting an exciting image in its own right, this eye-catching abstraction also functions as a “meta-image”, drawing attention to the portrait medallions and leading the eye further into the mosaic landscape, into the heavenly realm. In fact, zooming out and viewing the images in their larger context, the abstractions are significant accents in the visual ensemble. In this variegated spectacle, the “complex abstraction” lining both sides of the presbytery arch projects conspicuously and draws the eye to the Christ medallion encircled by a continuous rainbow at the summit. Moving the gaze down to the smaller sanctuary arch, the broken rainbow arches over the seated Christ in the apse. If one draws a line along the central axis from the bust of Christ to the full figure in the apse, the line passes through various pictures and symbols of Christ, all enclosed in circles. Interestingly (purely coincidentally?), the discs of the “complex abstraction” coincide with the other circular images (from top down: disc, Christ in medallion, disc, small blue orb, lamb in medallion, small blue orb, cross in circle, chrismon, Chi-Rho, Christ’s nimbus, large blue orb). This suggests a very deliberate layout of the mosaic programme, one where each and every detail matters.

Discussion Ambiguity is a characteristic feature of the mosaic abstractions. They are abstract, yet many of them derive from natural forms; they are two-dimensional, but then again, they may, like the perspectival meander, appear three-dimensional. At Centcelles, what were perhaps originally conceived as roof tiles and meant to draw associations to a sarcophagus lid, have been abstracted to the point where they take on a non-naturalistic appearance. In place of something concretely physical such as marble tiles, these elements are transposed into a different medium and the roof is flattened out so that front and back are viewed simultaneously. The imagery now moves ambiguously from the three-dimensional towards the two-dimensional. While some mosaics are set with contrasting colours, others show gliding colour changes that convey the impression of a vibrating surface and make it difficult to pin down the colours. This is evidenced at Centcelles and in the Ravenna leaf motif. Shifting colours and ambiguous forms are characteristic of the San Vitale rainbow, another motif that

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wavers between naturalism and abstraction.37 In the church’s “complex abstraction”, the shifting colours make the forms appear dynamic. Some images combine optical and near-tactile qualities, thus enabling the beholder to have a variety of sensations. Indeed, sense-perception plays an important role in viewing abstract images. Undoubtedly, the cognitive faculties are more alert when facing abstractions than when facing familiar objects. As the pareidolia phenomenon proves, the human brain wants to recognise familiar objects in all kinds of imagery. This means that even if an artist wants to dispense with recognizable subject matter and make something that will be perceived as totally abstract, it is actually quite difficult to do so. For instance, we see ancient patterns as “wave”, “lyre” and “dog tooth”, and name them accordingly. Precisely because we have an inborn tendency to see images as representing something, the artists must surmount a barrier in order to create non-representational images. They have to make a highly conscious effort to create shapes that will not be immediately associated with something known from our “real” world. But why should late antique artists go out of their way to make abstract images, as they seem to have done in the above instances, especially in San Vitale? It may be claimed that abstraction is a means to an end. Late antique artists, when commissioned to create religious works, needed expressions that differed from those used to render earthly life and earthly subjects. Abstractions can be said to exaggerate or distil important features, and as research has shown, we are drawn to exaggerations.38 Moreover, abstractions serve to make special, to make the ordinary appear extraordinary.39

Conclusion If we see abstractions merely as beautiful ornaments serving to fill empty spaces, to enrich the architecture and parergonally frame more important representative images, we fail to grasp significant dimensions of the imagery. The artistic and aesthetic properties are obviously important, but the viewer’s aesthetic response is the means to an end, namely, comprehension on a deeper level. The abstractions in the sacred spaces of churches, mausoleums and other late antique buildings may be said to be representational in a certain sense, but they do not represent things from the visible world. They visualise an extraordinary or extraterrestrial reality. By dissociating the

37 Colour effects, although of a somewhat different kind, are also a notable feature of the aesthetics of marble, where the veined and striated, multicoloured stones change remarkably, at times almost dramatically, from one colour to the other, Kiilerich (2012); Schibille (2014) 97–109. 38 Ramachandran & Hirstein (1999); Zimmer (2003) 1290. 39 Dissayanake (1992) 49 (pointing to the importance of art as making special).

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imagery from realistic connections and by elevating the specific to the general, the artist gives visual expression to the spiritual and non-material reality – by means of abstraction.

References Andreae (2003): Andreae, B. (2003), Antike Bildmosaiken, Mainz. Andreescu-Treadgold (1992): Andreescu-Treadgold, I. (1992), “The mosaic workshop at San Vitale”, in A.M. Iannucci, C. Fiori and C. Muscolino (eds), Mosaici a S. Vitale e altri restauri. Il restauro in situ di mosaici parietali, Ravenna, 31–41. Antoniadis (1909): Antoniadis, E.M. (1909), Ekphrasis tes Hagias Sophias, I-III, Athens. Arbeiter & Korol (2015): Arbeiter, A. and D. Korol (eds) (2015), Der Kuppelbau von Centcelles. Neue Forschungen zu einem enigmatischen Denkmal von Weltrang. Internationale Tagung im DAI Madrid, 22-24.1.2010, Tübingen & Berlin. Arnheim (1947): Arnheim, R. (1947), “Perceptual abstraction and art”, Psychological Review 54, 66–82 (reprinted in idem (1966) 27-50). Arnheim (1966): Arnheim, R. (1966), Toward a psychology of art. Collected essays, Berkeley & Los Angeles. Assimakopoulou-Atzaka (2003): Assimakopoulou-Atzaka, P. (2003), Psephidota dapeda, Thessaloniki. Ben Abed (1982): Ben Abed, A. (1982), “Une mosaïque a pyramides végétales de Pupput”, in Mosaïque. Recueil d’hommages à Henri Stern, Paris, 61–64. Biedermann (2015): Biedermann, D. (2015), “Die ornamentale Gliederung des Dekors im Kuppelsaal von Centcelles”, in A. Arbeiter and D. Korol (eds), Der Kuppelbau von Centcelles, Tübingen & Berlin 235–239. Bovini (1964): Bovini, G. (1964), “I mosaici di S. Maria della Croce di Casaranello”, Corsi Ravenna 11, 35–42. Bovini (1971): Bovini, G. (1971), Ravenna, New York. Bradley (2009): Bradley, M.(2009), Colour and meaning in ancient Rome, Cambridge. Buci-Glucksmann (2008): Buci-Glucksmann, C. (2008), Philosophie de l’ornement. D’Orient en Occident, Paris. Camprubí (1942): Camprubí, F. (1942), “I mosaici della cupola di Centcelles nella Spania”, RACrist 19, 87–110. Caneva (2010): Caneva, G. (2010), Il codice botanico di Augusto: Roma, Ara Pacis. Parlare al popolo attraverso le immagini della natura, Rome. Cutting & Massironi (1998): Cutting, J.E. and M. Massironi (1998), “Pictures and their special status in cognitive inquiry”, in J. Hochberg (ed), Perception and cognition at century’s end, San Diego, 137–168. Daszewski (1977): Daszewski, W.A. (1977), La mosaïque de Thésée. Etudes sur les mosaïques avec représentations du labyrinthe, de Thésée et du Minotaure (Nea Paphos II), Varsovie. Deichmann (1974): Deichmann, F.W. (1974), Ravenna II:1, Wiesbaden. Dissayanake (1992): Dissayanake, E. (1992), Homo Aestheticus: where art comes from and why, Seattle. Falla Castelfranchi (2005): Castelfranchi, M. Falla (2005), “I mosaici della chiesa di Santa Maria della Croce a Casaranello rivisitati”, in C. Angelelli (ed.), Atti del X colloquio dell’Assocc. Italiana per lo studio e la conserazione del mosaico, Tivoli, 13-24. Fiorentini & Orioli (2003): Fiorentini, I. and P. Orioli (2003), I marmi antichi di San Vitale, Faenza.

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Fiori & Muscolino (1990): Fiori, C. and C. Muscolino (eds) (1990), Restauri ai mosaici nella basilica di S. Vitale a Ravenna. L’arco presbiteriale, Faenza. Fobelli (2005): Fobelli, M.L. (2005), “La Santa Sofia di Costantinopoli nell’età di Giustiniano: sistemi decorativi e strategia delle immagini”, in A.C. Quintavalle (ed.), Medioevo: immagini e ideologie, Milano, 90–99. Fourlas (2012): Fourlas, B. (2012), Die Mosaiken der Acheiropoietos-Basilika in Thessaloniki. Eine vergleichende Analyse dekorativer Mosaiken des 5. und 6. Jahrhunderts, Berlin. Gilbert et al. (2001): Gilbert, C.D., M. Sigman and R.E. Christ (2001), “The neural basis of perceptual learning”, Neuron 31, 681–697. Gombrich (1979): Gombrich, E.H. (1979), The sense of order, Oxford. Gortais (2003): Gortais, B. (2003), “Abstraction and art”, Philosophical Transactions Royal Soc. London: Biological Sciences, 358, no. 1435, 1241–1249. Grand-Clément (2013): Grand-Clément, A. (2013), “Poikilia. Pour une anthropologie de la bigarrure dans la Grèce ancienne”, in C. Bonnet, P. Payen and E. Scheid (eds), Anthropologie de l’Antiquité. Anciens objets, nouvelles approches, Turnhout, 239–262. Gregory (2009): Gregory, R.L. (2009), Seeing through illusions, Oxford. Guimier-Sorbets (1982): Guimier-Sorbets, A.-M. (1982), “Le méandre a pannetons de clef dans la mosaïque romaine”, in Mosaïque. Recueil d’hommages á Henri Stern, Paris, 195–213. Guimier-Sorbets (2011): Guimier-Sorbets, A.-M. (2011), “Le travail des ateliers de mosaïstes”, Les Dossiers d’Archéologie 346, 90–95. Hadjikhani et al. (2009): Hadjikhani, N. et al. (2009), “Early (M170) activation of face-specific cortex by face-like objects”, NeuroReport 20:4,403–407. Ishai et al. (2007): Ishai, A., S.L. Fairhall and R. Pepperell (2007), “Perception, memory and aesthetics of indeterminate art”, Brain Research Bulletin 73, 319–324. Jacobsen et al. (2005): Jacobsen, T. et al. (2005), “Brain correlates of aesthetic judgment of beauty”, Neuroimage 29, 276–285. James (1996): James, L. (1996), Light and colour in Byzantine art, Oxford. Kiilerich (1993): Kiilerich, B. (1993), Late fourth century classicism in the plastic arts. Studies in the so-called Theodosian renaissance, Odense. Kiilerich (2001a): Kiilerich, B. (2001a), “Savedoff, frames and parergonality”, Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 59:3, 320–323. Kiilerich (2011b): Kiilerich, B. (2011b), “Ducks, dolphins and portrait medallions: framing the Achilles mosaic at Pedrosa de la Vega (Palencia)”, ActaAArtHist 15, n.ser. 1, 245–267. Kiilerich (2012): Kiilerich, B. (2012), “The aesthetic viewing of marble in Byzantium: from global impression to local attention”, Arte medievale 4 serie, anno 2, 9–28. Kiilerich (2015): Kiilerich, B. (2015), “The style and visual characteristics of the Centcelles mosaics”, in A. Arbeiter and D. Korol (eds), Der Kuppelbau von Centcelles, Tübingen & Berlin 325–332. Langer (1951): Langer, S.K. (1951), “Abstraction in science and abstraction in art”, in P. Henle, H.M. Kallen and S.K. Langer (eds), Structure, method and meaning: essays in honor of Henry M. Sheffer, New York, 171–182. Lipps (1903): Lipps, T. (1903), Aesthetik. Psychologie des Schönen und der Kunst, Hamburg & Leipzig. Melcher & Bacci (2008): Melcher, D. and F. Bacci (2008), “The visual system as constraint on the survival and success of specific artworks”, Spatial Vision 21:3-5, 347–362. Melcher & Cavanagh (2011): Melcher, D. and P. Cavanagh (2011), “Pictorial cues in art and in visual perception”, in F. Bacci and D. Melcher (eds), Art and the Senses, Oxford, 359–394. Michaelidis (1992): Michaelidis, D. (1992), Cypriot mosaics, Nicosia.

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Muscolino (1992): Muscolino, C. (1992), “I mosaici dell’arcone di S. Vitale a Ravenna. Osservazioni e scelte metodologiche per un restauro”, in A.M. Iannucci, C. Fiori and C. Muscolino (eds), Mosaici a S. Vitale e altri restauri. Il restauro in situ di mosaici parietali, Faenza, 54–62. Onians (2007): Onians, J. (2007), Neuroarthistory. From Aristotle to Baxandall and Zeki, New Haven & London. Peers (2010): Peers, G. (2010), “Utopia and heterotopia: Byzantine modernisms in America”, in K. Fugelso (ed.), Defining Neomedievalism(s), (Studies in Medievalism, 19), Cambridge & Rochester, N.Y., 78-85. Phillips (1992): Phillips, A. (1992), “The topology of Roman mosaic mazes”, Leonardo, 25:3-4, 321–329. Polito (2002): Polito, E. (2002), “Il meandro dall’arte greca ai monumenti augustei”, Rivista dell’Istituto nazionale d’archeologia e storia dell’arte 57, 3.ser. anno 25, 91–112. Ramachandran & Hirstein (1999): Ramachandran, V.S. and W. Hirstein (1999), “The science of art”, Journal of Consciousness Studies 7, 17, 15–51. Rothenberg (2013): Rothenberg, D. (2013), Survival of the beautiful. Art, science and emotion, New York, Berlin & London. Sauron (2000): Sauron, G. (2000), L’histoire végétalisée. Ornement et politique à Rome, Paris. Schibille (2014): Schibille, N. (2014), Hagia Sophia and the Byzantine aesthetic experience, Farnham. Schlunk & Arbeiter (1988): Schlunk, H. and A. Arbeiter (eds) (1988), Die Mosaikkuppel von Centcelles, Mainz. Schott (2013): Schott, G.D. (2013), “Revisiting the Rorschack ink-blots: from iconography and psychology to neuroscience”, J Neurol Neurosurg Psychiatry, published online July 19, 2013, doi: 10.1136/jnnp-2013-305672. Swift & Alwis (2010): Swift, E. and A. Alwis (2010), “The role of late antique art in early Christian worship: a reconsideration of the iconography of the ‘Starry Sky’ in the ‘Mausoleum’ of Galla Placidia”, PBSR 78, 193–217. Torp (2015): Torp, H. (2015), “Some remarks on the technique of the Centcelles mosaics”, in A. Arbeiter & D. Korol (eds) Der Kuppelbau von Centcelles, Tübingen & Berlin, 333–337. Trilling (2001): Trilling, J. (2001), The language of ornament, London. Voss et al. (2012): Voss, J.L., Federmeier, K.D. and Paller, K.A. (2012), “The potato chip really does look like Elvis! Neural hallmarks of conceptual processing associated with finding novel shapes subjectively meaningful”, Cerebral Cortex October 22, 2354–2364. Westphal-Fitch et al. (2012): Westphal-Fitch, G. et al. (2012), “Production and perception rules underlying visual patterns: effects of symmetry and hierarchy”, Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B 367, 2007–2022. Young (1957): Young, R.S. (1957), “Gordion 1956: preliminary report”, AJA 61, 319–331. Zimmer (2003): Zimmer, R. (2003), “Abstraction in art with implications for perception”, Philosophical Transactions Royal Soc. London: Biological Sciences 358:1435, 1285–1291.

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Fig. 4.1: Ravenna, Galla Placidia’s mausoleum: “starry sky” mosaic; photo B. Kiilerich.

Fig. 4.2: Constantinople, Chora church: book-matched marble panels; photo B. Kiilerich.

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Fig. 4.3: Centcelles (Tarragona), mausoleum: detail of Schuppenfries; photo B. Kiilerich.

Fig. 4.4: Ravenna, Galla Placidia’s mausoleum: meander mosaic; photo B. Kiilerich.

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Fig. 4.5: Ravenna, Galla Placidia’s mausoleum: stylised leaf; photo B. Kiilerich.

Fig. 4.6: Ravenna, San Vitale: triforium including zigzag abstraction; photo B. Kiilerich.

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Fig. 4.7: Ravenna, San Vitale, intrados of sanctuary arch: disc-and-volutes, rainbow; photo B. Kiilerich.

Fig. 4.8: Ravenna, San Vitale, sanctuary arch: detail of rainbow; photo B. Kiilerich.

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Fig. 4.9: Ravenna, San Vitale, intrados of presbytery arch: complex abstraction; photo B. Kiilerich.

Fig. 4.10: Ravenna, San Vitale, intrados of presbytery arch: detail; photo B. Kiilerich.

Beat Brenk

5 The Twelve-Silver-Column Programme in the Martyrium Church in Jerusalem I This paper is dedicated to the study of aniconic art in late antiquity. It is focused on the twelve-silver-column programme in the Martyrium Church in Jerusalem, described by Eusebius. The archaeological remains of the basilica are in an extremly poor condition with only a third of the apse having been excavated. A reconstruction of the original situation must therefore remain hypothetical. Nevertheless, the problem of the columns and their position in the apse are discussed here for the first time in a broader context where special attention is given to Late Hellenistic and Roman images representing an amphora or a kantharos on top of a column. In her brief and concise contribution on aniconic art between the 6th and 11th centuries, Leslie Brubaker offered a fundamental theoretical clarification of the difference between “aniconic” and “anti-iconic” art.1 She writes: “Aniconic is distinct from antiiconic, where representations of humans or animals have been removed and replaced by something else […]. Anti-iconic imagery is by its nature polemical; but […] aniconic decoration rarely is”. And she concludes: “because aniconic decoration was not regulated by legislation but functioned as part of a transactional process of consensus, it can express tone to us in a way that few other forms can”. If we must decide, however, whether a specific decoration belongs to one or the other category, we can sometimes find ourselves on slippery ground. For instance, it is not easy to determine whether the various non-figural traditions that persisted in the pre-iconoclast period, particularly in the Near East, were intended to be overtly aniconic. The consular diptych of Philoxenus from 525, in the Dumbarton Oaks Collection (Fig. 5.1), for instance, has just a simple geometric decoration without an image of the consul, whereas the diptych made for the same consul now preserved in the Cabinet des Médailles in Paris has the portraits of the consul and a female personification (Constantinopolis?).2 The consul Areobindus (506), however, had his ivory diptychs decorated with a full, complex image of himself sitting on a sella curulis and directing the circus games, represented at the bottom.3 The fact that the diptychs of Areobindus include figures and scenes while those of Philoxenus offer a simpler iconography with imagines clipeatae most probably has nothing to do with the consuls’ aesthetic preferences or a predilection

1 Brubaker (2003) 574 (“Interpreted literally, aniconic means ‘without images’, but it is normally applied metaphorically to mean ‘without people’”); Mundell Mango (1977). 2 Delbrueck (1929) 144–146; Olovsdotter (2005); Cameron (2013). 3 Delbrueck (1929) 107–117; David (2007) 24f; Cervini (2007) 170; Olovsdotter (2011) 99–122 with fig. 7. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110546842-006

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for images with more or less abstract compositions, but rather reflects their ambitions to represent themselves either in a more modest or in a more elaborate fashion. Massimiliano David connected the various forms of representation on these diptychs with “categorie di destinatari divisi probabilmente per rango”.4 Anthony Eastmond has also recently advanced a helpful explanation for this difference: simplicity and complexity are rhetorical modalities. The relationship between the diptychs and consular display is central to their understanding: the visual languages by which consuls in sixth-century Constantinople paraded their virtues, and the nature of the audiences that they addressed […] These diptychs reveal both the costs and the rewards of euergetism, the late antique expectation that the rich should use their wealth to benefit the community in which they lived.5

The author quotes Aphthonius the Sophist, who explains: [...] the three characters of style: grand (ἁδρός), plain (ταπεινός), and middle (μέσος). The ‘grand’, which is bombastic but literal, has parallels in the extended narratives on the full-figure type; the ‘plain’, whose simplicity relies on elevated thought, compares to the simple diptychs and their reliance on symbolism; and the ‘middle’, which runs between the symbolic and the narrative, matches the medallion type.6 [...] each type presents an image of the consul’s authority or wealth, but using a different visual language7 […] The full-figure diptychs are the one group that spell out fully the consul’s position, his wealth and virtues, his generosity and his games.8

Such rhetorical categories seem to have been important for the decoration of liturgical silver as well. The 6th-7th-century paten of bishop Amphilochius at the Walters Art Gallery in Baltimore, belonging to the Hama treasure, is decorated only with the cross,9 whereas the contemporary paten from Stuma (datable to 574–578) in the Archaeological Museum of Istanbul10 displays a magnificent liturgical scene showing Christ distributing wine and bread to the twelve apostles, i.e. the Communion of the Apostles. It seems that the features of the “grand”, “plain” and “middle” style are somehow all present in the art and architecture of any historical period, but in most cases the choice of “rhetorical mode” was not the immediate goal.11 The abstract and non-figural mode, as opposed to the figural and narrative mode, does not always express a rhetorical ambition, but simply belongs to local practices and traditions, and might under certain circumstances express a reluctance towards the figural and 4 David (2007) 25; also Cutler (1984) 75–115, 110 esp. 5 Eastmond (2010). 6 Eastmond (2010) 754. 7 Eastmond (2010) 756. 8 Eastmond (2010) 757. 9 Mundell Mango (1986) 84f. 10 Cruickshank Dodd (1961) n. 27; Mundell Mango (1986) 8–15, 159–170. 11 Brenk (2005).

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narrative mode. But how can one prove this to be true? Clearly it was a widespread custom to decorate the floors of churches with geometric and ornamental rather than figural mosaics. Figural mosaic pavements in churches are extremely rare.12 In other words: the absence of images on most early Christian church floors probably has less to do with Moses’ ban of images than simply with well-established and widely diffused customs and working practices.13 The few known floor mosaics in the cellae of Roman temples show geometric ornament.

Wall paintings and mosaics During the 1970’s Nezih Fıratlı and Demetrios Pallas published decorations from several early Christian hypogea in Constantinople, Asia Minor and the Greek Islands that they characterised as “aniconic”.14 Both scholars published 4th-century hypogea that are uniquely decorated with crosses. A well-preserved example is the hypogeum of Şehremini in Istanbul (Fig. 5.2), where a coin from the middle of the 4th century was found. Not far from Şehremini, however, lies the cemetery of Taşkasap, where figural sarcophagi were discovered.15 Since these were private tombs, the various approaches of the tomb owners towards imagery are more understandable. One owner declined narrative and figural images, and was content with a decoration composed only of crosses, while another was fond of narrative and figural art. In his recently published monograph on the mosaics of the Acheiropoietos basilica in Thessaloniki, Benjamin Fourlas observed a mosaic fragment above the arcades of the gallery of the narthex that, as he ventures to say, is strong indication that mosaic decoration covered the inner walls pervasively, and he further supposes that the nave walls were decorated with themes taken from the lexicon of the earthly paradise.16 He does not, however, speak of aniconic mosaics. In the mosaics of the Acheiropoietos basilica, human figures are totally absent, though we do find some animals such as doves, water birds, fish and deer. In the tribelon arcade is a unique representation of two closed books flanking a golden cross, possibly symbolic representations of the Old and the New Testament.17 The aniconic programme of the Acheiropoietos basilica

12 Well known exceptions are the floor mosaics of the 4th-century basilica in Aquileia, the so-called Samson floor at Mopsuestia (the ecclesiastical affiliation of which is not completely clear), the floor mosaics in the church of Huarte; and the floor mosaics in the Church of the Multiplication of the Loaves and Fishes at Tabgha (see Bevilacqua in this volume). 13 Marlia Mundell says “preference for abstract decoration (including symbols) may be more a matter of tradition than of doctrine”; Mundell Mango (1977) 59. 14 Fıratlı (1966); Pallas (1974); Pallas (1986). 15 Fıratlı (1960); Deckers (1995). 16 Fourlas (2012) 99–102. 17 Fourlas (2012) 104.

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in Thessaloniki recalls the church decoration commissioned by the eparch Olympiodoros, who wished “to set up in the nave a thousand crosses and pictures of different birds, beasts, reptiles and plants”,18 but whose proposal was declined by Bishop Neilus of Ankyra, who recommended that just a cross be represented in the apse. These are two rather different approaches. I shall return to this text in the following paragraph. There can be no doubt, however, that the cross is the dominant, if not the only Christian element decorating the Acheiropoietos basilica in Thessaloniki (Fig. 5.3), St Sophia in Constantinople (Fig. 5.4) and the Katapoliani of Paros (Fig. 5.5). This state of affairs cannot be merely random. If we characterise the mosaics of Ravenna and Rome as particularly narrative and iconic, then we are entitled to recognise in the mosaics of the Acheiropoietos basilica in Thessaloniki a decided refutation of the narrative and of the human figure.

Apses, cupolas, and vaults Such opposing options are also found within imperial church architecture. The apse of Justinian’s church of St Catherine at Mount Sinai (548–565) is richly decorated with figural mosaics, whereas in the cupola and many vaults and tympana of the contemporary church of St Sophia in Constantinople only crosses are represented. Procopius tells us that Justinian constructed the church dedicated to the mother of God on Mount Sinai for the monks.19 But this does not explain the presence of figural mosaics. The reason for the profusion of figural mosaics is due to its being a church that above all commemorated the Prophet Moses’ visions of God. In the three images within and over the apse, Moses is confronted with various visions of God, namely in the scenes of the Transfiguration, Moses at the Burning Bush, and Moses receiving the Tablets of the Law.20 God is represented in corpore in the Transfiguration in the apse, whereas on the triumphal arch, He appears in the form of the burning bush (Exod. 24.17), and as a hand reaching down from heaven. Interestingly, it is in the apse that Christ/God the Father is represented in corpore, as the hemispherical shape alluded to heaven. Here, the believer was permitted to gaze up into heaven and to meet, so to speak, Jesus Christ/God the Father in corpore manifested. A totally different experience was offered in St Sophia in Constantinople, where a multiplicity of abstract compositions with crosses appear, sometimes combined with leaves, burgeons and pearl-ribbons. Diversely, in the southern and south-west vaults are found several arrangements of three large crosses against a plain gold-ground (Fig. 5.4). Many of these elements, and the problem of their originality, were analysed

18 PG 79.577–580. 19 Aed. 4.8.1–9. 20 Miziolek (1990); Elsner (1994); Andreopoulos (2005).

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by Alessandra Guiglia Guidobaldi in a paper published in 1999.21 However, the Justinianic mosaics in St Sophia still await full publication. What does seem clear is that figural and narrative mosaics were systematically avoided here, and that the cross was the only Christian element to appear. Paulus Silentiarius describes a cross in the cupola as well. The renunciation of figural scenes was undoubtedly deliberate, and most probably meant to be not merely aniconic, but forthrightly anti-iconic. If we knew for certain that the cross preserved in the apse of the Acheiropoietos basilica in Thessaloniki was made contemporaneously with the remainder of the mosaics in the same church. I would have no problem declaring this program anti-iconic. The fact, however, that a cross is set at the culminating point of each archivolt of the nave, tribelon and gallery (Fig. 5.3), clearly means that the ornaments support the crosses. On this basis it is impossible to declare such compositions simply decorative: a crosssupporting ornament is a thoroughly abstract and meaningful concept, and I conclude: if this concept is not simply decorative but meaningful, it is an anti-iconic concept. In making this assertion I am not advocating the idea that all images representing ornaments and animals should be called anti-iconic. The decisive element in this visual dynamic is the cross as the focal point of an ornamental composition in which all ornaments serve to glorify and embellish the same. The mosaic programme of the Acheiropoietos basilica is the only surviving example of its kind from the 5th century that categorically refrains from presenting the human figure. Whether the aniconic mosaics of the Acheiropoietos basilica convey a special intention to acknowledge the second commandment (“Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image”) is hard to determine. I myself have strong doubts that an anti-iconic programme was necessarily intended as a way of conforming to the second commandment.22 A purely decorative, non-figural design and layout were probably rarely chosen because of the Mosaϊc ban on images (Deuteronomium 5.8). More often it seems that the non-figural was simply a convention without any deeper motivation or significance, and was possibly also considered more aesthetically pleasing. The crosses in St Sophia in Constantinople (Fig. 5.4) and the Acheiropoietos basilica in Thessaloniki (Fig. 5.3), however, speak in favour of an anti-iconic mentality. Theodor Klauser posited that up to c. 350 the church as an institution was strictly against images,23 and Hans-Georg Thümmel showed that in the earliest phase of 21 Guiglia Guidobaldi (1999). 22 Taddei (2008) observed a sharp contrast in S. George in Thessalonica between the figural mosaics of the cupola and the non-figural, and, as he puts it, aniconic mosaics of the barrel-vaulted chapels. He refers to a “vivace contraltare aniconico” though without going more deeply into this matter. I doubt that the geometric mosaics on the barrel-vaulted surfaces of S. George in Thessaloniki were planned as an aniconic decoration. After all, the cupola mosaics clearly favour the representation of human beings, and even of Jesus Christ. 23 Klauser (1965a); Klauser (1965b); Deichmann & Klauser (1966) 5–7; see also the thoughtful study by Finney (Finney (1994)), who shows how the earliest Christians were fully adapted to Greco-Roman material culture and moved gradually towards a selective adaptation of pagan imagery.

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Christian art a hostile tendency towards the narrative image developed to a much greater degree in the East than in the West.24 During the late 4th and the 5th century this tendency gradually faded. Crosses appear in cupolas and apses more often in the East than in the West. Demetrios Pallas, for example, assumed that the apses of the 4th-to-6th-century northern Syrian basilicas had never been painted or decorated with mosaics, because the surfaces of the ashlar blocks are carefully carved and smoothed. Jean Lassus, however, observed that the interiors of many Syrian churches were formerly whitewashed, such as Fafertin in 372 (Fig. 5.6), and that the apse of Qalb Lozeh was reveted with marble. The whitewashed apses could have been painted with a cross. In the basilica A at Resafa there is a painted apsidal room (Fig. 5.7) with a well preserved cross from the 6th century.25 Marlia Mundell mentions four churches in the Tur Abdin region that have “a cross carved in the stonework of the apse conch”.26 Whereas the eparch Olympiodoros expressed a tolerance for decoration with birds, plants and crosses, bishop Neilus would only sanction a cross in the apse. In temples from the Early Imperial period and onwards it was however in the apse that statues of gods were set up and venerated.27 The decision to place a cross in the apse of a church was in my opinion a deliberate response to this ancient pagan tradition. Neilus not only wanted to avoid the representation of human figures, birds and plants, but also probably thought that the cross was the only Christian symbol that could be venerated in an apse. When the priest was conducting the liturgy before the apse and facing east to pray, his thanksgivings were addressed to Jesus Christ symbolised by the cross. If by recommending a cross for the apse bishop Neilus wanted to prohibit iconic representations of the divine Christ, the cross in the apse of a church most probably had an anti-iconic meaning. But crosses on the walls of private and official ecclesiastical buildings are not necessarily always anti-iconic declarations. Henry Maguire has published a careful analysis of Choricius’ description of the wooden apse of St Steven in Gaza (Fig. 5.8), proposing a convincing reconstruction for it.28 The apse was a pumpkin-shaped semi-dome with nine ribs and a scalloped base. On either side of the triumphal arch, above the apse, were representations of St John the Baptist and St Steven, both flanking an image of Christ. Instead, the apse seems to have had an aniconic mosaic decoration in gold and various colours. If this reconstruction is correct, we may learn from it that in certain Near Eastern countries and in Tunisia29 a custom developed for leaving apses without images. From these

24 Thümmel (1999). 25 Ulbert (1986) 36–39, fig. 20. 26 Mundell Mango (1977) 65. 27 Brenk (2010) 34–50; also Rudolph (2004). 28 Maguire (1978). 29 Maguire mentions another pumpkin-shaped apse in the Tunisian church of Dar el Kous at Kef, dating to the 6th or early 7th century: Maguire (1978) fig. 3.

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observations it becomes clear that it is not possible to draw general conclusions or make overarching statements. Each building has to be investigated carefully on its own. Moreover, it is impossible to prove definitively that a decoration with crosses or the absence of a figural decoration in an apse, before Iconoclasm, was the result of a deliberate recognition of the second commandment. Before Iconoclasm, the aniconic and anti-iconic had different meanings. It seems that apses with a marble revetment (Qalb Lozeh) and those with a pumpkin shape (Gaza) were most probably not decorated at all, and this without there being any reference to the aniconic. On the other hand we know that 4th-century basilicas, with some rare exceptions, had no images. The image was only gradually introduced into official episcopal churches, and this, as it seems, not before the end of the 4th century.

II One Constantinian apse programme in Jerusalem has largely been ignored by scholars, and the text in Eusebius’ Vita Constantini (3.38)30 that refers to it has likewise received little attention. Eusebius describes the so-called Martyrium church opposite the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem, which was commissioned by the emperor Constantine I. The architect was a certain Zenobius.31 Opposite these gates the crowning part of the whole was the hemisphere, which rose to the very summit of the church. This was encircled by twelve columns (according to the number of the Apostles of our Saviour), having their capitals embellished with silver bowls of great size, which the emperor himself presented as a splendid offering to God.

The word hemisphere (ἡμισφαίριον) most probably refers to the apse, although some scholars have preferred to translate it as ciborium.32 The text does not elaborate on the form or materials of the columns (στυλοι), instead focusing on the capitals: `ό δἡ δυοκαίδεκα κίονες έστεφάνουν. The silver bowls on top of the columns (κρατἡρσι μεγίστοις έξ ἀργύρου) were rather large, which is not surprising given that it was an imperial donation. Notably, this decoration is still mentioned in a 6th-century document, namely in the so-called Breviarius de Hierosolyma: “Et ipsa absida in circuitu duodecim columnae marmoreae, super ipsas columnas hydriae argenteae duodecim, ubi sigillavit Salomon daemones”.33 First of all, this text clearly states that there was 30 Euseb., Vit. Const. 3.38; Eusebius (1902) 94; Eusebius (1982) 530; Mango (1972) 13. 31 Theophanes, Chronogr. a.m. 5828 (de Boor I 33); Mango (1972) 14. Zenobius built the Martyrium in Jerusalem to Constantine’s order. 32 Heisenberg (1908) (on Eusebius) 21, 38–39, 111–113, 155, 108; Piganiol (1945) translates the word ‘ημισφαίριον not with “apse” but with “cupola”, and thus reconstructs a ciborium. 33 Heisenberg (1908) 111.

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an apse; in other words, the Greek term used by Eusebius, `ημισφαίριον, is here translated as absida. With respect to Eusebius’s description, however, three changes have been introduced: the Breviarius does not mention either the comparison with the twelve apostles or the votive donation by Constantine, but instead newly presents a legend of Solomon. How are these texts to be interpreted? Let me first say that I do not believe that the description of the Martyrium church in Eusebius’ text is a later interpolation. Both texts, the Vita Constantini and the Breviarius agree in stating that along the apse wall stood twelve columns, and that on top of the columns stood twelve silver bowls (κρατῆρσι, hydriae). These are the facts that we have to take into account. There is, however, the purely practical question regarding the size and form of the apse. Twelve columns for the curve of an apse is a very large number. Since only a tiny fragment of this apse is preserved, any reconstruction must remain hypothetical. Virgilio Corbo reconstructed a stilted apse with a diameter of 8.2 meters instead of a semi-circular apse, because he thought that this would better accomodate the twelve columns (Fig. 5.9).34 On the other hand, Corbo estimates the width of the central nave of the Martyrium basilica as measuring between 13.50 and 15 meters. This would mean that the apse was conspicuously smaller than the width of the nave, a fact that does not at all correspond with the building customs of Palestine and Arabia during the fourth century. For the apse, I prefer to assume a semi-circular shape based on a circumference of 36 metres, a diameter of 11.5 metres, and a radius of 5.75 metres. Half the circumference is 18 metres, around which we have to arrange twelve columns and eleven intercolumniations on a half circle of 18 metres. In other words, each column and intercolumniation can together occupy a space of only 1.5 metres. This is somewhat surprising, because it means that the columns would have necessarily been quite slender, with base diameters of perhaps 50 cm. In such case, the eleven intercolumniations would amount to 1 metre each. A column with a diameter of only 50 cm cannot be much taller than 2.50 metres, a height that would have kept the silver bowls just out of reach of thieves. The whole installation would have appeared quite delicate and refined, certainly not monumental, but the gleaming silver of the bowls would undoubtedly have attracted the beholders’ gaze, and certainly have evoked meaning. Vincent’s reconstruction (Fig. 5.10) gives us an idea, but it is not reliable because his plan is not based on archaeological evidence. Before moving on to speak of meaning, I would also like to mention the two apses of the forum basilica at Leptis Magna (Fig. 5.11), constructed in 211 “ex maiore parte by the emperor Septimius Severus”.35 Both apses have a diameter of 13.40 meters and are decorated with only eight columns. I admit, however, that the

34 Corbo (1981) 104–107; as the survey of Corbo was done without a level or a theodolite, it does not allow us to draw any compelling conclusions. 35 Apollonj (1936) pl. XVI.

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comparison is somewhat feeble, given that the Leptis Magna basilica is one of the largest basilicas of the Roman world. One thing is clear: the twelve columns in the Martyrium basilica by the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem were anything but monumental; they were delicate, and above all, they were meaningful. The silver bowls were an ex-voto donation by the emperor Constantine, addressed in thanks to his God. Since Eusebius compares the twelve columns to the twelve apostles, for the time being the question of meaning seems resolved: the twelve columns represent the twelve apostles. Columns as a metaphor for apostles are mentioned in St Paul’s Letter to the Galatians 2.9, where he says “[…] James and Cephas and John, they who were reputed to be pillars […]”. The metaphor had enormous success. In the first epistle of Clement (5.2), the apostles and other leaders of the early Christian period are referred to as στυλοι (pillars).36 In the New Testament στυλος occurs four times. The notion also appears in Timothy 3.15, and we find στυλος twice in Revelation, for example at 3.12: “He who overcomes, I will make him a pillar in the temple of My God, and he shall go out no more. I will write on him the name of My God and the name of the city of My God, the New Jerusalem [...]”. The metaphor of the apostles as columns, as described in Galatians 2.9, was received and commented on by numerous church fathers37 so that it evolved into a generally diffused symbol in both the Greek and Latin speaking worlds. Among the numerous instances are also Gregory of Nyssa who mentions the apostles “who are the columns”.38 Hilary of Poitiers says of the apostles: “ut et fundamenta ecclesiarum fierent et columnae” (Tractatus in LXVII psalmum). In another text Hilary evokes the vision on Mount Tabor39: When the Lord, apparelled in splendour, was standing upon the Mountain with Moses and Elias at His side, and the Pillars of the churches who had been chosen as witnesses to the truth of the vision, and the voice, the Father spoke thus from heaven: “This is my beloved Son in Whom I am well pleased; hear Him”.

The Old-Testamental background of the theme is clearly evident in Paul’s letters.40 I am thinking in particular of Exodus 24.4: “and Moses rose early in the morning, and built an altar on the foot of the mountain, and twelve pillars”. This passage, however,

36 Pfammatter (1960) 11. 37 Eusebius (1982) 284 (Church History 4.41.14: “But the firm and blessed pillars of the Lord being strengthened by him, and having received vigor and might suitable and appropriate to the strong faith which they possessed, became admirable witnesses of his kingdom’); Hilarius, Tractatus in LXVII psalmum: PL 9.450; Tert., Adv. Marcionem 1.20, 4.3, 5.3; Ambrosius, De interpellatione Job et David: PL 14.841; Gregorius Nyssenus, In cantica canticorum homilia 14, PG 44.1077; Basilius, Liber de spirito sancto, 29.75: PG 32.208. 38 “σωμα τῆς Έκκλησίας βαστάζοντες”; In antica canticorum, homily 14. 39 St Hilarius of Poitiers (1983) 106. 40 Kornfeld (1962); Fabry & Ringgren (1989) 204–209.

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does not refer to columns but to pillars, which are called λίθους. The twelve pillars erected by Moses are exactly as abstract and aniconic as the twelve κίονες in Eusebius, and likewise recall the twelve tribes of Israel. Such aniconic pillars are mentioned several times in the Old Testament, for example in the Book of Joshua: when Joshua crosses the Jordan (Jos. 4.2–7) he erects twelve pillars in the middle of the river. Cyril of Jerusalem says in his Catechetical Lectures (10.11): and Jesus the son of Nave was in many things a type of Him (Christ). For when he began to rule over the people, he began from Jordan, whence Christ also, after he was baptised, began to preach the gospel. And the son of Nave appoints twelve to divide the inheritance, and twelve Apostles Jesus sends forth, as heralds of the truth into all the world.

Since the twelve columns in the apse of the Martyrium church in Jerusalem did not have a structural function but supported the twelve silver bowls, and since Eusebius compares the twelve columns with the twelve apostles, we may assume that the columns were chosen to represent the twelve apostles, aniconically indeed. This was a thoroughly abstract concept, but one based, however, on the Bible and on the interpretations of the church fathers. I exclude the possibility of random choice. When we attempt to understand the relationship between the columns and the silver bowls, it becomes clear that both were devised by Constantine. It is not possible to understand the twelve columns simply as bases for the silver bowls. The columns and the silver bowls cannot be seen separately: they form an entity. The silver bowls are not only the emperor’s ex-vota dedicated to his God41: they are, in so far as they are not totally aniconic, bowls for mixing wine and water. Once joined, however, the two elements gain an iconic effect, so to speak, the columns being the bodies, and the bowls standing for the heads of the apostles. This interpretation may, however, be going too far.42 The idea of setting an amphora or a kantharos on top of a column harks back to Hellenism and is reflected in several wall paintings in Pompeii. Usually these are votive columns erected by a worshipper next to an altar or the statue of a god (Fig. 5.12). The kantharos atop the column is probably a votive gift by the worshipper for a favour granted by the god. Such favours can of course be manifold. In the necropolis of Porta di Nola at Pompeii, a marble kantharos atop a column has been preserved.43 A silver or gold kantharos was also used to commemorate a victory or accomplishment, such as sporting events or even literary performances. In the Casa del Poeta Tragico in Pompei (Fig. 5.13), on a frescoed cornice in the Porticus post scaenam, are depicted several

41 Mathews (2009–2010). 42 To the average viewer, the silver bowls would have seemed objects from the imperial household, since in the mosaics of S. Constanza in Rome they are displayed next to the sarcophagus of the emperor’s daughter Constantina. This comparison, however, does not throw any new light on the silver bowls in the apse of the Martyrium church in Jerusalem; Rasch & Arbeiter (2007) 229 pl. 84.1 and 96.3, 134f. 43 Pesando & Guidobaldi (2006) 254. (I thank Filippo Coarelli for this reference.)

