Column: A Thousand Words
Apse Mosaic
Church of Sant'Apollinare in Classe
by Mary Elizabeth Podles
The Church of Sant'Apollinare, particularly its glorious apse mosaic, is the happy byproduct of the political, economic, and artistic boom in Ravenna, Italy, in the fifth and sixth centuries a.d.; the subsequent bust preserved it practically intact. Saint Apollinaris, pictured in the lower half of the mosaic, was the first bishop of Ravenna and was martyred under the reign of Vespasian. His relics were enshrined in the basilica when it was consecrated in 549 by the (legendarily disliked) Bishop Maximianus. Thus the saint's prominent placement in the apse.
The mosaicist presents the saint in classic icon form: a fully frontal, full-length figure, vested as in life as a bishop, with hands raised in an orans or praying posture. The sheep ranged on either side of him among lilies and flowers represent his earthly flock, who look toward him trustingly. Often in such Byzantine mosaics, the patron saint is flanked by real people, patrons of the church or imperial officials, as in the famous mosaics of Justinian and Theodora in the nearby basilica of San Vitale. Here, however, the flock is shown only symbolically. Only the saint appears as a human figure, appropriately enough, as his human remains rest in the altar directly beneath his feet. His praying posture also reflects that of the celebrant at the altar, as he partakes in heaven of the liturgy below.
Heavenly Drama
Within a Byzantine church, architectural forms themselves took on symbolic value. In a basilica like Sant'Apollinare, the worshiper entered through a series of portals into the nave. He then processed along the length of the nave, accompanied by mosaic saints and martyrs, and instructed by scenes from the Old and New Testaments, until he reached the sanctuary. There, a final portal in the form of a triumphal arch marked the entry into the apse, where the heavenly drama of the liturgy unfolded at the altar. Above the altar, the half-dome of the apse, as we see here, became the stretched tent of the cosmos enclosing heaven above and earth below.
In this dome, behind Apollinaris, there spreads a pastoral landscape in a rich golden green. Birds and flowers contribute sweet scent and songs. Stylized rocks and trees are ranged in rows behind the saint, with no attempt having been made to create a naturalistic recession into space. This is not an earthly landscape but an abstracted paradisal ground, part of the realm of heaven, drawn on the model of pagan images of the Fields of Elysium. Within it, above the saint, are three more sheep, bigger than those of his flock, and looking not at him but gazing skyward and into heaven. Who or what are they, and why are they here? The key lies farther up and deeper in.
Transfigured as the Cross
In the upper half of the dome, the background shifts from green to gold—the color that, in Byzantine art, had long been a symbol of the light of the divine. The mosaicist has set the individual gold tiles, or tesserae, at very slight angles to each other, so that the light striking them will appear to shimmer as the viewer's eye moves across the surface. In the center of the gold field is a great circular aureole, studded with gems and surrounding a jeweled golden cross set against a blue, star-spangled sky. In the center of the cross is a cameo bust of Christ, and around the cross is inscribed, "Jesus, Alpha, Omega, the salvation of the world." On either side of the dome, among scattered clouds (another symbol of the divine presence), are two half-length figures helpfully inscribed "Moyses" and "Holy Elyas." Above them, the hand of God reaches out in benediction toward the cross.
So: Jesus transformed, Moses and Elijah, the presence of God, and three viewers from the earthly realm; these are the dramatis personae of the Transfiguration, and that is indeed what we are seeing. The sheep are Peter (on the left) and the brothers James and John, rendered in symbolic rather than iconic form. The aureole breaks through their horizon line. The Transfiguration is one of Christ's great theophanies, where his divinity breaks through and reveals itself on earth. Within the aureole, the jeweled cross with its splayed arms would have been recognized as a reference to the Crux Gemmata, the bejeweled gold cross that the Byzantine emperor Theodosius II in the fifth century set on the site of the Crucifixion, in the Church of the Holy Sepulcher. So here Christ is transfigured as the cross: it is his redeeming sacrifice, re-enacted at the altar below, that makes us holy and opens heaven.
Symbolic Forms
There is no easy explanation for the mosaicist's apparent discomfort with naturalistic, narrative, and iconic forms of representation. Only the saint and the half-length Old Testament figures in the sky are given human form. All of the New Testament persons are shown in purely symbolic shape: the apostles are sheep; the voice of God issues from his hand, not his mouth; even the face of Christ is set as a gem in the center of the cross.
Mary Elizabeth Podles is the retired curator of Renaissance and Baroque art at the Walters Art Museum in Baltimore, Maryland. She is the author of A Thousand Words: Reflections on Art and Christianity (St. James Press, 2023). She and her husband