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kantharoi, most probably awards won for a literary performance. In 1895, eight wonderfully preserved marble amphorae dating to the first century BCE were excavated in the sanctuary of Diana Nemorensis on the Lake Nemi near Rome (Fig. 5.14).44 The eight vases were donated by the same person, as we are informed by their inscriptions: CHIO D(onum) D(edit). According to Guldager Bilde they “were all found in one room and surely formed an ‘ensemble’. They are all solid and could therefore not function as containers proper”.45 Chio, who was a Greek, made this votive donation to Diana probably because he had won a victory in a sporting event held in honour of the goddess. These amphorae remind us of the so-called Panathenaic amphorae from the 4th century BCE, and were a general symbol for agon and arete or virtus.46 In this context I would like to quote an excellent early monograph by Bernhard Laum on Greek and Roman votive donations.47 He convincingly showed that the agon usually carries the name of its donor, and that the intended recipients of such donations were gods such as Zeus, Apollon, Poseidon, Dionysos, and Aphrodite. The donor’s name was engraved on a column erected next to the statue of a god. The Pompeian fresco (Fig. 5.12) gives us a perfect idea of such a donation. The marble amphorae from the sanctuary of Diana Nemorensis are each inscribed with the name of the donor Chio, and I would guess that the silver amphorae in the Martyrium in Jerusalem likewise carried the name of their donor, the emperor Constantine. The only other important common element between the group of amphorae donated by Chio to the sanctuary of Diana (Fig. 5.14) and that of Constantine given to the Martyrium church is the multiplication of their dedications: eight in the sanctuary at Nemi and twelve in the church in Jerusalem. In the former case, however, it is not certain whether the eight amphorae represent the original number. But without question such donations were multiple. There is no doubt that the twelve silver amphorae of Constantine were thought to refer to the twelve apostles. But, regarding their meaning, I think they were also intended by the emperor as symbols of the victories he had won in the name of the “victorious” Christian religion, and, indeed, in Vita Constantini (3.33.2) Eusebius says that the emperor was erecting a monument to the saviour’s victory over death. The twelve apostles helped Constantine achieve his victories. One circumstance, however, was radically new in the apse of the Martyrium church in Jerusalem, namely that Constantine erected his personal votive donations in the apse of a church that was one of the most important Christian sanctuaries of the entire Mediterranean region. It would seem that in this respect, Constantine Christianised a former pagan custom. This specific iconography with the twelve silver amphorae atop twelve columns interestingly had no further effect on later Christian art or architecture, remaining, so to speak, 44 Grassinger (1991) 145f; Guldager Bilde (1997); Guldager Bilde & Moltesen (2002); Bentz (1998–1999). 45 Guldager Bilde (1997) 57. 46 Bentz (1998–1999) 185–196. 47 Laum (1914) 90–96.

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a private idea and donation of Constantine. The twelve silver amphorae also represent the imperial munificentia in the church. The number twelve prohibits us from looking for a sacramental interpretation: twelve liturgical chalices or twelve bowls for baptism make no sense. It would also be useless to attempt to find a Hermetic meaning in them.48

III If we accept the interpretation of the twelve columns as the twelve apostles, we cannot help thinking of well-known apse mosaics representing Jesus Christ at the centre flanked on either side by the twelve apostles such as those of S. Aquilino in Milan and S. Pudenziana in Rome.49 This iconography mirrors the bishop and the clergy seated below in the apse when important decisions were discussed; on such occasions, they sat on a semi-circular bench with the bishop’s throne in the centre. In the Lateran basilica in Rome Constantine donated the so-called fastigium (Fig. 5.15), a kind of bronze screen placed in front of the apse on an architrave supported by columns.50 Crowning the screen were silver statues (1.5 metres high) representing Jesus Christ, the twelve apostles, and the four archangels. This remained a totally isolated formation, which has vexed many scholars and probably disturbed early Christian theologians as well. Joseph Engemann has declared the description of the Constantinian fastigium to be a 6th-century addition to the Liber Pontificalis. I cannot see the meaning or necessity of such an addition in the 6th century. Indeed, we may ask: how was it possible that the Church as an institution tolerated three-dimensional silver statues in the apse of the cathedral of Rome?51 The second commandment was categorical on this point: Maledictus homo qui facit sculptile.52 Apparently the Church was not able to protest at this time, and simply had to accept the statues because they had been donated by the first Christian emperor and the founder of the basilica. The believers in the church were taught that the apse was the place of the reunion of the high clergy of Rome, representing Christ and the twelve apostles. It is therefore not merely accidental that the first apse mosaics we know, in Naples,

48 Eisler (1925) 156f; Lewy (1929) 14, 92; Festugière (1938); Nilsson (1958); von Moorsel (1969) 130. 49 Spieser (1998); Brenk (2010) 20–22, 52f. 50 Grigg (1977); Engemann (1993); De Blaauw (1996); Geertman (2001–2002). 51 Brenk (2010) 50–55. The 4th-century statuette of the so-called Christ in the Museo delle Terme (Museo Nazionale al Palazzo Massimo) in Rome has been detected by W. N. Schumacher to be a modern “ready-made” construction by an antiques dealer; Schumacher (1984); see also Mundell Mango (1977) 60 (“a painted stucco statue of life-size, said to represent a saint, excavated in 1929 within the area of Seleucia/Ctesiphon known as Kohke in what might have been the Nestorian Patriarchal church. It was found in the sanctuary under a floor laid in the early Islamic period and has been dated to the 6th century”). 52 Deuteronomium 27.15: “Cursed be the man who makes a graven or molten image”.

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S. Pudenziana in Rome and in S. Aquilino in Milan, show Christ with the twelve apostles. This important scene is also preserved in some Roman catacombs, and on a gold-glass bottom in Oxford. To the degree that the fastigium design was influential, it first established the apse as the place for the propagation of the word of the Lord. As a result, it appears that Constantine chose two completely different modes of representation in Jerusalem and Rome for one and the same theme. In the Martyrium church in Jerusalem the twelve apostles were symbolised aniconically by columns, while in the Lateran church in Rome the apostles were represented by life-size silver statues in the round. I suppose that this choice also mirrors the historical situation and the fundamentally diverse approaches towards the figural image that prevailed in Palestine and in Italy. I do not mean to construe a general difference between East and West, since the various Roman provinces knew a variety of approaches to the figural image, particularly in the East. In Egypt, for instance, there is an overwhelming abundance of three-dimensional sculpture, while quite the contrary is true of Palestine, Arabia and Syria. Figural and narrative sarcophagi were widespread in Italy, while in Palestine and Arabia they are rarely attested. Basilicas decorated with figural reliefs are well known in Italy (e.g. the Basilica Aemilia), but not so in Palestine and Arabia. It is not by chance that the only prominent opponent of images, Epiphanius of Salamis,53 was of Palestinian origin. Well known is the letter in which he describes how he tore to pieces a curtain with the representation of Christ. Epiphanius was then obliged to replace the curtain and did so with an aniconic one. On his trip to Palestine he encountered only this single instance of a curtain with a representation of Christ in a church; had he found any other figural images, he certainly would have mentioned them. We may thus conclude that in Palestine aniconic art prevailed, and this surely was also true long before the spread of Christian art. I might venture to suggest that Constantine, in view of the prevailing aniconic tendency in Palestine, consciously chose a non-figurative, symbolic programme for the apse of the Martyrium church in Jerusalem. The contrast between the twelve columns with the twelve silver bowls in Jerusalem (Fig. 5.16) and the twelve three-dimensional silver statues of the Apostles on the fastigium in Rome evokes a certain perplexity. Both programmes were highly innovative, but neither was ever repeated. They were, in a certain sense, unsuccessful imperial iconography. Constantine also erected three-dimensional silver statues of Christ and St John the Baptist in the Lateran baptistery, but these highly precious silver sculptures had no success in terms of artistic reception either. Incidentally, Gregory of Nazianzus the Elder, father of Gregory of Nazianzus, commissioned the construction of an octagonal church with a portico decorated with statues “true to life”.54 At some point in the 4th century, a decision was made against three-dimensional sculpture in

53 Klauser (1965a); Maraval (1987); Mass (1929–1930) 281–283. 54 Gregory of Nazianzus on the death of his father c. 39.

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favour of mosaics in apses. However, this decision was never proclaimed by an official council. Rather, it was privately discussed among bishops who wished to surmount the obstacle of the second commandment (Deuteronomium 5.8).55 The Martyrium church in Jerusalem and the Lateran basilica in Rome are official ecclesiastical buildings that express a consciousness different from that witnessed in private buildings. The decision of Constantine to choose a purely abstract and symbolic iconography in Jerusalem reflects his religious and cultural sensitivity.

References Andreopoulos (2005): Andreopoulos, A. (2005), Metamorphosis: the transfiguration in Byzantine theology and iconography, New York. Apollonj (1936): Apollonj, B.M. (1936), Il Foro e la basilica severiana di Leptis Magna, (I monumenti italiani, Fasc. 8–9), Roma. Benz (1998–1999): Bentz, M. (1998–1999), “Eine Weihung von Reliefgefässen im Diana-Heiligtum am Nemi-See”, Boreas 21–22, 185–196. Brenk (2005): Brenk, B. (2005), “Visibility and (partial) invisibility of early Christian images”, in G. de Nie, K.F. Morrison and M. Mostert (eds), Seeing the invisible in late antiquity and the early middle ages, Turnhout, 139–183. Brenk (2010): Brenk, B. (2010), The apse, the image and the icon, Wiesbaden. Brubaker (2003): Brubaker, L. (2003), “Aniconic decoration in the Christian world (6th-11th century): East and West”, in Cristianità d’Occidente e cristianità d’Oriente (secoli VI-XI), (Settimane di studio della Fondazione Centro Italiano di Studi sull’Alto Medioevo, 51), Spoleto, 573–590. Cameron (2013): Cameron, A. (2013), ‘The origin, context, and function of consular diptychs’, JRA 103, 174–207. Cervini (2007): Cervini, F. (2007), “Le vie del classicismo tra iconografie e linguaggi”, in M. David (ed.), Eburnea diptycha. I dittici d’avorio tra antichità e medioevo, Bari, 163–181. Corbo (1981): Corbo, V.C. (1981), Il Santo Sepolcro di Gerusalemme. Aspetti archeologici dalle origini al periodo crociato, (Studium Biblicum Franciscanum, 29), Jerusalem. Cruickshank Dodd (1961): Cruickshank Dodd, E. (1961), Byzantine silver stamps, Washington D.C. Cutler (1984): Cutler, A. (1984), “The making of Justinian’s diptychs”, Byzantion 54, 75–115.

55 “You shall not make for yourself a graven image, or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is on the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth; you shall not bow down to them or serve them” (Deuteronomium 27.15: “Cursed be the man who makes a graven or molten image”). The decision to have mosaics instead of statues in church apses was taken because the bishops wished to keep away from “pagan” statuary, condemned by Moses; the apse mosaic seemed an acceptable solution. However, not a single Church father ever dared to explain such a move. Richard Krautheimer assumed that “there is no trace of such decoration in any Roman church prior to 357, when the apse of St Peter’s presumably received a mosaic with a traditio legis”. But this is not at all certain. Not a single source, from the Liber Pontificalis to the writings of the church fathers or the epigrams of bishop Damasus, allows us the assumption of an apse mosaic in a church before c. 380. On the other hand, there are apse mosaics preserved in mausolea, such as in S. Costanza and S. Aquilino. It is often overlooked among scholars that a mausoleum is a private building, and that the norms for its decoration differed from those of an official church building; Krautheimer (1967) 120.

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David (2007): David, M. (2007), “Elementi per una storia della produzione dei dittici eburnei”, in M. David (ed.), Eburnea diptycha. I dittici d’avorio tra antichità e medioevo, Bari, 13–28. De Blaauw (1996): De Blaauw, S. (1996), “Das Fastigium der Lateranbasilika. Schöpferische Innovation, Unikat oder Paradigma?”, in B. Brenk (ed.), Innovation in der Spätantike, Wiesbaden, 53–65. Deckers (1995): Deckers, J. (1995), “Das hypogäum bein Silivri-Kapı in Istanbul”, in Akten des XII. Internationalen Kongresses für Christliche Archäologie 2, Münster, 674–681. Deichmann & Klauser (1966): Deichmann, F.W. and Klauser, Th. (1966), Frühchristliche Sarkophage in Bild und Wort, Olten. Delbrueck (1929): Delbrueck, R. (1929), Die Consulardiptychen und verwandte Denkmäler, (Studien zur spätantiken Kunstgeschichte, 2), Berlin & Leipzig. Eastmond (2010): Eastmond, A. (2010), “Consular diptychs, rhetoric and the languages of art in sixth-century Constantinople”, Art History 33, 742–765. Eisler (1925): Eisler, R. (1925), Orphisch-dionysische Myteriengedanken in der christlichen Antike, (Vorträge der Bibliothek Warburg, 2:2), Berlin. Elsner (1994): Elsner, J. (1994), “The viewer and the vision: the case of the Sinai apse”, Art History 17, 81–102. Engemann (1993): Engemann, J. (1993), “Der Skulpturenschmuck des ‘fastigiums’ Konstantins I. nach dem Liber Pontificalis und der ‘Zufall der Überlieferung”, RACrist 69, 189–203. Eusebius (1982): Eusebius, (1982), Church history. Life of Constantine the Great and oration in praise of Constantine, (A select library of Nicene and post-Nicene fathers of the Christian Church, 2.ser., 1), (transl. Ph. Schaff and H. Wace), Michigan. Eusebius (1902): Heikel,I.A. (ed.) (1902), Eusebius, Vita Constantini, in Die griechischen christlichen Schriftsteller der ersten drei Jahrhunderte, (Eusebius Werke, 1), Leipzig. Fabry & Ringgren (1989): Fabry,H.-J. and H. Ringgren (eds) (1989), Theologisches Wörterbuch zum Alten Testament, 6, Stuttgart. Festugière (1938): Festugière, A.J. (1938), “Hermetica”, HThR 31, 1–20. Finney (1994):Finney, C. (1994), The invisible god. The earliest Christians on art, Oxford. Fıratlı (1960): Fıratlı, N. (1960), “Deux nouveaux reliefs funéraires d’Istanbul et les reliefs similaires”, CahArch 11, 73–91. Fıratlı (1966): Fıratlı, N. (1966), “Notes sur quelques hypogées paléo-chrétiens de Constantinople”, in W.N. Schumacher (ed.), Tortulae. Studien zu altchristlichen und byzantinischen Monumenten, (Römischen Quartalschrift für christliche Altertumskunde und Kirchengeschichte, Suppl. 30), Freiburg, 131–142. Fourlas (2012): Fourlas, B. (2012), Die Mosaiken der Acheiropoietos-Basilika in Thessaloniki. Eine vergleichende Analyse dekorativer Mosaiken des 5. und 6. Jahrhunderts, (Millenium-Studien, 35), Berlin. Geertman (2001): Geertman, H. (2001), “Il fastigium lateranense e l’arredo presbiteriale”, Meded 60, 29–43. Grassinger (1991): Grassinger, D. (1991), Römische Marmorkratere, Mainz. Grigg (1977):Grigg, R. (1977), “Constantine the Great and the cult without images”, Viator 8, 1–32. Guiglia Guidobaldi (1999): Guidobaldi, A. Guiglia (1999), “I mosaïci aniconici della Santa Sofia di Costantinopoli nell’età di Giustiniano”, in M. Ennaïffer and A. Rebourg (eds), La mosaïque grécoromaine VII. 7ème colloque international pour l’étude de la mosaïque antique, 2, Tunis, 691–699. Guldager Bilde (1997): Bilde, P. Guldager (1997), “Chio d(onum) d(edit): eight marble vases from the sanctuary of Diana Nemorensis”, AnalRom 24, 53–81. Guldager Bilde & Moltesen (2002): Guldager Bilde, P. and M. Moltesen (2002), A catalogue of sculptures from the sanctuary of Diana Nemorensis in the University of Pennsylvania Museum, Philadelphia, (AnalRom suppl. 29), Rome.

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Heisenberg (1908): Heisenberg, A. (1908) Grabeskirche und Apostelkirche. Zwei Basiliken Konstantins. Erster Teil: Die Grabeskirche in Jerusalem, Leipzig. Klauser (1965a): Klauser, T. (1965a) “Die Äusserungen der alten Kirche zur Kunst. Revision der Zeugnisse, Folgerungen für die archäologische Forschung”, in Atti del VI congresso internazionale di archeologia cristiana, (Studi di antichità cristiana, 26), Città del Vaticano, 223–238. Klauser (1965b): Klauser, T. (1965b), “Erwägungen zur Entstehung der christlichen Kunst”, Zeitschrift für Kirchengeschichte 76, 1–11. Kornfeld (1962): Kornfeld, W. (1962), “Der Symbolismus der Tempelsäulen”, Zeitschrift für die alttestamentliche Wissenschaft 74, 50–57. Krautheimer (1967): Krautheimer, R. (1967), “The Constantinian Basilica’” DOP 21, 115–140. Laum (1914): Laum, B. (1914), Stiftungen in der griechischen und römischen Antike, 1–2, Leipzig. Lewy (1929): Lewy, H. (1929), Sobria Ebrietas. Untersuchungen zur Geschichte der antiken Mystik, Giessen. Maguire (1978): Maguire, H. (1978), “The “half-cone” vault of St. Stephen at Gaza”, DOP 32, 319–325. Mango (1972): Mango, C. (1972), The art of the Byzantine empire 312–1453. Sources and documents, Englewood Cliffs. Maraval (1987): Maraval, P. (1987), “Épiphane. Docteur des iconoclastes, in Nicée II”, in F. Boespflug and N. Lossky (eds), 787–1987. Douze siècles d’images religieuses. Actes du colloque international Nicèe II tenu au collège de France, Paris, Paris 51–72. Mass (1929–1930): Mass, P. (1929–1930), “Die ikonoklastische Episode in dem Brief des Ephanios an Johannes”, ByzZeit 29–30, 281–283. Mathews (2009–2010): Mathews, T.F. (2009–2010), “The piety of Constantine the Great and his votive offerings”, CahArch 53, 5–16. Miziolek (1990): Miziolek, J. (1990), “Transfiguratio Domini in the apse at Mount Sinai and the symbolism of light”, Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 53, 42–60. Moorsel (1969): von Moorsel, G. (1969), “Die Symbolsprache der hermetischen Gnosis”, Symbolon 1, 1969, 128–137. Mundell Mango (1977): Mango, M. Mundell (1977), “Monophysite church decoration”, in A. Bryer and J. Herrin (eds), Papers given at the Ninth Spring Symposium of Byzantine Studies. University of Birmingham March 1975, Birmingham, 59–74. Mundell Mango (1986): Mundell Mango, M. (1986), Silver from early Byzantium: the Kaper Koraon and related treasures, Baltimore. Nilsson (1958): Nilsson, M.P. (1958), “Krater”, HThR 51, 53–58. Olovsdotter (2005):Olovsdotter, C. (2005), The consular image: an iconological study of consular diptychs, (BAR S 1376), Oxford. Olovsdotter (2011): Olovsdotter, C. (2011), “Representing consulship. On the concept and meanings of the consular diptychs”, OpAthRom 4, 99–122. Pallas (1974): Pallas, D. (1974), “Eine anikonische lineare Wanddekoration auf der Insel Ikaris: zur Tradition der bilderlosen Kirchenausstattung”, JÖB 23, 271–314. Pallas (1986): Pallas, D. (1986), “Les décorations aniconiques des églises dans les îles de l’archipel”, in O. Feld and U. Peschlow (eds), Studien zur spätantiken und byzantinischen Kunst: Friedrich Wilhelm Deichmann gewidmet, (Römisch-Germanisches Zentralmuseum, Monographien, 10), Bonn, 171–179. Pesando & Guidobaldi (2006): Pesando, F. and M.P Guidobaldi (2006), Pompei, Oplontis, Ercolano, Stabiae, Bari. Pfammatter (1960): Pfammatter, J. (1960), Die Kirche als Bau. Eine exegetisch-theologische Studie zur Ekklesiologie der Paulusbriefe, (Pontificia Universitas Gregoriana), Rom.

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Piganiol (1945): Piganiol, A. (1945), “L’hémisphairion et l’omphalos des lieux saints”, CahArch 1, 7–14. Rasch & Arbeiter (2007): Rasch, J.J. and A. Arbeiter (2007), Das Mausoleum der Constantina in Rom, Mainz. Rudolph (2004): Rudolph, C. (2004), “Communal identity and the earliest Christian legislation on art: Canon 36 of the Synod of Elvira”, in T.N. Kinder (ed.), Perspectives for an architecture of solitude. Essays on Cistercians, art and architecture in honour of Peter Ferguson, Turnhout, 1–7. Schumacher (1984): Schumacher, W.N. (1984), Die Christus-Statuette im Thermenmuseum zu Rom und ihre Probleme. Actes du Xe Congrès International d’Archéologie Chrétienne. Vol.2, Città del Vaticano, 489–499. Spieser (1998): Spieser, J.M. (1998), “The representation of Christ in the apses of early Christian churches”, Gesta 37, 63–73. St Hilarius of Poitiers (1983): St Hilarius of Poitiers, Select Works, (A select library of Nicene and post-Nicene fathers of the Christian Church, Second series, 9), (transl. E.W. Watson, L. Pullan et al.), Michigan. Taddei (2008): Taddei, A. (2008), “Il mosaico parietale aniconico da Tessalonica a Costantinopoli”, in A. Acconcia Longo, G. Cavallo, A. Guiglia and A. Iacobini (eds), La sapienza bizantina, (Milion, 8), 153–182. Thümmel (1999): Thümmel, H.G. (1999), Die Frühgeschichte der ostkirchlichen Bilderlehre. Texte und Untersuchungen zur Zeit vor dem Bilderstreit, Berlin. Ulbert (1986): Ulbert, T. (1986), Die Basilika des Hl. Kreuzes in Resafa-Sergiupolis, Resafa II, Mainz.

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Fig. 5.1: Consular diptych of Philoxenos; Dumbarton Oaks Museum, inv. BZ.1935.4.a-b; photo B. Brenk.

Fig. 5.2: Hypogaeum, Şehremini, Istanbul; drawing after Fıratlı (1966).

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Fig. 5.3: Mosaics in the church of Acheiropoietos, Thessaloniki, 5th century; photo B. Brenk.

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Fig. 5.4: Aniconic mosaics in St Sophia, Istanbul, 6th century; photo B. Brenk.

Fig. 5.5: Nave in Katapoliani, Paros; photo B. Brenk.

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Fig. 5.6: Apse in Fafertin, Syria: photo B. Brenk.

Fig. 5.7: Apse in the basilica of the Holy Cross, Resafa-Sergiupolis; drawing after Ulbert (1986).

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Fig. 5.8: Apse in the church of St Stephen, Gaza; graphic reconstruction after Maguire (1978).

Fig. 5.9: Martyrion, Jerusalem; groundplan after Corbo (1981).

Fig. 5.10: Martyrion, Jerusalem; hypothetical reconstruction B. Brenk.

Fig. 5.11: Apse in the basilica of Leptis Magna; groundplan after Apollonj (1936).

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Fig. 5.12: Wall painting from a Pompeian villa; Naples, Museo Nazionale Archeologico, inv. 147503; photo B. Brenk.

Fig. 5.13: Mosaic emblema, Casa del Poeta Tragico, Pompeii; photo B. Brenk.

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Fig. 5.14: Amphora from the sanctuary of Diana Nemorensis, Nemi; photo after Guldager Bilde (1997).

Fig. 5.15: Fastigium in the Lateran basilica, Rome; graphic reconstruction after de Blaauw (1996).

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Fig. 5.16: Apse in Martyrion, Jerusalem: graphic reconstruction B. Brenk.

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6 Defining Space: Abstraction, Symbolism and Allegory on Display in Early Byzantine Art Abstraction and symbolism are aspects of Byzantine art that appear most distinctly in the late-antique official art of Constantinople.1 While the official reliefs of Roman imperial art displayed allegorical and historical imagery, the triumphal reliefs of Constantinople are characterized by a new symbolic and abstract mode of representation. The focus is no longer on the deeds of any particular emperor and his military success, but rather on the concept of imperial rulership as such. Triumph becomes a perpetual attribute of rulership granted by the gods, later God. This turning away from historical narrativity towards symbolic and abstract values in late antique art has been discussed in the broader terms of spiritualisation, dematerialisation, and the visualisation of the invisible spheres of heaven, but the topic is far from exhausted.2 Symbolism signals a complex understanding of qualities and how they may be visually defined.3 The understanding of abstraction as a mode of conveying fundamental meaning by reducing or suppressing figurative form has gained much force in the art-historical discourse since the early 20th century. Artists such as Kandinsky and Malevich proposed to invent abstraction as an intensive description of reality. Wilhelm Worringer described in his programmatic dissertation of 19114 the properties of abstraction in terms of an assimilation of the subject into the planar surface, a strict compression of space, and an intensification of the single form: the individual form is liberated from space. And indeed, Early Byzantine art is generally characterised by a reduction of representational modes, and a preference for imagery rendered entirely in the plane (“Flächenkunst”) that visualises symbolic concepts referring to qualities beyond time and history. The political, social and religious foundations of imperial and divine rule are visually conceptualised as timeless statements. While the illusionistic imagery of earlier centuries conveyed action according to situation and event, late-antique compositions are frozen in frontality, axiality and symmetry. The scenic display becomes radically reduced, where only certain objects or frameworks provide indications of occasion and location, and where the rendering of figures is characterised by hieratic frontality and immobility. The composition may be subdivided into several registers that are thematically coherent but abstracted in form, conveying meanings that go beyond the demarcations within which the figures and 1 I am very grateful for all help I obtained from David Knipp and Cecilia Olovsdotter. 2 MacCormack (1981); Ćurčić (2011). 3 Pfister (2011) 340–348 s.v. “Symbol” (R. Ubl). For a cultural-scientific approach, see Berndt & Drügh (2009); for a theological approach, see The Oxford Dictionary of Byzantium, 3 (1991) 1980f s.v. “Symbolism” (A. Karzhdan and A. Cutler). 4 Worringer (1908/2007) 28. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110546842-007

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scenes are presented. Such phenomena of reduction, division and isolation required knowledgeable viewers who were able to assemble the different informations into coherent messages in their mind.

Theodosian Constantinople: An idealised space for a new urban society From an archaeological point of view, a milestone in the symbolisation of visual forms occurred in Constantinople in the late 4th century. It was initiated in the reign of Theodosius I (379–395), who was rightly counted among the historical founders of the city of Constantinople by the rhetorician Themistios (Or. 18.10),5 and whose programmatic Forum Tauri was inaugurated in 393. Under Theodosius II (408–450), the building enterprises of the Theodosian dynasty culminated in the completion of the city wall (419), the large-scale cisterns (410–30), and the reconstruction of the Hagia Sophia (consecrated in 415). The “New Rome” – this term first appeared in the council acts of 381 – became an alternative conception of the Roman capital, where the people, senate, administration and army were incorporated within one urban context.6 The late-antique emperor transformed himself into a residential emperor who had his wars fought by a military élite of generals; he became a peaceful ruler whose conduct was informed by ideal virtues. As a residential city, Constantinople was gradually transformed into a stage for honorific sculpture that glorified the good government, as outlined by Sarah Bassett,7 where urban processions took place by day and – by torch-light – by night. The colonnaded streets (emboloi) and squares constituted a new performative urban layout for activities, movements, illuminations, acclamations, and chants (stational liturgies, adventi of relics, etc.).8 As part of all these changes, imperial art developed into a distinctive style which left its impressions in all public art: a Theodosian “Zeitstil”. This all-dominant imperial style, the first “new” style since the time of the Tetrarchy, was at the same time highly idealising and abstract.9 We can trace its culmination in the ageless Beyazıt head, presumably a portrait of Theodosius II.10 As part of this new artistic trend, which was founded on the workshop traditions of Asia Minor, an abstract conception of surfaces and of architectural ornament was also developed, as shown by

5 See Leppin & Portmann (1998) 100. 6 Bassett (2004); Croke (2010). 7 Bassett (2014). 8 Baldovin (1987); for social interactions as “Akzeptanzgruppen” in Constantinople, see Pfeilschifter (2013); for performative qualities of space, see Fischer-Lichte (2012) 58–60. 9 For visual concepts under the Tetrarchy, see Boschung & Eck (2006). 10 Fıratlı (1990) pl. 3 no. 5a.; Stichel (1982) 51f, pl. XVII-XVIII.

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Giulia Barsanti with regard to the pier capitals in the Theodosian vestibule of Hagia Sophia.11 The subtle interplay between light and darkness created by the drill-holes, and the shadows achieved by using a refined technique of undercutting, increased the dematerialisation and intensification of the individual form. As a consequence of this new configuration of sculpture and architecture, symbolism and abstraction emerged in Byzantine buildings and imagery. The celebrated missorium of Theodosius I (388) in Madrid and the Theodosian sarcophagi of Ravenna are expressions of an idealising court art that is at once symbolic and abstract. The so-called Pignatta sarcophagus in Ravenna (Fig. 6.1), produced in the early 5th century after eastern prototypes, illustrates this surge of a new symbolic expression in Christian art. An “imperial” Christ enthroned in rigid frontality above the embodiments of evil, the serpent and the basilisk; the symmetrical and frontal composition unfolding in an empty space where the protagonists appear as if they existed beyond time and history, accompanied only by small biblical quotations (Ps. 90.3); two palm-trees serving as an abstract frame for Christ assisted by the courtly audience of Peter and Paul: all transfer the scene into a paradisaical setting.12 Paradise becomes the new paradigm for peaceful rulership in heaven and on earth. The heavenly and earthly spheres are conceived as part of the same spatial framework. Everything evil is defeated in the same way that Christ treads the allegorical figures of the lion and the serpent underfoot. The immobile human figures and abstracted palm-trees combine to make this symbolic description of rulership into an image of peaceful harmony. The pilaster-framed type of sarcophagus exemplified by the Pignatta sarcophagus functions like a container for its visual message. In this way a new and important feature of representation emerged: the stressing or individuation of the single form as such, which already Wilhelm Worringer counted among the properties of abstraction. Reduction of form, significant objects, meaningful configurations, certain gestures of emphatic expression, are all primary tools of visual representation. Their functions reach beyond the simple indication of place, whilst at the same time working in specific ways to define space; they are pictorial symbols as well as framing devices that indicate the inner and outer boundaries of a symbolic state.

Grids and balustrades: Abstract structures and borders in Theodosian conceptions of space The ways in which grids and balustrades may indicate inner detachments and abstract boundaries within a pictorial entity can be witnessed in the reliefs of the

11 Barsanti & Guiglia (2010) 24. 12 Kollwitz & Herdejürgen (1979) 54 Kat. nr. B 1 Taf. 24.

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obelisk base of Theodosius I in the Hippodrome of Constantinople (Fig. 6.2), dated by inscription to the year 390.13 On each of its four sides, the enthroned assembly of rulers, surmounted by a single arch and flanked by officials of the administration and guards, is bordered by a continuous balustrade consisting of grid patterns. The decorative strip simultaneously delineates a border between two worlds: above the cosmic ruler of earth and sea, below the submissive peoples from the limits of the inhabited world suspended in courtly proskynesis. The delicate craftsmanship of these transennae is worthy of note; their quality and beauty reflect the cultural conditions that determined late-antique rulership. Substantial balustrades recur in the judicial basilica where judiciary and administrative acts were conducted. In the Constantinian Lateran basilica in Rome, holes in the ground indicate posts for barriers that would have marked the confines of a processional route along the building’s longitudinal axis.14 Similarly, in the southern basilica of Aquileia traces of substantial transennae are still visible in the mosaic floor.15 Eusebius expressly praised the beauty of the wooden transennae in the Christian basilica at Tyrus in his Ecclesiastical history (10.4.44).16 In these contexts, demarcation barriers of the kind described evidently represented authority, law and order within the state and society.17 On Theodosius’ obelisk base, the modest arch surmounting the imperial family might be misconstrued as simply a depiction of the imperial tribunal (kathisma), when it was in fact also a visual abbreviation of joint rulership. The motif actually goes back to early 4th-century coinage, where it was used as a pictorial framework to denote collective imperial rulership; like a canopy, the symbolic arch surmounts and dignifies the imperial group ruling in harmony (concordia), as seen on coins issued under Valens (364–367).18 But on the Theodosian base the rulers are ideally seated. Space in Theodosian art was understood as an abstract, clearly defined framework for symbolic statements.

The St Polyeuktos church and the defining of new spaces: Entering the gardens of Paradeisos The space-defining realism of the grids returns in a completely different context in the early 6th century, where wide-meshed grids directed the view towards a garden idyll of flowering plants. Thus in the sumptuous relief decoration in the church of 13 Bruns (1935) Taf. 37; Rebenich (1991). 14 Brandenburg (2013) 28, 284. 15 Forlati Tamaro et al. (1980) 178 fig. 156 (Aula Teodoriana nord). 16 Cf. Kraft (1967) 423. 17 For the juridical function of cancelli, see Färber (2014). 18 Panella (2011) 109, pl. 155.

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St Polyeuktos in Constantinople (Fig. 6.3–6.4), begun after 527, where the architectural ornamentation pursued a symbolic conception of motifs and adornments referring to the gardens of Paradise.19 The state of preservation is very fragmentary, but some partly preserved groups of motifs point to a highly symbolic value of the individual forms. Beside surface decorations in the shape of grids and plants, there are the plastically sculpted forms of peacocks. The extant marble blocks, now in the Istanbul Archaeological Museums, served as constructive elements to exedrae ornamentally conceived as gardens inhabited by these peacocks, whose continuous shift between frontal and profile view (on two different block types) would have enlivened the composition. The frontally rendered peacocks filling the conch-like niches of the closed-arched blocks are most realistically depicted, proudly displaying the splendour of their plumage, while the protome-like pairs of peacocks rendered in profile in the open-arched blocks face one another in a more formal scheme. Through their natural size and expressive vivacity, the peacocks transformed the Polyeuktos church into a paradisaic garden that could be entered. The broad exedrae, which opened like traversal passages, would have offered a variety of perspectives (Fig. 6.3). Although the St Polyeuktos church was destroyed (probably by earthquake) in the Middle Ages, it did not disappear but survives through a number decorative fragments spread across the Mediterranean. An attempt at a digital reconstruction from these fragments, based on material published by Martin Harrisons and the reconstructions by Jonathan Bardill,20 gives us an idea of the church’s famous decoration. An architectural inscription in the form of an epigram (rendered in Anthologia Graeca 1.10) ran along the entire naos, spanning three exedrae and two headpieces on each side and probably including the templon, its placement on the surfaces of the blocks making it appear like a continuous commentary on the founder’s dedication.21 With the help of the inscription, which was accommodated in 31 to 35 letters per block, the position of the different fragments within the church space can be established. Two of the church’s pillars were moved to the south façade of San Marco in Venice sometime after 1204. Even if these so-called Pilastri Acritani were not positioned together in St Polyeuktos, they are arranged similar to the pairs of pillars that interconnected the exedrae in the original church setting. The vertical recesses on their rear sides can be explained by their original employment in inner-corner positions.22 The two pillars

19  From the measures and proportions of the plan Harrison (Harrison 1989) suggested the Temple of Jerusalem as a symbolic prototype for the church and, less convincingly, the peacocks as indications of cherubim; for Paradise as an earthly place at the eastern limit of the world, see Maguire (2007) III; for an adaptation of the Jewish temple tradition, see Ousterhout (2010). 20 See the documentation by Harrison (1986) 117–126. 21 Inscription by Harrison (1986) 5f; for the revised discussion of the inscription and the fragments, see Bardill (2011) with plan 4. 22 Deichmann et al. (1981) 139 (a recess of about 5 cm).

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would have supported large blocks that may be reconstructed as a symmetrical arrangement with a central niche-head surrounded by plant and grid motifs (Fig. 6.5).23 The ornamental fields with grapevines and various fruits that decorate the pillars’ shafts are adaptions of Hellenistic motifs; the same type of motif can be seen on e.g. a stele from Pergamon now in the Antikensammlung in Berlin,24 where the entwined vines with grapes set centrally among many finely rendered leaves covering the framed surface is developed in a lively and realistic mode very similar to the Byzantine adaption in St Polyeuktos. On the pillars, further, the vegetal motifs are combined with decorative forms derived from Sassanid art. By thus turning to Hellenistic and eastern traditions for inspiration, the art of the early 6th century relinquished the Late-Roman visual language of rigid abstraction, and opened up to a new, natural and lively interpretation of space. According to the convincingly reconstructed ground plan of the Polyeuktos church recently offered by Bardill, it included three exedrae about 7 m in depth on either side of the longitudinal axis.25 However, new observations of the inscriptions by Venla Kakko indicate that the two middle exedrae were deeper than its two flanking exedrae (Fig. 6.6),26 and that they could therefore be reconstructed as including one additional block each. Thus a centralising tendency would have been imprinted along the nave of the church, and the entablature blocks of the exedrae have revealed an even richer and more varied prospect. With its abundant architectural ornamentation of grapevines, palm trees, pomegranates, and variously rendered peacocks, the interior of St Polyeuktos was transformed into a vision of the gardens of Paradise. It was a novelty at the time to integrate a whole church interior within one pictorial theme. Thus, through innovative craftsmanship, a symbolic place of dense naturalism was created, a fascinating allegorical space where Paradise could be entered. After the end of Roman rulership in the west in 476, and consequent to the economic and monetary consolidations achieved under Anastasius I, Constantinopolitan culture turned towards the Greek tradition whilst at the same time reinforcing its contacts with the East and the Sassanid kingdom, the “eternal” adversary and rival, and the high-cultural traditions of Mesopotamia. The architectural ornamentation in the form of gardens filled with palm trees, fruits and peacocks in the St Polyeuktos church was much influenced by these contacts.

23 Deichmann et al. (1981) 138–141 Kat. 639–640, Taf. 46–47. 24 Kunze (1992) Kat. 86 (2nd century BCE); for a broader discussion of Hellenistic prototypes, see McKenzie (2007) 329–339. 25 Bardill (2006) 263; and Bardill (2011). 26 Kakko (2011) 103f, n. 20. The middle exedra with five blocks (including V, VI and VII) can be reconstructed as having had a radius of 8 meters and a depth of 6 meters. All reconstructions and digital visualisations published here are derived from the successful but unpublished MA thesis by Venla-Eeva Kakko.

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Space as symbolic entity: The Justinianic mosaics in San Vitale and the definition of sacred space The 6th century saw an increasingly idealising trend in the conception of symbolic spaces, spheres and objects in the art produced by the imperial workshops concentrated in Constantinople. The cosmic symbolism and allegorical qualities of this imperial art were now grounded in the idea that the emperor’s earthly rulership reflected the heavenly rulership of God. In his exalted position at the top of the imperial ideological construct, the Christian emperor became the visible image of the invisible god (Corippus, Iust. Aug. 2428).27 In the imperial workshops were created new symbolic images of God in the glory of heaven, and of the emperor as the holder of a most holy office taking part in the sacred liturgy of the Church. In the apse mosaics of San Vitale in Ravenna, Christ-God and the emperor are shown in the meeting-place of earthly and cosmic space, as in a most holy shrine of theophany.28 In a finely balanced exchange between pictorial patterns for divine and imperial authority, the earthly-secular emperor is represented as standing in Christian eusebeia while the heavenly Christ is seated as kosmokrator on a sphaira studded with stars. And in the sanctuary, where the theophanic themes are projected towards the central altar, the biblical king-priest Melchisedec is seen to perform his dual role of ruler and religious leader in one cultic act. The abstract conception of the mosaics of San Vitale is illustrated in the rich assembly of highly meaningful figures organised, like timeless statements, throughout the ecclesiastical space. Thus Ernst Kitzinger, when discussing the San Vitale mosaics in his essential study Byzantine art in the making (1977), showed how abstraction worked in different modes and on various levels, articulated as “windows” opening onto a heavenly vision.29

Defining heavenly space through abstract frames of light and parabolic gestures Towards the end of Justinian’s reign pictorial strategies were once again directed towards symbolic values. As Kitzinger has shown, the churches of S. Apollinare in Classe in Ravenna and St Catherine at Mount Sinai are characterised by an enforced

27 Cf. Meier (2003) 629–638. 28 For the discussion of the mosaics, see Deliyannis (2010) 236–243; and Basset (2008), who focusses on the rhetorical values of the imperial mosaics. In the Theodora panel are allegorical references to beauty (Venus niche, rose ornaments) and to the water of life (fountain). 29 Kitzinger (1977) 81–98.

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abstraction.30 The frontal figure of Christ and the Theotokos seated with the Christchild are enclosed within a mandorla, an opaion or some other framing device that stresses the theophanic values of the representations. Mandorlas, clipei and tondi become interpreted as the abstract containers of divine inner spaces. In Egypt, such as in Bawit, the iconography of the shield-carrying Victoria is adapted into an abstract-symbolic type where the Virgin holds an elliptical shield enclosing the full-figure image of the Christ-child (Fig. 6.7).31 The essential immateriality of such enclosures is often emphasised by brilliant rays of light, as in the miniature in folio 31r of the Cotton Genesis representing God speaking to Abraham (Fig. 6.8).32 The figures of Christ in the Transformation mosaic in the apse of St Catherine at Mount Sinai and the Theotokos with Christ-child in Panagia Kanakaria at Lythrankomi (Cyprus) are similarly enclosed within radiating containers of holiness.33 Complex framing-devices continue to be used in post-Justinianic art, such as in the 9th-century painting in the so-called Pantokrator cave in the Latmos Mountains in Asia Minor (Fig. 6.9), where the framing-system radiating in different sections of colour and light evokes the liturgy of the Trisagion (Isaiah 6.3).34 So, in the centre of apse compositions there emerged clearly defined inner spaces which served to set the frontal, hieratic figure of God apart from any figures around him, thus allowing for the representation of different realities within one and the same composition. Medieval iconography would be based on the same code of abstract signs for making visible the invisible sphere.35 There were other allegorical and narrative ways of communicating the divine. Affective gestures could be used to indicate and define the boundaries between individual figures. Emphatic gestures such as of fear or wonderment could make humans stand in apparent contrast with divine figures, rendered motionless in the frontality of theophany. Humans could thus express awe through reflecting gestures as they faced a theophany, or, like the shepherds of the Nativity, received the message of the birth of Christ. Such gestures are witnessed in the apse of St Catherine at Mount Sinai, where the bent and drastically exaggerated movements of the apostles are a response to the overwhelming moment of witnessing a theophany.36 While no indication of space is given here, and no reflection of the topographically close-by Sinai mountain itself is 30 Kitzinger (1977) 99–105 (p. 105: “Now these central figures were put before the worshipper in stark isolation as a statue of god or goddess had been in a Greek temple”). 31 Clédat (1906) pl. XCVIII. 32 Weitzman & Kessler (1986) 72 Fig. 164–165, BL 18r. The full image is represented in the painting by Peiresc in Paris BN cod.r. 9550 fol.31r. 33 Weitzmann (1966); Megaw & Hawkins (1977); Warland (2002) 57f. For a systematic treatment of apse mosaics, see Brenk (2010). 34 Wiegand (1913) 192, pl. 1; Reallexikon zur byzantinischen Kunst, 5 (1993) 651–716 s.v. “Latmos” (U. Peschlow); Peschlow-Bindokat (2005) 170. 35 For the continuity in medieval usage, see Ganz (2008). 36 Weitzmann (1966); Manafis (1990) 61–66, pl. 73–79.

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included in the composition, the narrative quality relies entirely on the various ways in which the protagonists react and respond to the experience of the theophany. The apostles are acting as would every human being in the fear of god, as enactors of the “human phobia” of the divine: they kneel down and throw up their hands as they share with the viewer the privilege of witnessing the metamorphosis of the earthly nature of Christ. The rhetorical strategy of this imagery was to awaken the religious empathy in the viewers. In Early Byzantine art the affective values of human-divine interaction were further emphasised in the invention of the “astonished” angel. On the well-known Sinai icon of the Theotokos between Sts Theodore and George (Fig. 6.10), the two angels in the background are gazing upwards into heaven, bewildered at and admiring the birth of God by the Virgin. Their eyes go up to heaven as they receive individual theophanies from the hand of God above. The transparent light around their heads is derived from the Hellenising imperial portraiture of the period.37 Later, in the early 8th-centry Roman icon of S. Maria in Trastevere, the highly charged meaning of the astonished angel is related in an inscription on its frame: ASTANT STYPENTES ANGELORUM PRINCIPES GESTARE NATUM [...]DS QUOD IPSE FACTUS EST.38 Below, gazing into the heavenly light, the archangels Gabriel and Michael stand as witnesses to the birth of God by the Virgin. The actions of their bodies create a holy space within the image, their rhetorical gestures encourage the viewer to apprehend the meaning of the theophany through the visible nature of the Child. In the Middle Byzantine period, there is a lingering awareness of the special meaning of such angelical gestures. Thus for instance in the apse of St George in Kurbiunovo (1192),39 where the framing inscription beneath the archivolt tells us once again of the astonishment of the archangels as they witness the incarnation of God. The origins of this particular allegorical narrative would have been a hymn of the Constantinopolitan liturgy for the celebration of the Nativity.40

Conclusion In early Constantinople there was a continuous development of rhetorical qualities and allegorical narratives based on traditions inherited from the Hellenistic east, an increasingly on the Greek tradition of paideia and rhetorical instruction.41 The abstract 37 Weitzmann (1976) 18–23, cat. no. B 3, pl. XLII; Barber (2000); Vassilaki (2000) 262f cat. no.1 (R. Cormack); for the portrait style of the angels, see Kitzinger (1963). 38 Bertelli (1961) 34–44; Andaloro (2002a); Andaloro (2002b). 39 Hadermann-Misguich (1975) 55f. 40 The first trace appears in the sixth ode in the first volume of the Oktoechos by Johannes of Damascus; Schollmeyer (1960) 186f. 41 Maguire (1981) 9–21; Borg (2004) 1–9; Leader-Newby (2005).

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patterns of the imperial art of the Roman west merged with the visual traditions and cultural ethos of Asia Minor. Abstraction continued to serve as a mode for the intensification of meaning, but it served beneath other modes of visual expression. With Theodosian art came a coherent visual system based on the idealising principles of Late-Classical art. It was expanded in the beginning of the 6th century, and further reinforced in the age of Justinian, when artistic workshops developed a new mediality of visual expression through hybrid compositions, shifting materials, and meaningful allusions within in elaborate rhetorical frameworks. New sensibilities in the perception and use of figures and shapes found expression in the favouring of media such as gold and silver, in effects of light, and in performative conceptions of the human form. Biblical and liturgical narratives became emotional and emphatic enactments set on stage. The formation of Byzantine art in the Justinianic era is signally revealed in its definitions of earthly, heavenly and allegorical space.

References Andaloro (2002a): Andaloro, M. (2002a), “Le icone a Roma in età preiconoclasta”, in Roma fra Oriente e Occidente, 2 (Settimane di studio del Centro Italiano di Studi sull’Alto Medioevo, 49), Spoleto, 719–753. Andaloro (2002b): Andaloro, M. (2002b), “Vom Portrait zur Ikone”, in M. Andaloro and S. Romano (eds.), Römisches Mittelalter. Kunst und Kultur in Rom von der Spätantike bis Giotto, Regensburg, 23–54. Baldovin (1987): Baldovin, J.F. (1987), The urban character of Christian worship. The origins, development, and meaning of stational liturgy, Rome. Barber ( 2000): Barber, C. ( 2000), “Early representations of the Mother of God”, in M. Vassilaki (ed.), Mother of God. Representations of the Virgin in Byzantine art, Athens, 253–261. Bardill (2006): Bardill, J. (2006), “A new temple for Byzantium: Anicia Juliana, King Salomon, and the gilded ceiling of the church of St Polyeuktos in Constantinople”, in W. Bowden, A. Gutteridge and C. Machado (eds), Social and political life in late antiquity, Leiden, 339–370. Bardill (2011):Bardill, J. (2011), “L’église Saint-Polyeucte à Constantinople: nouvelle solution pour l´énigme de sa réconstitution”, in J.-M. Spieser (ed.), Architecture paléochrétienne, Gollion, 77–158. Barsanti & Guilglia (2010): Barsanti C. and A. Guiglia (2010), The sculptures of the Ayasofya Muzesi in Istanbul. A short guide, Istanbul. Bassett (2004): Bassett, S. (2004), The urban image of late antique Constantinople, Cambridge. Bassett (2008): Bassett, S. (2008), “Style and meaning in the imperial panels at San Vitale”, Artibus et historiae 57 (29), 49–57. Bassett (2014): Bassett, S. (2014), “Late antique honorific sculpture in Constantinople”, in S. Birk (ed.), Using images in late antiquity, Oxford, 78–95. Berndt & Drügh (2009): Berndt, F. and H. Drügh (eds) (2009), Symbol. Grundlagentexte aus Ästhetik, Poetik und Kulturwissenschaft, Frankfurt am Main. Bertelli (1961): Bertelli, C. (1961), La Madonna di Santa Maria in Trastevere, Roma. Borg (2004): Borg, B. (2004), Paideia: the world of the second sophistic, (Millenium-Studien, 2), Berlin & New York.

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Boschung & Eck (2006): Boschung, D. and W. Eck (2006), Die Tetrarchie als Botschaft der Bildmedien. Ein neues Regierungssystem und seine mediale Präsentation, Wiesbaden. Brandenburg (2013): Brandenburg, H. (2013), Die frühchristlichen Kirchen in Rom vom 4. bis zum 7. Jahrhundert, Regensburg. Brenk (2010): Brenk, B. (2010), The apse, the image and the icon. An historical perspective of the apse as a space for images, Wiesbaden. Bruns (1935): Bruns, G.(1935), Der Obelisk und seine Basis auf dem Hippodrom zu Konstantinopel, Istanbul. Clédat (1906): Clédat, J. (1906), Le monastère et la nécropole de Baouit, Paris. Croke (2010): Croke, B. (2010), “Reinventing Constantinople: Theodosius I’s imprint on the imperial city”, in S. McGill (ed.), From the Tetrarchs to the Theodosians, Cambridge, 241–264. Ćurčić (2011): Ćurčić, S. (2011), “Aesthetic shifts in late antique art. Abstraction, dematerialization, and two-dimensionality”, in A. Lazaridou (ed.), Transition to Christianity. Art of late antiquity, 3rd-7th century AD, New York, 67–73. Deichmann et al. (1981): Deichmann, F.W. , J. Kramer and U. Peschlow (eds) (1981), Corpus der Kapitelle der Kirche von San Marco zu Venedig, (Forschungen zur Kunstgeschichte und Christlichen Archäologie, 12), Wiesbaden. Deliyannis (2010): Deliyannis, D.M. (2010) Ravenna in late antiquity, Cambridge. Färber (2014): Färber, R. (2014), Römische Gerichtsorte. Räumliche Dynamiken von Jurisdiktion im Imperium Romanum, München. Fıratlı (1990): Fıratlı, N. (1990) La sculpture byzantine figurée au Musée Archéologique d’Istanbul, Paris. Fischer-Lichte (2012): Fischer-Lichte, E. (2012), Performativität. Eine Einführung, Bielefeld. Forlati Tamaro et al. (1980): Forlati Tamaro, B. et al. (eds) (1980), Da Aquileia a Venezia, Milano. Ganz (2008): Ganz, D. (2008), Medien der Offenbarung. Visionsdarstellungen im Mittelalter, Berlin. Hadermann-Misguich (1975): Hadermann-Misguich, L. (1975), Kurbinovo. Les fresques de Saint-George et la peinture byzantine du XII et siècle, Bruxelles. Harrison (1986): Harrison, R.M. (1986), Excavations at Saraçhane in Istanbul, 1, Princeton. Harrison (1989): Harrison, R.M. (1989), A temple for Byzantium: the discovery and excavation of Anicia Juliana’s palace-church in Istanbul, London. Kakko (2011): Kakko, V.-E. (2011), Die Gebälkstücke der frühbyzantinischen Polyeuktoskirche in Istanbul. Zur Rekonstruktion der Exedren des Naos, (unpubl. MA thesis, Institut für Archäologische Wissenschaften, Abt. Christliche Archäologie und Byzantinische Kunstgeschichte), Freiburg. Kitzinger (1963): Kitzinger, E. (1963), “The Hellenistic heritage in Byzantine art”, DOP 17, 100–104. Kitzinger (1977): Kitzinger, E. (1977), Byzantine art in the making, London. Kollwitz & Herdejürgen (1979): Kollwitz, J. and H. Herdejürgen (1979), Die ravennatischen Sarkophage, (Die antiken Sarkophagreliefs, 8:2), Berlin. Kraft (1967): Kraft, H. (ed.) (1967), Eusebius von Caesarea, Kirchengeschichte, München. Kunze (1992): Kunze, M. (1992), Die Antikensammlung im Pergamonmuseum und in Charlottenburg, Mainz. Leader-Newby (2005): Leader-Newby, R. (2005), “Personifications and paideia in late antique mosaics from the Greek East”, in E. Stafford and J. Herrin (eds), Personification in the Greek world. From antiquity to Byzantium, Ashgate, 231–246. Leppin & Portmann (1998): Leppin, H. and W. Portmann (eds) (1998), Themistios, Staatsreden. Übersetzung, Einführung und Erläuterungen von H. Leppin und W. Portmann, (Bibliothek der griechischen Literatur), Stuttgart. MacCormack (1981): MacCormack, S. (1981), Art and ceremony in late antiquity, Berkeley, Los Angeles & London. Manafis (1990): Manafis, K.A. (1990), Sinai. Treasures of the monastery of Saint Catherine, Athens.

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Maguire (1981): Maguire, H. (1981), Art and eloquence in Byzantium, Princeton. Maguire (2007): Maguire, H. (2007), Image and imagination in Byzantine art, Ashgate. McKenzie (2007): McKenzie, J. (2007), The architecture of Alexandria and Egypt: c. 300 B.C. to A.D. 700, New Haven, Conn. Megaw & Hawkins (1977): Megaw, A.H.S. and E.J.W. Hawkins (1977), The church of the Panagia Kanakariá at Lythrankomi in Cyprus, Dumbarton Oaks. Meier (2003): Meier, M. (2003), Das andere Zeitalter Justinians. Kontingenzerfahrung und Kontingenzbewältigung im 6. Jahrhundert n. Chr., Göttingen. Ousterhout (2010): Ousterhout, R.G. (2010), “New Temples and New Solomons: The Rhetoric of Byzantine Architecture”, In P. Magdalino and R. Nelson (eds), The Old Testament in Byzantium. Washington D.C, 223–253. Panella (2011): Panella, C. (ed.) (2011), I segni del potere. Realià e immaginario della sovranità nella Roma imperiale, Bari. Peschlow-Bindokat (2005): Peschlow-Bindokat, A. (2005), Herakleia am Latmos. Stadt und Umgebung; eine karische Gebirglandschaft. Mit einem Beitrag von Urs Peschlow und Volker Honfeld, (Homer Archaeological Guides, 3), Istanbul. Pfeilschifter (2013): Pfeilschifter, R. (2013), Der Kaiser und Konstantinopel. Kommunikation und Konfliktaustrag in einer spätantiken Metropole, (Millennium-Studien, 44), Berlin. Pfister (2011): Pfister, U. (ed.) (2011), Metzler Lexikon Kunstwissenschaft, Stuttgart & Weimar. Rebenich (1991): Rebenich, S. (1991), “Zum Theodosiusobelisken von Konstantinopel”, IstMitt 41, 447–478. Schollmeyer (1960): Schollmeyer, Ch. (ed.) (1960), Hymnen der Ostkirche. Dreifaltigkeits-, Marien-und Totenhymnen, Münster. Stichel (1982): Stichel, R.H.W. (1982), Die römische Kaiserstatue am Ausgang der Antike. Untersuchungen zum plastischen Kaiserporträt seit Valentinian I, 364-375 n. Chr., Rom. Vassiliaki (2000): Vassilaki, M. (ed.) (2000), Mother of God Representations of the Virgin in Byzantine art, Athens. Warland (2002): Warland, R. (2002), “Die Gegenwart des Heils. Strategien der Vergegenwärtigung in der frühbyzantinischen Kunst”, in R. Warland (ed.), Bildlichkeit und Bildorte von Liturgie: Schauplätze in Spätantike, Byzanz und Mittelalter, Wiesbaden, 51–74. Weitzmann (1966): Weitzmann, K. (1966), “The mosaics in St Caterine’s monastery on Mount Sinai”, PAPS 110, 392–405. Weitzmann (1976): Weitzmann, K. (1976), The icons. I. From the sixth to the tenth century, Princeton. Weitzmann & Kessler (1986): Weitzmann, K. and H.L. Kessler (1986), The Cotton Genesis: British Library Codex Cotton Otho b. VI, (The illustrations in the manuscripts of the Septuagint, 1), Princeton. Wiegand (1913): Wiegand, Th. (ed.) (1913), Der Latmos (Milet, 3:1), Berlin. Worringer (1908/2007): Worringer, W. (1908/2007), Abstraktion und Einfühlung, H. Grebig (ed.), Paderborn & München.

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Fig. 6.1: Pignatta sarcophagus; Ravenna, Braccioforte; photo R. Warland.

Fig. 6.2: Obelisk base of Theodosius I, Istanbul; photo R. Warland.

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Fig. 6.3: Church of St Polyeuktos, Istanbul: graphic reconstruction of middle exedra from parts of entablature; graphic V. Kakko.

Fig. 6.4: Church of St Polyeuktos, Istanbul: reconstruction of entablature above pillars; graphic V. Kakko.

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Fig. 6.5: Piazetta San Marco, Venice: reconstruction of pillars ("Kopfstücke") from St Polyeuktos (without scale); graphic R. Warland.

Fig. 6.6: Church of St Polyeuktos, Istanbul: axonometric reconstruction of exedra; graphic V. Kakko.

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Fig. 6.7: Chapel 28 at Bawit, Egypt: apse decoration; after Clédat (1906) pl. XCVIII.

Fig. 6.8: Cotton Genesis, fol. 18 r (Peiresc); Paris cod. fr. 9550 fol. 13 r; after Weitzmann & Kessler (1986) pl. I,2.

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Fig. 6.9: Painting in Pantokrator cave, Latmos Mountains; after Wiegand (1913) Taf. 1.

Fig. 6.10: Icon of the Virgin with Sts Theodor and George, Monastery of St Catherine at Mount Sinai; after Weitzmann (1976) pl. IV.

Cecilia Olovsdotter

7 Architecture and the Spheres of the Universe in Late Antique Art In late antique art, abstract concepts are not exclusively expressed through abstraction of form or a renouncement of physical reality. On the contrary, they are often conveyed through forms and motifs derived from actual and physical models, natural or created, but now charged with a stronger and sometimes new symbolic content. Architectural motifs such as arches, portals, arcades, pedimented fronts, aedicules, baldachins and other domed structures are a prominent example of this. Architectural motifs had always been an integral part of Roman art tradition, and to some extent also of the art of the Hellenistic East, but from the second half of the 3rd century CE they become a ubiquitously present component of Mediterranean visual culture. In the Roman Empire, architectural representations had appeared in commemorative and religious art, on coinage, and, in more imaginary form, in wall-painting: on triumphal arches, columns and other imperial monumental programmes (notable examples of which include the so-called Aurelian relief panels from an unknown monument honouring Marcus Aurelius’ victories1), on funerary and votive monuments, as defining elements of the Pompeian styles II-IV in RomanCampanian wall-painting (c. 90 BCE-79 CE), and on architectural relief tiles of the Campana type (notably from the Augustan period). Theatrical scaenae frontes, considered to be the primary source of inspiration for the Pompeian styles, displayed a visual approach towards conceptualising architecture that was also exemplified in the monumental façade programmes of the library of Celsus at Ephesos (135) and the Septizonium (c. 203) and “Arch of Janus” (c. 300–350) in Rome (Fig. 7.8). Following and expanding on these partly overlapping “architectural traditions” of art, architectural motifs now appear in innumerable works celebrating events of a transitional, cyclic or status-related nature in the lives of individuals, social and public groups, the state and the empire – imperial victories, accessions and jubilees, official appointments, deaths, betrothals, etc. – and they are adapted on a large scale by Christianity to express its notions of status, victory and immortality. Architectural motifs, or imaged architecture, very much form part of the universal language of Late Roman and Early Byzantine art, shared by East and West and by secular and sacral contexts. Their proliferation and variegation in this particular period may doubtless be explained by their suitability for the hieratic and abstracted modes of representation that were now

1 The eleven preserved relief panels, of which six include more or less detailed architectural backdrops, are believed to have belonged to a city-Roman monument commemorating Marcus Aurelius’ victories over the Marcomanni and Sarmatians in 169–176, and are distributed between the Arch of Constantine and the Palazzo dei Conservatori in Rome. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110546842-008

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developed, i.e. by their usefulness in the creation of symbolic art. Formally defined, they constitute frameworks that serve to structuralise imagery into well-ordered and meaningful patterns, and to provide idealised physical and spatial settings for, typically, human or divine figures engaged in some significant act, presiding in state, or appearing in effigial manifestation; conceptually defined, they serve to signal precedence, exclusivity, elevation and majesty, and to infuse the overall imagery with a sense of momentousness, glory and eternity. Representations of actual buildings do of course occur, notably (following Roman tradition) in the narrative programmes of triumphal monuments and in artworks with topographical subjects – the Constantinian frieze on the Arch of Constantine in Rome and the mid 6th-century floor mosaics in the church of Hagios Georgios at Madaba (mod. Jordania) are two examples that can be mentioned2 – but they make up a small minority of the whole, and, in conformity with the general artistic trend of the period, present abstracted and symbolically modified versions of their prototypes. In late-antique visual conceptions of architecture, the role of physical architecture is certainly fundamental:3 built and imaged architecture are mutually reflective, constituting different dimensional aspects of the same visual language, different expressions of a common architectural perception. But imaged architecture, especially architectural motifs and themes unrelated or only generically associated with specific built prototypes, allows the viewer or “experiencer” a clearer, more substantive insight into the symbolic and ideational meanings that were attributed to architecture in its various contexts of usage. Some motifs, such as the arch, pedimented front and dome, were of course traditionally connoted with certain contextually determined ideas, beliefs and practices, and thus infused with more specific associations and symbolisms – symbolisms that took on partly new aspects as the culture of Roman antiquity underwent Christianisation. The pictorial language of architecture developed in late antiquity is rich, coherent and consistent, offering instructive yet hitherto largely neglected illustrations of the conceptual processes by which concrete and abstract, representational and symbolic, are mediated and integrated in the period’s art.4 2 Other types of architectural representations associated with specific built structures include miniature models of churches in ecclesiastical founder or donor imagery (e.g. the model of a central church in the hands of the founder archbishop Ecclesius in the apse mosaic of San Vitale, Ravenna) and the many visual references in various media to the church of the Holy Sepulchre with the Anastasis and Aedicula in Jerusalem (exemplified by the “Resurrection” ivory-panel (Fig. 7.10) and various Palestinian pilgrim ampullae). 3 Partly contra Lampl, who seemingly considered early and medieval Christian architectural representations – the focus of his analysis – to have been more or less conceptually detached from built architecture, and instead dictated by “the mind of the late antique artist”; Lampl (1961) 7–10 esp. 4 The specialised literature on architectural motifs in Roman, particularly Late-Roman and EarlyByzantine, visual culture is rather limited, largely of an older date, and mostly concerned with the depictive aspects (or lack thereof) of specific architectural representations, i.e. whether they may be

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In the following I will consider the most frequently used architectural motifs in late-antique visual culture, and discuss how they have been employed to convey ideas and beliefs about the structure, composition and interconnection of the world and the universe.

Architecture in late antique art: A brief overview Late-antique imaged architecture includes single as well as complex forms, and composite creations including different architectural motifs are not uncommon. Typically, one or several symbols of an emblematic, semi-figural kind accompany the structures; these will be treated in a separate subsection.

Pedimented front, aedicule, arched fastigium A single architectural unit such as a columned and pedimented front or aedicule provides a perfect frame for elevated state, as it evokes a temple with its god enthroned inside: in the “earthly” compartment below, columns frame a hieratically posing deity or personage; in the “heavenly” compartment above,5 a pediment frames and/ or supports deities and other celestial and perennial entities in the form of sculpted figures and acroteria. The concept, which can be described as an ideogram for manifest divinity, had, in its simplest and most pervasive formula, been developed on identified – despite “incorrections” in the translation prototype-visual copy – with specific buildings and building types: e.g. Castagnoli (1941); Dyggve (1941); Krautheimer (1942) (dealing with architectonic as well as imaged reproductions of built originals, mainly medieval); Bendinelli (1956); Egger (1959); Duval (1965); Duval (1978); Billig (1977); and more recently e.g. Golvin (2008b) (presenting a critical approach to the “methodology” of reconstructing Roman architectural monuments from images); and Carile (2011). Apart from Lampl (1961) (see supra n. 3), conceptual (perceptual, ideal, symbolical) considerations of late-antique and early-medieval architectural representations have been presented by e.g. Torp (2002a) (relating to the architectural mosaic zone in Hagios Georgos in Thessaloniki), and a number of scholars dealing with architectural motifs on funerary monuments, such as Altmann (1902); Elderkin (1935); Goldman (1966); Haarløv (1977); Davies (1978); Bisconti & Mazzei (2013); and also Elsner (2013) 189–201 (relating to the representation of St Peter’s tomb on the Pola casket). The architectural frames that are a regular feature of the consular diptychs and related works have been touched upon by Gabelmann (1978); and more comprehensively analysed by Olovsdotter (Olovsdotter (2005) 157–178 esp.; also Olovsdotter (2011) 117 esp.; and Olovsdotter (2012). For the presence and significances of architecture in Byzantine art, primarily medieval and religious, see especially and most recently Ćurčić & Hadjitryphonos (2010); and on micro-architecture within medieval ecclesiastical contexts more specifically, Kratzke & Albrecht (2008); and Bogdanović (2017), 177–240 esp. 5 For the heavenly interpretation of the pediment and tympanum, see notably Hommel (1957); also Grabar (1967) 76.

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Roman coinage,6 and it appears with increasing frequency in commemorative (imperial, triumphal, official, funerary) and religious (polytheistic, Christian) art from the 2nd century onwards. Generally speaking, the pedimented front and aedicule, with their close associations to sacral buildings, express exclusivity, containment, stillness, the suspension of time and the physical laws of earthly existence. The sphere encased in them, as it were, can be understood as a portion of eternity set aside and above from the ordinary world, and the figure or scene framed by it is endowed with an epiphanous quality. In the thirteenth folio of the Chronography of the year 354 (Fig. 7.1),7 an illuminated calendar conceived with the ambition to encompass all aspects of Roman time, empire and cosmos, the emperor Constantius II was represented in the capacity of imperial consul, nimbate and frontally enthroned on a sella curulis, beneath an abstracted front with curtains pulled aside as if to reveal his divine person in its sanctum. On the triangular tympanum was an archivolt – a reductive version of the arched pediment that became a signature feature of late-antique palatial architecture (see below) – enclosing a shell (concha), an immortality symbol that proliferated in Roman art from the 3rd century,8 and in the space above the cornice were two radiate discs to indicate the cosmic sphere and the solar association of imperial power.9 A similar composition is found in some consular diptychs of Flavius Anastasius created in Constantinople some hundred-and-sixty years later (Fig. 7.14). The arched pediment or fastigium variously referred to as Syrian, palatial and ceremonial10 that appears on the famous silver missorium of Theodosius I (Fig. 7.2), created in Constantinople (?) in celebration of the emperor’s decennalia on the East-Roman throne in 388,11 fuses a tetrastyle and pedimented front and an arched 6 On the non-specific and symbolic character of Late-Roman coin types specifically, see notably Dumser (2006); and Elkins (2015) 131–140 esp. Valuable contributions on architectural representations on Roman coins, albeit largely monument-oriented, include Fuchs (1969) 47–129 esp.; Hill (1984) (Late-Roman coins); and Hill (1989). 7 Rome, 354 (lost original); the copy analysed here is that made for Peiresc in 1620 from the then still extant Carolingian Codex Luxemburgensis; Vatican, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, inv. Romanus 1 MS, Barb.lat. 2154; Stern (1953) 14–41; and Salzman (1990) 70–73. 8 See further Architecture and symbols below. 9 On the solar association of Late-Imperial power and ceremonial, see Halsberghe (1972); Salzman (1990) 149–153; Carile (2003) 27, 30; Berrens (2004); and Löhr (2007); in visual culture, see L’Orange (1953); L’Orange (1973); Matern (2002); and Bergmann (2006). 10 Among others; further denominations include arched pediment, arcuated entablature, Syrian arch-gable, Syrian entablature, arcuated lintel and serliana. For an overview of the fastigium terminology used in modern literature, see Parada López de Corselas (2012b) 182–186; also Parada López de Corselas (2012a) 563–565. 11 Madrid, Real Academia de la Historia. The attribution to Theodosius I and the tenth anniversary of his reign is the most common and plausible, and based on the legend inscribed along the plate’s rim, translated as “Our lord Theodosius, emperor in perpetuity, on the very felicitous day [of the] ten[th year of his reign]”.

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entrance into a scheme that simultaneously refers to a temple and a triumphal arch. It is widely recognised as a reductive representation of an imperial palace,12 of which the arched fastigium was a standard feature in this period: the palatia at Spalatum, Constantinople and Ravenna all had one, located within the palace compounds and fronted by peristyle courts, and it recurred as an “imperial” theme in the great church basilicas of the period; thus in the Constantinian Lateran basilica in Rome, where it had the form of a statued screen set up between nave and apse, and in the Theodosian basilica of Hagia Sophia in Constantinople, where it served as an imperial entrance (propylaeum) into the church from the west.13 As a palatial structure, the arched fastigium served both as boundary and a triumphal passageway between the outer and inner spaces of the palatial compound, and also as a tribunal from whence the emperor could preside over his court and subjects. In an image, an imperial figure seated beneath or in front of an arched fastigium may be understood as presiding in his palace, the absolute centre of imperial power and authority in late antiquity, and a sacral abode for the divine imperial family (domus divina).14 As illustrated by the Theodosian missorium, the characteristic scheme with a central arch flanked by two lower intercolumniations is perfectly suited for the representation of hierarchical

12 Some have suggested that the fastigium on Theodosius’ missorium was modelled after a specific prototype, the entrance façade in the peristyle court of Diocletian’s palace at Spalatum (Split), some other imperial palatium of the period, or the Theodosian west façade of Hagia Sophia in Constantinople; e.g. Delbrueck (1929) 3–5; Dyggve (1941) 37f; Brown (1942) 396f; De Francovich (1970) 22; Kiilerich (2000) 276f; Meischner (2000) 248f; Leader-Newby (2004) 33f. An alternative suggestion is that it reflects the architecture of the (or a) palatial consistorium, i.e. an interior structure/space; Kiilerich (1993) 22; Herrmann-Otto (2006) 437. On the symbolic values associated with the fastigium as a palatial scheme in late antique art, see e.g. Kiilerich (2000) 276; Olovsdotter (2005) 166f; and González (2013) 93. 13 Whereas the palatial fastigium at Spalatum (Split) (c. 300) is still in situ, the Ravennese fastigium is documented through the famous palatium mosaic decorating the nave wall of Sant’ Apollinare Nuovo (505/547), and the tribunal or ceremonial porch in the Delphax (peristyle court) of the Great Palace of Constantinople more lately graphically reconstructed as part of the Byzantium 1200 project (2003–2010; A. Tayfun Öner) clearly using the Split fastigium as prototype: http:// www.byzantium1200.com/greatpalace.html. On the forms and functions of the tetrastyle, arched and pedimented front in late-antique palatia, see most recently Dey (2015) 49–52 esp. As for fastigia in imperial churches, the fastigium screen in the Lateran basilica in Rome is attested through literary sources only (for reconstructions, see notably Teasdale Smith (1970) with Fig. 3; and De Blaauw (2001) with Fig. 1–2; see also Brenk in this volume), whereas the standard graphic reconstruction of the Theodosian entrance façade to the Hagia Sophia is based on archaeological remains on the site (e.g. Grabar (1966) 82 Fig. 87; Müller-Wiener (1977) 84–86; Dark & Kostenec (2012) with Fig. 1–2. 14 On the Late-Imperial house as domus divina, see e.g. Martin (1997) 48f. On the association of the Late-Imperial palace with a temple, see Treitinger (1938) 50f; Smith (1956) 180f esp.; and MacCormack (1981) 25, 296. On the sacrality of the imperial palace and the cultic status of the emperor residing within it, see e.g. Matschke (2002) 151–155; Carile (2003) 27f; and Unruh (2003) 34, 36–38.

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relationships, here within the ruler triunity of Theodosius I and his co-emperors in the year commemorated by the plate (388).15

Arch, portal, arcuated niche The arch and portal essentially signal liminality and passage: transition, transcendence, and the bridging or linking of two spheres or spatio-temporal segments. A figure standing beneath an arch or in a portal (an arch or doorway integrated into some composite and/or monumentalising structure) can be understood as passing or having just passed through it, as temporarily inhabiting an intermediate stage, or as having transcended from one place, scene, sphere or state to another. In Roman culture, as is well known, the arch came to be intimately associated with triumph and triumphal ceremonial, as manifested by the monumental triumphal arches erected in Rome and other imperial cities. In the consular diptych of Probus (406) (Fig. 7.3),16 which represents the emperor Honorius, displaying the physical attributes of Mars and the triumphal insignia of the Christian conqueror, treading through a classically ornamented arch in the manner of a victorious emperor in the traditional adventus, a ceremony that ideally inaugurated a new era of prosperity in the history of Rome and her people.17 In the diptych of Probus, which is the only preserved consular diptych to represent not the consul himself but his appointer, the consular inauguration on the New Year is rephrased as, or rather assimilated with, the inauguration of a new golden era through an imperial triumph. The same associations, but more directly referring to consulship and consular inauguration ceremonial, can be attributed to the arch framing the eastern consul Areobindus in one of his commemorative diptychs from 506 (Fig. 7.4),18 where, significantly and (as far as I know) uniquely, the visual formula of the arch-framed consul reappears as two minute insets on the

15 In 388 the co-Augusti of Theodosius I were Valentinian II (West) and Arcadius (East), whereas his younger son Honorius was Caesar of the West. 16 Rome or North Italy, 406; Aosta, Museo del Tesoro della Cattedrale di Aosta; Delbrueck (1929) 84–87 N 1, Taf. 1; Volbach (1976) 29f Nr. 1, Taf. 1; Olovsdotter (2005) 168 esp., Pl. 14. 17 On the ceremonial and symbolical correspondences between triumph, adventus and consular accession, see Versnel (1970) 356–380, 371–373; MacCormack (1981) 52–55; McCormick (1986) 85–89; Künzl (1988) 106, 129; and Benoist (2005) 195–308. Under Honorius specifically, see also Claud., IV. Cons. Hon. 361–425 (relating Honorius’ consular adventus into Rome in 404). On the symbolic association of the city-gate and the triumphal arch, see e.g. Smith (1956) 22–39. On the interpretation of the arch in Probus’ diptych specifically, see Delbrueck (1929) 85 (tribunal in a military compound (!)); Olovsdotter (2005) 168 esp. (symbolic conflation of city-gate and triumphal arch). 18 Constantinople, 506; Paris, Musée du Moyen-Âge – Cluny; Delbrueck (1929) 112f N 11, Taf. 11; Volbach (1976) 33 Nr. 10, Taf. 5; Olovsdotter (2005) 41f no. 9 C, Pl. 9:3 a.

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perpendicular front-fold of the trabea.19 Ever since the consulate’s institution with the Roman Republic in the late 6th century BCE, the consuls’ entry into office on the New Year had been conceived as an entry, directly modelled on triumphal ceremonial20; like the triumph, the consular inauguration represented the beginning of a new cycle (here annual) and a ritual celebration of victory, prosperity and regeneration in the life of the Roman state, empire and people. And through their appointment, the consuls entered the annals, thus immortality in the collective memory, of Rome.21 A cosmic conceptualisation of the arch could be witnessed in the section devoted to the astrological week in the Chronography of 354 (fol. 8–12),22 where the personifications of the seven planets each appeared within a “triumphal arch” composed of two wide piers (inscribed with the nocturnal and diurnal lists of the respective day) spanned by an ornate archivolt and complemented by two corner acroteria in the form of each planet’s imago clipeata; to enforce the triumphal associations of the arch, it was supported by atlantes in the form captive “Goths”, suggesting the cosmic movements are sustained by Roman victory and dominion. The architectural scheme, which also displayed structural affinities with the arched fastigium (an imperial motif), fittingly centred around the theme of arriving and passing, and the “triumphant” opening of a new cosmic (here circadian) cycle. On funerary stelae and sarcophagi throughout the Hellenistic, Roman and Early Byzantine periods, the commemorated dead regularly appear beneath the archivolt of shrine-like portals to indicate that they have passed from the world of the living into the tomb, the intermediate stage between life and afterlife (immortality, Paradise). In the same way, a Christian personage standing within an arch or portal, such as St Menas on a well-known 6th-century ivory pyxis in the British Museum23 and St Paul on a 6th-century Syrian silver-plaque in the Metropolitan Museum of Art (Fig. 7.5),24 can

19 Insets (segmenta, purpura) with imperial images – technically effigies – were a common, in some cases obligatory, feature of Late-Roman official costume. For imperial imagines on official insignia and their substitutional functions in official proceedings, see DarSag IV:2, 1172–1175 s.v. “Segmentum” (V. Chapot); DarSag III:1, 406f s.v. “Imago” (E. Courbaud); Kruse (1934) 100–112; Berger (1981) 32–34, 189 esp.; McCormick (1986) 66–68 and n. 89; Olovsdotter (2005) 71–83 passim, 93f, 184, 194–196. 20 Versnel (1970) 95–98, 129–131, 302f, 374f; MacCormack (1981) 52–55; McCormick (1986) 84–91 esp.; Künzl (1988) 106, 129; Rüpke (1990) 231; and Olovsdotter (2005) 184–189 esp. 21 The Fasti consulares, named for the two annually appointed consuls (consules ordinarii), had since the beginning of the Republic served as the public record against which the Romans measured time and registered historical events. On the association of the consulate with the concept of continuity in late antiquity, see e.g. Engemann (1988) 111f; Bowes (2001) 347–353; and Olovsdotter (2005) 197–202. 22 Only five of the seven days folios remain in copy; Stern (1953) Pl. V-VII; Salzman (1990) Fig. 8–12. 23 London, British Museum inv. 1879, 1220.1. Found in the vicinity of San Paolo fuori le Mura in Rome, and variously attributed to Egypt and Constantinople; e.g. Volbach (1976) Nr. 181; Weitzmann (1979) 575f No. 514; Spätantike und frühes Christentum (1983) Nr. 176; Buckton (1994) No. 65. 24 New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art, inv. 50.5.1 (a pendant plaque, inv. 50.5.2, shows St Peter); Kaper Koraon or Antioch (Syria), 550–600. Weitzmann (1979) 618f No. 554; Frazer (1979); Frazer (1992)

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be understood as having crossed the threshold between physical and eternal life25 and, being channels between man and God, as simultaneously inhabiting that threshold. On the silver plaque, an official-looking Paul poses beneath an archivolt formed of a triumphal wreath (corona laurea triumphalis) with its characteristic central jewel (here in the form of a minuscule wreath-encircled cross) in reference to his triumph over death,26 whereas peacocks, a symbol of apotheosis and Paradise,27 perch in the spandrels above. In the Roman tradition, the celestial connotation of the arch is pre-eminently represented by the intradotes of triumphal arches, which were habitually coffered and studded with rosette-shaped stars. With or without star-rosettes, the many coffered ceilings of arches, vaults, domes and apses in Roman monumental (sacral, palatial, memorial) architecture can be said to provide abstracted visualisations of the perfect shape, harmony and infinity of heaven.28 The star-spangled vault is a motif endlessly reproduced and varied in Late Roman and Byzantine art. In the 5th- to 6th-century churches in Rome and Ravenna, the mosaics on the triumphal arches and apse conchs amply illustrate the arch’s association with the heavenly vault and, by extension, with transition and transcendence: the transcendence of Christ, his apostles and saints into heaven (Paradise, eternity). Thus in the apse conch of Santa Pudenziana, where Christ presides over his apostles beneath a Golgotha cross set against a rainbow-tinted sky inhabited by the Tetramorph; in the apse conch of San Vitale, where Christ presides in majesty on a cosmic orb among angels, saints and bishops, and with paradisiacal verdure beneath and rainbow-tinted clouds above; and in Sant’Apollinare in Classe, where a cosmic system incorporating one paradisaic and four celestial sections ornament the apse conch and the façade of the triumphal arch, the whole composition centered around a large starry circle enclosing a crux gemmata set with the imago clipeata of Christ. Another emblematic Ravennese example is the starry sky ornamenting the intrados of the apse vault in the so-called mausoleum of Galla Placidia, and framing a lunette representing Christ as the good shepherd in Paradise. In a smaller format,

72f esp., Fig. 7 (and 4); Mundell Mango (1986) 199–205 Nos. 44–45 (Paul and Peter); Crippa & Zibawi (1998) 423 Fig. 397 (Peter). 25 Cf. Kitzinger’s interpretation of the arches framing a cross that appears on two 6th-century silver book-cover plaques from the Sion treasure in the Dumbarton Oaks Collection as a celestial gate or a gate to Paradise; Kitzinger (1974) 13f. 26 Compare Effenberger’s interpretation of an archivolt ornamented with a laurel garland as a symbol for immortality; Effenberger (1975–1976) 140. See further infra n. 75. 27 See further under Architecture and symbols. 28 Cf. notably Lehmann (1945); Hautecoeur (1954) (65f esp.); and Giedion (1971) 150–154. For a complementary and very elucidating discussion of the early Christian conceptualisation of heaven as an iconographic translation of the heavenly vault perceptible by the human eye (“le ciel visible”, “optique”) on the one hand and a visualisation of the unseen, ideal heaven where God resides (“le ciel invisible”, “symbolique”, “scientifique”) on the other, i.e. one lower-real and one upper-abstract (curvilinear or disc-shaped) stratum, see Grabar (1982) 5–16. For a useful overview of the celestial interpretation of the dome and the barrel-vault among early Christian writers, see Schleißheimer (1959) 16–24.

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canon tables such as those in the 6th-century Rabbula gospels and the London canon tables29 are shaped, after the by then established Eusebian formula, as large arches enclosing two to four smaller arches framing concordant gospel passages, the lunettes between major and minor archivolts being rendered as abstracted variations on the heavenly vault. Thus, for instance, “heaven” in the canon table of folio 4 v of the Rabbula gospels30 is conceived as a stylised coffer-and-star pattern on a golden ground with a solar disc affixed at its centre, concluded above by a rainbow-coloured “corona” supporting “acroteria” in the form of birds, trees, discs and a cup – symbols of Paradise and regeneration. Representing an opening into the New Testament, a portal through which the reader is symbolically inducted into the Christian creed, the smaller arches of this and similar Eusebian schemes designate openings into the evangelists’ accounts, the four paths in one that the Christian believer undertakes to follow in order to achieve the immortality promised at the summit of the greater arch.31

Arcade, niche arcade Arcades appear on many late-antique monuments and in artworks of all formats and materials. Being basically an arch multiplied, the arcade lends itself perfectly to schemes comprising several figures and/or symbolic motifs. It may variously serve to emphasise the action-direction of a composition, indicate the narrative order between scenic sections, impose a hierarchically determined system, or, in the case of multi-figured schemes without narrative continuity, simply provide a monumentalising and visually unifying framework. As countless examples show, the arcade, niche arcade and the related portico motif were considered as optimal frames for ceremonial imagery, something which doubtless reflected the functions served by “real” arcades and porticoes as frames or backdrops for ceremonial action in the imperial palaces, church basilicas and urban centres of the period.32

29 Respectively Syria, 586; Florence, Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana, inv. cod. Plut. I, 56; and Constantinople (?), 6th-7th century; London, British Library, inv. Add MS 5111. 30 Colour reproduction in e.g. Weitzmann (1977) Pl. 34. 31 Compare the liturgy-oriented variant of this interpretation by Grigoryan (2014) 21 esp. For other interpretations of the architectural framework in late-antique canon tables, nearly all of which postulating a physical prototype, see Nordenfalk (1938) (a reference to the Constantinian tomb Aedicula in the church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem); Underwood (1950) 110–118 esp. (a “Hypothesis tholos”, viz. an adaptation of the Greek tholos that may simultaneously be understood as a temple tomb, a Fountain of Life, and Christ’s tomb/Holy Sepulchre); Bandmann (1966) 16f, 23 (variously a reference to the Christian church and a portal); and Mathews & Sanjian (1991) 173f esp. (a ciborium-like “dwelling” for the biblical salvation mysteries). 32 For a useful discussion of the functions and importance of the porticoed street in late-antique urban contexts and visual representations, see Dey (2015) 65–126.

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The niche arcade with conchae appears with increasing frequency in the commemorative and religious art from the 3rd century, where it habitually accompanies representations of divine and holy figures and the immortalised dead. One illustrative example is the tribute-bearing Victoriae walking in procession against the backdrop of a niche arcade with conchae in a frieze on the great tetrapylon of Galerius in Thessaloniki (303) (Fig. 7.6). The frieze, now heavily eroded, appears in the bottom register on the N-E face of pylon B, the overall visual programme of which is devoted to imperial triumph: (from the top), adventus Augusti, the emperors vanquishing barbarian enemies, the triumphant Tetrarchs enthroned in apotheosis.33 The Victoriae, which appear immediately beneath the apotheotic throne scene, may be interpreted as paying tribute to the emperors in a celestial-palatial setting, i.e. in a transcendental sphere. Another notable example is the façade programme of multiple shellcrowned and colonnette-flanked niches for statues that ornaments the Constantinian (?) quadrifrons or “Arch of Janus” in the Velabrum in Rome (Fig. 7.7),34 a monumental pseudo-triumphal gateway erected across a central street intersection with each of its four sides facing a principal zone in the topography of the Urbs: the Capitol, the Palatine, the Circus Maximus, and the Forum Boarium.35 The keystone figures representing major goddesses of Rome and her empire – Juno (E), Minerva (S), Roma (N)36 – that are still in situ above three of the arched openings indicate the theme of the disappeared niche statuary:37 gods, personifications and/or deified emperors, each standing in a “heavenly gateway” or apse-like shrine. The monument as a whole could be imagined as a Roman pantheon overlooking and interconnecting the four directions of Rome and her worldwide empire. Arcades and niche arcades with conchae are often found on sarcophagi of the late 3rd to 6th centuries, particularly on works produced in Roman Asia and northern Italy (most prominently Sidamara and Ravenna), and they are common in the ecclesiastical art of the 5th and 6th centuries, where they consistently frame ceremonial figure constellations. One prominent example out of many is the ivory cathedra of the Ravennese archbishop Maximianus,38 the seat front of which shows John the Baptist flanked by four apostles standing hieratically in shell-crowned niches; 33 The most thorough analysis of the structure and relief programme of the tetrapylon is offered by Laubscher (1975); but see also e.g. Engemann (1979); and Meyer (1980). 34 Forty-eight niches in all, sixteen of which are blind (N and S façades). 35 The monument is possibly identical with the “arcus Divi Constantini” situated in Regio XI, Circus Maximus as recorded in the mid 4th-century Regionary Catalogues of Rome; e.g. Richardson (1992) 25; and Coarelli (1997) 312. 36 Coarelli has plausibly suggested that the fourth keystone-figure facing west and the Forum Boarium represented Ceres (goddess of agriculture, crops and fertility, thus intimately linked with the prosperity of Rome and her empire); Coarelli (1997) 312. 37 No attempt has otherwise been made, as far as I have been able to determine, to reconstruct the identities of the niche statues. 38 Ravenna or Constantinople, 545–556; Ravenna, Museo Arcivescovile.

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another is the monumental ambo from the church of Hagios Georgios in Thessaloniki (Fig. 7.8)39 with reliefs representing the Magi, the announcing angel and the shepherd of the Nativity in procession towards Mary Theotokos enthroned.40 On the ambo, the ceremonial character of the niche arcade is enhanced by the parted curtains (vela, “veils”) in some of the intercolumniations; a motif associated with boundaries, the concealment or revelation (“unveiling”) of inner spaces (closed vs. open curtains), and palatial ceremonial, and as such suitable for the venerative representation of divine royalty.41 Arcade- and portico-like compositions with alternately straight, arcuated and raking lintels appear on some Christian sarcophagi, among which some monumental so-called Sidamara sarcophagi and two Constantinopolitan slab sarcophagi in the Archaeological Museums of Istanbul,42 and on the bridal silver casket of Proiecta and Secundus from the Esquiline treasure.43 In all these works the formal and ornamental differentiations in the architecture correspond to differentiations in status between the figures/scenes enclosed by the schemes.

Domed structures Baldachins, canopies, ciboria and other domed structures appear in art with increasing frequency from the late 4th century, the cupola often with an external or internal concha (flute-and-fillet) patterning or coffering with or without “stars”. As is well known, the dome had since ancient times been invested with cosmic symbolism.44 Its association with divine and royal power and status is demonstrated by the continuous use of baldachins and canopies as shrines for divinities and ceremonial frames for rulers through the early Near-Eastern, Pharaonic, Hellenistic, Roman, Byzantine, Frankish, Ottonian and Islamic cultures and beyond; a use amply attested in the 39 Thessaloniki or Constantinople, 450–550 (datings vary); Istanbul, İstanbul Arkeoloji Müzeleri inv. 1090 T. 40 The most thorough and convincing analysis of the ambo’s iconographic programme is in my view offered by Warland; Warland (1994). 41 The visual appearances and applications of the curtain motif in late antique images seem largely to have corresponded with contemporary usages of curtains in public and religious contexts. On the palatial use of curtains (vela) to screen off the sacrosanct imperial person from his officials and subjects, see e.g. Treitinger (1938) 55f; Unruh (2003) 36; and Featherstone (2010) 165f and 169. For the use of curtains in the Early- and Middle-Byzantine church, see notably Taft (2006) 40–49; on the religious (Judeo-Christian) use of the curtain as a screen for the sacred, a cosmic or mysterious veil, and a veil between life and afterlife in art, see notably Goodenough (1988) 141, 146, 203f, 212–214. 42 Constantinople, early 6th century; Istanbul, İstanbul Arkeoloji Müzeleri inv. 5423; Pasinli (2010) 143 no. 157, Fig. 157 (the so-called Taşkasap sarcophagus) and inv. 5796 T, representing the Traditio legis and the miracles of Christ respectively. 43 Rome, 330–380 (datings vary); London, British Museum inv. 1866, 1229.1. 44 Lehmann (1945); Giedion (1971) 79, 150–154 esp.; and Smith (1978) 71–94.

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visual record.45 Historically, the Roman rotunda, like the Greek tholos, was either a tomb, temple or shrine, and from the later Empire the building type increasingly came to manifest the idea of the imperial palace and the church as microcosmic reflections of the macrocosm, where, beneath the “dome of heaven”, emperor, court and clergy enacted their divinely ordained roles in an otherworldly sphere of sacrality.46 A domed baldachin, aedicule or ciborium47 encloses a Byzantine empress commonly identified as Ariadne (c. 450–515), spouse of consecutively Zeno (474–491) and Anastasius I (491–518), in one of two related ivory panels attributed to Constantinople and the early 6th century (Fig. 7.9).48 The panel shows the empress standing like a deity in a shrine, and in the full (feminised) ornate of a Late-Roman world ruler, between its supporting columns draped with parted curtains. The architectural ensemble presents a veritable sample card of symbolic references to the imperial house as the sacred abode of triumphal and cosmic rulership: a dome rendered as an inverted concha (symbol of immortality) crowned at the summit by an orb (the orbis caelestis, insignium of cosmic rulership49), finished below with a corona radiata pattern (a solar motif),50 and flanked by acroteria in the form of eagles (imperial symbols of apotheosis)51 holding a corona longa triumphalis (“long triumphal wreath”)52 between their beaks. The curtains in the intercolumniation announce the sacrosanct exclusivity of

45 Weber (1990) provides the outstanding study on the baldachin, canopy and related structures in the ancient world; for the Greek context, see also Miller (1992) (on the related parasol motif); for the Roman and Byzantine context, see Treitinger (1938) 57f esp.; Lehmann (1945) 9–14; Klauser (1961); Smith (1978) 71f, 79–83 esp.; and for the Byzantine context most notably Bogdanović (2017). 46 E.g. Krautheimer (1986) 218f, 486 n. 17 (citing Dionysios the Areopagite); Carile (2003) 28, 30f esp.; and Unruh (2003) 38 esp.; also Treitinger (1938) 50f, 57f, 124–157; Smith (1956) 130–151 esp.; MacCormack (1981); Herrmann-Otto (2006) 434 esp.; and McVey (2010) 46–48. For the concept’s continuance and further elaboration in medieval Byzantium, see e.g. Winterling (1999) 117–144; Featherstone (2015) 600f esp.; for the ecclesiastical context e.g. Bogdanović (2017), 264–293 and 296f esp. 47 For the palatial use of the ciborium as throne baldachin, see e.g. Smith (1956) 107–129; Carile (2003) 28 (discussing Corippus, Iust. Aug. 2.111); and Unruh (2003) 36–38. 48 Constantinople, c. 500–520; Florence, Museo Nazionale del Bargello inv. 24 C (a pendant panel is kept in Vienna, Kunsthistorisches Museum, Antikensammlung, inv. X39). E.g. Delbrueck (1929) 204f; Weitzmann (1979) 31f No. 25 (Vienna panel); James (1997) 130f; idem in Cormack & Vassilaki (2008) 82, 384 (Vienna panel); Angelova (2004); and also Olovsdotter (2005) e.g. 75, 101. 49 Hölscher (1967) 23–46; Arnaud (1984) 111 esp.; and Schäfer (1989) 184; also Alföldi (1961) 31f esp.; and Deér (1961). 50 As is well known, the corona radiata was an emblem of Sol and of the Late Roman emperor in his solar or Apollonian aspect, as notably illustrated by the radiate crown worn by the columned statue of Constantine-Apollo-Helios in the Forum Constantini in Constantinople (330); Gurlitt (1912) Taf. 5 c (graphic reconstruction); also e.g. Fowden (1991) 125–131. As an architectural element in late antique art, the radiate crown or solar-rays motif typically appears as a cornice-and-cyma (gabled fronts, domed structures) or a cyma-like moulding above archivolts. 51 E.g. RE I.1 (1894), 375 s.v. “Adler” (E. Oder); and Arce (1988) 131–140. See further Architecture and symbols below. 52 See further infra n. 75.

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the imperial consort and the realm in which she resides. More fantastical variants of the same architectural concept are found in folios 1 v and 14 r of the Rabbula gospels, representing respectively Mary Theotokos and Christ in majesty beneath cosmic domes layered with symbolic references to heaven, Paradise, and Christian triumph and rulership. Whereas the domed and semi-domed spaces of palaces, churches and imperial tombs in the Late Roman capitals testify to the dome’s aptness for expressing the cosmic ambitions of imperial and Christian rulership, domed tomb-buildings such as the tower-like sepulchre of Christ represented in the early 5th-century “Reidersche Tafel” or Resurrection panel in Munich (Fig. 7.10)53 reflect an essentially Roman conception of afterlife as a heavenly dwelling-place54 and the tomb as a temporary station between life and apotheosis,55 in Christian terms the period spent in limbo between burial and resurrection.56 In the Munich panel, Christ’s tomb – which may with some plausibility be construed as an imaged abbreviation of the Anastasis rotunda and/ or the tomb shrine (Aedicula) in the church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem57 – provides the visual focus of a bipartite narrative comprising the Resurrection and the Ascension. In the lower register, a wingless angel (identical with Christ in the Ascension scene above) announces the Resurrection to the three Maries from his seated position before the closed door to the sepulchre (the closed door signalling that the spirit of the departed no longer dwells within); in the upper register, Christ leaves the tomb behind him as he, witnessed by a pair of awestruck disciples, scales a cloud-like Mountain of Olives towards the welcoming hand of God. Representing a station between the

53 North Italy, c. 400; Munich, Bayerisches Nationalmuseum, inv. MA 157. Volbach (1976) 79f Nr. 110, Taf. 59; Weitzmann (1979) 454f; Baumstark (1998) 84–90 Nr. 9; Gaborit-Chopin (2003) 34 with Fig. 1c. For more reasoned interpretations of the tomb building in the Resurrection panel, see Charalambidis (1975) 33 esp.; and Jensen (2000) 162–164. 54 On the apotheotic beliefs of the Roman élites, see notably Price (1987); on the perception of heaven as the sphere of immortality in antiquity, see also Goodenough (1988) 127–134. For a relevant discussion of domed and canopied grave markers, mausolea and tomb shrines of the Late Roman period, see Bogdanović (2017) 181–183 esp. 55 Haarløv (1977) 86f esp.; Davies (1978); compare also Goldman (1966) 101–124 (Roman-Judaic funerary art). 56 For a discussion of this interim state (limbo, descensus Christi ad inferos) and its conceptualisation in early Christian thought and funerary art, see Stuiber (1956) 32–74 esp. 57 For the Anastasis rotunda as a possible prototype for the sepulchre in the Munich ivory, compare e.g. Jensen (2000) 162f. For a visual representation of the Anastasis’ elevation and façade system, which basically correspond to those of the tomb building in the Resurrection panel, see a 7th-8th-century bread mould in the Cleveland Museum of Art, reproduced in Krautheimer (1986) 63 fig. 27(C). For useful descriptions of the 4th-century appearance of the Anastasis, see Krautheimer (1942) 5; and Kühnel (1987) 81–89 (describing it as “a monument built to the theophany of the resurrection” on p. 82). More significantly, the general aspect of the rotunda also seems to have been reflected in the tomb shrine, Aedicula (Gr. Kouvouklion), beneath its dome, insofar as the present shape of that shrine can be believed to preserve the features of the Constantinian original.

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two  miracles  and between life and afterlife (eternal life), the building is conceived in the best Roman-aristocratic tradition with imagines (statues and clipeate busts) of togate dignitaries in niches; these would presumably represent Christ’s “ancestors”, the prophets of the Old Testament, and/or his “heirs” the apostles (the four evangelists, Peter and Paul), in an ecclesiastical rephrasing of the Roman concept of family and heredity.

Architecture and symbols Following and expanding upon an essentially Etrusco-Roman visual tradition, late-antique imaged architecture is habitually combined with symbols. The repertoire consists of emblematic figural motifs of a more or less abstracted nature that can be roughly divided into heavenly, earthly and transcendental, and thus collectively defined as cosmic. Variously incorporated into and juxtaposed to the architectural structures they accompany, the symbols’ range and placement are generally dictated by significative relevance and synergistic correspondence: their distribution within/ around the architectural unit or framework typically conforms closely to the tectonic principles of that architecture (axiality, symmetry, stratification), whereas their selection is guided by principles of relevance and affinity. One and the same symbol is often repeated, and two or more symbols of similar or complementary meaning are often combined, in order that they may correlatively define and reinforce one another and thus the meaning/s of the architecture and the image as a whole. The meanings of the individual symbols are, according to the nature of all symbols, mostly fluid and flexible – or, to use Henry Maguire’s definitions, polyvalent and ambiguous58 – and their “accurate” interpretation, to the extent that such is possible, determined by considerations of contextual framework and usage. The range of symbols and the consistent manner in which they are combined with architectural motifs provide significant evidence for the intrinsic meanings associated with architecture in LateRoman culture, and may also add to our understanding of the visual symbols as such. The brief overview that follows here cannot obviously be comprehensive, but aims at listing the symbols and symbol types most frequently combined with late-antique imaged architecture. The most common and ancient “architectural” symbols of all are the orb, disc, star and their variants – radiate, spiral, rosette (petalled, acanthus-leafed), diamond-shaped, crossed, etc. Simple, abstracted and often multiplied, these astral motifs can be understood as generic and archetypal significators of heaven and

58 Maguire (1987) 8–15 esp. Compare also the notions of “flexible intention” and “multifocal meanings” discussed by Aldhouse-Green; Aldhouse-Green (2004) 2f.

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associated concepts of cosmic power, regeneration, divinity, immortality and eternity.59 Sol-Helios and Luna-Selene are other recurrent, but less abstracted, celestial motifs. Commonly appearing together as bust images set in the spandrels of arches (symbolising the heavenly vault and the trajectory of their movements), they symbolise cosmic cycles and regeneration in general, and the cyclic regeneration effected through imperial victory in particular, Sol specifically being associated with the emperor in his all-victorious and divine aspect, and, as a reflection of this notion, with Christ.60 The rainbow is a widely and variously employed celestial motif with transcendental significance, symbolising the connection between earth and heaven, man and god, in biblical terms a manifestation of God’s allegiance to mankind61; a colour pattern (or pattern variations on a colour theme) rather than a graphic motif, the rainbow is typically applied to archivolts, pediments and semi-domes, sometimes in the form of rainbow-tinted clouds, and occasionally fused with a stellar pattern to create a conflation of rainbow and heavenly vault.62 Winged figures such as the eagle, peacock, Phoenix, dove and various generic small birds, Victoria, and the eros or putto are very common with late-antique imaged architecture. Deriving from a long commemorative – triumphal, imperial, funerary – tradition in Roman art, most of them become assimilated with little or no modification into Christian art. As entities moving between earth and heaven, figures of the winged category symbolise liminality, transcendence and apotheosis, expressing man’s aspiration towards immortality. The eagle (aquila), attribute 59 Elderkin (1935) 523–525; Danthine (1939) 861; Goodenough (1988) e.g. 122f; Kiilerich (2000) 280; compare also Thimme (1969) 160–163 (concerning the rosette as an astral symbol of heaven and immortality in Etrusco-Italic funerary art). 60 For this historical development, see notably Wallraff (2001); and Bergmann (2006); on the solar association of Christ in Early Byzantine art, see also Torp in this volume. For the use of the Sun and Moon, as signs and as personifications, in the Jewish art of the late antique and Byzantine period, see Goodenough (1988) 116–127. 61 In Greco-Roman religion the rainbow was personified by Iris, a messenger between gods and humans; e.g. Grimal (1969) 237f; and Bradley (2009) 47f. For the continued association of the rainbow with Iris and the formal association between arch and rainbow in the Byzantine context, see Procopius’ description of the great arches in Justinian’s Hagia Sophia in Aed. 1.1.448; Mango (1986) 82. For the rainbow in late antique and Byzantine art, see Grabar (1982) 5–12 (interpreting representations of the sky with rainbow-tinted clouds as the visible, “material”, optical lower stratum of heaven); James (1991); James (1996) 92–109; Ćurčić (2012), 313–334 (considering the geometricised zigzag rainbow or “radiant frieze” as a rendition of divine light); and Kiilerich in this volume. For the divine interpretation of the rainbow among the Byzantines, see Bradley (2009) 51 with n. 41 esp. Biblical sources to rainbow symbolism are e.g. Genesis 9.13 (referring to the covenant between God and humanity); and Revelation 4.3 (mercy, love, hope and allegiance between God and humanity symbolised by the rainbow framing the heavenly throne). 62 The latter e.g. in fol. 129 v (Luke) of the St Augustine gospels in Cambridge, representing the evangelist Luke enthroned beneath a segmental pediment incorporating a “starry rainbow” of blue rosettes and white diamonds against a purple ground; Italy, 6th century; Cambridge, Corpus Christi College Library, inv. MS 286; e.g. Weitzmann (1977) Pl. 42.

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of the Greco-Roman high-gods Zeus and Jupiter and the Roman triumphator and emperor, signifies god-given victory, power and empire; within the imperial context the eagle was also associated with the funerary consecratio ritual, by which the deceased emperor’s soul was released and conducted to heaven in apotheosis, and it appears regularly as a symbol of transcendence on funerary and other honorific monuments and artworks from the 2nd century CE.63 The peacock, attribute of Hera/ Juno and the symbol of apotheosis for Roman empresses, becomes redefined as a symbol of resurrection, Paradise and eternal beatitude by the Christians,64 while the Phoenix, Egyptian mythic bird of cyclic rebirth, becomes associated with the Roman emperor as eternal victor (with solar connotations) and with the resurrected Christ.65 Following a Hellenistic-Roman tradition, the dove and other small birds are typically part of vegetal compositions, where their picking at plants or drinking from cups indicate a fruitfulness and regeneration which in its Christian reformulation becomes associated with Paradise, eternal life, the Holy Ghost, the risen human spirit, and peace.66 The Roman goddess of victory, Victoria, appears widely in Roman art from Augustus through late antiquity. Increasingly perceived as a divine victoriousness inherent in the imperial person (Victoria Augusta, Victoria Imperatoria), Victoria’s primary place is in imperial art, but she is also associated with military and civic success and virtues more in general, and as such a frequent feature of funerary and other commemorative art celebrating the immortal glory and apotheosis (victory over death) of its honorands.67 The theme of transcendent victory becomes central to Victoria’s visual representation in late antiquity, where she is partly transformed into a winged angel to denote developing Christian conceptions of imperial triumph and eternity. The semi-divine figure of the winged eros had a long history in Greek, Etruscan and Roman visual culture, where it represented perennial prosperity, regeneration and happiness; as a standard ingredient of triumphal art from the late 2nd century through late antiquity, it illustrates the superior prosperity and happiness brought by imperial victory (felicitas temporum), whereas its presence in funerary art intimates the regeneration and abundant pleasure that await the deceased in

63 RE I.1 (1894), 375 s.v. “Adler” (E. Oder); RE II A.12 (1921), 1335f s.v. “Signa” (J.W. Kubitschek); Fears (1981) 744 esp.; Goette (1984) 586–589; Arce (1988) 131–140; Engemann (1988) 109f; and Olovsdotter (2005) 76–79, 111–114, 155–157; for the consecratio, visually testified through notable works such as the column base of Antoninus and Faustina in Rome (161 CE) and in the so-called Consecratio ivory panel (Rome, c. 400; London, British Museum inv. 1857, 10–13), see e.g. MacCormack (1981) 99–101, 112. 64 August., De civ. Dei, 21.4; also e.g. Boschung (1987) 51; Jensen (2000) 159; Chelli (2008) 77f; and Effenberger (1975) 210. 65 Notably Broek (1972) 146–304 and 423–458 esp. with plates; also e.g. Jensen (2000) 159f; and Chelli (2008) 60. See also Torp in this volume. 66 Matthew 3.16; Luke 3.22; also e.g. Chelli (2008) 53. 67 Hölscher (1967) 43–46, 102–107, 111f; Winkes (1969) 18–43; also Fears (1981); and Olovsdotter (2005) e.g. 110–112 with ref.

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afterlife.68 To the winged category of liminal or transcendental symbols combined with architectural motifs can also be counted the Tetramorph, the winged symbols of the four evangelists. Other transcendence symbols frequently combined with late-antique imaged architecture are the imago clipeata (shield portrait), the concha, and the cross. In Roman tradition, the persons commemorated through imagines clipeatae in public contexts (civic buildings, tombs) were ancestors of the living, but in late antiquity the clipeus motif comes to be used more generally as an attribute of superior and immortal status.69 The imago clipeata and the related imago laureata, the triumphally connoted wreath-encircled image typically reserved for the emperor, can be regarded as a portrait variants of the clipeus virtutis (“shield of virtue”),70 a common motif of triumphal and official art. The concha (scallop- or cockle-shell) is the perhaps most widespread transcendence motif of all in late antique art, where (unlike in the Roman funerary art of preceding centuries) it is consistently applied or juxtaposed to architectural structures, typically arches, niches, apses, tympana and domes. When framing a figure’s head, it is formally and functionally comparable to the nimbus, late antique attribute of divinity and sanctity. As a motif, the concha would most plausibly have originated from the myth of Aphrodite-Venus’ birth from the sea (generation, divinity) and, within the Roman funerary context, have been associated with the passage of the spirits of the dead across water to the Blessed Isles (apotheosis, immortality).71 The primary Christian symbol of transcendence and apotheosis, the cross with variants, 72 is likewise a common symbol with architecture, particularly arched and domed structures. In addition, there are some transcendental motifs of an apotropaic nature that occur in combination with imaged architecture, notably on East-Roman funerary

68 Notably Stuveras (1969) 85–107, 138–144, 165–171 esp.; also Cumont (1942) passim; LIMC III.2 (1986), 683–726 s.v. “Eros/Amor, Cupido”, nos. 61–702 passim (N. Blanc and F. Gury); and Olovsdotter (2005) 129–131 with ref. 69 Plin., NH 35.4–11; Bolten (1937) (typological); Winkes (1969) (historical, contextual); Scarpellini (1987) (funerary); and Olovsdotter (2005) 110–112 and 116f esp. (official). 70 E.g. Kruse (1934) 24, 30, 40–49; Treitinger (1938) 208–210; Deér (1961) 61; and Olovsdotter (2005) e.g. 76f. 71 Stuveras (1969) 153f; Engemann (1973) 65–67 esp.; Scarpellini (1987) 89f; Caillet & Loose (1990) 44; Olovsdotter (2005) 144f, 152–155; similarly (but without the reference to Venus) Thimme (1969) 156f; Matz (1971) 105f (interpreting the concha or shell clipeus on Roman sarcophagi as signifying variously the epiphany of the dead and the passage to the Isles of the Blessed); and Thomas (2000) 79. 72 Latin, Greek, monogrammatic, stepped (Golgotha, Calvary), jewelled (crux gemmata), Greek diagonal (crux decussata, St Andrew’s cross), crux ansata (Latin cross with looped upper vertical arm; compare ankh) and crux commissa (Latin cross without upper vertical arm) all appear with imaged archictecture. For the cross as a symbol of Paradise in Coptic funerary art specifically, see Thomas (2000) 73–75, 78f.

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monuments. Most common among these are the Gorgon-head and dolphin, ancient liminal symbols of protection and safe passage.73 Earthly (vegetal, animal, elemental) symbols which regularly appear with imaged architecture are trees and plants such as laurel, palm, olive, oak, grapevine, grain crops, acanthus, flowers and fruits real and generic, the cornucopia, the fruit- or flower-basket, the cup, and quadrupeds such as deer, lambs, hares and rabbits. These earthly motifs may all, as is widely recognised, be understood in their perennial sense, i.e. as symbols of fruitfulness, abundance, prosperity, regeneration and Paradise, and are as such often found in the upper, “celestial” sections of architectural structures, juxtaposed to celestial symbols.74 More specifically transcendental meanings are ascribed to some of these motifs: the laurel and palm in various forms – wreath (corona laurea (triumphalis)), garland (corona longa (triumphalis), serta), branch, frond, tree – had since ancient times been conceived as emblems of renewal through victory (imperial victory, public success, victory in the arena, victory over death),75 and were adapted by Christians to symbolise Christian triumph over death; the vine became associated with Christ as a source of re/generation76; and the lamb came to designate Christ’s sacrifice and victory over death (Agnus Dei).

Architectural structure and patterns of meaning In the following I will briefly outline the ways in which architectural motifs and structures could be employed to visualise the structure and composition of the world, the universe, and related notions of state (order, balance, permanence) and transition (passage, transcendence) in late antique art.

73 For the dolphin as a conveyor of the souls of the dead to the Isle of the Blessed in Etrusco-Italic funerary art, see Thimme (1969) 158f. For the dolphin in Christian imagery, see Hall (1979) 105f (Christ’s death and resurrection as prefigured by the saving of Jonah from the whale); Jensen (2000) 159; and Chelli (2008) 58. For the dolphin as psychopomp in Coptic funerary art, see Thomas (2000) 78. 74 A juxtaposition which Goodenough explained as expressing, in its early Christian interpretation, a “fertility-mystic hope of a future life identified with the new astronomical hope”; Goodenough (1988) 136. 75 The triumphator’s wreath (corona laurea triumphalis) and its garland counterpart (corona longa triumphalis) were both characterised by a central jewel, and are amply attested in Roman visual culture; RE XIII.2 (1927), 1440f s.v. “Lorbeer” (A. Steier); DarSag I:2, 1537 s.v. “Coronarius, coronaria” (E. Saglio); Kruse (1934) 24–48; Klauser (1944); Versnel (1970) 56f, 72–77, 378f with n. 4; MacCormack (1981) 174, 195, 243–246; McCormick (1986) 82, 86; Künzl (1988) 86–88; Schäfer (1989) 201 and n. 40; Rumscheid (2000); and Olovsdotter (2005) 138–142 esp. 76 “I am the true vine”: John 15.1–6. See further e.g. Daniélou (1961) 33–48.

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Architecture, state and transition Breaking down late-antique imaged architecture into its fundamentals, it can be said to fall into two major archetypal shapes: the pedimented front or “house” and the arch or “gateway”, i.e. a contained structure for dwelling (state) and an open structure for passage. The two often appear as juxtaposed or conflated within the same architectural composition (the arched fastigium is a primary example of this), and multiplied they can form composite architectural constructions or complex urban conglomerations. Here I will discuss two examples of varying complexity. A unique conflation of “house” and “gateway” is witnessed in the central front panel of the ivory lipsanotheca in Brescia (Fig. 7.11),77 where a cabinet-like structure rendered in a split frontal perspective and fusing an arched portal with a pedimented and curtained shrine, a clerestoried basilica and a turreted city-gate, encloses the standing figure of Christ reading from an open scroll to six seated attendants. The scene has most plausibly been associated with the New-Testamental accounts of Christ preaching in the synagogue of Nazareth,78 and the composite architectural structure may indeed be interpreted as a reference to that seminal event – Christ’s first sermon whereby he announced his divinely assigned mission – but by extension also to Christ’s preaching to his apostles and to all future members of his Church. Thus, the concept of a divinely inspired act performed in a sacred building is fused with the concept of entry: entry into a city and into a temple, and the more symbolic entry into a new era through Christ’s teaching of God’s word. The (originally) eight scaenae frons-like mosaic compositions in the dome of Hagios Georgios in Thessaloniki (Fig. 7.12)79 present singularly rich and varied examples of their kind.80 When observing the elaborate, tripartite exedras rendered in two storeys, with porticos below and apses and baldachins above, fronted by variously domed and semi-domed ritual centres and inhabited by hieratically praying saints, the viewer senses that the distinction between state and transition is upheaved, and that an imagined physical movement through the structures must follow an infinite, swaying rhythm that is a state in itself. These sensations are heightened by the transparency and polycentral perspectives of the architectural ensembles, by their reiteration around the circle of the rotunda, and by their near-monochromatic suffusion

77 North Italy (Brescia or Milan?), latter half of the 4th century; Brescia, Museo Santa Giulia – Museo della Città, inv. MR5767. 78 E.g. Luke 4.16–21. Delbrueck (1952) 25f; Watson (1981) 285 esp.; and Tkacz (2002) 33f. 79 I am very grateful to Hjalmar Torp for granting me the use of the here-reproduced photo of the rotunda mosaics. 80 For overviews of the history and dating of the rotunda mosaics, see Kiilerich (2015) 128–130 with n. 253 esp.; and Torp (2017).

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with gold, the colour of divine light,81 accentuated by the vibrating luminescence of the purple-blue shades that outlines all parts of the architecture in seeming reflection of the silvery-bright light radiating from the cosmic clipeus of Christ-Helios above.82 Such assimilation, as it were, between movement and state seems to reflect a ritual conception of architecture as an interplay between processional passage and stationary contemplation.

Architecture and hierarchy An important function of architecture in late antique art is to facilitate the visualisation of hierarchical order. The most emblematic examples of such a hierarchical use of architectural motifs derive, as would be expected, from the imperial sphere, where the obelisk base of Theodosius I in the Hippodrome of Constantinople (390) is perhaps the most emblematic of all (Fig. 7.13). Reproduced here is the north-west face of the base, showing in its upper register Theodosius enthroned beside his co-emperors Arcadius and Honorius (East/left) and Valentinian II (West/right), each sized according to his place in the imperial hierarchy, beneath a simple arch – a thin and plain archivolt spanned between Corinthian colonnettes – and “behind” an openwork parapet which combine to indicate the kathisma in the Hippodrome, the location associated with the scene. The synoptic and reductive structure, which is flanked by further segments of parapet to contain the hieratically serried rows of officials and military guards forming the emperors’ retinue, would denote the central section of the kathisma towards the arena, the imperial box proper, the façade of which may well have had the form of an arched fastigium, viz. a tetrastyle front with a central arcuated intercolumniation.83 It effectively separates and elevates the imperial 81 In the Roman tradition, gold was conceived as divine light or an emanation of divine power, and as such used in beautifying temples, subsequently becoming associated with the deified Roman emperor; Plin., NH 33.57; Sen., Controv. 1.6.4; and Plut., Public. 15.3; Janes (1998) 19–60 and 105–139 esp. For the use of gold in the Hagios Georgios mosaics, see Torp (1963); Torp (2002a) e.g. 10 (citing John 8.12); and Charalampidis (2006) 291f. For the use of gold and other metals in/on religious and palatial architecture, also e.g. Carile (2013). 82 A careful analysis of the technique, effects and significances of the prismatic use of colour in the rotunda’s mosaics is presented in Kiilerich (2017). 83 Very little is known about the exterior aspect of the late-antique kathisma towards the arena apart from the highly abbreviated and somewhat dissimilar representations on the Theodosian obelisk base. The written source material, largely of a later date, is vague on this point and mainly concerned with the interior of the kathisma and its connection with the greater palace compound; notably Malalas, 319–320; Chron. Pasch. 1.527–528; and Constantine VII Porphyrogenitus, De ceremoniis 1.68, 73 and 77 esp. (ed. A. Vogt (1935–1940) II pp. 112–117, 164–168, 172f). For discussions of the sources and how the kathisma may be reconstructed, see Guilland (1957) (reconstruction pp. 66–76); Dagron (1984) 164f; Dagron (2000) 120 esp; Safran (1993) 415–419 esp.; Kiilerich (1998) 37f, 146–150; Bassett

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quartet from their retinue and from the symmetrically arranged scene below, where representatives of conquered peoples (“Persians” and “Germans”, or “Ostrogoths” and “Visigoths”) proceed in ritual submission enclosed by another fence from below. The grid-like geometries imposed on the figure constellations by the architecture on this and the other sides of the obelisk base, with its strong central focus, emphasised horizontals (railings) and repetitive vertical patterning (rail posts), plainly illustrate the hierarchical composition and order of imperial rulership, state and society under the Dominate84 – a cosmic order also represented in the arrangement, visual programme and symbological superstructure of the Hippodrome itself.85 On Theodosius’ missorium (Fig. 7.2), similarly, the arched fastigium is employed to the utmost advantage for emphasising the superior status of the honorand vis-à-vis his co-emperors, Valentinian II and Arcadius, who are sized according to their respective position in the imperial hierarchy, and quite considerably smaller than Theodosius. As a reductive image for the imperial palace, the absolute centre of imperial power and authority in late antiquity, the fastigium epitomises the palatial idea with its inherent notions of dynastic unity and harmony, and the integrity and stability of the Roman empire.86 As a centralised composition simultaneously associated with a triumphal arch and a temple, this fastigium presents an optimal vehicle for expressing the victoriousness and majesty of Theodosius, and the hierarchical relationships within the dynastic triad in the year where the plate was commissioned.

Architecture and the spheres of the universe Among the most conspicuous features or visual techniques of late antique art is stratification, viz. the horizontal subdivision of a pictorial surface into a cosmic system of graded levels or spheres. In the relief programmes on the period’s great imperial monuments – the tetrapylon of Galerius in Thessaloniki (Fig. 7.6) and the obelisk base of

(2004) 41f; and Featherstone (2010) 171 with n. 43. For graphic reconstructions of the box proper, see especially Golvin (2008a) 153–155, 157 Pl. V Fig. 1 esp. (presenting it as an out-jutting arch or shallow vault supported on two columns in antis, flanked by two straight intercolumniations and fronted by a square podium; compare the palatial fastigium at Split); and Bardill (2010) 142f esp. with Fig. 8.48, 264 Fig. 14.5 (presenting a box similar to Golvin’s but with the central arch elaborated into a fourcolumned baldachin). 84 Cf. notably Balty (1982). 85 On the cosmic and solar symbolism of the Hippodrome, see e.g. Malalas, 175–176; further Halsberghe (1972) 30; Dagron (1974) 330–338; Dagron (1984) 161–163, 173–180; Lyle (1984) (n. 2 on p. 827 containing a list of late antique authors on the topic, including Johannes Lydus, Cassiodorus, and Corippus); Pavis d’Escurac (1987); Kiilerich (1998) 153–156; and Olovsdotter (2005) 200f. 86 Compare the interpretations of the palatial fastigium by Dyggve (1941) 37f; Brown (1942) 393f; Smith (1956) 31–35, 52–73; Kinney (2001) 133f; and Olovsdotter (2005) 166f.

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Theodosius (Fig. 7.13) and column base of Arcadius in Constantinople – stratification is highly developed. Together with centrality, symmetry and value-related differentiations in size and placement, it enforces an order of viewing that gives precedence to hierarchical and symbolical relationships over the physical, spatial and chronological relationships of narration. In the art of late antiquity, as I have demonstrated, architecture is chiefly used as a device for constructing symbolical frameworks. However, with the exception of Theodosius’ obelisk base it is not on the great imperial monuments that we witness this use of architecture. After the pattern of Roman triumphal monuments, the visual programmes of imperial arches and columns in late-antique Rome, Constantinople and Thessaloniki include architectural motifs – cities, city-gates, fortresses, temples, harbours, bridges, palatial interiors, imperial tribunals etc. and, as frames for divinities, arched portals and shell-crowned niches, collectively illustrating the double and interconnected planes on which the Roman emperors exist and operate, the world of the humans and the sphere of the gods – but they remain little more than scaled-down and integrated elements among the many elements of narration. It is in the compositions of the least monumental artworks that architecture is the most developed as a structuralising, cosmic scheme. Returning again to the emblematic missorium of Theodosius (Fig. 7.2), the fastigium framing the imperial trio in itself comprises two “celestial” elements, the archivolt and the pediment, accompanied by celestial figures in the shape of fruit-offering erotes to symbolise the perpetual prosperity and happiness brought by the Theodosian rule; a very traditional Roman theme that is also reflected on the “earth” beneath the architecture, in the exergue, where a voluptuous Tellus reclines amidst flowers, fruit, grain crops, and playfully fluttering erotes. The larger-than-life Theodosius centrally enthroned beneath the fastigium thus forms a node in which three planes of existence converge: the vegetal world below, the world of empire and state in the middle, and the heavenly sphere of eternity above. Similar schemes are found in some consular diptychs, notably including a series of diptychs issued by Flavius Anastasius in 517 (Fig. 7.14),87 where the consul’s figure presiding in the centre of each panel is framed by an aedicule seemingly suspended high above the miniaturistic arena-scenes below. The aedicule’s shrine-like appearance with “pedimental sculpture” and roof acroteria brings traditional Roman temple-fronts mind, and with his hieratic pose and the shell enclosing his head from behind, the consul appears like a deity in its sanctuary. The acroteria are imagines clipeatae of the consul Anastasius’ appointer and great-uncle, the emperor Anastasius I (apex) with family (lower corners)88; the emperor’s image is supported on laurel garlands held by erotes 87 Constantinople, 517; Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, inv. 55; Delbrueck (1929) 131–134 N 21, Taf. 21; Volbach (1976) 36 Nr. 21, Taf. 9; Olovsdotter (2005) 48–50 no. 11 A, Pl. 11:1. 88 Eastern consul in the year 517, Flavius Anastasius was great-nephew to the emperor Anastasius I, a ruler known for appointing his kinsmen to the consulate; Cameron (1978); also Olovsdotter (2005) 74–83 passim, 116f; Olovsdotter (2012).

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(interchanged with Victoriae in other diptychs), a figure constellation that proclaims the transcendent felicitas and victoria of the imperial person.89 Seen as cosmic construct, this dynastic shrine forms the centre of an “Anastasian universe” where the consul Anastasius, the highest representative of the Roman state and a member of the imperial house, presides in exalted majesty between “heaven” (the divine sphere of the emperor above) and “earth” (the worldly sphere of the people below). Stratified architectural schemes are also found in a couple of notable church mosaics. In Hagios Georgios in Thessaloniki (Fig. 7.12) the architectural zone appears in the intermediate sphere between the physical church room and the cosmic circle of the dome occupied by the image of Christ in his solar aspect (Helios-Apollon) surrounded by stars, angels and the Phoenix.90 It is a sphere inhabited by immortalised humans, who stand hieratically in the foreground like officiating priests, facing the congregation with their hands raised in prayer. Between each praying pair, in the centre before each two-storeyed architectural ensemble, is a ritual focus: in the mosaic panel illustrated here, the ciborium between bishop-saints Kosmas and Damion fronts a pedimented temple façade superimposed by an apse-shaped exedra the scalloped conch of which replicates the fluted ciborium dome below – a celestial shrine mirroring an ecclesiastical one.91 If the lower storeys of the architectural structures can be likened to colonnaded ambulatories for liturgical processions (compare above), the tri-partite constellations of the upper storeys may be interpreted as otherworldly sanctuaries housing peacocks, phoenixes, doves, dolphins and crosses – symbols of immortality, rebirth, spirit, and transcendence. Thus, in itself and within the greater mosaic programme of the dome, the imaged architecture in Hagios Georgios describes a gradual ascent from earth to heaven, a sphere where human merges with the divine, and the earthly church with its heavenly reflection. Related meanings can be ascribed to the lower of the three mosaic zones in the dome of the Orthodox or Neonian baptistery in Ravenna (458) (Fig. 7.15), where eight exedra-like structures alternately enclose empty cross-surmounted thrones, the monumental and imperially ornamented hetoimasia (Lat. etimasia) or “prepared throne” of Christ as

89 For the quality of felicitas, translated as an immanent ability to succeed, conquer and prosper, see Versnel (1970) 361–371; and Wistrand (1987) 9 and 72–76 esp. 90 E.g. Torp (1963) 36f; Torp (2002a) 6; Torp (2002b) 11–13; see also Torp in this volume; and Kiilerich (2015) 127f. 91 Interpretations of the architectural mosaic compositions in Hagios Georgios include Grabar (1967) 66–69 (“ideal Christian sanctuaries”, also visualisations of “a paradisaic city”); Kleinbauer (1982) 37 (identifying the entire architectural mosaic zone as “a celestial ecclesia” that possibly reflected the interior architecture and liturgical furnishing of the rotunda itself); Charalampidis (2006) 291 (“the sanctuary of the celestial church”); Torp (1963) 24, 69 esp. (“celestial temple-palaces of the martyrs” referring to the Heavenly Jerusalem); Torp (2002a) 6–11, 13f (“heavenly and royal city”, “city of the divine high-priest”, a reinterpretatio christiana of the Hebrew “cosmic” Tabernacle as an image for the heavenly city, architectured and inhabited by God, a symbol for Christian redemption); Torp (2002b) 13 (“Heavenly Jerusalem – the celestial City, Palace, and Church – the abode of the martyrs”).

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the ruler of heavenly Jerusalem,92 and altars supporting the four gospels, flanked by respectively paradisaic bowers and sella curulis-like chairs in shell-crowned niches. As in Hagios Georgios, the zone forms an intermediate sphere between the physical church room below and the celestial spheres of the dome inhabited by Christ and the apostles above. Its eight architectural units may be understood as projections of the heavenly palace that awaits Christ and his priestly court,93 and to constitute a transitional stage between the biblical past, represented through the Old-Testamental prophets in the clerestory zone below,94 and the future kingdom of Christ prefigured in the dome above. A last example of the spheral concept in late-antique imaged architecture can be a Coptic stela in Boston (Fig. 7.16),95 the dense composition of which is entirely built of architecture: two small arches surmounted by a pedimented aedicule enclosed within a great arch. The symbols filling the interspaces between architectural elements designate three levels or stages of transcendence: the smaller arches on the lower level, enclosing Calvary (stepped) crosses, are triumphal gateways to immortality;96 the aedicule on the middle level is a “house-tomb of transcendence”, as signalled by the conflation of a Phoenix and an eagle that opens its wings in vertical ascent inside it; and the upper level, beneath the greater arch ornamented with an “eternal” interlace pattern, is the heavenly sphere of Paradise, regeneration and immortality symbolised by deer and peacocks.

Conclusion The examples I have brought up here illustrate how, in late antique art, architecture is systematically employed to denote the transcendent status or universal significance 92 On the motif and characteristic elements of the hetoimasia/etimasia, the “prepared” throne or the throne of the second coming, in early ecclesiastical art, see notably Quarles van Ufford (1971) (pp. 203–205 on the etimasia in the Orthodox baptistery); on the thrones in the Orthodox baptistery especially also Kostof (1965) 77–82 (who recognises the “glorious presence of Christ” in them); Pasquini (2005) 333 esp.; Herrmann-Otto (2006) 442; Deliyannis (2010) 97; and Rizzardi (2011) 76f. Contra Wharton, who interprets them as four separate bishops’ thrones, i.e. not as four projections of Christ’s throne, and the entire architectural zone as a representation of the Church; Wharton (1987) 373. 93 Compare Kostof (1965) 79–81; and also Deliyannis (2010) 97 (interpreting the register as a representation of the heavenly kingdom to be attained by the baptised). 94 The sixteen standing stucco figures holding scrolls and framed by fantastical aediculae with conchae have plausibly been identified as Old-Testamental prophets (viz. forerunners and presagers of Christ); Kostof (1965) 72–75; Wharton (1987) 363; Deliyannis (2010) 94f. 95 Egypt, 7th century (?); Boston, Museum of Fine Arts, inv. 04.1845. 96 For the interpretation of arches or “doorways” framing crosses and other eschatological symbols on Coptic stelae as entrances to the beyond, heaven or Paradise, see Badawy (1978) 101f, 210–220 with Figs. 3.191 through 3.215; also Kitzinger (1974) 13 with n. 36.

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of persons, acts, events and phenomena. The regularising principles of architecture – containment, axiality, symmetry, elevation, stratification – are exploited for visualising cosmic wholeness and order, and the spheres within that order: the physical and vegetal world below, the human state and the physical manifestation of divinity in the middle, the superior and otherworldly sphere of heaven and eternity above. The quantitative, creative and cross-contextual expansion of imaged architecture in late antiquity, along with its increasing abstraction and systematic combination with cosmic symbols, evidently reflect a period-specific way of visualising life and the universe as a set of meaningful forms and relationships within a defined and structured space; a space where earth and heaven meet, and where man enters immortality.

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Martin (1997): Martin, J. (1997), “Das Kaisertum in der Spätantike”, in F. Paschoud and J. Szidat (eds), Usurpationen in der Spätantike. Akten des Kolloquiums “Staatsreich und Staatlichkeit”, 6.-10. März 1996, Solothurn/Bern, Stuttgart, 47–62. Matern (2002): Matern, P. (2002), Helios und Sol: Kulte und Ikonographie des griechischen und römischen Sonnengottes, Istanbul. Mathews & Sanjian (1991): Mathews, T.F. and A.K. Sanjian (1991), Armenian gospel iconography: the tradition of the Glajor gospel, (Dumbarton Oaks Studies, 29), Washington D.C. Matschke (2002): Matschke, K.-P. (2002), “Sakralität und Priestertum des byzantinischen Kaisers”, in F.-R. Erkens (ed.), Die Sakralität von Herrschaft. Herrschaftslegitimierung im Wechsel der Zeiten und Räume. Fünfzehn interdisziplinäre Beiträge zu einem weltweiten und epochenübergreifenden Phänomen, Berlin, 143-149. Matz (1971): Matz, F. (1971), “Stufen der Sepulkralsymbolik in der Kaiserzeit”, AA, 102–116. McCormick (1986): McCormick, M. (1986), Eternal victory: triumphal rulership in late antiquity, Byzantium, and the early mediaeval west, Cambridge. McVey (2010): McVey, K. (2010), “Spirit embodied: the emergence of symbolic interpretations of early Christian and Byzantine architecture”, in S. Ćurčić and E. Hadjitryphonos (eds), Architecture as icon. Perception and representation of architecture in Byzantine art, New Haven & London, 39–71. Meischner (2000): Meischner, J. (2000), “El Missorium de Teodosio: una nueva interpretación”, in M. Almagro-Gorbea, J.M. Álvarez Martínez, J.M. Blázquez Martínez and S. Rovira (eds), El disco de Teodosio, Madrid, 233–252. Meyer (1980): Meyer, H. (1980), “Die Frieszyklen am sogenannten Triumphbogen des Galerius in Thessaloniki. Kriegschronik und Ankündigung der zweiten Tetrarchie”, JdI 95, 374–444. Miller (1992): Miller, M.C. (1992), “The parasol: an oriental status-symbol in Late Archaic and Classical Athens”, JHS 112, 91–105. Mundell Mango (1986): Mundell Mango, M. (1986), Silver from early Byzantium. The Kaper Koraon and related treasures, Baltimore. Müller-Wieber (1977): Müller-Wiener, W. (1977), Bildlexikon zur Topographie Istanbuls: Byzantion-Konstantinopolis-Istanbul bis zum Beginn des 17. Jahrhunderts, Tübingen. Nordenfalk (1938): Nordenfalk, C. (1938), Die spätantiken Kanontafeln. Kunstgeschichtliche Studien über die eusebianische Evangelien-Konkordanz in den vier ersten Jahrhunderten ihrer Geschichte (Die Bücherornamentik der Spätantike, 1), Göteborg. Olovsdotter (2005): Olovsdotter, C. (2005), The consular image. An iconological study of the consular diptychs, (BAR S 1376), Oxford. Olovsdotter (2011): Olovsdotter, C. (2011), “Representing consulship: on the conception and meanings of the consular diptychs”, OpAthRom 4, 99–124. Olovsdotter (2012): Olovsdotter, C. (2012), “Anastasius’ I consuls: ordinary consulship and imperial power in the consular diptychs from Constantinople”, Valör. Konstvetenskapliga studier 1-2, 33–47. Parada López de Corselas (2012a): Parada López de Corselas, M. (2012a), “La arquitectura de poder y su recepción: la “serliana”. ¿Viaje de formas, viaje de contenidos?”, in G. Bravo and R. González Salinero (eds), Ver, viajar y hospedarse en el mundo romano, Madrid & Salamanca, 561–582. Parada López de Corselas (2012b): Parada López de Corselas, M. (2012b), “En torno al “entablamento arcuado” y al “frontón sirio” en la arquitectura construida y la iconografía arquitectónica romana”, Ocnus. Quaderni della Scuola di Specializzazione in Beni Archeologici 20, 181–212. Pasinli (2010): Pasinli, A. (2010), İstanbul Archaeological Museums6, Istanbul. Pasquini (2005): Pasquini, L. (2005), “Il battistero della cattedrale cattolica a Ravenna”, in E. Rizzardi (ed.), Venezia e Bisanzio. Aspetti della cultura artistica bizantina di Ravenna e Venezia (V-XVI secolo), Venezia, 327–344.

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Pavis d’Esturac (1987): Pavis d’Escurac, H. (1987), “Magie et cirque dans la Rome antique”, ByzF 12, 447–467. Quarles van Ufford (1971): Quarles, van Ufford J.M. (1971), “Bemerkungen über den eschatologischen Sinn der Hetoimasia in der frühchristlichen Kunst”, BABesch 46, 193–207. Richardson (1992): Richardson Jr, L. (1992), A new topographical dictionary of ancient Rome, Baltimore & London. Rizzardi (2011): Rizzardi, C. (2011), Il mosaico a Ravenna. Ideologia e arte, (Studi e scavi nuova serie, 32), Bologna. Rumscheid (2000): Rumscheid, J. (2000), Kranz und Krone. Zu Insignien, Siegespreisen und Ehrenzeichen der römischen Kaiserzeit, (Istanbuler Forschungen, 43), Tübingen. Rüpke (1990): Rüpke, J. (1990), Domi militae. Die religiöse Konstruktion des Krieges in Rom, Stuttgart. Safran (1993): Safran, L. (1993), “Points of view: the Theodosian obelisk base in context”, Greek, Roman and Byzantine Studies 34, 409–435. Salzman (1990): Salzman, M.R. (1990), On Roman time: the codex-calendar of 354 and the rhrythms of urban life in late antiquity, Berkely & Los Angeles. Scarpellini (1987): Scarpellini, D. (1987), Stele romane con ‘imagines clipeatae’ in Italia, Roma. Schleißheimer (1959): Schleißheimer, B. (1959), Kosmas Indikopleustes, ein altchristliches Weltbild, (diss.), München. Schäfer (1989): Schäfer, T. (1989), Imperii insignia. Sella curulis und fasces, (RM-EH, 29), München. Smith (1956): Smith, E.B. (1956), Architectural symbolism of Imperial Rome and the Middle Ages, New Jersey. Smith (1978): Smith, E.B. (1978), The dome: a study of the history of ideas2, (Princeton Monographs in Art and Archaeology, 25), Princeton. Spätantike und frühes Christentum (1983): Spätantike und frühes Christentum. (1983), Ausstellungskatalog, Liebighaus Museum alter Plastik, Frankfurt am Main. Stern (1953): Stern, H. (1953) Le calendrier de 354. Étude sur son texte et sur ses illustrations, (BAHBeyrouth, 55), Paris. Stuiber (1956): Stuiber, A. (1956), Refrigerium interim. Vorstellungen vom Zwischenzustand und die frühchristliche Grabeskunst, Bonn. Stuveras (1969): Stuveras, R. (1969), Le putto dans l’art romain, (CollLatomus, 99), Bruxelles. Taft (2006): Taft, R.F. (2006), “The decline of communion in Byzantium and the distancing of the congregation from the liturgical action: cause, effect, or neither?”, in S.E.J. Gerstel (ed.), Thresholds of the sacred. Architectural, art historical, liturgical, and theological perspectives on religious screens, East and West, Washington D.C., 27-50. Teasdale Smith (1970): Teasdale Smith, M. (1970) “The Lateran fastigium, a gift of Constantine the Great”, RACrist 46, 149–175. Thimme (1969): Thimme, J. (1969), “Rosette, Myrte, Spirale und Fisch als Seligheitszeichen in etruskischen und unteritalischen Gräbern”, in P. Zazoff (ed.), Opus nobile. Festschrift zum 60. Geburtstag von Ulf Jantzen, Wiesbaden, 156–163. Thomas (2000): Thomas, T.K. (2000), Late antique Egyptian funerary sculpture: images for this world and the next, Princeton, N.J. Tkacz (2002): Tkacz, C.B. (2002), The key to the Brescia casket: typology and the early Christian imagination, Notre Dame, Ind. & Paris. Torp (1963): Torp, H. (1963), Mosaikkene i St. Georg-rotunden i Thessaloniki: et hovedverk i tidlig-bysantinsk kunst, Oslo. Torp (2002a): Torp, H. (2002a), “Les mosaïques de la Rotonde de Thessalonique: l’arrière-fond conceptuel des images d’architecture”, CahArch 50, 3–20. Torp (2002b): Torp, H. (2002b), “Dogmatic themes in the mosaics of the rotunda at Thessaloniki”, Arte medievale. Nuova serie 1:1, 11–34.

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Torp (2017): Torp, H. (2017), “Considerations of the chronology of the Rotunda mosaics”, in A. Eastmond and M. Hatzaki (eds), The mosaics of Thessaloniki revisited. Papers from the 2014 symposium at the Courtauld Institute of Art, London, 34–47. Treitinger (1938): Treitinger, O. (1938), Die oströmische Kaiser- und Reichsidee nach ihrer Gestaltung im höfischen Zeremoniell, Iena. Underwood (1950): Underwood, P.A. (1950), “The Fountain of Life in manuscripts of the gospels”, DOP 5, 41–115. Unruh (2003): Unruh, F. von (2003), “Unsichtbare Mauern der Kaiserpaläste. Hofzeremonien in Rom und Byzanz”, in M. König, E. Bolognesi Recchi Franceschini and E. Riemer (eds), Palatia. Kaiserpaläste in Konstantinopel, Ravenna und Trier, Trier, 33–48. Versnel (1970): Versnel, H.S. (1970), Triumphus. An inquiry into the origin, development and meaning of the Roman triumph, Leiden. Volbach (1976): Volbach, W.F. (1976), Elfenbeinarbeiten der Spätantike und des frühen Mittelalters3, Mainz. Wallraff (2001): Wallraff, M. (2001), “Christus verus sol”. Sonnenverehrung und Christentum in der Spätantike, (JAC, Erg.band 32), Münster. Warland (1994): Warland, R. (1994), “Der Ambo aus Thessaloniki. Bildprogramm – Rekonstruktion – Datierung”, JdI 109, 371–385. Watson (1981): Watson, C.J. (1981), “The program of the Brescia casket”, Gesta 20, 283–298. Weber (1990): Weber, M. (1990), Baldachine und Statuenschreine, (Archaeologica, 87), Roma. Weitzmann (1977): Weitzmann, K. (1977), Late antique and early Christian book illuminaton, New York. Weitzmann (1979): Weitzmann, K. (ed.) (1979), Age of spirituality. Late antique and early Christian, third to seventh century, New York. Wharton (1987): Wharton, A.J. (1987),“Ritual and reconstructed meaning: the Neonian baptistery in Ravenna”, ArtB 69:3, 358–375. Winkes (1969): Winkes, R. (1969), Clipeata imago. Studien zu einer römischen Bildnisform, (diss.), Bonn. Winterling (1999): Winterling, A. (1999), Aula caesaris: Studien zur Institutionalisierung des römischen Kaiserhofes in der Zeit von Augustus bis Commodus (31 v. Chr.—192 n. Chr.), München. Wistrand (1987): Wistrand, E. (1987), Felicitas imperatoria, (Acta Universitatis Gothoburgensis; Studia Graeca et Latina Gothoburgensia, 48), Göteborg.

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Fig. 7.1: Chronography of 354, fol. 13 Constantius II as consul (after Peiresc); Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, inv. Romanus 1 MS, Barb.lat. 2154; photo © 2018 Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana.

Fig. 7.2: Silver missorium of Theodosius; Madrid, Real Academia de la Historia; after Delbrueck (1929) Taf. 62.

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Fig. 7.3: Consular diptych of Probus; Aosta, Museo del Tesoro della Cattedrale di Aosta; photo Diego Cesare, by concession of the Regione autonoma Valle d’Aosta, Archivi dell’Assessorato Istruzione e Cultura della Regione autonoma Valle d’Aosta – fondo Catalogo beni culturali.

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Fig. 7.4: Consular diptych (panel) of Areobindus; Paris, Musée du Moyen-Âge – Cluny, inv. Cl 13.135; photo © RMN-Grand Palais (musée de Cluny – musée national du Moyen-Âge)/Thierry Ollivier.

Fig. 7.5: Silver plaque with representation of St Paul; New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art, inv. 50.5.1; photo Fletcher Fund, 1950.

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Fig. 7.6: Tetrapylon of Galerius in Thessaloniki: pylon B, N-E face; photo © Hans Wiegartz.

Fig. 7.7: Quadrifrons (“Arch of Janus”), Velabrum, Rome: N-W face; photo C. Olovsdotter.

Fig. 7.8: Ambo from Thessaloniki, façade of right block; Istanbul, İstanbul Arkeoloji Müzeleri, inv. 1090 T; photo C. Olovsdotter.

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Fig. 7.9: Ivory panel with representation of a Byzantine empress (Ariadne?); Florence, Museo Nazionale del Bargello, inv. 24 C; photo © Gabinetto Fotografico delle Gallerie degli Uffizi.

Fig. 7.10: “Reidersche Tafel” or “Resurrection” panel; Munich, Bayerisches Nationalmuseum, inv. MA 157; photo © Bayerisches Nationalmuseum München.

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Fig. 7.11: Lipsanotheca; Brescia, Museo Santa Giulia – Museo della Città, inv. MR5767; photo © Archivio fotografico Civici Musei di Brescia.

Fig. 7.12: Dome mosaics in Hagios Georgios, Thessaloniki: panel with Kosmas and Damion; photo Hjalmar Torp.

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Fig. 7.13: Obelisk base of Theodosius I in the Hippodrome of Constantinople (Istanbul), N-W face; photo C. Olovsdotter.

Fig. 7.14: Consular diptych of Anastasius; Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, inv. 55; photo source: Bibliothèque nationale de France.

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Fig. 7.15: Dome mosaics in the Orthodox baptistery in Ravenna, detail; photo C. Olovsdotter.

Fig. 7.16: Coptic stela; Boston, Museum of Fine Arts, inv. 04.1845; photograph © 2018 Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.

Hjalmar Torp

8 Christus Verus Sol – Christus Imperator: Religious and Imperial Symbolism in the Mosaics of the Rotunda in Thessaloniki The Rotunda as part of the imperial palace The Rotunda in Thessaloniki was begun by the emperor Galerius (293–311), but left unfinished and undecorated at the time of his death.1 In a second building phase, the structure was completed and converted into a centrally-planed, domed church with presbytery, apse and a wide ambulatory. The impressive church thus created had a diameter of about 54 m.2 The building is situated to the north of the emperor’s triumphal arch, the hippodrome and main parts of the palace, but as is generally acknowledged, in both building phases it formed an integral part of the city’s imperial quarters, and the main access to the church remained in the south. Sections of parallel walls running northsouth, excavated by E. Dyggve in 1939, provide evidence that the Rotunda, its temenos and the triumphal arch were connected by a monumental, colonnaded processional way.3 In its turn this thoroughly coordinated complex was connected with the palace by a 42 × 18  m great hall, the so-called vestibulum, and a monumental flight of 12 marble steps, more than 18 m broad, and built immediately to the south of the arch.4 There is disagreement as to the date of the Christian rebuilding of the Roman Rotunda; in my opinion, it was done, or at least initiated, by Theodosius I in 379, to serve as his palace church. This should weigh heavily with regard to the question of deliberately inserted elements of imperial connotation in the Rotunda’s mosaics, as these were planned and executed together with the transformation of the Roman structure into a church.5 Archaeological evidence indicates that the topographical and architectural integration palace-vestibulum-arch-Rotunda existed into the sixth century, when the vestibulum appears to have been destroyed by an earthquake.6 The Rotunda was also severely damaged in the quake. It was then rebuilt and provided with a large, octagonal baptistery in order to serve as the city’s metropolitan church.

1 Torp (1991); Theoharidou (1992). 2 Hébrard (1920) 27; Dyggve (1941) 69. 3 Dyggve (1941) 67. 4 Dyggve (1941) 68–69; Torp (2003) 248–257, fig. 10–21; Stefanidou-Tiveriou (2009) 398–402, fig. 4. 5 Torp (1955) 491; Torp (1963) 80. Cf. Mentzos (2002) 73. For a discussion of the date, see Torp (2017). 6 Dyggve (1941) 68. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110546842-009

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The mosaics The cupola mosaics are disposed in three superimposed registers.7 In the approximately 8 m high lower register, there are representations of martyrs in an orant position against a backdrop of splendid imitations of two-storey architecture in the Fourth Style, but with the addition of elements borrowed from contemporary Christian architecture and iconography.8 The middle register, largely destroyed, seems to have represented a choir of twenty-eight angels in vivid motion (see further below). At the summit of the cupola, the cosmic clipeus of glittering silver is largely destroyed, but the try-out sketch is preserved. It is painted in black directly on the dome’s brickwork and represents the striding, full-figure Christ, oriented to the east; extant in mosaic are his raised right hand, the upper part of the nimbus and, to the right of it, the top of what must have been a long, sceptre-like cross-staff, supported by his left hand. The clipeus, which is framed by three circular bands, respectively of stars, a garland of fruit, flowers and evergreen plants, and the rainbow, is supported by four hovering angels. They are accompanied by the Phoenix to the east, and to the north, by four rays of light, which are undoubtedly the remains of a large, radiant cross. In contrast to the Christ figure, the angels, the Phoenix and the other accompanying motifs are set off against a gold ground (Fig. 8.1). Because the medallion is situated about 28 m above the floor, the images are very large: the east-west diameter of the medallion measures 7.35 m; the sketch of Christ, including nimbus, is about 4  m; the diameter of his nimbus is 90  cm; the angels’ nimbuses range from 82 to 88  cm, and their impressive wingspans are as much as about 5 m.

The medallion Let us take a closer look at some characteristic features of the medallion’s representation of Christ and the four angels. The head of one angel is lost. Two of the three extant heads show handsome, youthful faces with wide-open eyes and gentle, “angelic” features (Fig. 8.2). The closest counterparts to these heads are those of the angels carved on the marble “Prinzensarkophag” from the Sarıgüzel area of Istanbul, dating from the late 4th century (Fig. 8.3).9 The third angel is far more individualised than these

7 The mosaics are splendidly illustrated in Bakirtzis et al. (2012); and Torp (2018) vol. II; for an overview, Kiilerich & Torp (2017). 8 Originally there were eight panels and twenty male martyrs; Torp (2002); Torp (2011). 9 Kiilerich (2002) 139–141, pl. 52.1, 3–53.1–3, 5. The sarcophagus is now in the Archaeological Museum in Istanbul, inv. 4508.

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two and has a distinctive, masculine look. The face is fuller and less soft; especially the lower part, with its strong, protruding chin, displays an unexpected and unprecedented heaviness. The mouth is separated from the nose by a long philtrum. The forehead is broad but surprisingly low; the curls of the fringe are arranged almost rectilinearly – in contrast to the curly fringe of the two other celestial beings (Fig. 8.4). Plausibly, the now-lost, fourth angel adhered to this same distinct physiognomic formula. At any rate, the type represented by the two “effeminate” angels has been profoundly modified or, rather, transformed, under the influence of an assertive, almost brutally masculine facial type. With its characteristic heavy features, the third angel’s effigy is closely related to the imperial τύπος ἱερός of the 4th century, that is, the physiognomic stereotype developed on the basis of the “Herrscherbild” of Constantine and his earliest successors. By downplaying certain features and stressing others, the image-makers made an effort to elevate the imperial portrait into the sacred realm in order to give visual expression to the emperor’s superhuman, indeed, divine, nature or essence.10 A series of 4th-century imperial portraits in various media illustrates the progressive crystallisation and transmission in imperial art of the iconic τύπος ἱερός that, according to my view, is mirrored in the masculine angel: 1) Constantine Sol, multiplum and gold solidus, Ticinum, 313 and 315.11 2) Constantine, colossal, reworked marble head, Rome, 320–330 (?).12 3) Constantine, silver medallion struck at Constantinople, 330.13 4) Constantine, solidus, struck at Antioch, 335/336.14 5) Constantine divus, colossal gilded bronze head, Rome, c. 340 (?)15 (Fig. 8.5). 6) Constans II (?), silver largitio plate, Antioch 357?16 (Fig. 8.6). 7) Valentinian I, silver miliarense, Siscia, 367–375.17 8) Theodosius I, silver medallion, Thessaloniki, 383–388 (?).18

10 L‘Orange (1984) 78–80; Torp (1996). 11 Ticinum 313: RIC VI, 96 no. 111; Alföldi (1963) 40–42, cat. no. 118, 166, pl. V.60. Ticinum 315: RIC VII, 363 no. 32, pl. 9; Alföldi (1932) pl. II.16; Alföldi (1963) cat. nos. 275, 430, 179–180, 193, pl. V.63–64. For the relation to Augustus’ image, see Smith (1997) 186. 12 Rome, Musei Capitolini, Palazzo dei Conservatori, inv. 757. Fittschen & Zanker (1985) 147–152 cat. no. 122. For later bibliography, see Guidetti (2013) note 11. 13 RIC VII, 578 no. 53, pl. 18 (struck for the occasion of the consecration of Constantinople; cf. gold coins from the same year, ibid. 577 no. 44, pl. 18). 14 RIC VII, 694 no. 96. 15 Fittschen & Zanker (1985) 152–155 no. 123. For later bibliography, see Guidetti (2013) note 32. 16 St Petersburg, State Hermitage, inv. 1820/79. Found at Kerch in 1891. Matzulewitsch (1929) 95–100, pl. 23; Althaus & Sutcliff (2006) 147 no. 62, colour pl. on p. 96. 17 RIC IX, 147, no. 9 (a), pl. IX, 4; other examples, ibid.175 no. 9, pl. X.1 (Thessaloniki 364–367). 18 RIC IX, 185 no. 56; for other examples, see ibid. 223 no. 43 (b), 44 (c), pl. X.7–8 (gold solidi, Constantinople).

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The use of the imperial τύπος ἱερός for the image of an angel might bring to mind the Christos-Angelos iconography – that is, the representation of Christ with angels’ wings,19 but the most plausible explanation for the Rotunda mosaic is the idea that this particular angel mirrors the face of Christ. This interpretation draws from a traditional source of knowledge: Pseudo-Dionysius, The Celestial Hierarchy, from about 500. When defining the three triads of angelic beings, Pseudo-Dionysius states that the goal of a hierarchy is “to enable beings to be as like as possible to God and be at one with him”. Furthermore: “Hierarchy bears in itself the mark of God. Hierarchy causes its members to be images of God in all respects, to be clear and spotless mirrors reflecting the glow of primordial light and indeed of God himself”’.20 The “final rank in the hierarchy”, he further explains, consists of “the godlike principalities, archangels, and angels”,21 the latter completing “the entire ranking of the heavenly intelligences”.22 Through the angels, “divine enlightenment” is announced “to us insofar as we are capable of being sacredly enlightened”.23 Let us return to the medallion’s representation of Christ, announced by the “masculine” angel. Fortunately, the small vestiges of the mosaic are supplemented by the artist’s preparatory drawing (Fig. 8.7). The preserved fragment of the nimbus covers the sketched head from the nose up, but of the lower face, enough is visible to bring out the essential features of the Divinity: sturdy neck, heavily rounded chin, full cheeks framed by long, wavy hair falling onto the broad shoulders. There is no trace of a beard. The head is shown en face, but a slight asymmetry suggests a light movement towards the cross-staff in his left hand and, perhaps, in the direction of the radiant cross that originally illuminated the north heaven. At this point, the problem of the Christian adaptation of the imperial τύπος ἱερός has been transferred from the image of the angel to that of Christ. How do we interpret this “imperial” rendering of the sacred face? In his Life of Constantine, Eusebius recounts how the emperor “had his own portrait (εἰκόνα) so depicted on the gold coinage that he appeared to look upwards (ὡς ἄνω βλέπειν) in the manner of one reaching out to God in prayer. Impressions of this type were circulated throughout the entire Roman world”. The bishop further tells us that “in the imperial quarters of various cities, in the images erected above the entrances, he was portrayed standing up, looking up to heaven, his hand extended in a posture of prayer. Such was the way he would have himself depicted praying

19 See Vollenweider (2002) 21–44, 36–38 esp. Interesting in connection with the Christos Angelos iconography is the uncertainty concerning how to interpret the seated figure by the holy sepulchre in two ivories from about 400; Volbach (1952) 57f nos. 110–111, pl. 33; Kiilerich (1993) 154–157. 20 De coelesti hierarchia 3.2 (PG 3, 165 A); transl. Luibheid (1987) 154; cf. Torp (1984) 120–127. 21 De coelesti hierarchia 9.1 (PG 3, 257 B); Luibheid (1987) 169. 22 De coelesti hierarchia 3.2 (PG 3, 260 A); Luibheid (1987) 170. 23 De coelesti hierarchia 3.2 (PG 3, 257 D.; Luibheid (1987) 169.

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in works of graphic art (ταῖς γραφαῖς)”.24 Insisting on the “heavenward gaze” as an expression of Christian prayer to God, Eusebius clearly makes an effort to Christianise the image of the emperor. In the panegyric Tricennial Orations, the bishop of Caesarea insists that “This is a sovereign who calls on the Heavenly Father night and day, who petitions him in his prayers [...]”. He is “outfitted in the likeness of the kingdom in heaven, he pilots affairs below with an upward gaze, to steer by the archetypal form. He grows strong in his model of monarchic rule [...)]”.25 The imperial image, of the type represented on the gold coins and in related images, portrays the sovereign “in contact and identity with the governing powers”.26 Towards the end of the Life of Constantine, Eusebius writes that the Romans “took steps to honour him in death as if he were alive with dedication of his portrait. They depicted heaven in coloured paintings (ἐν χρωμάτων γραφῇ), and portrayed him resting in an ethereal resort above the vaults of heaven”.27 The portrait of the emperor was an imago sacra28 which might be called an icon, a term Eusebius himself uses when he writes that Constantine “forbade images of himself (εἰκόνας αὐτοῦ) to be set up in idol-shrines”.29 When rendered in the calligraphic style of the silver plate conserved in St Petersburg, and sharing the features of the colossal bronze head in Rome, the imperial icon must have made a profound impression on the beholder. This image was treated with the same reverence that was accorded the emperor in person. Symptomatic is the sigh uttered by Nazarius in his panegyric to Constantine, when relating that before the Battle of Pons Milvius, Maxentius had destroyed or deformed the statues of Constantine in Rome: “Behold, for sorrow! (words come with difficulty), the violent overthrow of venerable statues and the ugly erasure of the divine visage”.30 If the facial masque of the imperial icon was transferred to the image of Christ, this would be because of developments in the attitude of the church. I have in mind the theological and religious concept of Christ παντοκράτωρ31 as well as the radical change in the Christian attitude towards the Roman state, in particular towards the

24 VC 4.15–16 (Cameron & Hall (1999) 125f). Cf. Dölger (1925) 303f; and L’Orange (1947) 92–94. 25 LC 5.5, 3.5 (Drake (1976) 89, 87). 26 L’Orange (1947) 116, 126–129. 27 VC 4.69, 1–2 (Cameron & Hall (1999) 180f); cf. Bonamente (1988) 110 with n. 15. 28 Kruse (1934) 27–39, 49f; Berger (1981) 26–31. 29 VC 4.16 (Cameron & Hall (1999) 159). 30 Nazarius, Pan. Const. Aug. 12.1–2. […] ecce enim, pro dolor! (verba vix suppetunt), venerandarum imaginum acerba deiectio et divini vultus litura deformis; transl. Nixon & Saylor Rodgers (1994) 356. 31 Wessel (1953) 136: “Fassen wir zusammen: Reiche Anregungen schöpfte die frühchristliche Kunst für das Christ Rex-Bild aus dem kaiserlichen Zeremoniell und den Darstellungen der Kaiser. Immer aber ging es ihr darum, dem von Gott gesetzten irdischen Herrscher den hoch über ihn erhabenen Himmelskönig entgegenstellen. Lebensvoll ringt die Kunst darum darzustellen, was die Theologie zu diesem Thema erarbeitet hat. Eine Fülle von Bildern entsteht so und versinkt wieder“. On this theological proposition in general, see Beskow (1962).

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imperial cult, an orientation that, among certain representatives of the church, can be traced back to the events of 312 (the battle of Pons Milvius) and 313 (the “Edict of Milan”).32 More precisely, what has been called Eusebius’ “political theology” undoubtedly constitutes the fundamental ideological platform for the iconographic parallelism here discussed.33 With Constantine’s victory and religious politics, the cult of the imperial autocrator, the “sovereign dear to God”,34 was no longer directed against the cosmic cult of the celestial pambasileus, but was subordinated to it. Ideally, the Christian emperor, the “royal Logos”, exercises his functions “as a kind of prefect of the Supreme Sovereign (οἷ μεγάλου βασιλέως ὕπάρχος)”.35 “By an indescribable force He (God) keeps filling with His message all that the sun oversees. He has modelled the kingdom on earth into a likeness of the one in heaven [...]”.36 Not only the empire, but the emperor in person reflects the divine archetype: “Really a Victor is he [...] who has modelled himself after the archetypal form of the Supreme Sovereign [...].”37 Constantine is “the image of the One Ruler of All”.38 As emphasised by H. A. Drake: this passage indicates a much more intimate and personal mimesis according not only with the theory of the sovereign as likeness of God but also with Constantine’s own concept of his relationship to his deity that produced the Constantine-Sol coin, the Constantine-Helios statue in Constantinople, and the claim by the panegyrist in 310 that he had seen his own features on the face of Apollo.39

If the “masculine”, Constantine-like angel of the Rotunda mirrors the largely lost mosaic of Christ, then we can safely consider this mosaic a Christianised version of the Constantine-Sol Invictus “twin” iconography represented on the gold multiplum and solidus struck at Ticinum (Fig. 8.8); it would have displayed a particular formulation of an imperial iconographical tradition with roots back to “heavenward-gazing” Alexander.40

32 Lepelley (1991) 107. 33 Baynes (1933); Straub (1939) 132 (“Eusebius übernahm es, dem Bild vom ‘Sonnenkaiser’ einen christlichen Charakter zu geben”); Straub (1967) 50 (“in my opinion, Eusebius was in fact a very competent interpreter, and an effective inspirer, of the Emperor’s own political intentions and of the concept of his special mission”); Berkhof (1939) 54–59; Berkhof (1947) 102; Farina (1966); Lepelley (1991) 19 (“Sous un vêtement chrétien fort superficiel, on retrouve ici des thèmes de propagande connus et sans cesse répétés”); Maraval (2001) 48–61. 34 LC 1.6 (Drake (1976) 85). 35 LC 3.6 (Drake (1976) 87). 36 LC 4.2 (Drake (1976) 88). 37 LC 5.4 (Drake (1976) 89). 38 LC 7.12 (Drake (1976) 97). 39 Drake (1976) 166, n. 13. 40 L’Orange (1947) 19–38, 126f, and passim. See also Tantillo (2003).

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Christus Verus Sol In the sketch of the medallion, Christ supports a long cross-sceptre with his left hand, while on the other side, his rounded shoulder accords harmoniously with the convex curve of his raised right arm (Fig. 8.9). The energetically striding movement of his body is transmitted to his garments, which consist of a wide, full-length chiton and a billowing chlamys. This is not the philosopher’s tunica and pallium usually worn by the Saviour, but the ideal costume of Apollo-Sol. Seen together, the raised right hand, the long chiton and the flowing chlamys constitute the decisive evidence in favour of the solar interpretation of the Rotunda Christ.41 In fact, flowing freely on either side of his body, the mantle brings to mind the image of Helios-Sol erect in his quadriga crossing the vault of heaven – a traditional iconographic formula represented on the shield carried by Constantine on the multiplum from 315. No later than the beginning of the 4th century this formula was taken over by the Christians, probably to express the omnipotence of the resurrected Saviour.42 The epithet sol iustitiae, ἥλιος (τῆς) δικαιοσύνης, is used for Christ very early in theological writing.43 However, the gesture of the raised right hand is characteristic of Sol Invictus, Constantine’s tutelary deity as represented on the Ticinum gold issue of 315. “In the magic sign of his ingens dextra, he rules and moves the Cosmos, sends the spheres spinning in their eternal orbits, thus affecting everything that happens in our earthly sphere. It is the gesture of the cosmocrator”.44 In the beginning of the 5th century, the Christ-Sol Invictus was saluted by Paulinus of Nola with words borrowed from the traditional poetry of the followers of Helios: salve, o Apollo vere [...] beata saeculi victoria.45 But in contrast to the Sun-god – and to the physical sun – the Resurrected Sun, τῆς ἀναστάσεως ἥλιος,46 never rests: χαῖρε φῶς ανέσπερον.47

41 Torp (1963) 60–62. Cf. Miziołek (1991) 62–72 (English summary on p. 176f), fig. 16–17, 28, 51–54, 59. 42 Miziołek (1991) 31–49, 171–174, fig. 3, 15, 17 (Vatican necropolis, tomb of the Iulii), fig. 23–24 (Rome, catacombs of SS. Marcellinus and Peter), fig. 25–26 (Milan, chapel of San Aquilino). 43 Clement of Alexandria, Protreptikos XI.114.3; Eusebius, LC 6.18 (Drake (1976) 94). Dölger (1925) 381; also Dölger (1918). For the solar attributes and epithets of Christ, see further Kantorowicz (1963) 135–149. 44 L’Orange (1953) 148. 45 Paulinus of Nola, Carmen II.51, 61 (CSEL 30; Hartel, Wien 1894, 349). In general, see Dölger (1925) 364–379 (“Jesus als Sonne der Auferstehung und Sol Invictus”), 379–410 (“Sol Salutis. Christus als Sonne im Morgenhymnus”). For solar themes in early Christian thought, see Wallraff (2001a) 41–125; and Marone (2016). On Christus Lux Vera, Lux Hominum, see L’Orange (1979) 115–124; contra Engemann 1979, whose objections against L’Orange’s nuanced interpretation are not persuasive; further Pace (1997) 185–200 with fig. 29–34 (p. 197 with n. 27 esp., repr. in Pace (2000) 105–123), 356–358 fig. 29–34; Torp (2015). 46 Clement of Alexandria, Protreptikos VIII.84.1–2 (GCS Clem. 1.63, l.15–20); cf. Dölger (1925) 365, with n. 2. 47 Methodius of Olympia, Convivium decem virginium XI § 286 (GCS 116); Dölger (1925) 378, with n. 3.

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The origin of the image Christ τύπος ἱερός The transference of the divine countenance from the “royal Logos” to the image of Christ is a special, but very characteristic and highly telling, example of the adaptation of the sacred images of Constantinian and post-Constantinian imperial art by the triumphant Church.48 This image, which I propose be named Christus Imperator, may have been created in order to present the Christian emperor, and thereby his state, as mirroring the ordered, celestial Jerusalem ruled by the supreme sovereign. Religion is politicised, imperial politics spiritualised. The gilded bronze portrait of Constantine in the Museo dei Conservatori in Rome – the principal example of the imperial τύπος ἱερός represented by the “masculine” angel – has by S. Ensoli been associated with the colossal statue of Constantine-Sol, likewise in gilded bronze. This latter work is now lost, but it once triumphantly crowned the porphyry column in the circular forum, the main public space of Constantine’s new capital.49 Erected in connection with the dedication of Constantinople on 11 May 330, the monument symbolised the city’s sacred centre.50 The statue was turned towards the east, and held a lance in its left hand (after 554, this was replaced by a sceptre) and an orb crowned by a victoriola in the right. Wearing a crown with seven rays, this statue of Constantine was evidently strongly influenced by solar ideology.51 Mounted on a base, pedestal, and column, this emperor-Helios colossus was raised some 37 m over the forum from where it could spread divine claritas over the new capital and its inhabitants.52 This idea is reflected in the words by the historian Hesychios of Miletos (6th century, excerpt 41): Κωνσταντῖνον ὁρῶμεν δίκην ἡλίου προλάμποντα τοῖς πολιταῖς.53 48 According to Bruun (1992) 219–229, Christ’s nimbus is a legacy of the image of Constantine (-Sol). 49 Ensoli (2000) 78 with n. 61 (bibliography). 50 Dagron (1974) 36–40. The dimensions of the colossus are unknown; the statue to which the Roman head of Constantine (5) belonged may have measured around 10 m in height. On the column, see Mango (1965) 310–313; Mango (1980-1981); and Ousterhout (2014). For the traditional and political aspects of the relation of Constantine with the sun god, and the metaphorical meanings of the monument in Constantinople, see Bergmann (2006). On the drawing by Melchior Lorck of a column base (1561), sometimes associated with Constantine’s monument, see Engemann (1989) 249–265 (drawing refers to a later monument); and the critical remarks by Mango (1980-1981) (maintaining the attribution of the drawing to the podium of Constantine’s column); see also Mayer (2002) 95–97. 51 For the sources, see Preger (1901b) 457–469; for the oratorium erected in connection with the column, see Ebersolt (1919) 71–74; also Straub (1939) 129–134; Wallraff (2001a) 133f; and Bergmann (2006) 153–159. 52 Mango (1965) 312f. Cf. Krautheimer (1983) 62–67; Wallraff (2001a) 126–143; and Wallraff (2001b). 53 Preger (1901a) 17; for the Patria “according to Hesychios”, see Dagron (1984) 23–29; for the religious meaning of the legend Claritas Reipvblicae in connection with Sol’s image on Constantinian coins, see Alföldi (1964). I disagree with the proposition of MacMullen (1969) 151, who tries to reduce the statue to the outcome of the haste with which the new city had been consecrated.

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A bronze statuette in the National Museum in Copenhagen helps visualise the lost statue (Fig. 8.10). The figure is haloed but, having lost its hands, has no other attributes.54 The position of the arms, however, seems to indicate that it originally held the orb in the left hand, while the right, raised and slightly extended, either made the habitual gesture of power or held a lance.55 The statuette’s long, sleeved and belted chiton and the chlamys fastened at the right shoulder make up the ideal and complete dress of Sol Invictus.56 In front, the twelve-rayed nimbus is enriched by a large gem, thus combining the sun-god’s radiant crown and the imperial diadem: the statuette probably represents Constantine or one of his successors in the guise of Sol Invictus. For the interpretation of the mosaic medallion, the identity of the emperor is not of primary importance.57 What is important is the head and physiognomy of the emperor-Sol. His straight, mid-length hair is combed forward in the imperial fashion introduced by Constantine, and the low forehead, the large eyes and nose, the small mouth, the full cheeks, the strong protruding chin and the broad neck define a face related to the divine countenance of Christ and the Christ-mimetic angel of the Rotunda mosaics. With indignation the 9th-century patriarch Photius, in his compilation of the Ecclesiastical History of the Neo-Arian Philostorgius (c. 364–440), writes that: This impious enemy of God [...] accuses the Christians of offering sacrifices to an image of Constantine (τὴν Κωνσταντίνου εἰκόνα) placed upon a column of porphyry, and of honouring it with lighted lamps and incense, and of offering vows to it as to God (ὡς θεῷ), and making supplications to it to ward off calamities.58

When to this “accusation” one adds that in his mausoleum church, the Apostoleion (inaugurated on 9 April 370), Constantine’s sarcophagus was situated in the centre of twelve tombs or slabs (θῆκαι or στήλαι) symbolising the apostles, one can along with G. Dagron affirm that “Constantin tient effectivement la place du Christ” and safely

54 Copenhagen, Nationalmuseum, inv. 8040 (height 49.7 cm, incl. lost feet about 60 cm). Mackeprang (1938) 135–151; Fleischer et al. (1996) 46f no. 10 (B. Kiilerich) (“Constantinople (?), c. 400”). According to Jucker (1967) the statuette may date from the second half of the 5th century or the beginning of the 6th; cf. Bassett (2004) 201–204. 55 Cf. L’Orange (1962) 104. 56 However, on coins as elsewhere the god Sol is often represented as dressed in chlamys but without chiton, as exemplified by the bronze statuette found in the Roman Villa de La Olmeda, Pedrosa; Cortes Álvarez de Miranda (1996) fig. on p. 109 (in the local museum at Saldaña). 57 L’Orange (1962) 105. Stucchi (1950) (42, n. 3) and Jucker (1967) (126, pl. 45) both reject the proposition that the statuette was related to the Constantinian monument; cf. L’Orange (1984) 122. 58 Epitome 2.17, PG 65, 480 (transl. Amidon (2007)). Cf. Dagron (1984) 41f; Krautheimer (1983) 62.

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conclude that “l’empereur victorieux se substitue à Constantinople au Christ ressuscité de Jérusalem [...]”.59 Seen against this background, there can be little doubt, I think, that the image of Christus Imperator, which might be reflected in the “masculine” τύπος ἱερός angel in the Rotunda, was created in Constantinople (probably no earlier than the third quarter of the 4th century), and brought to Thessaloniki by the main workshop responsible for the majestic mosaic decorations of Theodosius’ Palatine church in Thessaloniki.

Participation in Christ I would like to conclude with some considerations on the significance of the iconography of the medallion and the middle zone, i.e. the ensemble of the two upper registers in the three-storey heavenly world represented by the Rotunda mosaics.60 Unfortunately, the mosaics of the middle zone are only very fragmentarily preserved, but the original programme can still be reconstructed in its main lines. The remains of sandalled feet, white tunics and white pallia show that it was inhabited by figures in vivid motion across a green field. Originally twenty-eight to thirty in number, the figures plausibly represented a choir of angels. Being about 3.5 m tall, these celestial beings moving around the dome certainly must have played a dominant role in the Rotunda’s mosaic decoration. If the designation “church of the Incorporeal” – ναός τῶν ἀσωμάτῶν – recorded in late Byzantine sources refers to the Rotunda, it is an echo of the impression created by the animated dance performed in the paradisiacal meadow by these imposing heavenly beings.61 As mentioned, no horizontal frame appears to have separated the two registers: the medallion and the intermediate zone together constitute one single two-zoned image unveiling the upper spheres of the heavenly world, the spheres that the martyrs, standing in their proper register further down and distinctly framed, contemplate with wide-open eyes. A possible interpretation, proposed by some scholars, is that the two registers represent the Ascension; however, the large number of figures in the middle zone speaks against this interpretation. A more frequently advanced and more probable hypothesis is the Parousia, Christ’s Second Coming in glory.62 In support of this interpretation, W.E. Kleinbauer, in his important article on the 59 Dagron (1974) 406f. Cf. Krautheimer (1983) 66: Constantine “would have seen himself as an earthly double of Christ [...]”. 60 Whereas the martyrs’ register is set off from the middle register by way of a wide composite cornice drawn in perspective, no frame seems to have separated the middle register from the medallion. 61 Theocharidis (1954). 62 Valentien (1966); Grabar (1967) 65; Kleinbauer (1972) 27–44. Cf. Gioles (1990) 122; Lidov (1998) 341; Mentzos (2002) 78f; and Nasrallah (2005) 466, 506–508.

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iconography of the mosaics,63 assigns great importance to the presence of the luminous cross, even though it is situated in the northern heaven and not, as one would expect, in the east – a place of privilege that is instead accorded to the Phoenix, the bird intimately associated with Christ-Sol. In accordance with the Parousia hypothesis, the relocation of the radiant cross from the east to the north may be explained in various ways.64 Still, considering the utmost care with which even secondary iconographic elements have been treated in the Rotunda, the Second Coming could hardly be other than a potential signification to be “activated” at certain moments in the celebration of the liturgy.65 In view of the interplay between liturgy and image, the mosaics in the dome’s two upper registers probably represent a theme with a more general religious content than the historical Ascension or the future adventus of Christ. I believe the medallion visualises a theophany of Christ, carried by four angels and saluted by a choir of angels, contemplated by the martyrs in the lower zone, and by the congregation attending the Church. The visible manifestation of Christ is immediate, but also timeless and infinite: fundamentally, thus, the mosaics symbolise Christ’s continuous and eternal presence in the church and among the faithful.66 In both visual and verbal representations of such visions, light always plays an important part.67 In the Rotunda, light is evoked by the circle of stars and the rainbow – the lights of night and of day – but above all by the silver ground of the medallion. Whereas the nimbus of Christ is golden – as are the nimbi of the angels and the background of the mosaics – the clipeus of the revealed Divinity is made of shining silver. Advancing through the silvery light, “the great Christ shines on every being more than the sun”, as Saint Hippolytus wrote in the 3rd century.68 The imperial Christ-Sol of the theophany represented in the mosaic in the zenith of the dome could well have been praised with the very same words which the priests of Syrian Heliopolis used to invoke their solar god69: ῾Ηλιε παντόκρατωρ, κόσμου πνεῦμα, κόσμου δύναμις, κόσμου φῶς!

63 Kleinbauer (1972). 64 Cf. Kleinbauer (1972) 36–39. 65 On the Second Coming as a potential theme in the arts of the 4th century, see Matthiae (1988) 59–63 (à propos the mosaic in S. Pudenziana). On polyvalence, ambivalence and ambiguity in early Christian art, see Maguire (1987) 5–15. 66 Cf. the comments by Sallis (1999) 78–84. For the iconography, see Torp (2018) Chap. 12. 67 Like the image of Christ in the medallion of the mosaic, the shining cross of the vision of 7 May 351 was, according to Cyrillus of Jerusalem (Epistula ad Constantium II; PG 33, 1169 A), surrounded by a luminous rainbow. 68 Hippolyte, Homelies pascales I; SC 27.1.1 (p. 116/117 (P. Nautin)). 69 Macrob., Sat.1.23.

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References Alföldi (1932): Alföldi, A. (1932), “The helmet of Constantine with Christian monogram”, JRA 22, 9–23. Alföldi (1963): Alföldi, M.R. (1963), Die constantinische Goldprägung. Untersuchungen zu ihrer Bedeutung für Kaiserpolitik und Hofkunst, Mainz. Alföldi (1964): Alföldi, M.R. (1964), “Die Sol Comes-Münze vom Jahre 325: Neues zur Bekehrung Constantins”, in Mullus. Festschrift Theodor Klauser (Jahrbuch für Antike und Christentum, Erg.-Bd 1), 10–16. Althaus & Sutcliff (2006): Althaus, F. and M. Sutcliff (eds) (2006), The road to Byzantium.Luxury arts of antiquity, London. Amidon (2007): Amidon, P.R. (2007), Philostorgius: church history, Leiden. Bakirtzis et al. (2012): Bakirtzis, C. et al. (2012), Mosaics of Thessaloniki 4th-14th century, Athens. Bassett (2004): Bassett, S. (2004), The urban image of late antique Constantinople, Cambridge. Baynes (1933): Baynes, N.H. (1933), “Eusebius and the Christian empire”, Annuaire de l’Institut de philologie et d’histoire orientales, (Mélanges Bidez), Bruxelles, 13–18. Berger (1981): Berger, P.C.(1981), The insignia of the Notitia Dignitatum. A contribution to the study of late antique illustrated manuscripts, New York & London. Bergmann (2006): Bergmann, M. (2006), “Konstantin und der Sonnengott. Die Aussagen der Bildzeugnisse”, in A. Demand and J. Engemann (eds), Konstantin der Grosse. Geschichte – Archäologie – Rezeption, Trier, 143–161. Berkhof (1939): Berkhof, H. (1939), Die Theologie des Eusebius von Caesarea, Amsterdam. Berkhof (1947): Berkhof, H. (1947), Kirche und Kaiser. Eine Untersuchung der Entstehung der byzantinischen und der theokratischen Staatsauffassung im vierten Jahrhundert, Zürich. Beskow (1962): Beskow, P. (1962), Rex Gloriae. The kingship of Christ in the early church, Stockholm. Bonamente (1988): Bonamente, G. (1988), “Apoteosi e imperatori cristiani”, in G. Bonamente and A. Nestori (eds), I cristiani e l’impero nel IV secolo. Colloquio sul cristianesimo nel mondo antico, Macerata, 107–142. Bruun (1992): Bruun, P. (1992), “Una permanenza del ‘Sol Invictus’ di Costantino nell’arte cristiana”, in Costantino il Grande dall’antichita all’umanesismo. Colloquio sul cristianesimo nel mondo antico, 1990, Macerata, 219–229. Cameron & Hall (1999): Cameron, A. and S.G. Hall (1999), Eusebius, Life of Constantine. Introduction, translation, and commentary, Oxford. Cortes Alvares de Miranda (1996): Cortes Alvarez de Miranda, J. (1996), Rutas y villas romanas de Palencia, Palencia. Dagron (1974): Dagron, G. (1974), Naissance d’une capitale. Constantinople et ses institutions de 330 à 451, (Bibliothèque Byzantine, Études, 7), Paris. Dagron (1984): Dagron, G. (1984), Constantiople imaginaire. Etudes sur le recueil des Patria, Paris. Dölger (1918): Dölger, F.J. (1918), Die Sonne der Gerechtigkeit und der Schwarze, Münster. Dölger (1925): Dölger, F.J. (1925), Sol salutis. Gebet und Gesang im christlichen Altertum. Mit besonderem Rücksicht auf die Ostung in Gebet und Liturgie, Münster. Drake (1976): Drake, H.A. (1976), In praise of Constantine: A historical study and new translation of Eusebius’ Tricennial Orations, Berkeley & Los Angeles. Dyggve (1941): Dyggve, E. (1941), “Kurzer, vorläufiger Bericht über die Ausgrabungen im Palastviertel von Thessaloniki, Frühjahr 1939”, in Dissertationes Pannonicae 2:11, (Lauvreae Aquincenses Memoriae V. Kuzsinszky dicatae, 2), Budapest, 63–71. Ebersolt (1919): Ebersolt, J. (1919), Constantinople, Paris. Engemann (1979): Engemann, J. (1979), “Akklamationsrichtung, Sieger- und Besiegtenrichtung auf dem Galeriusbogen in Saloniki”, JAC 22, 150–160.

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Engemann (1989): Engemann, J. (1989), “Melchior Lorichs Zeichnung eines Säulensockels in Konstantinopel”, in Quaeritur inventus colitur. Miscellanea in onore di padre U.M. Fasola (Studi di Antichità Cristiana, 40), Città del Vaticano, 249–265. Ensoli (2000): Ensoli, S. (2000), “I colossi di bronzo a Roma in età tardoantica: dal Colosso di Nerone al Colosso di Costantino”, in, S. Ensoli and E. La Rocca (eds), Aurea Roma. Dalla città pagana alla città cristiana, Roma, 66–90. Farina (1966): Farina, R. (1966), L’impero e l’imperatore cristiano in Eusebio di Cesarea, la prima teologia politica del cristianesimo, (Bibliotheca Theologica Salesiana, ser. 1: Fontes, 2), Zürich. Fittschen & Zanker (1985): Fittschen, K. and P. Zanker (1985), Katalog der römischen Porträts in den Capitolinischen Museen, und den anderen kommunalen Sammlungen der Stadt Rom, 1. Kaiserund Prinzenbildnisse, Mainz. Fleischer et al. (1996): Fleischer, J. et al. (1996), Byzantium. Late antique and Byzantine art in Scandinavian collections, Copenhagen. Gioles (1990): Gioles, N. (1990), O byzantinós troúllos kai to eikonografikó tou prógramma, Athens. Grabar (1967): Grabar, A. (1967), “À propos des mosaïques de la coupole de Saint-Georges à Salonique”, CahArch 17, 59–81. Guidetti (2013): Guidetti, F. (2013), “Iconografia di Costantino. L’invenzione di una nuova immagine imperiale”, in Costantino I. Enciclopedia costantina sulla figura e l’immagine dell’imperatore del cosiddetto editto di Milano 313-2013, 2, 185–200, Roma. Hébrard (1920): Hébrard, E. (1920), “Les travaux du Service Archéologique de l’Armée d’Orient à l’Arc de triomphe ‘de Galère’ et à l’église Saint-Georges de Salonique”, BCH 44, 5–40. Jucker (1967): Jucker, H. (1967), “Zwei konstantinische Porträtköpfe in Karthago. Beiträge zur Ikonographie Konstantins des Grossen und seiner Söhne”, in Gestalt und Geschichte. Festschrift Karl Schefold, Bern, 121–132. Kantorowicz (1963): Kantorowicz, E.H. (1963), “Oriens Augusti. Lever du Roi”, DOP 17, 117–177. Kiilerich (1993): Kiilerich, B. (1993), Late fourth century classicism in the plastic arts. Studies in the so-called Theodosian renaissance (Odense University Classical Studies, 8), Odense. Kiilerich (2002): Kiilerich, B. (2002), “The Sarigüzel sarcophagus and triumphal themes in Theodosian art”, in G. Koch (ed.), Akten des Symposiums ‘Frühchristliche Sarkophage’, Marburg 1999 (Sarkophag-Studien, 2), Mainz, 137–144. Kiilerich & Torp (2017): Kiilerich, B. and H. Torp (2017), The Rotunda in Thessaloniki and its mosaics, Athens. Kleinbauer (1972): Kleinbauer, W.E. (1972), “The iconography and the date of the mosaics of the Rotunda of Hagios Georgios, Thessaloniki”, Viator 3, 27–107. Krautheimer (1983): Krautheimer, R. (1983), Three Christian capitals, Berkeley. Kruse (1934): Kruse, H. (1934), Studien zur offiziellen Geltung des Kaiserbildes im römischen Reiche, Paderborn. Lepelley (1991): Lepelley, L. (1991), “Y eut-il au IVème siècle une idéologie chrétienne du pouvoir impérial?”, in L’idéologie du pouvoir monarchique dans l’Antiquité. Actes du Colloque de la Société des Professeurs d’Histoire Ancienne de l’Université tenu à Lyon et Vienne les 26-28 juin 1989, Paris, 105–114. Lidov (1998): Lidov, A. (1998), “Heavenly Jerusalem: the Byzantine approach”, in The real and the ideal Jerusalem in art of Judaism, Christianity and Islam, Jerusalem, 341–353. L’Orange (1935): L’Orange, H.P. (1935), “Sol Invictus Imperator. Ein Beitrag zur Apotheose”, SymbOslo 14, 86–114 (reprinted in H.P. L’Orange, Likeness and icon. Selected studies in classical and early medieval art, H. Torp (ed.), Odense, 325-344). L’Orange (1947): L’Orange, H.P. (1947), Apotheosis in ancient portraiture, Oslo. L’Orange (1953): L’Orange, H.P. (1953), Studies on the iconography of cosmic kingship in the ancient world, Oslo.

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L’Orange (1962): L’Orange, H.P. (1962), “Kleine Beiträge zur Ikonographie Konstantins des Grossen”, Opuscula 4, 101–105. L’Orange (1979): L’Orange, H.P. (1979), La scultura in stucco e in pietra del Tempietto (Institutum Romanum Norvegiae, Acta, ser. 1, 7:3), Rome. L’Orange (1984): L’Orange, H.P.(1984), Das spätantike Herrscherbild von Diokletian bis zu den Konstantin-Söhnen, 284-361 n. Chr, unter Mithilfe von Reingart Unger; mit einem Nachtrag von Max Wegner, (Das römische Herrscherbild, 3:4), Berlin. Luibheid (1987): Luibheid, C. (1987), Pseudo-Dionysius. The complete works, New York & Mahwah. Mackeprang (1938): Mackeprang, M. (1938), “Eine in Jütland vor 200 Jahren gefundene Kaiserstatuette”, ActaArch 9, 135–151. MacMullen (1969): MacMullen, R. (1969), Constantine, New York. Maguire (1987): Maguire, H. (1987), Earth and ocean. The terrestrial world in Early Byzantine art, University Park, PA & London. Mango (1965): Mango, C. (1965), “Constantinopolitana”, JdI 80, 305–336. Mango (1980-1981): Mango, C. (1980-1981), “Constantine’s porphyry column and the chapel of St. Constantine”, Deltion tis christianikis archaiologikis etaireias 4:10, 103–110. Maraval (2001): Maraval, P. (2001), Eusèbe de Césarée. La théologie politique de l’Empire chrétien. Louanges de Constantin (Triakontaétérikos). Introduction, traduction et notes, Paris. Marone (2016): Marone, P. (2016), “Il tema del Cristus Verus Sol nella letteratura cristiana antica”, Annales theologici 30, 371–382. Matthiae (1988): Matthiae, G. (1988), Mosaici medievali delle chiese di Roma, Roma. Matzulewitsch (1929): Matzulewitsch, L.A. (1929), Byzantinische Antike. Studien auf Grund der Silbergefässe der Eremitage, Berlin & Leipzig. Mayer (2002): Mayer, E. (2002), Rom ist dort, wo der Kaiser ist: Untersuchungen zu den Staatsdenkmälern des dezentralisierten Reiches von Diokletian bis zu Theodosius II, Mainz. Mentzos (2002): Mentzos, A. (2002), “Reflections on the interpretation and dating of the Rotunda of Thessaloniki”, Egnatia 6, 57–82. Miziołek (1991): Miziołek, J. (1991), Sol Verus. Studia nad ikonografią Chrystusa w sztuce pierwszego tysiąclecia, Wrocław, Warszawa & Krakow. Nasrallah (2005): Nasrallah, L. (2005), “Empire and apocalypse in Thessaloniki: interpreting the early Christian Rotunda”, Journal of Early Christian Studies 13.4, 465–508. Nixon & Saylor Rogers (1994): Nixon, C.E.W. and B. Saylor Rodgers (1994), In praise of later Roman emperors: the Panegyrici Latini, Berkeley. Ousterhout (2014): R. Ousterhout (2014), “The life and afterlife of Constantine’s column”, JRA 27, 304–326. Pace (1997): Pace, V. (1997), “Cristo-Luce a Santa Prassede”, in Per assiduum studium scientiae adipisci margaritam. Festgabe für Ursula Nilgen zum 65. Geburtstag, St. Ottilien, 185–200. Pace (2000): Pace, V. (2000), “Cristo-Luce a Santa Prassede”, in Arte a Roma nel Medioevo. Committenza, ideologia e cultura figurativa in monumenti e libri, Napoli, 105–123. (Reprint from Per assiduum studium scientiae adipisci margaritam. Festgabe für Ursula Nilgen zum 65. Geburtstag, St. Ottilien, 185–200). Preger (1901a): Preger, T. (1901a), Scriptores originum constantinopolitanarum, 1, Leipzig (reprint New York 1975). Preger (1901b): Preger, T. (1901b), “Konstantin-Helios”, Hermes 36, 457–469. Sallis (1999): Sallis, J. (1999), Chorology. On the beginning in Plato’s Timaeus, Bloomington & Indianapolis. Smith (1997): Smith, R.R.R. (1997), “The public image of Licinius I: portrait sculpture and imperial ideology in the early fourth century”, JRS 87, 170–202.

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Stefanidou-Tiveriou (2009): Stefanidou-Tiveriou, T. (2009), “Die Palastanlage des Galerius in Thessaloniki. Planung und Datierung”, in Diocletian, Tetrarchy and Diocletian’s palace on the 1700th anniversary of existence, Split, 389–410. Straub (1939): Straub, J.A. (1939), Vom Herrscherideal in der Spätantike, Stuttgart. Straub (1967): Straub, J.A. (1967), “Constantine as KOINOS EPISKOPOS: tradition and innovation in the representation of the first Christian emperor”, DOP 21, 39–55. Stucchi (1950): Stucchi, S. (1950), Il ritratto bronzeo di Costantino del Museo di Cividale, Gorizia. Tantillo (2003): Tantillo, I. (2003), “L’impero della luce: riflessioni su Costantino e il sole”, MEFRA 115:2, 985–1048. Theocharidis (1954): Theocharidis, G.I. (1954), “O naós tôn Asômátôn kai ê Rotonda tou Agíou Geôrgìou Thessaloníkês”, Ellenika 13, 24–70. Theoharidou (1992): Theoharidou, K. (1992), “Ê Rotonda tês Thessaloníkês. Nea stoichéia kai aposaféníseis me aformê tés anastêlôtikês ergasíes”, Deltion tis christianikis archaiologikis etaireias 16, 57–76. Torp (1955): Torp, H. (1955), “Quelques remarques sur les mosaïques de l’église Saint-Georges à Thessalonique”, Actes du IX congrès international d’études byzantines (1953), Athens, 489–498. Torp (1963): Torp, H. (1963), Mosaikkene i St. Georg-rotunden i Thessaloniki. Et hovedverk i tidligbysantinsk kunst, Oslo. Torp (1984): Torp, H. (1984), The integrating system of proportion in Byzantine art. An essay on the method of the painters of holy images (ActaAArtHist Series altera in 4: o,18), Roma. Torp (1991): Torp, H. (1991), “The date of the conversion of the Rotunda at Thessaloniki into a church”, in Ø. Andersen and H. Whittaker (eds), The Norwegian Institute at Athens. The First Five Lectures, (Papers from the Norwegian Institute at Athens, 1), Athens, 13–28. Torp (1996): Torp, H. (1996), “Tradition and innovation in iconography. From imperial glorification to Christian dogma”, in A. Ellegård and G. Åkerström-Hougen (eds), Rome and the North, Jonsered, 73–94. Torp (2002): Torp, H. (2002), “Dogmatic themes in the Rotunda at Thessaloniki”, Arte Medievale, Nuova serie 1:1, 1–34. Torp (2003): Torp, H. (2003), “L’entrée septentrionale du palais impérial de Thessalonique: l’arc de triomphe et le vestibulum d’après les fouilles d’Ejnar Dyggve en 1939”, Antiquité tardive 11, 239–272. Torp (2011): Torp, H. (2011), “An interpretation of the Early Byzantine martyr inscriptions in the mosaics of the Rotunda at Thessaloniki”, ActaAArtHist 24, 11–43. Torp (2015): Torp, H. (2015), “Lo sfondo storico-iconografico dell’immagine di Cristo nel Tempietto Longobardo di Cividale”, ActaAArtHist 28, 73–93. Torp (2017): Torp, H. (2017), “Considerations on the chronology of the Rotunda mosaics”, in A. Eastmond and M. Hatzaki (eds), The Mosaics of Thessaloniki Revisited. Papers from the 2014 symposium at the Courtauld Institute of Art, London, 34–47. Torp (2018): Torp, H. (2018), La rotonde palatine à Thessalonique: architecture et mosaïques, Athènes. Valentinien (1966): Valentien, F. (1966), “Frühchristliche und frühmittelalterliche Voraussetzungen für eine Majestas-Darstellung des 12. Jahrhunderts”, in Tortulae. Römische Quartalschrift, Suppl. Heft 30, 285–292. Volbach (1952): Volbach, W.F. (1952), Elfenbeinarbeiten der Spätantike und des frühen Mittelalters, Mainz. Vollenwieder (2002): Vollenweider, S. (2002), “Zwischen Monotheismus und Engelchristologie. Überlegungen zur Frühgeschichte des Christusglaubens”, Zeitschrift für Theologie und Kunstgeschichte 99, 21–44.

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Wallraff (2001a): Wallraff, M. (2001a), Christus Verus Sol. Sonnenverehrung und Christentum in der Spätantike (JAC, Erg.band, 32), Münster. Wallraff (2001b): Wallraff, M. (2001b), “Constantine’s devotion to the Sun after 324”, Studia patristica 34, 256–269. Wessel (1953): Wessel, K. (1953), “Christus Rex, Kaiserkult und Christusbild”, AA, 118–136.

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Fig. 8.1: Thessaloniki, Rotunda: the cupola medallion; photo B. Kiilerich.

Fig. 8.2: Thessaloniki, Rotunda: “Sweet” angel; photo B. Kiilerich.

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Fig. 8.3: Sarıgüzel sarcophagus, angels; Istanbul Archaeological Museum; photo H.Torp.

Fig. 8.4: Thessaloniki, Rotunda: Heavy-faced angel; photo H. Torp.

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Fig. 8.5: Colossal bronze head of Constantine; Rome, Museo Capitolino; photo B. Kiilerich.

Fig. 8.6: Largitio plate of Constantius II, detail of emperor; St Petersburg, Hermitage; photo after Grabar (1967) Fig. 347.

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Fig. 8.7: Thessaloniki, Rotunda: Christ in medallion; photo H. Torp.

Fig. 8.8: Constantine-Sol medallion from Ticinum; Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale de France; photo after Grabar (1966) Fig. 11.

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Fig. 8.9: Thessaloniki, Rotunda: sketch of Christ by S.Sass.

Fig. 8.10: Bronze statuette of emperor from Tømmerby; Copenhagen, Nationalmuseum; photo after Fleischer et al. (1996) fig. on p. 47.

Josef Engemann

9 A “Modern Myth”: The Sixth-Century Starting Date of the “Eastern” Representation of Christ’s Ascension Since almost a hundred years there exists a twofold interpretation of early illustrations representing Christ’s ascension as conforming to either a “western” or an “eastern” manner. This typological division is well known and accepted as communis opinio.1 In the “western” type of ascension image Christ climbs a mountain, his wrist being seized and pulled upwards by God’s hand extended from heaven. The type first appeared in the second third of the 4th century with the sarcophagus from Servannes in Arles, produced by a Roman workshop.2 Towards the end of the 4th century it appeared in a resurrection display on an ivory plaque (the so-called Resurrection panel) in Munich,3 where Christ is shown holding a scroll in his left hand while his extended right arm is being seized by the wrist by God’s right hand.4 The inclusion of God’s hand into the ascension image can hardly be explained without referring to preceding apotheosis images, for instance the consecration coins of Constantine I.5 The appearance of the “eastern” type of ascension representation is generally attributed to the 6th century based on a corresponding full-page miniature in the Syrian Rabbula gospels, whose text is dated to the year 586.6 The dating of the Palestinian pilgrim flasks, to which I will return presently, is derived from the same source.7 Essentially, these images are divided into two zones. The upper zone shows the enthroned or standing Christ within a clipeus or mandorla supported by four angels, while the lower zone presents Mary – although this is not mentioned in the biblical text – amidst the twelve apostles. In the Syrian miniature the mandorla with the standing Christ is carried upwards by two angels while another two angels pay homage to him by offering wreaths with veiled hands. Finally, below the mandorla are the four living creatures, flames, eyes, and wheels from the vision of Ezekiel

1 Engemann (2011) 98–104 with notes. 2 Christern-Briesenick (2003) 29–31 no. 42, pl. 15, 3–5 (second third of 4th century). 3 Munich, Bayerisches Nationalmuseum, inv. MA 157. Volbach (1976) 79f no. 110, pl. 59; Baumstark (1998–1999) 84–90 no. 9 (R. Kahsnitz); Ensoli & La Rocca (2000) 611 no. 312 (F. Tasso). 4 For this motif, see Kötzsche (1986) 402–482, 437f esp. 5 Kötzsche (1986) 423–425, 438. Beside a great number of small coins there are some gold solidi: Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France: Ensoli & La Rocca (2000) 551 no. 206 (M. Amandry); Engemann (2007) 200–207, fig. 18. London, British Museum: Hartley et al. (2006) 101 fig. 42. 6 Florence, Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana, Ms. cod. Plut. I, 56, fol. 13b. Cecchelli et al. (1959) fol. 13b; Weitzmann (1977) 104 fig. 36; Wright (1979) 197–210; Engemann (1993) 161–168, fig. 4; Mundell Mango (2008) 113–126 (miniatures from a different workshop have been added to the text). 7 Grabar (1958) 16, pl. 3; Engemann (1973) 5–27, pl. 5b. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110546842-010

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(Ez. 1). In accordance with the Acts of the Apostles, two white-robed men have been added to the lower zone, here winged and nimbed like angels. One of them is pointing upwards, as does an apostle on each side of the image. The text reads as follows: After he said this, he was taken up before their very eyes, and a cloud hid him from their sight. They were looking intently up into the sky as he was going, when suddenly two men dressed in white stood beside them. “Men of Galilee”, they said, “why do you stand here looking into the sky? This same Jesus, who has been taken from you into heaven, will come back in the same way you have seen him go into heaven” (Acts 1.9-11).

“Eastern” representations of Christ’s ascension from the early 5th century: a group of North-African oil lamps The assumption that two-zoned ascension images do not appear until the 6th century now turns out to be erroneous. A North-African ceramic oil-lamp belonging to a private collector in Munich (Fig. 9.1a)8 depicts Christ’s ascension, representing a type of which fifteen more samples have been located in Tunisia, Sicily, and Greece.9 Moreover: a mould of unknown origin exists in Rome, suitable for producing the upper part of identical lamps.10 The ornamental motifs of the horizontal shoulder are the same on all examples, including the XP monogram in the second double circle on both sides. Judging by shape and decorative motifs, these lamps belong to a North-African group produced from the first half or middle of the 5th century.11 The central image is divided into two zones (Fig. 9.1b). In the upper zone, two flying angels transport the standing Christ in a clipeus. Christ is clad in tunic and cloak, adorned with a nimbus, and holds in his left hand a staff with a cross at the end. His right arm is seized by the wrist by God’s hand, extended from heaven above, exactly as shown on the ivory plaque in Munich. Lazaridou’s description from 2011 that Christ grasps the hand of God is misleading.12 That the hand of God is extended from heaven is, however, confirmed by the four living creatures located above the clipeus and the two filler holes. The eagle, man, ox, and lion of the Tetramorph are represented as somewhat foreshortened. They do

8 Munich, Collection Dr. Christian Schmidt, inv. 2157; length 14.5 cm, width 8.6 cm, height 3.7–5.3 cm; Anneser et al. (2005) 181 no. II.7.2 (P. B. Steiner); Hahn et al. (2010–2011) 270f no. III. 43 (C. Schmidt); Engemann (2011) pl. 4a-b. 9 For other examples, see Herrmann & van den Hoek (2003) 293–318, notes 1–4 esp.; and Engemann (2011) 101f n. 23. 10 Mercando (1963) 35–39; Béjaoui (1997) fig. 77c. 11 Hayes (1972) 313f, form IIa; Enciclopedia (1981) 159–272 group 6.1.1.1; Mackensen (1993) 151f. 12 Lazaridou (2011) 157 no. 127.

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not hold books as was repeatedly the case in images of the first half of the 5th century.13 Below the clipeus we see two frontally standing men in belted tunics, the man on the right holding up his right hand. Whether or not two apostles or the aforementioned heavenly messengers are represented here is an open question; either way, the two men are representative of an “eastern” type of ascension image where such figures are placed in the zone below the clipeus with angels – and this more than a century before the miniature of the Rabbula gospels. I cannot imagine that this richly detailed ascension image was invented primarily for small objects such as North-African oil lamps. Inspite of the well-known warnings not to draw conclusions about no longer existing greater monuments of art from preserved smaller works,14 I firmly believe that in the early 5th century there must have existed at least one monumental model for the representation of Christ’s ascension in two zones. In search of an early model I recommend attentive consideration of the idea presented by Archer St. Clair in her article of 1978, where she endeavoured to attribute the two-zoned ascension image to about 400.15 On a large ivory pyxis in Berlin16 two of the apostles flanking the enthroned Christ do not fit into the context with regard to their postures and upturned heads. However, they correspond to two apostles standing side by side in a two-zoned ascension image from the 9th century, namely the dome mosaic of the Hagia Sophia in Thessaloniki.17 Here, in the upper zone, two flying angels carry the clipeus with Christ enthroned, while in the lower zone Mary stands between the two heavenly messengers, presented as angels, and the twelve apostles. Despite the interval of five hundred years between the pyxis and the dome mosaic, St. Clair deduced from their congruence – I think correctly – that at the time when the Berlin pyxis was produced, an ascension image must have existed from which the two upwards-glancing apostles would have been copied. Such an image later influenced the cupola mosaic in Thessaloniki as well. The author of this hypothesis has so far not received any applause,18 but I think that ought to change now, considering the discovery of the African ascension lamps.

13 Cf. an ivory plaque in Milan (Volbach (1976) 80 no. 111); the apse mosaic in S. Pudenziana in Rom (Ihm (1992) 130–132 no. 11); and the vault mosaic in the Mausoleum of Galla Placidia in Ravenna (Deichmann (1958) pl. 19). 14 Brenk (2010) 10. 15 St. Clair (1978) 5–27, 14–16 esp. 16 Berlin, Museum für spätantike und byzantinische Kunst, inv. 563; Volbach (1976) 104 no. 161; Effenberger & Severin (1992) 132–134 no. 48 (H. G. Severin); Stiegemann (1996) 62f no. 62 (G. Bühl). 17 L’Orange & Nordhagen (1960) pl. 95–97; St. Clair (1978) fig. 10–12. 18 For literature, see Engemann (2011) 101.

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Representations in zonal arrangement on other themes from the 4th and early 5th century In this context one should not overlook the fact that at the time of Theodosius I and his sons, there surfaced images of homage partitioned into different zones. The offering of tribute by barbarians represented on the pedestal of the obelisk in the Hippodrome of Constantinople takes place in two zones and in a strictly power-political sphere.19 The corresponding compositions on the pedestal of the Arcadius column, however, represent in each of the three zones scenes relating to power politics as well as to religious politics (the fourth zone shows trophies and representatives of conquered countries).20 On the east side of the Arcadius pedestal, senators of Constantinople and Rome offer deference to the emperors Arcadius and Honorius, on the west side barbarians pay homage to the same, and on the south side personifications of conquered cities do likewise. On all three sides the emperors themselves pay homage to the symbols of Christ, the cross or the XP monogram, located in a zone immediately above them. It is certainly no coincidence that the wreaths and the plaque displaying the signs of Christ are being carried by winged Victories or angels. This last detail illuminates the parallelism between the zonal arrangement on the Arcadius pedestal and the arrangement of the ascension images attributed to the “eastern” type. In Hagios Georgios in Thessaloniki we find a dome mosaic that, whilst not portraying Christ’s ascension, is nevertheless similar to the “eastern” type of ascension image with its two-zoned arrangement above architectural representations with standing saints. The upper part of the mosaic shows, in the centre, Christ with nimbus and cross-adorned staff inside a clipeus supported by four winged angels. Of the roughly thirty figures in the lower zone only the feet and scant remnants of long white garments have been preserved. Proposed dates for the mosaics include the 6th21 and the 5th century22 as well as the Constantinian23 and Theodosian24 periods.

19 Kähler (1975) 45–55; also Wrede (1966) 178–198; Müller-Wiener (1977) 64–73; Rebenich (1991) 447–476; Safran (1993) 409–435; Jordan-Ruwe (1995); Bauer (1996) 247–354; and Effenberger (1996) 207–283. 20 Cambridge, Trinity College, Ms. O.7.2; Freshfield (1922) 87–104; Müller-Wiener (1977) 250–253; Bauer (1996) 203–212; Konrad (2001) 319–401. 21 Spieser (1984) 164. 22 Vickers (1970) 183–187; Kleinbauer (1972a) 27–108, 69 esp.; Kleinbauer (1972b) 55–60; Kleinbauer (1982) 25–45; Mentzos (2001–2002) 56–82, 73 esp.; Fourlas (2012) 177–195. 23 Bakirtzis & Mastora (2011) 13–45. 24 Torp (1963); Torp (1991) 13–28; Torp (2011) 11–43; Torp (2017) 38f esp.; Nasrallah (2005) 465–508, 508 esp.; Kiilerich (2007) 321–336, 322 esp.; Mastora (2010) 83–107, 92f esp.; Ćurčić (2010) 213–244, 216 esp.

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Implications of the new chronology for the symbolism and meaning of “eastern” ascension images: The examples of the pilgrim flasks from Palestine and Egypt The general dating of the Palestinian pilgrim flasks to the late 6th century is based on three points of evidence. Firstly, there is a legendary association of the collections at Monza and Bobbio with the Lombardic queen Theodolinde (589–626).25 Secondly, the earliest report on oil brought into contact with the relic of the cross in Jerusalem emerges only in 570 with the pilgrim of Piacenza.26 Thirdly, the “eastern” ascension image featuring on the pilgrim flasks has been dated according to the earliest known example of the type in the Rabbula gospels of 586. This third argument is sustainable no more, and the other two can no longer exclude an earlier dating of the eulogies. Forty years ago, when working on a paper about pilgrim flasks from Palestine,27 I was at a loss for an explanation of a certain remarkable interval in time. Already in the 4th century intensive veneration of the cross relic was going on in Jerusalem,28 while pilgrim flasks for the ΕΛΑΙΟΝ ΞΥΛΟΥ ΖΟΗC, the Oil of the Wood of Life, would only become produced two hundred years later. Why should these metal ampullae have been in use later than the simple Egyptian pottery flasks of St Menas, the production of which started during the last quarter of the 5th century?29 The case became all the more puzzling when, in 1983, a distribution site for votive oil was unearthed in the town of Menas. Coin findings permitted a dating of this plant to the middle of the 5th century.30 The coins were located beneath the altar of the first church of St Menas, which had been constructed in the first half of the 5th century. If confirmed, an earlier dating of the composition of Christ’s ascension in two zones would allow an earlier dating of the Palestinian ampullae as well.

References Anderson (2004): Anderson, W. (2004), An archaeology of late antique pilgrim flasks, (Anatolian Studies, 54), 79–93. 25 Grabar (1958) 15, 32. 26 Anon. Placent. 20 (CSEL 39, 172.205); Grabar (1958) 63; Engemann (1973) 11f. 27 See supra n. 7. Further literature: Kötzsche-Breitenbruch (1981) 229–246; Engemann (2002) 153– 169; and Anderson (2004) 79–93. 28 Egeria, Peregrinatio 37.2 (CCL 175, 81; CSEL 39.88). 29 Kiss (1989); Kaminski-Menssen (1996); Witt (2000); Engemann (2016). 30 Grossmann (1989) 64–68; Noeske (1991) 278–290; Noeske (2000) 93–111; Engemann (1995) 223–233 with pl. 15.

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Anneser et al. (2005): Anneser, S. et al. (2005), Kreuz und Kruzifix, Zeichen und Bild. Ausstellung Diözesanmuseum Freising, 20. Februar bis 3. Oktober 2005, Lindenberg. Bakirtzis & Mastora (2011): Bakirtzis, C. and P. Mastora (2011), “Are the mosaics in the rotunda in(to) Thessaloniki linked to its conversion to a Christian church?”, in M. Rakocija (ed.), The Days of St. Emperor Constantine and Helena: Niš and Byzantium. Ninth Symposium, Niš 2010, Niš, 13–45. Baumstark (1998): Baumstark, R. (ed.) (1998), Rom und Byzanz. Schatzkammerstücke aus bayerischen Sammlungen. Katalog zur Ausstellung des Bayerischen Nationalmuseums München, 20. Oktober 1998 bis 14. Februar 1999, München. Bauer (1996): Bauer, F.A. (1996), Stadt, Platz und Denkmal in der Spätantike, Mainz. Béjaoui (1997): Béjaoui, F. (1997), Céramique et religion chrétienne. Les thèmes bibliques sur la sigillée africaine, Tunis. Brenk (2010): Brenk, B. (2010), The apse, the image and the icon. An historical perspective of the apse as a space for images, Wiesbaden. Christern-Briesenick (2003): Christern-Briesenick, B. (2003), Repertorium der christlich-antiken Sarkophage 3: Frankreich, Algerien, Tunesien, Mainz. Cecchelli et al. (1959): Cecchelli, C., G. Furlani and M. Salmi (1959), The Rabbula gospels, Olten & Lausanne. Ćurčić (2010): Ćurčić, S. (2010), “Christianisation of Thessalonikē: the making of Christian ‘urban iconography’”, in L. Nasrallah, Ch. Bakirtzis and St. J. Friesen (eds), From Roman to early Christian Thessalonikē, (Harvard Theological Studies, 64), Cambridge, Mass., 213–244. Deichmann (1958): Deichmann, F.W. (1958), Frühchristliche Bauten und Mosaiken von Ravenna, Baden-Baden. Effenberger (1996): Effenberger, A. (1996), “Überlegungen zur Aufstellung des Theodosius-Obelisken im Hippodrom von Konstantinopel”, in B. Brenk (ed.), Innovation in der Spätantike. Kolloquium Basel, 6. und 7. Mai 1994, (Museum Helveticum, 57:3), Wiesbaden, 207–283. Effenberger & Severin (1992): Effenberger, A. and H.G. Severin (1992), Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Das Museum für spätantike und byzantinische Kunst, Mainz. Enciclopedia (1981): Enciclopedia (1981), Enciclopedia dell’arte antica classica e orientale. Atlante delle forme ceramiche 1: ceramica fine romana nel bacino mediterraneo (medio e tardo impero), Roma. Engemann (1973): Engemann, J. (1973), “Palästinische Pilgerampullen im F. J. Dölger-Institut in Bonn”, JAC 16, 5–27. Engemann (1993): Engemann, J. (1993), “Syrische Buchmalerei”, in E.M. Rupprechtsberger (ed.), Syrien. Von den Aposteln zu den Kalifen. Exposition Linz 1993/94, Mainz, 161–168. Engemann (1995): Engemann, J. (1995), “Eulogien und Votive”, in E. Dassmann and J. Engemann (eds), Akten des 12. internationalen Kongresses für Christliche Archäologie 1991, 1, (JAC Suppl. Vol. 20), Münster, 223–233. Engemann (2002): Engemann, J. (2002), “Palästinische frühchristliche Pilgerampullen”, JAC 45, 153–169. Engemann (2007): Engemann, J. (2007), “Ikonographie und Aussage von Münzbildern”, in A. Demandt and J. Engemann (eds), Konstantin der Große. Exhibition Trier 2007, Mainz, 200–207. Engemann (2011): Engemann, J. (2011), “Die Himmelfahrt Christi – eine neue Interpretation früher Bilder”, JAC 54, 98–104. Engemann (2016): Engemann, J. (2016), Abū Mīnā VI, Die Keramikfunde von 1965 bis 1998, (Deutsches Archäologisches Institut Kairo, Veröffentlichungen 11), Wiesbaden. Ensoli & La Rocca (2000): Ensoli, S. and E. La Rocca (eds) (2000), Aurea Roma. Dalla città pagana alla città cristiana, Roma. Fourlas (2012): Fourlas, B. (2012), Die Mosaiken der Acheiropoietos-Basilika in Thessaloniki, Berlin, Berlin.

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Freshfield (1922): Freshfield, E.H. (1922), “Notes on a vellum album containing some original sketches of public buildings and monuments, drawn by a German artist who visited Constantinople in 1574”, Archaeologia 72, 87–104. Grabar (1958): Grabar, A. (1958), Les ampoules de Terre Sainte (Monza-Bobbio), Paris. Grossmann (1989): Grossmann, P. (1989), Abū Mīnā I. Die Gruftkirche und die Gruft, Mainz. Hahn et al. (2010): Hahn, S. et al.(2010), Engel. Mittler zwischen Himmel und Erde. Exposition Freising 2010-2011, Berlin. Hartley et al. (2006): Hartley, E. et al. (2006), Constantine the Great, York’s Roman emperor. Exhibition York 2006, York. Hayes (1972): Hayes, J.-W. (1972), Late Roman pottery, London. Herrmann & Van den Hoek (2003): Herrmann, J. and A. Van den Hoek (2003), “’Two men in white’: observations on an early Christian lamp from North Africa with the ascension of Christ”, in D.H. Warren et al. (eds), Early Christian voices in texts, traditions, and symbols, Boston, 293–318. Ihm (1992): Ihm, C. (1992), Die Programme der christlichen Apsismalerei vom vierten Jahrhundert bis zur Mitte des achten Jahrhunderts2, Wiesbaden. Jordan-Ruwe (1995): Jordan-Ruwe, M. (1995), Das Säulenmonument. Zur Geschichte der erhöhten Aufstellung antiker Porträtstatuen, Bonn. Kähler (1975): Kähler, H. (1975), “Der Sockel des Theodosiusobelisken als Denkmal der Spätantike”, ActaAArtHist 6, 45–55. Karminski-Menssen (1996): Kaminski-Menssen, G. (1996), Bildwerke aus Ton, Bein und Metall. Liebieghaus – Museum alter Plastik, Bildwerke der Sammlung Kaufmann, 3, Kassel. Kiilerich (2007): Kiilerich, B. (2007), “Picturing ideal beauty: the saints in the Rotunda at Thessaloniki”, Antiquité tardive 15, 321–336. Kiss (1989): Kiss, Z. (1989), Les ampoules de Saint Ménas découvertes à Kôm el-Dikka (1961-1981), (Alexandrie, 5), Varsovie. Kleinbauer (1972a): Kleinbauer, W.E. (1972a), “The iconography and the date of the mosaics of the rotunda of Hagios Georgios, Thessaloniki”, Viator 3, 27–108. Kleinbauer (1972b): Kleinbauer, W.E. (1972b), “The original name and function of Hagios Georgios at Thessaloniki”, CahArch 22, 55–60. Kleinbauer (1982): Kleinbauer, W.E. (1982), “The orants in the mosaic decoration of the rotunda at Thessaloniki: martyr saints or donors?”, CahArch 30, 25–45. Kötzsche-Breitenbruch (1981): Kötzsche-Breitenbruch, L. (1981), “Pilgerandenken aus dem Heiligen Land”, in Vivarium. Festschrift Theodor Klauser zum 90. Geburtstag, (JAC Suppl. Vol. 11), Münster, 229–246. Kötzsche (1986): Kötzsche, L. (1986), “Hand II (ikonographisch)”, in Reallexikon für Antike und Christentum 13, 402–482. Konrad (2001): Konrad, C.B. (2001), “Beobachtungen zur Architektur und Stellung des Säulenmonumentes in Istanbul-Cerrahpaşa – ‘Arkadiossäule’”, IstMitt 51, 319–401. Lazaridou (2011): Lazaridou, A. (ed.) (2011), Transition to Christianity. Art of late antiquity, 3rd-7th century AD. Exhibition catalogue, Onassis Cultural Center, New York City, December 7, 2012 – May 14, 2013, New York. L’Orange & Nordhagen (1960): L’Orange, H.P. and P. J. Nordhagen (1960), Mosaik: von der Antike bis zum Mittelalter. München. Mastora (2010): Mastora, P. (2010), “Ο ψηφιδωτὸς διάκοσμος στὶς φωτιστικὲς θυρίδες τς Ροτόντας Θεσσαλονίκης”, Archaeologikē Ephemeris 149, 83–107. Mentzos (2001–2002): Mentzos, A. (2001–2002), “Reflections of the interpretation and dating of the rotunda of Thessaloniki”, Egnatia 6, 56–82. Nasrallah (2005): Nasrallah, L. (2005), “Empire and apocalypse in Thessaloniki: interpreting the early Christian rotunda”, Journal of Early Christian Studies 13, 465–508.

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Mackensen (1993): Mackensen, M. (1993), Die spätantiken Sigillata- und Lampentöpfereien von El Mahrine (Nordtunesien), München. Mercando (1963): Mercando, L. (1963), “Una matrice di lucerna nella collezione dell’Antiquarium Comunale”, BollMC 10, 35–39. Müller-Wiener (1977): Müller-Wiener, W. (1977), Bildlexikon zur Topographie Istanbuls: ByzantionKonstantinopolis-Istanbul bis zum Beginn des 17. Jahrhunderts, Tübingen. Mango, Mundell (2008): Mango, M. Mundell (2008), “The Rabbula gospels and other manuscripts produced in the late antique Levant”, in N. Bernabò (ed.), Il tetravangelo di Rabbula, Roma, 113–126. Noeske (1991): Noeske, H.-C. (1991), “Ein spätrömischer Münzschatz aus der Gruftkirche von Abu Mina”, in Tesserae. Festschrift für Josef Engemann, (JAC Suppl. Vol. 18), Münster, 278–290. Noeske (2000): Noeske, H.-Chr (2000), Münzfunde aus Ägypten I. Die Münzfunde des ägyptischen Pilgerzentrums Abu Mina und die Vergleichsfunde aus den Dioecesen Aegyptus und Oriens vom 4.-8. Jh. n. Chr., (Studien zu Fundmünzen der Antike, 13), Berlin. Rebenich (1991): Rebenich, S. (1991), “Zum Theodosiusobelisken in Konstantinopel”, IstMitt 41, 447–476. Safran (1993): Safran, L. (1993), “Points of view: the Theodosian obelisk base in context”, Greek, Roman, and Byzantine Studies 34, 409–435. Spieser (1984): Spieser, J.-M. (1984), Thessalonique et ses monuments du IVe au VIe siècle, Paris. Stiegemann (1996): Stiegemann, C. (1996), Frühchristliche Kunst in Rom und Konstantinopel. Schätze aus dem Museum für Spätantike und Byzantinische Kunst Berlin, 6. 12.1996-31.3.1997Erzbischöfliches Diözesanmuseum Paderborn, Paderborn. St. Clair (1978): St. Clair, A. (1978), “The iconography of the Great Berlin pyxis”, JBerlMus 20, 5–27. Torp (1963): Torp, H. (1963), Mosaikkene i St. Georg-Rotunden i Thessaloniki: ed hovedverk i tidligbysantinsk kunst, Oslo. Torp (1991): Torp, H. (1991), “The date of the conversion of the Rotunda at Thessaloniki into a church”, in Ø. Andersen and H. Whittaker (eds), The Norwegian Institute at Athens: the first five lectures, (Papers from the Norwegian Institute at Athens, 1), Athens, 13–28. Torp (2011): Torp, H. (2011), “An interpretation of the Early Byzantine martyr inscriptions in the mosaics of the Rotunda at Thessaloniki”, ActaAArtHist 24, 11–43. Torp (2017): Torp, H. (2017), “Considerations of the chronology of the Rotunda mosaics”, in A. Eastmond and M. Hatzaki (eds), The mosaics of Thessaloniki revisited. Papers from the 2014 symposium at the Courtauld Institute of Art, London, 34–47. Vickers (1970): Vickers, M. (1970), “The date of the mosaics of the rotunda at Thessaloniki”, PBSR 38, 183–187. Volbach (1976): Volbach, W.F. (1976), Elfenbeinarbeiten der Spätantike und des frühen Mittelalters3, Mainz. Weitzmann (1977): Weitzmann, K. (1977), Spätantike und frühchristliche Buchmalerei, München. Witt (2000): Witt, J. (2000), Staatliche Museen zu Berlin – Preußischer Kulturbesitz, Skulpturensammlung und Museum für Byzantinische Kunst. Bestandskataloge, 2:1, Werke der Alltagsskulptur: Menasampullen, Wiesbaden. Wrede (1966): Wrede, H. (1966), “Zur Errichtung des Theodosiusobelisken in Istanbul”, IstMitt 16, 178–198. Wright (1979): Wright, D.H. (1979), “The date and arrangement of the illustrations in the Rabbula gospels”, DOP 27, 197–210.

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Fig. 9.1a: North-African lamp with Christ’s ascension; Munich, Collection Dr Christian Schmidt; photo Martin del Negro.

Fig. 9.1b: North-African lamp with Christ’s ascension: detail of motif.

Livia Bevilacqua

10 Symbolic Aspects of the Mosaics in the Church of the Multiplication of the Loaves and Fishes at Tabgha Tabgha is a village that lies by the north-western shore of the Sea of Galilee, in presentday Israel. The name comes from the Greek Ἑπτάπηγον, “the seven springs”, referring to the numerous sources flowing from the surrounding hills. Tabgha or et-Tabgha (among other spelling variants) is the Arab adaptation of the Greek toponym. In this area, according to Christian tradition, three events from the life of Christ narrated in the Gospels took place. All of them have been monumentalised through the building of sanctuaries as early as in the fourth century: the Sermon on the Mount, the appearance of the risen Christ to the Apostles and the Primacy of Peter, and the miracle of the Multiplication of the Loaves and the Fishes. These three venues are still today the goal of pilgrims who visit the Holy Land, thus perpetuating an itinerary which has its roots deep in the first centuries of Christianity, although the buildings that accommodate these memories have been rebuilt in very recent times. The sanctuary of the Multiplication is the largest, and the most relevant from the art-historical point of view, since the magnificent mosaics that once carpeted the whole of its floor are largely preserved. Among them, two panels display a “Nilotic” landscape – the oldest of this subject to be found in a Christian building – and a symbolic depiction hinting at the miracle narrated in the Gospels. In the pages that follow, we will analyse these mosaics and their iconography in detail, and attempt to contextualise and interpret them in the artistic and religious situation surrounding their production. The first and only thorough study devoted to our church dates back to 1934, following the archaeological survey by Alfons Schneider and Evaristus Mader, who at that time were in charge of the first official site excavations.1 Later, in the 1970s, the excavation reports by Stanislao Loffreda were more concerned with the other sanctuaries of the area,2 including only a brief report of the excavations at Tabgha,3 while the short guide for the pilgrims published by the same author in 1977 includes a summary of the history of the church of the Multiplication.4 As early as in the 1940s, the mosaics of Tabgha were considered in more general studies. After their mention by André

1 Mader (1933) and Mader (1934) (both these texts have unfortunately been inaccessible to me); Schneider (1934); Schneider 1937 (English edition). 2 Loffreda (1968); Loffreda (1970a). 3 Loffreda (1970b). 4 Loffreda (1977). https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110546842-011

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Grabar in Martyrium,5 and their appearance in several corpora of Middle-Eastern floor mosaics,6 it is worth recalling that Ernst Kitzinger introduced the two Nilotic panels in his study of the stylistic development in pavement decoration in the late-antique Near East, when the Roman formula of the emblema is supplanted by a figure carpet: of the latter the mosaics in the transept of the church of the Multiplication are a relevant example.7 Beyond the purely formal evolutionary scheme, and on a more iconographic and symbolic level, Henry Maguire considered the same panels in his studies on the representation of nature in late-antique pagan and Christian buildings.8 Most recently, Karen Britt has devoted an entry to the Tabgha mosaics in her doctoral dissertation on Byzantine mosaics in Palestine.9

The Church of the Loaves and Fishes: The textual and archaeological record Before going into interpretive issues, a step backwards in time needs to be taken, to the earliest literary sources concerning the site; we will also recall briefly the archaeological data we can draw on, both of these components being relevant in order to better contextualise the specific milieu in which the mosaics have been produced, to conduct a precise visual analysis of the remains, so that we may accurately elaborate on their possible interpretation. Many of the pilgrims who, throughout the centuries, travelled to Tabgha and worshipped the relic of this place, left a written account of their visit.10 However, only a few of these allude to the existence of buildings on the site, and that rather ambiguously. The earliest testimony is provided by Egeria, who travelled the Holy Land in the late 4th century, and subsequently described in her “diary” all the places she visited, among them Tabgha: And in the same place by the sea is a grassy field with plenty of hay and palm trees. By them are seven springs, each flowing strongly. And this is the field where the Lord fed the people with the five loaves and the two fishes. In fact, the stone on which the Lord placed the bread has now been made into an altar. People who go there take away small pieces of the stone to bring them

5 Grabar (1946) I: 128–130, 198, 291; II: 159–162, 251. The mosaics are also mentioned in Grabar (1966) 112–115. 6 Kitzinger (1965a) passim; Ovadiah (1970) 56–59 no. 46 a-b; Avi-Yonah (1976) II: 497–501; Ovadiah & Ovadiah (1987) 174f; Ben Dov & Rappel (1987) 61–63. 7 Kitzinger (1965b); Kitzinger (1976); Kitzinger (1977) 51. 8 Maguire (1987); Maguire (1999). 9 Britt (2003) 216–232. See also Britt (2011) for a thorough study of the scholarly literature on MiddleEastern floor mosaics. 10 For a complete anthology of texts, see Baldi (1935) 346–370 esp.

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prosperity, and they are very effective. Past the walls of this church goes the public highway on which the Apostle Matthew had his place of custom.11

It has to be remarked, however, that this excerpt is only reported by Peter the Deacon in his Liber de Locis Sanctis dating to 1137, while it is missing in the major manuscript of Egeria’s text. Not until almost three centuries later, another pilgrim, Arculf, tells about a church on the site where Jesus fed five thousand people with five loaves and two fishes. But, through the words of the Irish monk Adomnanus, he reports that in that field: There are no buildings to be seen […]. Arculf saw a few stone columns only, lying on the brink of the fountain, the one from which it is said the people drank on the day on which the Lord refreshed them with such a repast. The place is on the other shore of the sea of Galilee, facing the city of Tiberias which bounds it on the south.12

Thus, around 670 the church was already in ruins. Most likely it had been damaged during either the Persian invasion in 610 or the Arab one in 638. Nevertheless, still in the early 9th century a monastery “quod vocatur Heptapegon” and housing ten monks is referred to in the anonymous Commemoratorium de casis Dei,13 while, between the 9th and 11th century, the monk Epiphanius mentions an ekklesìa megàle,14 although it is not clear whether it was still officiated. No post-Byzantine rebuilding has come to light in the archaeological excavations on the site, and the literary testimonies remain ambiguous about what was actually extant and/or visible in the Middle Ages. In 1932 the first official archaeological surveys were undertaken, during which the Benedictines Schneider and Mader were able to find the remnants of the large basilica and of its lavish mosaics.15 At first they believed they had unearthed the church that Egeria had visited, and therefore dated it to the late 4th century; but when in 1936 the mosaics underwent restoration, B. Gauer discovered, beneath the pavement of the basilica, the foundations of an earlier, smaller sanctuary16 (Fig. 10.1)

11 Wilkinson (1999) 97f. Original text in Latin: Ibidem vero super mare est campus herbosus, habens foenum satis et arbores palmarum multas et iuxta eas septem fontes, qui singuli infinitam aquam emittunt, in quo campo Dominus de quinque panibus et duobus piscibus populum satiavit. Sane lapis, super quem Dominus panem posuit, est factum altarium, de quo lapide nunc frusta tollunt venientes pro salute sibi et prodest omnibus. Iuxta cuius ecclesiae parietes via publica transit, ubi Mattheus apostolus theloneum habuit. (Baldi (1935) 354). 12 Meehan (1958) 92–95. The original Latin text: In quo nulla cernuntur aedificia; quasdam solummodo columnas paucas Arculfus aspexit lapideas super marginem illius fonticuli iacentes, de quo illi eadem biberunt, ut fertur, die, qua Dominus esurientes eos tali refectione recreavit. Qui videlicet locus citra mare Galileae est, respiciens civitatem Tiberiadem ab australi plaga sibi occurrentem. (Baldi (1935) 347f). 13 Baldi (1935) 348. 14 Baldi (1935) 348f. 15 Schneider (1934); Schneider (1937). 16 Gauer (1938).

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(no. 1 on the plan), built with local limestone blocks, single-aisled, barrel-vaulted (as suggested by the pilasters along the side walls, which were intended to support transverse arches),17 and with an apse semi-circular both internally and externally. The stone of worship was placed before the altar, in the centre of the easternmost span. Schneider ascribed this earlier church to the mid 4th century.18 In 1970, underneath the foundations of the chapel, Stanislao Loffreda reportedly found a coin dated to the reign of Honorius, emperor from 395 to 423: this date should therefore indicate a terminus post quem for the first sanctuary,19 which, as suggested by the coin, could consequently be ascribed to the late 4th-early 5th century. The problem, which is still much discussed, also involves the chronology of Egeria’s travels, which is not plain either: some scholars ascribe these travels to the early 5th century,20 in which case the chronology of the smaller church would fit Egeria’s description, but most of today’s scholars tend to assign her Itinerarium to the years 381–384.21 There being no material evidence for an earlier building, the chronological problem thus remains open. It may be suggested that the discrepancy between the archaeological data and Egeria’s description might be revised, based on some philological problems posed by the text of Peter the Deacon, the only author quoting this specific passage of the pilgrim. This, however, is a problem that goes beyond the aim of the present paper, as well as my expertise. The chronology of the second basilica and of its mosaics have not yet been firmly established either. For some unknown reason, only a few decades after its erection, the older chapel was replaced by a larger basilica surrounded by a monastic complex.22 The explanation for such a rebuilding may be either that the structure had been damaged by an earthquake, or – which is more likely – that the sanctuary had increased in importance, similar to other major Christian sanctuaries that underwent extensive renewal from the late 4th century onwards.23 After the discovery of the

17 Crowfoot (1938) 329 esp.: on this basis citing Tabgha, together with Julian’s church at Umm el Jamal, as the earliest example of a “hall church” with an external apse. 18 Schneider (1937) 20–23. 19 Loffreda (1970b) 378. The coin was found “fra le pietre di fondazione della Cappella Primitiva in un contesto in cui si esclude la possibilità di una intrusione”. 20 See discussion in Wilkinson (1999) 169–171. 21 Wilkinson (1999) 169–171 esp. On Egeria’s itinerary, see also de’ Maffei (2000). 22 The former church had a decidedly inclined axis compared to the second one, but this can be easily explained, since on the north side ran the road leading to Capernaum, determining the position of the former building. When this was rebuilt, preference was given to a more precise east-west orientation of the church, and this is why the external northern wall is not orthogonal to the others, its position being conditioned by the road itself; see Ovadiah (1970) 56–59. 23 Not only in the Holy Land, but also in Rome, where one can mention, as a pivotal example in this respect, the basilica of S. Paolo fuori le mura, which underwent a complete rebuilding and enlargement shortly after the establishment of an earlier chapel. On S. Paolo, see Pietrangeli (1988) passim; and Liverani (2012).

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earlier chapel, Schneider had proposed the new basilica be dated to the late 4th-early 5th century. As early as 1941 Crowfoot suggested that this dating might be shifted even further on the basis of the high quality of the mosaics and the peculiarity of the plan, whilst recognising that the archaeological data were too scarce to confirm this with any certitude.24 If we look at the plan of the complex, it is possible to identify some features that match the Palestinian architectural trends of the time, whereas others are unique in the region. The church could be entered through the east wing of a roughly rectangular atrium, with a cantharus in the centre of it. Inside, the three-aisled space was marked by two rows of columns supporting a wooden roof25; the colonnades bent north- and southwards into a large, projecting transept. Beyond the transept, a semi-circular apse was flanked by two pastophoria, all concealed on the outside by a straight wall – a most common solution in this region. Our basilica, however, differs from all other local examples in that a hollow space connects the prothesis to the diaconicon behind the apse. This device is quite usual among village churches in the Negev,26 in Nubia,27 and it recurs in various basilicas in Cilicia,28 but it seems to have been uncommon in the Tabgha area. The only comparable example is a monastic basilica in Tiberias a few kilometres away from Tabgha, which is considered to be almost coeval with ours, and where a similar corridor can be found.29 Although I will not dwell upon the liturgical furniture, I wish to point out that at Tabgha, the bema chancel-screen did not only surround the central area of the presbytery as such, but continued parallel with the eastern walls of the transept, thus preventing access to the side chambers from the aisles. Only the clergy could have had access there, through a narrow passage of 80 cm. This is another uncommon solution, one that would become more frequent in the next century, in Jordan for example.30 However, at some later date the lateral

24 Crowfoot (1941) 73–77 with n. 3 (p. 75). Crowfoot points out that the former chapel had been found by workers, in charge of taking off, and then resetting, the mosaics, and that archaeologists did not witness the operation. If this is true, a number of meaningful traces may have been lost, which the author himself regrets. 25 For a hypothesis on the shape of the roofing, see Orlandos (1952) 182f. I am grateful to Dr Nikolaos Karydis for kindly informing me about this reference. 26 Descoeudres (1983) 21f with further bibliography. 27 Crowfoot (1941) 76f. On the churches of Nubia: Mileham (1910) 11–13; and Säve-Söderbergh (1970). 28 Hill (1996) 28–37, suggesting that there might be an actual connection between Cilician and Palestinian churches, and pinpointing the status of martyria of the buildings considered in both examples. 29 Ovadiah (1970) 56–59, 57 esp. The whole ground plan at Tabgha is, however, far more elaborate, as befits an important pilgrimage sanctuary, whereas the church at Tiberias appears to be of a more specifically monastic use. 30 In the cathedral church of Gerasa, however, an analogous solution had been adopted already in the 4th century (Ovadiah (1970) passim).

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chancel screens were removed31 and the gaps filled with new mosaic. Along the apse a synthronon was arranged, and the venerated stone moved from its setting in the older church and placed beneath the new altar.32 Following the excavations in the 1930s a new sanctuary was erected; it was rebuilt in 1982 by the Benedictine community running the pilgrimage site.33

The mosaics The floor of the church of the Multiplication of the Loaves and Fishes was entirely paved with mosaics, today only in part visible in their original shapes. As shown in the ground plan (Fig. 10.2), they are divided into panels, symmetrically arranged on the floor and defining different liturgical spaces, each provided with its own frame. Various standard geometric and floral patterns stretch out across the nave, aisles, side chambers, narthex, and even the front courtyard. Two large panels with Nilotic scenes (Fig. 10.3–10.4) cover the floor in the transept, framed by a lotus-frieze with alternately upright and inverted chalices,34 and on the eastern side, which corresponded to the original corridor between wall and chancel screen,35 by an elegant vine tendril (partly restored). Behind the main altar in the presbytery, a mosaic showing two fishes and a basket of loaves recalls the miracle connected with that spot (Fig. 10.5). Figurative mosaics are further displayed between the columns, both along the aisles and in the transept. Of the latter, only those in the northern and eastern areas are preserved. Schneider attempted to identify all the plants and animals portrayed here. Between the nave and the northern aisle, from the entrance towards the apse, it is possible to see: a wader attacking a badger (Fig. 10.6); two geese before a water-filled basin (Fig. 10.7); a pheasant (almost entirely destroyed); two herons (also damaged); two francolins holding a garland with their beaks (Fig. 10.8); and, between the pillars of the western section of the transept, two peacocks facing each other in a heraldic arrangement while pecking at plants (Fig. 10.9). All the different animals have been naturalistically rendered, yet it has to be noted that this is a quite common decorative pattern, found all over the Mediterranean area in late antiquity.

31 Probably due to the development of the Byzantine liturgy and the introduction of the Little and Great Entrances of the clergy from the sacristies to the bema; Ovadiah (1970) 56–59. 32 Bagatti (1964) 55f. 33 Goergen (1986). 34 This was indeed a widespread pattern, since we find it even in 6th-century churches in Cyrenaica, especially at Apollonia; see Alföldi-Rosenbaum & Ward-Perkins (1980) 22. 35 This pattern is also to be found in Apollonia (idem).

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Lastly, the Nilotic mosaics incorporate two Greek funerary inscriptions mentioning donors.36 A chronology of all the mosaic sections of the bema would only be possible through accurate stratigraphic analysis, which, as far as I know, has unfortunately never been carried out. Moreover, besides extensive integrative restorations, the area surrounding the altar was heavily altered in the 1980s, when the church was built anew on its foundations. These changes also naturally affected the mosaics.37 Still today pilgrims visiting Tabgha show great veneration towards the mosaic depicting a basket containing four loaves, flanked on either side by two fishes and two lozenges. The image recalls the miracle of the Multiplication, referred of in the Gospels,38 which allegedly took place here. Following the dramatic restoration in the 1980s, the panel was moved to the front of the altar (Fig. 10.10), before the stone of the miracle, so that everyone approaching the altar could see it. As recalled above, the mosaic was originally placed behind the mensa, where it was only visible to the clergy and others admitted to that sacred area (Fig. 10.5). If the mosaics of the transept and aisles are largely contemporary with the building of the basilica (even if an absolute dating is still lacking), the date of the presbytery panel is debated. The style is concise, and the mosaic technique with its larger, less regularly arranged tesserae differs noticeably from that of the rest of the floor panels, suggesting a later date. But how much later? Loffreda conjectured that between late 5th and early 6th century the pavement needed some renovation (the reason is unclear), and suggested that the two Greek inscriptions and the Loaves-andFishes panel were added to an existing decoration at that time. The sequence of the events, however, must surely have been far more intricate than this: traces of a restoration that has altered the original layer are visible all over the pavement surface, including the Nilotic panels. Some of these traces must be linked to the removal of the chancel screen – when the slabs and pilasters were removed, the gaps were filled with new tesserae – but did this happen before, after, or at the same time as the altar mosaic was made? As stated above, the two inscriptions are not contemporary with each other, and none of the donors mentioned in the mosaics can be identified with 36 The first, next to the altar (see Fig. 10.5), translates: + TO THE MEMORY (AND) / REST / OF HIM WHO OFFERED / THE MOST HOLY PATRIARCH M (AR) / T (IRIOS?) [...] (The integration of the text has been suggested by Loffreda (1977) 35). Beneath this inscription a burial site was found. The second inscription, towards the eastern end of the north transept (see Fig. 10.3), translates: […] TO THE HOLY PLACE / REMEMBER O LORD SAURUS. The two epigraphs do not pertain to the same decorative phase as the main decoration of the transept and aisles. The inscription next to the altar is contemporary with the Loaves-and-Fishes panel, which is later than the rest of the floor. The inscription in the transept must also be a restoration (clearly recognisable despite the poor quality of available photographs), the date of which is difficult to establish. Between the two inscriptions there must be a time lapse, as the differences in the epigraphic ductus make clear. 37 Shenhav (1984). 38 Mark 6.30–46. For the iconography, see Grabar (1946) II: 159–162; Nilgen (1968).

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a historical character.39 Seemingly, within a comparatively short period of time the church of the Multiplication was the object of constant maintenance as well as several renewals sponsored by a number of individuals (local and/or foreign) who wished to leave a memento of themselves in our building, thus aspiring to rival with the major sanctuaries of the Holy Land where such a practice was common.

The Nilotic panels The two large, rectangular panels in the northern and southern wings of the church’s transept offer a peculiar representation, where a variety of birds and water plants are portrayed: herons (some of which attacking snakes), cormorants, flamingos, ducks, cranes, lotus flowers, reeds and oleanders are freely distributed all across the surface. Some scattered buildings can also be seen. Three of these are found in the north panel (Fig. 10.3): top right, a city-gate flanked by towers; towards the centre of the composition, a little pavilion; and top left, a small round tower with a cone-shaped roof variously interpreted as a funerary monument and a small nilometer, but more likely to be identified as one of the many water towers of Tabgha.40 In the south panel (Fig. 10.4), a tall round tower with a cone-shaped roof and a series of Greek letters inscribed on it stands out among the various animals and plants, the letters indicating the numbers six to ten. This tower, in fact, depicts a nilometer, viz. a type of structure traditionally erected by the shores of the Nile, the purpose of which was to measure the level of the river’s recurring floods. The depiction of a nilometer confirms that we are shown a “proper” Nilotic landscape. We will return to analyse this particular iconographic theme, but first it may be valuable to insert a few remarks on the stylistic features of the two panels. What strikes the viewer is that the mosaicist randomly juxtaposed the motifs against a neutral white background over which they cast no shadows, without any perspectival relations between them, and without providing the “scene” with a credible landscape. The relation between birds, plants and buildings is hard to understand, and the positions of the birds, which stand on or lean into flowers that could in reality never bear their weight, are lacking in verisimilitude. These motifs, however, can be considered a traditional iconographic topos of the region, for we meet the same pattern in for example the Roman villa at Emmaus (Fig. 10.11).41 If, on the one hand, the general composition of the panels appears haphazard and abstract, we cannot deny that the artist has, on the other hand, shown meticulous attention to

39 The “Sauros” inscription in the transept is not of any help, and the “Bishop Martirios” named in the bema is only a hypothetical integration. 40 As suggested by Loffreda (1977) 34. 41 Vincent & Abel (1932).

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naturalistic detail. Indeed, it is remarkable how he exerted himself in rendering – in the most precise manner he was able – the plants and animals populating the shores of the Sea of Galilee.42 He also succeeded in conveying a certain bodily volume to the figures: the careful use of colour gradations, although within a limited palette (black, grey, blue and white for the lotus flowers; green for leaves; pink and red for the oleander blossoms; black-grey-blue gradations for the birds, with some red and yellow tesserae to highlight feathers; white, brown and grey with black contours for buildings), hints at the actual corporeality of the birds, to the chalice-like roundness of the lotus flowers, etc. From a compositional point of view, and in order to highlight the long recognised art-historical importance of our Nilotic mosaics, one may recall that Ernst Kitzinger once described the two panels when examining the stylistic development in pavement decoration in the Eastern Mediterranean between the 4th and 6th century.43 The major aesthetic transformation that took place in this period in his view marked a passage from the negation or dissimulation of the pavement surface, realised through the emblema typical of the Roman era (which works like an “easel painting”, often rendered in perspective as if the two-dimensional surface had been perforated by a window), to the complete acceptance of the surface signalled by the introduction of what Kitzinger called a figure carpet; this “acceptance” becomes more common in the 4th century, when geometric patterns prevail. In the 5th century figural scenes are introduced into the geometric grid, whereafter the grid itself disappears, leaving the single scenes unconfined, freely juxtaposed, and without relation to each other. In some cases, such as in the church of St John the Baptist at Gerasa (531),44 a common background or landscape supports the figures, but every reference to the ancient emblema has disappeared. As Kitzinger put it: It is, I believe, this tendency to organise, to articulate, to keep things within bounds and in harmonious relationships and proportions, which, in due course (more precisely, in the early years of the Justinianic era), brings about a return to a natural arrangement of figures and landscape elements in panels of limited size. A comparison of the Nilotic mosaics of the fifth century at Tabgha with those at St John’s in Gerasa (531 A.D.) illustrates the point. Tabgha is a pure figure carpet, with the elements of the landscape totally disjointed and taken apart, so as to give full and undisturbed play to the neutral surface on which these elements are spread […]. At Gerasa they are recomposed to the extent that we see the bank of the Nile with buildings, trees and people, and water birds and water plants in the river below […]. But – and this is important – there is no attempt to reintroduce any illusion of depth. The principle of the acceptance of the floor surface as an opaque, two-dimensional matrix is nowhere abandoned.45

42 See the careful analysis by Schneider (1937) 56–77. 43 Kitzinger (1965b) 348f. 44 Kraeling (1938) passim. 45 Kitzinger (1965b) 348f.

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Tabgha would thus exemplify the intermediate stage in this development, although already comparatively advanced, since the single elements are placed independently from each other without conforming to any inflexible rules or schemes. On the contrary, however, the mosaicist has introduced into the composition elements which confer a sense of verticality to the whole, such as the reeds in the north panel and the nilometer in the south.46 The purely formal evolutionary scheme proposed by Kitzinger, although valuable within the framework of a largely speculative discourse, does not thus fully reflect the multifaceted history of these specific mosaics. Nevertheless, it introduces another relevant point in our discussion: their strict connection with other monuments of the same region, where similar patterns are witnessed. This leads us to the next step of our analysis. In order to better contextualise the imagery of our Nilotic mosaics, and understand their symbolic values, one must look more attentively into their iconography and search for comparable cases. In the Palestinian region there are a few contemporary examples of a similar iconographic subject. In the so-called House of Kyrios Leontis adjoining a small synagogue in Beth-She’an (which has been dated to the 5th century47), a floor mosaic displays all the features that typify a Nilotic landscape (Fig. 10.12): a nilometer stands in the top-left corner; next to it, the abridged representation of a city is outlined, identified through the inscription ALEXANDRIA; the seated personification of the river Nile dominates the scene, surrounded by a waterbird, a lotus flower, the river itself with a boat and a fish, and an alligator attacking an ox. A scene similar to that in Beth-She’an, but even richer in the number of elements gathered in one and the same panel, is displayed in the so-called Nile Festival Building at Sepphoris, also dated to the early 5th century.48 The many details of this composition are all constituent parts of what we may call an emblematic representation of the river Nile, well established in tradition, and corresponding to the guidelines for such representations given by Pliny in his Naturalis Historia. It is useful to recall the well-known passage recounting that: when the painter Nealkes painted a naval battle of the Persians and the Egyptians, and wanted to indicate that it took place on the Nile […] he expressed by the use of subject-matter what he was unable to express by technique: for he painted a donkey drinking on the shore and a crocodile lying in wait for it.49

The scene with the donkey and the crocodile described by Pliny was regularly used to signify the Nile landscape in visual culture, and it appears in a number of Nilotic

46 Crowfoot (1941) 122–124. 47 See Alföldi-Rosenbaum (1975) 151. 48 Weiss (2009). 49 NH 35.142; translation by Pollitt (1965) 209.

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scenes from late antiquity to the early Middle Ages.50 The two comparative examples mentioned above were found in private and secular contexts, but similar themes do also appear in religious buildings. A somewhat later example – and in an altogether less visible setting – is the carved wooden beams of the roof of St Catherine’s monastery at Mount Sinai (Fig. 10.13).51 The common, underlying idea of these Nilotic representations is that the illustration of an abstract concept – be it a virtue or, as in this case, a geographical entity – with symbols can express that concept better, and explain it “intuitively”, to the beholder.52 Which concept, then, is conveyed through the Tabgha mosaics in their context (and considering that late-antique mosaics are nearer to classical ideals than to ours)? Which of the visual “clues” mentioned above are also to be found in Tabgha? The nilometer is depicted here, in the foreground, and so is the city-gate (although here without an inscription), the flora and fauna of the marsh of course, and the pavilion, another recurrent feature of river landscapes since the Roman era.53 However, neither fishes nor human figures can be seen in our mosaics, nor the personification of the river Nile, nor the crocodile devouring the donkey. The mosaic is fragmentary, of course, and we cannot exclude a priori that at least one of those motifs was originally represented, but we cannot take their presence for granted: we can see none of them. Interestingly, it has been remarked that the fauna and flora of our mosaics do not pertain, at least not exclusively, to the Nile, but (also) to the local landscape around Tabgha; that some of the mosaics specifically depict the variety of species indigenous to the Sea of Galilee, although it may be difficult to distinguish which animals, plants and buildings are “local” and which “Nilotic”. The towered city in our mosaic could of course be an implicit reference to the city of Alexandria, as the traditional iconography of the Nile suggests, but it could just as well be the image of a city in Galilee near Tabgha. The latter becomes even more convincing if we identify the building in the top left of the panel as a water tower typical of the Tabgha region. Possible “candidates” could then be Capernaum, or Magdala, or perhaps Tiberias, the last-mentioned of which was one among the cities in Roman Galilaea that had been provided with ramparts. And the detail of our mosaic in Fig. 10.14 in fact very closely resembles a Roman city-gate, typically flanked by round or square towers. The mosaicist, then, drew inspiration both from his own experience of the local landscape and from more conventional representations, perhaps making use of models or

50 For an in-depth analysis of the diverse elements of the Nilotic scenes and their occurrence in ancient and early-medieval contexts, see Versluys (2002) 266f esp. 51 Alföldi-Rosenbaum (1975) 150f. 52 As a general critical reference on the subject, see Gombrich (1971). On the iconography of the River in Christian art, see Nygren (1970). 53 As in Roman mosaics of Catalonia, see Balil (1965) fig. 11.

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“sketchbooks” available from his workshop.54 Such conventional city representations were fairly common in the area, as recently discovered mosaics attest.55 The Nilotic landscape exemplified by the Tabgha mosaics was a widespread theme in the decoration of buildings in Greco-Roman antiquity. In the Roman context, as is well known, Nilotic motifs were widespread in the decorations of villas and private houses from the Republican period; among the most renowned are the “Casa del Fauno” at Pompeii,56 various mosaics in Antiochia,57 and the “Nile Villa” in Leptis Magna. There is also the monumental Nile mosaic from the Absidal Hall in Palestrina,58 now commonly dated to the 2nd century BCE. As for the original function of this latter mosaic, it is much debated whether it was intended to decorate a secular or a religious space (a so-called Aula Isiaca). Either way, cultic elements are included in its imagery alongside the representations of the flora, fauna, the populations along the Nile valley, and major Ptolemaic temples actually situated along the river. The Nilotic landscape had no established tradition in Christian buildings. We must of course remember that our knowledge of the iconographic tradition of lateantique buildings may be distorted by the fact that not many Christian buildings have been excavated thus far, and that it is therefore difficult to establish relevant comparisons, but it is generally acknowledged that non-religious (i.e. non-biblical) iconographies in religious buildings must have been more common than we think. The recently excavated synagogue at Huqoq provides an interesting example in this respect, displaying on its floor scenes including elephants that may have been part of some narrative from the life of Alexander the Great.59 But Nilotic imagery is not really introduced into Christian buildings until much later than our Tabgha example; only from the 6th century onwards do we find them comparatively often in Christian contexts. This does not mean that such themes were totally absent in Christian buildings in earlier centuries. A most significant example may have been the Nilotic patterns displayed in the church at Capernaum,60 dating back to the 5th century, and therefore worthy of being studied in close connection with those in our church, but unfortunately the mosaics of Capernaum have been removed from their original position.

54 For an overview on the problem of the circulation of sketch- and pattern books in late-antique Middle-Eastern workshops, see Britt (2003) 412f. 55 Magness et al. (2014). 56 Baldassarre (1994) passim. 57 On the mosaics of Antioch, see Levi (1947); Campbell (1988); Becker & Kondoleon (2005). 58 See Alföldi-Rosenbaum & Ward-Perkins (1980) 45–51. On the mosaic of Palestrina: Meyboom (1995); and Hinterhöller (2009). 59 See previous note. 60 Corbo (1969) passim.

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Why are Nilotic themes displayed in churches? From the very beginning the motif was closely associated with pagan rituals, in particular with a thanksgiving ceremony performed on the occasion of the Nile floods, which brought fertility to the surrounding land.61 In the first centuries of our era, the borders between paganism and Christianity were extremely permeable, and so these rites may have migrated from the first to the second very easily. The Nile was also held by the Christians as one of the rivers of Paradise, and would therefore fit well into a Christian context, as the church fathers taught in their sermons.62 Egypt was regarded as an “idyllic” and altogether exotic place, and its representation would have created a highly decorative and evocative effect, indirectly alluding to the Christian theme of regeneration and new life, without breaking the principle regulating the depiction of Christian subjects on church pavements.63 Moreover, reciprocal influence with the Jewish tradition (where non-biblical scenes could be included in the decoration of religious buildings, as in the aforementioned case of Huqoq) may have played a role in the diffusion of a wider repertoire of motifs. As for the position of the scenes within the architectural context of the church, one can mention a number of cases derived from across the Mediterranean region where Nilotic (or water-related at least) scenes have been placed next to the sanctuary, the most sacred space of the church building. In addition to a variety of churches, the occurrence is seen in synagogues. In my opinion, the most persuasive parallel (although of a later date) is that offered by the so-called Basilica A (St Demetrius) in Nicopolis (Fig. 10.15). Two square-shaped “geographical” (or “cosmological”) panels, where the Earth is represented as surrounded by the Ocean, have been arranged in both wings of the transept, in the same way as the Nilotic panels in Tabgha. The comparison regards the composition as a whole, since indeed both Ocean and the Nile exemplify how secular themes have been freely inserted into the decoration of a Christian church.

Conclusions Notwithstanding the many aspects of and around the Tabgha mosaics considered here, many questions yet remain unsolved. In order to reach a fuller understanding of the Tabgha mosaics in their historical, religious, cultural, and – possibly – social context, they should be studied as part of a greater phenomenon, of which we can have, today, only a very incomplete view. The church of the Multiplication of the

61 Versluys (2002) 278–281. 62 Hermann (1959); Nygren (1970); Hamarneh (1999); Maguire (1999). 63 Seemingly, in early Christian churches, as well as in synagogues, the depiction of figurative or figural motifs was forbidden or strictly limited.

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Loaves and Fishes must have been an important sanctuary, comparable with other churches of the Holy Land (the neighbouring churches in the same village are all far smaller), and we cannot but regret the loss of the superstructures and the scarcity of documentary evidence. The role of the patron or patrons (be they the monks living in the monastery or some wealthy pilgrim or inhabitant of the village) might have been significant, both in the building and decoration of the “second” church and in the various later interventions. The funerary inscription in the presbytery and the second inscription in the transept (which is reportedly not connected to a burial but would instead be a commemoration of the person who sponsored the restorations carried out on the mosaics) seem to point in this direction.64 The fragments of the mosaic pavement, which are indeed all that is left of the church of the Multiplication of the Loaves and Fishes, thus raise a number of questions concerning a building so many times mentioned in the scholarly literature and yet so little known. Those questions would deserve further research, which I believe is still possible, and shed new light on the history, and the history of the artistic production, of early Christian Palestine. The representation of landscapes in Christian churches is often rationalised as a pattern reference to Paradise. However, I believe the analysis that has been conducted here has brought to the surface some elements that allow us to look at the Tabgha mosaics as an example that gathers into itself several layers of meaning; layers that are intersected in their most fascinating – I think – peculiarity. They place, on one and the same floor, a reference to the Nile as the eschatological place and as a representation of the local landscape and nature, as if Tabgha, with its seven springs and the Sea of Galilee, could itself be perceived as a “second” – indeed the ultimate, “real” – Nile, the place all human beings strive to reach, a taste of Paradise on Earth and of all the spiritual delights awaiting the Christian. So, the Tabgha mosaics are a link in the chain, not only (as Kitzinger demonstrated) from a purely stylistic point of view, but also from a spiritual one. The ancient pagan theme referring to abundance and fertility is little by little transformed into a representation of the very place where Christ satisfies his people with such an abundance that “the disciples could pick up twelve basketfuls of leftover bread and fish”.65

64 Britt (2003) 218: “Undoubtedly, alleviation of throngs of visitors is the best explanation for the presence of a transept at Tabgha”. This is surely true, as for any sanctuary-martyrium accommodating large masses of pilgrims. I believe, however, that the reason may be searched for in the models that the patrons wished to reproduce, although the precise circumstances may escape us. For a general overview of the question of mosaic patronage in the Holy Land, see Britt (2003) 414f, who here points out that portraits are included in the scenes in some cases (but not in ours) and, while remarking the lack of testimonies, raises questions about the influence of donors in the elaboration of iconographical programmes. 65 Mark 6.43.

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Grabar (1946): Grabar, A. (1946), Martyrium. Recherches sur le culte des reliques et l’art chrétien antique, Paris. Grabar (1966): Grabar, A. (1966), Byzantium. From the death of Theodosius to the rise of Islam, (The Arts of Mankind, 10), London. Hamarneh (1999): Hamarneh, B. (1999), “The River Nile and Egypt in the Mosaics of the Middle East”, in M. Piccirillo and E. Alliata (eds), The Madaba Map Centenary, 1897-1997: travelling through the Byzantine Umayyad Period. Proceedings of the International Conference, Amman 7-9 April 1997, Jerusalem, 185–189. Hermann (1959): Hermann, A. (1959), “Der Nil und die Christen”, JAC 2, 30–69. Hill (1996): Hill, S. (1996), The Early Byzantine churches of Cilicia and Isauria, Aldershot. Hinterhöller (2009): Hinterhöller, M. (2009), “Das Nilmosaik von Palestrina und die Bildstruktur eines geographischen Großraums: Versuche zur möglichen Rekonstruktion, geograpischen Interpretation und den Formen der perspektivischen Raumerschließung”, Römische Historische Mitteilungen 51, 15–130. Kitzinger (1965a): Kitzinger, E. (1965a), Israeli mosaics of the Byzantine period, London. Kitzinger (1965b): Kitzinger, E. (1965b) “Stylistic developments in pavement mosaics in the Greek east from the age of Constantine to the age of Justinian”, in La mosaïque gréco-romaine, I. Actes du colloque international sur la mosaïque antique, Paris 29 août – 3 septembre 1963, Paris, 341–352. Kitzinger (1976): Kitzinger, E. (1976), “Mosaic pavements in the Greek East and the question of a ‘Renaissance’ under Justinian”, in W.E. Kleinbauer (ed.), The art of Byzantium and the medieval west, Bloomington & London, 49–63. Kitzinger (1977): Kitzinger, E. (1977), Byzantine art in the making. Main lines of stylistic development in Mediterranean art, 3rd-7th century, Cambridge, MA. Kraeling (1938): Kraeling, C.H. (ed.) (1938), Gerasa: city of the Decapolis, New Haven. Levi (1947): Levi, D. (1947), Antioch mosaic pavements, Princeton, London & the Hague. Liverani (2012): Liverani, P. (2012), “La cronologia della seconda basilica di S. Paolo fuori le mura”, in H. Brandenburg and F. Guidobaldi (eds), Scavi e scoperte recenti nelle chiese di Roma. Atti della giornata tematica dei Seminari di Archeologia Cristiana, Roma – 13 marzo 2008 (Sussidi allo studio delle antichità cristiane, 24), Città del Vaticano, 107–123. Loffreda (1968): Loffreda, S. (1968), “The first season of excavations at Tabgha (near Capharnaum). (March 25th-June 20th) – Preliminary report”, Liber Annuus 18, 238–243. Loffreda (1970a): Loffreda, S. (1970a), Scavi di Et-Tabgha: relazione finale della campagna di scavi, 25 marzo-20 giugno 1969, (Publications of the Studium Biblicum Franciscanum, Collectio minor, 7), Gerusalemme. Loffreda (1970b): Loffreda, S. (1970b), “Sondaggio nella chiesa della Moltiplicazione dei Pani a Tabgha”, Liber Annuus 20, 370–380. Loffreda (1977): Loffreda, S. (1977), I santuari di Tabgha, Gerusalemme. Mader (1933): Mader, A.E. (1933), “Die Ausgrabungen der Kirche der Brotvermehrung durch die Görresgesellschaft”, Theologie und Glaube 25, 669–677. Mader (1934): Mader, A.E. (1934), “Die Ausgrabung der Brotvermehrungskirche auf dem deutschen Besitz et-Tabgha am See Genesareth”, Das Heilige Land 78, 42–68. Magness el al. (2014): Magness, J., S. Kisilevitz, K. Britt, M. Grey and C. Spiegel (2014), “Huqoq (Lower Galilee) and its synagogue mosaics: preliminary report on the excavations of 2011-2013”, JRA 27:1,327–355. Maguire (1987): Maguire, H. (1987), Earth and ocean. The terrestrial world in Early Byzantine art, University Park, PA & London. Maguire (1999): Maguire, H. (1999), “The Nile and the Rivers of Paradise”, in M. Piccirillo and E. Alliata (eds), The Madaba Map Centenary, 1897-1997: travelling through the Byzantine Umayyad period. Proceedings of the international conference, Amman 7-9 April 1997, Jerusalem, 179–184 (reprinted in H. Maguire, Image and Imagination in Byzantine Art, Aldershot 2007, 1-17).

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Mehhan (1958): Meehan, D. (1958), Adamnan’s De Locis Sanctis, (Scriptores Latini Hiberniae, 3), Dublin. Meyboom (1995): Meyboom, P.G.P. (1995), The Nile mosaic of Palestrina. Early evidence of Egyptian religion in Italy, (Religions in the Graeco-Roman World, 121), Leiden, New York & Köln. Mileham (1910): Mileham, G.S. (1910), Churches in lower Nubia. (Eckley B. Coxe Junior Expedition to Nubia, 2), (D. Randall-Maciver ed.), Philadelphia. Nilgen (1968): Nilgen, U. (1968), “Brotvermehrung”, in Lexikon der christlichen Ikonographie, 1, Rom, Freiburg, Basel & Wien, 326–330. Nygren (1970): Nygren, O.A. (1970), “Fluss, Flusslandschaft, Flussgötter”, in Lexikon der christlichen Ikonographie, 2, Rom, Freiburg, Basel &Wien, 51. Orlandos (1952): Orlandos, A.K. (1952), Hē xylostegos palaiochristianikē basilikē tēs Mesogeiakēs lekanē, Athina. Ovadiah (1970): Ovadiah, A. (1970), Corpus of the Byzantine churches in the Holy Land, Bonn. Ovadiah & Ovadiah (1987): Ovadiah, A. and R. Ovadiah (1987), Hellenistic, Roman and Early Byzantine mosaic pavements in Israel, Rome. Pietrangeli (1988): Pietrangeli, C. (ed.). (1988), San Paolo fuori le Mura a Roma, Firenze. Pollitt (1965): Pollitt, J.J. (ed.) (1965), The art of Greece, 1400-31 B.C. Sources and documents, Englewood Cliffs. Säve-Södernergh (1970): Säve-Söderbergh, T. (1970), “Christian Nubia: the excavations carried out by the Scandinavian Joint Exhibition to Sudanese Nubia”, in E. Dinkler (ed.), Kunst und Geschichte Nubiens in christlicher Zeit. Ergebnisse und Probleme auf Grund der jüngsten Ausgrabungen, Recklinghausen, 219–244. Schneider (1934): Schneider, A.M. (1934), Die Brotvermehrungskirche von eṭ-Ṭâbġa am Genesarethsee und ihre Mosaiken, (Collectanea Hierosolymitana, 4), Paderborn. Schneider (1937): Schneider, A.M. (1937), The Church of the Multiplying of the Loaves and Fishes, (A.A. Gordon ed.), London. Shenlav (1984): Shenhav, D.J. (1984), “Loaves and Fishes mosaic near Sea of Galilee restored”, Biblical Archaeology Review 10:3, 22–31. Versluys (2002): Versluys, M.J. (2002), Aegyptica Romana. Nilotic scenes and the Roman views of Egypt, Leiden & Boston. Vincent & Abel (1932): Vincent, L.H. and F.M. Abel (1932), Emmaus. Sa basilique et son histoire, Paris. Weiss (2009): Weiss, Z. (2009), “The Mosaics of the Nile Festival Building at Sepphoris and the legacy of the Antiochene tradition”, in K. Kogman-Appel (ed.), Between Judaism and Christianity. Art historical essays in honor of Elisheva (Elisabeth) Revel-Neher, (The Medieval Mediterranean, 18), Leiden, 9–23. Wilkinson (1999): Wilkinson, J. (ed.) (1999), Egeria’s travels, Warminster.

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Fig. 10.1: Tabgha, church of the Multiplication of the Loaves and the Fishes, ground plan (1: First sanctuary; 2: Second church; 3: Remaining foundations; 4: Hypothetical outline); photo after Loffreda (1977).

Fig. 10.2: Tabgha, church of the Multiplication of the Loaves and the Fishes, ground plan: scheme of the remaining mosaics; photo after Schneider (1937).

Fig. 10.3: Tabgha, church of the Multiplication of the Loaves and the Fishes, mosaic in north wing of the transept; photo after Schneider (1937).

Fig. 10.4: Tabgha, church of the Multiplication of the Loaves and the Fishes, mosaic in south wing of the transept; photo after Schneider (1937).

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Fig. 10.5: Tabgha, church of the Multiplication of the Loaves and the Fishes, mosaics in the bema; photo after Schneider (1937).

Fig. 10.6: Tabgha, church of the Multiplication of the Loaves and the Fishes, mosaics between nave and north aisle: detail; photo after Schneider (1937).

Fig. 10.7: Tabgha, church of the Multiplication of the Loaves and the Fishes, mosaics between nave and north aisle: detail; photo after Schneider (1937).

Fig. 10.8: Tabgha, church of the Multiplication of the Loaves and the Fishes, mosaics between nave and north aisle: detail; photo after Schneider (1937).

Fig. 10.9: Tabgha, church of the Multiplication of the Loaves and the Fishes, mosaics between the columns of the north transept: detail; photo after Schneider (1937).

Fig. 10.10: Tabgha, church of the Multiplication of the Loaves and the Fishes, present state of the mosaics in the bema; photo © Stanislao Lee/ Custodia di Terra Santa.

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Fig. 10.11: Emmaus, mosaic of the Roman villa; drawing after Vincent & Abel (1932).

Fig. 10.12: Beth She’an, “House of Leontios”, Nilotic mosaic; photo after Alföldi-Rosenbaum (1975).

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Fig. 10.13: Mount Sinai, Monastery of St Catherine, detail of the roof beams; photo after Maguire (1987).

Fig. 10.14: Tabgha, church of the Multiplication of the Loaves and the Fishes, mosaic in north wing of transept: detail; photo after Schneider (1937).

Fig. 10.15: Nicopolis, St Demetrius, mosaic in north wing of transept; photo after Albani & Chalkia (2013)

Index acroteria 139, 143, 145, 148, 158 action, -al 32, 35, 50, 59, 63, 120, 145 adventus 142, 146, 188 aedicule (aedicula) 139, 148, 158, 160 aesthetic 1, 8, 9, 10, 13, 15, 17, 18, 19, 49, 61, 63, 78, 84, 86, 95, 216 afterlife 143, 147, 149, 153 Agnus Dei 154 Alexandria 25, 26, 60, 82, 184, 218 allegory, -ical 1, 120, 122, 125, 126, 128 altar 5, 31, 32, 40, 56, 103, 104, 126, 203, 209, 211, 213, 214 ambiguity, -ous 3, 6, 81, 82, 86, 150, 188, 210 ambo 40, 147 amphora 95, 104 Anastasis 57, 59, 73, 138, 149 Anastasius I 3, 125, 148, 158 angel 53, 54, 55, 56, 59, 69, 128, 144, 147, 149, 152, 159, 179, 180, 181, 183, 185, 186, 187, 188, 194, 195, 199, 200, 201, 202 aniconic 4, 95, 97, 99, 100, 103, 104, 107 animal 32, 79, 95, 97, 99, 154, 213, 215, 216, 218 Aphrodite (Venus) 62, 105, 126, 153 Aphthonius the Sophist 96 Apollo (Apollon) 62, 105, 148, 159, 183, 184 apophaticism, -atic 45, 46, 47, 48, 51, 52, 53, 54, 55, 57, 59, 60, 63 apostle 49, 200 apotheosis, -otic 144, 146, 148, 149, 151, 153, 199 apotropaic 78, 82, 153 apse, absidal 4, 7, 31, 40, 52, 53, 55, 56, 57, 85, 95, 98, 99, 100, 101, 102, 104, 105, 106, 107, 108, 126, 127, 128, 135, 138, 141, 144, 146, 159, 178, 201, 211, 212, 213 Aquileia 97, 123 Arabia 102, 107 Ara Pacis 6, 7, 17, 23, 82 arcade 97, 145, 146, 147 Arcadius 142, 156, 158, 202 Arcadius column (base, pedestal) 202 arch 83, 84, 85, 93, 94, 123, 138, 140, 141, 142, 143, 144, 145, 151, 155, 156, 157, 160, 178 archivolt 99, 128, 140, 143, 144, 156, 158 Arch of Constantine 15, 137, 138 https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110546842-012

Arch of Janus 137, 146, 173 Areobindus, consular diptych of 95, 142, 172 Ariadne (empress) 148, 174 army 121 artist 6, 11, 14, 38, 39, 86, 87, 138, 181, 215 ascension (Ascension) 4, 149, 187, 188, 199, 200, 201, 202, 203, 207 attribute 4, 120, 151, 153, 201 Augustus 5, 14, 62, 152, 180 authority 31, 33, 60, 96, 123, 126, 141, 157 axiality 120, 150, 161 baldachin 148, 157 balustrade 123 baptism 31, 32, 33, 35, 36, 37, 53, 58, 106 baptistery 31, 82, 107, 160, 178 barbarian 146 Basil of Caesarea 45, 46, 50, 51, 60, 62, 63, 65 basket 154, 213, 214 Bawit 127, 135 beauty 9, 17, 18, 48, 50, 60, 62, 65, 83, 85, 123, 126 Besant, Annie 13 Bethlehem 40, 53, 56 Beth-She’an 217 Beyazıt, portrait head from 80, 121 Bible, biblical 61, 80, 81, 104, 122, 126, 145, 151, 160, 199, 219, 220 bird 152, 188 Blavatsky, Helena B. (Madame) 12, 13 Blessed Isles (Islands of the Blessed) 29, 153 Bobbio 203 body 33, 34, 38, 48, 54, 57, 59, 65, 184 border 47, 52, 55, 56, 84, 123 brilliance 46, 53, 54, 56, 59, 60 Byzantium 45, 55, 62, 79, 120, 141, 148 canon table 145 canopy 123, 148 cantharus (kantharos) 95, 104, 212 Cappadocia, -an 46, 55, 56, 58, 64, 65, 69, 74 Caracalla, portrait of 6, 24 cataphaticism, -atic 46, 57, 63 cathedra (of Maximianus) 146 celestial 4, 53, 57, 61, 139, 144, 146, 151, 154, 158, 159, 180, 183, 185, 187 Centcelles 4, 77, 80, 83, 84, 85, 91 ceremonial 5, 80, 140, 141, 142, 145, 146, 147

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child (Christ-child) 55, 127 Chi-Rho 83, 85 Chora church (Constantinople/Istanbul) 46, 55, 56, 57, 59, 69, 70, 71, 72, 73, 74, 90 chrismon 85 Christ 2, 4, 7, 25, 26, 31, 34, 35, 36, 38, 42, 45, 46, 47, 48, 49, 50, 52, 53, 54, 55, 56, 57, 58, 59, 60, 61, 62, 63, 64, 65, 69, 76, 85, 96, 98, 99, 100, 104, 106, 107, 122, 126, 127, 144, 145, 147, 149, 151, 152, 154, 155, 156, 159, 160, 179, 181, 182, 183, 184, 185, 186, 187, 188, 197, 198, 199, 200, 201, 202, 203, 207, 208, 221 Christian, -ity 2, 4, 6, 14, 17, 18, 19, 29, 30, 31, 32, 33, 34, 35, 36, 37, 38, 39, 40, 41, 42, 43, 47, 51, 52, 62, 63, 64, 83, 97, 98, 99, 100, 103, 105, 106, 107, 122, 123, 126, 129, 137, 138, 140, 142, 143, 144, 145, 147, 149, 151, 153, 154, 159, 178, 179, 181, 182, 184, 185, 188, 200, 207, 208, 209, 211, 218, 219, 220, 221 Christology, -ical 45, 50, 52, 54, 64 Christos-Angelos 181 Chronography of the year 354 140, 143, 170 church (building) 4, 5, 31, 32, 34, 36, 40, 41, 45, 47, 48, 54, 56, 57, 58, 59, 63, 65, 69, 71, 72, 77, 79, 80, 81, 86, 97, 98, 99, 100, 101, 103, 104, 105, 106, 107, 108, 113, 116, 123, 124, 125, 138, 141, 145, 147, 148, 149, 155, 159, 178, 182, 186, 187, 188, 203, 208, 210, 211, 212, 213, 214, 215, 216, 219, 220, 225, 226, 228 church father 45, 48, 54, 57, 65, 103, 104, 108, 220 Church (institution) 4, 34, 45, 48, 50, 53, 54, 55, 56, 57, 58, 60, 61, 73, 75, 95, 97, 103, 106, 108, 126, 133, 134, 159, 160, 185, 188, 209 ciborium 101, 145, 148, 159 circle 52, 53, 84, 85, 102, 144, 155, 159, 188, 200 city-gate 142, 155, 158, 215, 218 classicism 15 clipeata, clipeate 143, 144, 150, 153 clipeus, -ei 127, 153, 156, 179, 188, 199, 200, 201, 202 cloud 84, 149, 200 coin 97, 140, 183, 211 colour, color 5, 6, 7, 11, 16, 34, 39, 53, 81, 82, 83, 85, 86, 127, 151, 156, 180, 216 column 4, 31, 81, 95, 102, 104, 152, 158, 185, 186 commemoration, -tive 2, 137, 140, 142, 146, 151, 221

composition 1, 5, 6, 11, 16, 53, 77, 83, 99, 120, 122, 124, 127, 139, 140, 144, 145, 154, 155, 157, 160, 203, 215, 217, 220 concha 140, 147, 148, 153 consecratio 152 Constantine 4, 5, 14, 15, 33, 41, 42, 101, 102, 103, 104, 105, 106, 107, 148, 156, 180, 182, 183, 184, 185, 186, 187, 196, 197, 199 Constantinople 3, 41, 47, 55, 61, 64, 76, 79, 80, 90, 96, 97, 98, 120, 121, 123, 124, 126, 128, 140, 141, 142, 143, 145, 146, 147, 148, 156, 158, 176, 180, 183, 185, 186, 187, 202 Constantius II 140, 170, 196 consul 95, 96, 140, 142, 158, 170 consular diptych 2, 95, 139, 140, 142, 158 continuity 145 convention 99 Coptic 153, 154, 160, 177 cornucopia 84, 154 corona (see also crown) 144, 145, 148, 154 corporeal, -ity 55, 57, 58, 59, 62, 216 Cosmas and Damian 31, 40 cosmos (kosmos), -ic 4, 47, 56, 57, 58, 59, 62, 63, 83, 123, 126, 140, 143, 144, 147, 148, 149, 150, 151, 156, 157, 159, 161, 179, 183 costume 6, 143, 184 Cotton Genesis 127, 135 cross 41, 42, 52, 53, 54, 55, 56, 57, 59, 78, 82, 84, 85, 96, 97, 99, 100, 144, 153, 159, 161, 179, 181, 184, 188, 200, 202, 203 crown (see also corona) 148, 185, 186 crucifixion 41 crux 56, 144, 153 cup 145, 154 cupola 77, 80, 98, 99, 101, 147, 179, 194, 201 curtain 107, 147 cycle, -ic 46, 53, 54, 55, 56, 57, 64, 137, 143, 151, 152 Cyril of Jerusalem 104 Daphni monastery 58 death 33, 36, 41, 53, 54, 61, 63, 105, 107, 144, 152, 154, 178, 182 De coelesti hierarchia (Celestial Hierarchy) 181 deity, -ies 32, 38, 58, 139, 148, 158, 183, 184 diadem 5, 186 dimension, -al 5, 6, 13, 16, 39, 40, 43, 81, 83, 85, 106, 107, 138, 216 Dionysius the Areopagite 52

Index 

disc 83, 85, 93, 144, 145, 150 doctrine 45, 48, 50, 60, 97 dogma, -tic 48 dolphin 154 dome 4, 40, 55, 56, 100, 138, 144, 147, 148, 149, 155, 159, 179, 187, 188, 201, 202 Dominate 157 domus divina 141 dove 151 dynasty, -ic 5, 53, 121, 157, 159 eagle 151, 160, 200 earth (Earth), -ly 3, 4, 32, 55, 65, 83, 84, 86, 97, 108, 122, 123, 124, 126, 128, 139, 150, 151, 154, 158, 159, 161, 183, 184, 187, 220, 221, 228 effigy 180 Egeria 203, 209, 210, 211 Egypt, Egyptian 15, 24, 33, 58, 73, 82, 107, 127, 135, 143, 152, 160, 203, 220 Elmalı kilise (Göreme 19) 59 emblem 41, 148 emotion, -al 9, 10, 11, 13, 14, 17, 18, 35, 40, 42, 43, 129 empathy, -ic 9, 10, 13, 14, 16, 18, 128 emperor 6, 50, 80, 101, 102, 103, 104, 105, 106, 120, 121, 126, 140, 141, 142, 148, 151, 152, 153, 156, 158, 178, 180, 181, 182, 183, 185, 186, 196, 198, 211 empire 2, 4, 137, 140, 143, 146, 152, 157, 158, 183 entry 35, 41, 143, 155, 209 Epiphanius of Salamis 107 epiphany, -ous 140, 153 eros 151 eschatological 2, 4, 160, 221 esoteric 12, 13 eternal, -ity 2, 16, 19, 47, 49, 50, 53, 56, 58, 62, 63, 64, 65, 125, 144, 150, 152, 160, 184, 188 Etruscan 33, 152 Eucharist 6, 32, 54, 56 Eusebius 95, 101, 102, 103, 104, 105, 123, 181, 182, 183, 184 evangelist 151 exedra 125, 133, 134, 159 experience 5, 8, 9, 10, 11, 14, 16, 17, 18, 30, 31, 35, 37, 38, 40, 41, 42, 46, 59, 61, 64, 98, 128, 218 Fafertin (Syria) 100, 115 faith 45, 46, 47, 49, 51, 52, 53, 54, 55, 56, 58, 60, 61, 63, 103

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fastigium 106, 107, 139, 140, 141, 143, 155, 156, 157, 158 felicitas 152, 159 figurative, figural 2, 3, 77, 78, 79, 80, 81, 95, 96, 97, 98, 99, 101, 107, 120, 139, 150, 216, 220 fish 29, 43, 97, 217, 221 flask 38 Flavius Anastasius, consular diptychs of 140, 158 flower 84, 154, 217 frame, framework 4, 5, 6, 33, 47, 53, 56, 77, 86, 122, 123, 128, 139, 145, 146, 150, 187, 213, 217 front 38, 40, 85, 106, 138, 139, 140, 141, 143, 146, 155, 156, 186, 213, 214 frontal, -ity 3, 6, 35, 37, 120, 122, 124, 127, 155 fruit 42, 154, 158, 179 funerary 137, 139, 140, 143, 149, 151, 153, 154, 214, 215, 221 Gabriel (archangel) 59, 128 Galerius 146, 157, 173, 178 Galla Placidia, mausoleum of 53, 77, 78, 80, 81, 82, 84, 90, 91, 92, 144, 201 garden 123 garland 144, 154, 179, 213 gate, -way 53, 57, 142, 144, 146, 155 Gaza 100, 116 gem 52, 54, 186 geometric, -al 11, 46, 56, 78, 95, 97, 99, 213, 216 Gerasa 212, 216 goddess 105, 127, 146, 152 god, God 2, 36, 45, 46, 47, 48, 49, 50, 51, 52, 53, 55, 57, 58, 59, 60, 61, 63, 64, 65, 98, 101, 103, 104, 120, 126, 127, 128, 139, 144, 149, 151, 152, 155, 159, 181, 183, 184, 185, 186, 188, 199, 200 gold 5, 42, 46, 53, 55, 56, 58, 98, 100, 104, 106, 129, 156, 179, 180, 181, 183, 184, 199 Golgotha 64, 144, 153 Gordion, royal palace in 77 Gorgon-head 154 gospel 31, 41, 104, 145 Great Palace (Constantinople) 7, 26, 141 Gregory of Nazianzus 45, 46, 47, 48, 49, 50, 51, 53, 59, 60, 61, 62, 64, 107 Gregory of Nyssa 45, 50, 51, 54, 60, 103 grid 82, 83, 123, 125, 157, 216

232 

 Index

Hades 51, 59, 61 Hagia Sophia (Constantinople) (see also St Sophia) 57, 73, 79, 121, 122, 141, 151, 201 Hagia Sophia (Thessaloniki) 57, 73, 79, 121, 122, 141, 151, 201 Hagios Georgios (Madaba) 4, 138, 147, 155, 156, 159, 175, 202 Hagios Georgios (Thessaloniki) 4, 138, 147, 155, 156, 159, 175, 202 halo 54, 55, 59 Hama treasure 96 heaven (Heaven), -ly 3, 4, 32, 37, 38, 47, 53, 55, 57, 58, 59, 60, 74, 75, 78, 84, 85, 98, 103, 108, 120, 122, 126, 128, 139, 144, 146, 148, 149, 150, 151, 158, 159, 160, 161, 181, 182, 183, 184, 187, 199, 200, 201, 228 Heavenly Jerusalem 29, 31, 32, 159 Helios 148, 151, 156, 159, 183, 184, 185 Hellenism, -istic 47, 62, 77, 82, 83, 95, 104, 125, 128, 137, 143, 147, 152 Hera 152 hetoimasia (etimasia) 159, 160 hierarchy, -ical 77, 141, 156, 158, 181 Hilary of Poitiers 103 hippocampus 29, 30, 31, 32, 35, 43 Hippodrome (Constantinople) 123, 156, 157, 176, 202 historical, historicity 3, 5, 10, 12, 14, 15, 17, 29, 58, 64, 96, 107, 120, 121, 143, 151, 153, 188, 208, 215, 216, 220 Holy Land 31, 32, 208, 209, 211, 215, 221 Holy Sepulchre (Jersualem) 101, 103, 138, 145, 149 Holy Spirit 46, 48, 49, 50, 54, 59, 60, 61, 62, 63 Honorius 142, 156, 202, 211 Hosios Loukas monastery 58 human, humanity 1, 3, 9, 11, 13, 17, 33, 38, 45, 46, 47, 48, 49, 50, 51, 52, 53, 54, 55, 57, 59, 60, 61, 62, 64, 86, 97, 99, 100, 128, 129, 138, 144, 151, 152, 159, 161, 218, 221 hymn 56, 57, 58, 128 hypogeum, -a 97 hypostasis 50, 54 icon 7, 51, 55, 61, 76, 128, 182 iconoclasm, -ast 3, 45, 64, 95 ideology, -ical 59, 63, 126, 183, 185 illusionism, -istic 7, 14, 16, 17, 120 imagination 2, 39, 58 imago, -ines 40, 81, 95, 143, 144, 150, 153, 158, 182

imitatio, imitation 5, 8, 15, 16, 18, 47, 50, 63 immaterial, -ity 2, 6, 12, 50, 61, 127 immortal, -ity 54, 137, 140, 143, 144, 145, 148, 149, 151, 153, 159, 160, 161 incarnation, -ate 3, 45, 46, 47, 49, 50, 53, 54, 55, 56, 57, 60, 63, 64, 65, 128 inscription 5, 37, 38, 123, 124, 128, 214, 215, 217, 218, 221 insignia 5, 142, 143 intrados 54, 81, 82, 83, 84, 93, 94, 144 Istanbul V, 1, 7, 25, 26, 46, 54, 56, 57, 58, 69, 70, 71, 72, 73, 74, 75, 80, 96, 97, 112, 114, 124, 132, 133, 134, 147, 173, 176, 179 Italy, -ian 8, 81, 107, 142, 146, 149, 151, 155 Jerusalem 4, 31, 32, 40, 42, 53, 56, 95, 101, 103, 104, 105, 107, 116, 119, 138, 145, 149, 159, 160, 185, 188, 203 Jesus 49, 53, 55, 58, 60, 63, 98, 99, 100, 104, 106, 184, 200, 210 jewel 5, 144, 154 Jew, Jewish 126, 151, 220 John Chrysostom 51 John Damascene 45, 46, 48, 49, 50, 51, 52, 54, 55, 57, 62, 64 John the Baptist 59, 146 Jordan (river) 31, 40, 58, 104, 202, 212 Judaism 32 Judgment 59, 74, 75 Juno 146, 152 Jupiter 152 Justinian, Justinianic 5, 6, 15, 16, 17, 23, 53, 98, 99, 126, 129, 151, 216 Kandinsky, Vassily 11, 12, 13, 28, 120 Karanlık kilise (Göreme 23) 54, 55, 58, 69, 74 Katapoliani (Paros) 98, 114 kathisma 123, 156 Kitzinger, Ernst 1, 5, 6, 126, 127, 128, 144, 160, 209, 216, 217, 221 kosmokrator 126 Kurbiunovo 128 Kyrios Leontis, House of (Beth-She’an) 217 lamb 85, 154 lamp 200, 207 landscape 11, 40, 85, 208, 215, 216, 217, 218, 219, 221 Lateran basilica (Rome) 106, 108, 118, 123, 141

Index 

laurel 144, 154, 158 Leadbeater, Charles W. 13 leaf 82, 84, 85, 92 Leptis Magna 102, 116, 219 light 7, 8, 15, 16, 30, 34, 35, 37, 39, 45, 46, 49, 51, 53, 54, 55, 56, 57, 59, 60, 61, 81, 82, 84, 104, 121, 122, 126, 127, 128, 129, 151, 156, 179, 181, 188, 210, 221 liminal, -ity 142, 151, 154 Lipps, Theodor 9, 10, 15, 16, 18, 78 lipsanotheca (Brescia) 155 liturgy, -ical 51, 56, 57, 63, 96, 100, 106, 126, 127, 128, 145, 159, 188, 212, 213 Logos 47, 50, 53, 60, 183, 185 London 30, 31, 143, 145, 147, 152, 199 Luna 151 lunette 58, 81, 144 Lythrankomi 127 Magi 147 magic 33, 34, 36, 37, 41, 42, 43, 184 majesty 63, 138, 144, 149, 157, 159 Malevich, Kazimir 11, 120 mandorla 55, 57, 59, 127, 199 marble 6, 40, 56, 57, 79, 81, 85, 86, 90, 100, 101, 104, 124, 178, 179, 180 martyr 37, 38, 55 Martyrium church (Jersualem) 4, 101, 102, 104, 105, 107, 108 material, -ity 2, 3, 5, 6, 8, 10, 11, 12, 13, 17, 18, 34, 37, 63, 79, 87, 99, 124, 151, 156, 211 Maximus the Confessor 45, 46, 52, 64 meander 77, 81, 82, 83, 84, 85, 91 medallion 4, 53, 56, 80, 85, 96, 179, 180, 181, 184, 186, 187, 188, 194, 197 memory 30, 31, 32, 41, 143 Menas 143, 203 Mesopotamia 33, 125 meta-image 3, 45, 46, 47, 52, 53, 54, 56, 57, 62, 63, 85 metaphor, -ical 1, 34, 35, 57, 103, 185 miliarense 180 military 6, 33, 120, 121, 142, 152, 156 mimesis 8, 45, 47, 58, 60, 62, 65, 183 miracle 208, 213, 214 missorium of Theodosius 122, 140, 158, 170 modernism 8, 9

 233

monastery, -stic 46, 55, 56, 76, 210, 211, 212, 218, 221 Mondrian, Piet 11 Monet, Claude 9 monotheism, -tic 6, 18, 63 monothelitism 52 Monza 203 mosaic 4, 5, 6, 7, 16, 17, 52, 54, 55, 56, 58, 62, 77, 78, 80, 82, 83, 85, 90, 91, 97, 99, 100, 108, 123, 127, 138, 141, 155, 159, 179, 181, 183, 186, 187, 188, 201, 202, 213, 214, 217, 218, 219, 221, 225, 227, 228 Moses, -aïc 53, 55, 97, 98, 103, 108 movement 6, 31, 32, 35, 50, 155, 181, 184 multiplum 180, 183, 184 Munch, Edvard 11, 27 mystery 32, 49, 54 mystic, -icism 12, 13, 154 narrative, -ity 3, 14, 47, 49, 51, 52, 53, 54, 58, 63, 96, 97, 98, 99, 100, 107, 120, 127, 138, 145, 149, 219 Nativity 127, 128, 147 naturalism, -tic 2, 5, 6, 7, 8, 11, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 65, 79, 82, 83, 84, 85, 125, 216 Nea Moni (Chios) 46, 58, 59 Near East 33, 95, 100, 209 Nemi, sanctuary of Diana Nemorensis 105, 118 Neo-Platonic, -ism, -ist 52, 63 Nestorian 106 neuroarthistory 3, 29 New Testament 34, 97, 103, 145 niche 125, 126, 142, 145, 146 Nile 215, 216, 217, 218, 219, 220, 221 Nile Festival Building (Sepphoris) 217 nilometer 215, 217, 218 Nilotic (mosaic) 4, 208, 209, 213, 214, 215, 216, 217, 218, 219, 220, 227 nimbus, -i 5, 85, 153, 179, 181, 185, 186, 188, 200, 202 North Africa 4 obelisk (base, pedestal) of Theodosius 123, 132, 156, 158, 176 office 5, 126, 143 official 2, 100, 101, 107, 108, 120, 137, 140, 143, 144, 153, 208, 210 Old Testament 62, 64, 104, 150 Olympian 32

234 

 Index

Olympiodoros (Olympiodorus) 98, 100 orb (orbis) 85, 144, 148, 150, 185, 186 order 2, 18, 34, 48, 57, 59, 61, 63, 64, 83, 86, 101, 123, 145, 150, 154, 156, 158, 161, 178, 180, 185, 209, 216, 217, 220 ornament 78, 81, 97, 99, 121, 144 Orthodox (Neonian) baptistery (Ravenna) 58, 159, 160, 177 pagan, -ism 29, 38, 39, 61, 99, 100, 105, 108, 209, 220, 221 painter, painting 9, 11, 12, 13, 14, 16, 38, 62, 63, 64, 76, 79, 83, 117, 127, 137, 216, 217 palace 77, 141, 148, 156, 157, 160, 178 palatium, -a 141 Palestine, -inian 64, 102, 107, 138, 199, 203, 209, 212, 217, 221 Palestrina 219 palm 122, 125, 154, 209 Panagia Kanakaria church (Lythrankomi) 127 Pantokrator 55, 69, 127, 136 Pantokrator cave (Latmos Mountains) 127, 136 parabolic 126, 127 Paradise, -aic, -iacal 31, 33, 35, 40, 41, 57, 122, 124, 125, 143, 144, 149, 152, 153, 154, 160, 220, 221 pareidolia 79, 86 Parousia (Second Coming) 187, 188 passage 103, 142, 153, 154, 155, 156, 183, 211, 212, 216, 217 paten 5, 96 path 40, 58, 63 pattern 2, 80, 83, 145, 148, 151, 158, 160, 213, 215, 219, 221 Paul 35, 36, 40, 41, 42, 51, 103, 122, 143, 144, 150, 172 Paulus Silentiarius (Paul the Silentiary) 40, 41, 99 peacock 151 pearl 52, 98 pediment 139, 140, 151, 158 perception, -ual 1, 9, 15, 16, 17, 20, 34, 45, 49, 51, 65, 86, 129, 138, 139, 149 personification 58, 82, 95, 217, 218 Peter 1, 39, 53, 55, 61, 108, 122, 139, 143, 150, 184, 208, 210, 211 Philostratus the Elder 78 Philoxenus, consular diptych of 95 Phoenix 151, 159, 160, 179, 188 physicality 3, 65

physiognomy 7, 186 Pilastri Acritani 124 pilgrim, -age 31, 37, 138, 199, 203, 208, 209, 210, 211, 212, 213, 214, 221 plant 78, 125, 203 Pliny 217 Plotinus 63 polytheism, -istic 6, 140 Pompeii, -eian 62, 104, 117, 137, 219 Pons Milvius, battle of 182, 183 portal 142, 143, 145, 155 portico 107, 145, 147 portrait, -ure 1, 6, 7, 10, 17, 79, 80, 82, 85, 121, 128, 153, 180, 181, 182, 185 power 37, 39, 40, 41, 42, 45, 50, 60, 64, 140, 141, 147, 151, 152, 156, 157, 186, 202 presbytery 56, 83, 84, 85, 94, 178, 212, 213, 214, 221 Probus, consular diptych of 142, 171 procession, -al 5, 23, 48, 82, 123, 146, 147, 156, 178 Proclus 63 prosperity 142, 146, 152, 154, 158, 210 Pseudo-Dionysius 181 psychology, -ical 3, 8, 10, 11, 17, 40 putto 151 pyxis 143, 201 quadrifrons 146 Rabbula gospels 145, 149, 199, 201, 203 radiate 56, 140, 148, 150 rainbow 56, 83, 84, 85, 86, 93, 144, 151, 179, 188 Ravenna 4, 5, 23, 46, 47, 52, 53, 56, 57, 58, 68, 77, 78, 79, 80, 81, 82, 83, 85, 90, 91, 92, 93, 94, 98, 122, 126, 138, 141, 144, 146, 159, 177, 201 reality, -ism 2, 5, 11, 13, 16, 18, 47, 48, 53, 60, 84, 87, 120, 137, 215 Redon, Odilon 11, 27 regeneration, -al 143, 145, 151, 152, 154, 160, 220 Reidersche Tafel (see also Resurrection panel) 149, 174 relief 5, 14, 17, 123, 137, 146, 157 religion, -ious 2, 3, 6, 12, 19, 30, 31, 32, 33, 36, 41, 42, 43, 45, 46, 47, 49, 54, 56, 58, 63, 64, 86, 105, 108, 120, 126, 128, 137, 139, 140, 146, 147, 151, 156, 182, 185, 188, 202, 208, 218, 219, 220

Index 

representation, -al V, 1, 2, 4, 5, 6, 7, 9, 11, 12, 14, 15, 17, 18, 19, 38, 58, 59, 61, 77, 78, 79, 80, 81, 82, 84, 86, 96, 97, 99, 100, 107, 120, 122, 127, 137, 138, 139, 141, 147, 149, 152, 160, 172, 174, 179, 181, 199, 201, 209, 215, 217, 220, 221 Resafa (Syria) 100, 115 Resurrection panel 149, 199 resurrection (Resurrection) 35, 59, 138, 149, 152, 154, 174, 199 revelation 47, 48, 51, 53, 60, 147 rhetoric, -al 40, 96, 126, 128 Riegl, Alois 1, 8, 13, 15, 16, 17, 19 ritual 31, 33, 34, 37, 143, 152, 155, 157, 159 Rome V, 5, 23, 28, 30, 31, 33, 40, 62, 82, 98, 104, 105, 106, 107, 118, 121, 123, 137, 140, 141, 142, 143, 146, 147, 152, 158, 173, 180, 182, 184, 185, 196, 200, 202, 211 rosette 144, 150, 151 rotunda, Rotunda (Thessaloniki) 148, 149, 155, 156, 159, 178, 181, 183, 184, 186, 187, 188, 194, 195, 197, 198 ruler, -ship 79, 120, 121, 122, 123, 125, 126, 142, 148, 149, 157, 158, 159 sacrifice, -icial 31, 32, 54, 154 saint 31, 38, 106 salvation 35, 41, 46, 47, 48, 50, 51, 53, 54, 55, 56, 57, 59, 60, 61, 62, 63, 64, 65, 145 sanctuary 83, 85, 93, 105, 106, 118, 126, 158, 159, 208, 210, 211, 212, 213, 220, 221, 225 San Marco (Venice) 58, 124, 134 Santa Pudenziana (S. Pudenziana) (Rome) 106, 144, 188, 201 San Vitale (Ravenna) 5, 15, 16, 23, 47, 53, 56, 57, 68, 77, 79, 80, 83, 84, 86, 92, 93, 94, 126, 138, 144 sarcophagus 42, 81, 85, 104, 122, 147, 179, 186, 199 Sassanid 125 Satan 51, 58, 61 scallop 153 screen 57, 106, 141, 147, 212, 213, 214 sculptor 38 sculpture 6, 13, 14, 16, 39, 107, 121, 122, 158 Sea of Galilee 208, 216, 218, 221 Şehremini 97, 112 Selene 151 sella curulis 95, 140, 160 senate 121

 235

Septizonium (Rome) 137 sepulchre 149, 181 sermon 155 shell 140, 146, 153, 158, 160 shepherd 34, 35, 144, 147 shield 53, 127, 153, 184 shrine 40, 126, 143, 146, 147, 148, 149, 155, 158, 159, 182 Sidamara 146 silver 4, 46, 58, 79, 95, 96, 101, 102, 103, 104, 105, 106, 107, 129, 140, 143, 144, 147, 179, 180, 182, 188 silver casket of Proiecta and Secundus 147 silver plaque with St Paul 144 sky 78, 82, 90, 144, 151, 200 solidus 180, 183 Sol, Sol Invictus 148, 151, 180, 183, 184, 185, 186, 188, 197 space 4, 11, 17, 40, 54, 80, 81, 82, 83, 102, 120, 121, 122, 123, 124, 125, 126, 127, 128, 129, 140, 141, 161, 185, 212, 219, 220 spatial, -ity 3, 4, 5, 14, 15, 16, 30, 32, 60, 122, 138, 158 sphere 52, 53, 55, 56, 57, 61, 127, 140, 142, 146, 148, 149, 156, 158, 159, 160, 161, 184, 202 spirit 49, 57, 152, 159 spiritual, -ism, -ity 1, 2, 3, 6, 8, 10, 11, 12, 13, 17, 19, 38, 51, 54, 57, 58, 61, 65, 83, 87, 221 Split (Spalatum) 141, 157 star, -ry 18, 41, 57, 59, 78, 82, 90, 144, 150, 151 state (stasis) 2, 3, 6, 10, 11, 18, 33, 47, 58, 63, 98, 122, 123, 124, 137, 139, 142, 149, 154, 155, 157, 158, 161, 182, 185, 226 statue, -ette 38, 48, 104, 106, 127, 148, 183, 185, 186, 198 status 2, 6, 137, 141, 147, 153, 157, 160, 212 St Catherine at Mount Sinai 7, 98, 126, 127, 136, 218, 228 St Demetrius (Nicopolis) 220, 228 stela (stele) 125, 160, 177 St George (Kurbiunovo) 128 St John the Baptist (Gerasa) 36, 100, 107, 216 St Nicholas (Myra/Demre) 71 St Polyeuktos (Constantinople) 123, 124, 125, 133, 134 stratification 3, 150, 157, 161 St Sophia (Constantinople) (see also Hagia Sophia) 98, 114 St Steven (Gaza) 100

236 

 Index

Stuma (Syria) 96 sun 57, 84, 183, 184, 185, 186, 188 symbol 3, 81, 84, 100, 103, 105, 140, 144, 148, 150, 151, 152, 153, 159 symmetry 3, 16, 82, 120, 150, 158, 161 synagogue 155, 217, 219 Syria 107, 115, 143, 145 Tabgha 4, 97, 208, 209, 211, 212, 214, 215, 216, 217, 218, 219, 220, 221, 225, 226, 228 taxi driver 30, 31 temple 40, 54, 58, 103, 126, 127, 139, 141, 145, 148, 155, 157, 158, 159 temporal 1, 19, 34, 47, 63, 142 Tetramorph 144, 153, 200 tetrapylon (of Galerius) 146, 157, 173 Tetrarch, -archy 2, 6, 7, 24, 121 Themistios 121 Theodosian 121, 122, 123, 129, 141, 156, 158, 202 Theodosius I 121, 140, 142, 178, 180, 202 Theodosius II 121 theology, -ian, -ical 12, 45, 46, 47, 48, 51, 54, 57, 60, 62, 63, 64, 120, 182, 184 theophany 126, 127, 128, 149, 188 theory 8, 9, 10, 14, 16, 18, 29, 47, 56, 183 Theosophical Society 12 theosophy 12 Theotokos 54, 55, 56, 58, 59, 63, 65, 69, 72, 127, 128, 147, 149 Theotokos Pammakaristos (Constantinople) 54, 56, 58, 69, 72 Thessaloniki 4, 56, 97, 99, 113, 139, 146, 147, 155, 157, 159, 173, 175, 178, 180, 187, 194, 195, 197, 198, 201, 202 tholos 145, 148 throne 55, 106, 140, 146, 148, 151, 159, 160 titulus, -i 37, 52 tomb 31, 97, 139, 143, 145, 148, 149, 160, 184 Tomb of the Haterii 14, 28 tondo, -i 55, 127 topography 30, 31, 32, 146 tradition, -al 2, 6, 7, 9, 11, 15, 29, 41, 43, 45, 58, 64, 77, 84, 97, 100, 125, 128, 137, 142, 144, 150, 151, 153, 156, 158, 181, 183, 184, 185, 208, 215, 217, 218, 219, 220 transcendence, -ent, -ental 45, 46, 47, 50, 53, 57, 61, 63, 142, 144, 146, 150, 151, 153, 154, 159, 160 transformation 5, 12, 34, 36, 46, 60, 178, 216 transition, -al 137, 142, 144, 154, 155, 160

tree 42, 154 tribunal 123, 141, 142 trinity, trinitarian 45, 47, 50, 54, 62, 64 Trisagion 127 triumph, -al 53, 56, 98, 100, 120, 137, 140, 141, 142, 143, 144, 146, 148, 151, 153, 154, 157, 158, 160, 178 triumphal arch 53, 56, 98, 100, 137, 141, 142, 143, 144, 157, 178 Tunisia 80, 100, 200 Tyrus (Tyros) 123 universe, -al 13, 43, 45, 50, 58, 59, 137, 139, 154, 157, 159, 160 urban 121, 145, 155 Valens 123 Valentinian II 142, 156 vault 56, 80, 81, 144, 151, 157, 184, 201 vela 147 Venantius Fortunatus 42 veneration, -tive 47, 49, 50, 147, 203, 214 Venice 43, 58, 124, 134 vestibulum 178 Victoria 127, 151 victor, victory 41, 42, 53, 104, 105, 137, 143, 151, 152, 154, 183 vine (grapevine) 34, 35, 42, 154, 213 Virgin (Mary) 38, 48, 53, 54, 55, 56, 57, 59, 60, 69, 70, 71, 75, 127, 128, 136 virtue 153, 218 Vischer, Robert 9, 15, 16 Vita Constantini (Life of Constantine) 101, 102, 105, 181, 182 Vitalis 57, 84 votive 102, 104, 105, 137, 203 Wickhoff, Franz 8, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 19 window 216 world 2, 5, 6, 8, 11, 13, 16, 18, 19, 30, 31, 33, 34, 38, 39, 40, 42, 45, 48, 49, 53, 57, 62, 63, 65, 77, 83, 86, 87, 102, 104, 123, 124, 139, 140, 143, 148, 154, 158, 161, 181, 187 Worringer, Wilhelm 8, 13, 17, 18, 19, 120, 122 worship 32, 42, 48, 211 wreath 56, 144, 148, 153, 154 XP (monogram) 200, 202 Zenobius 101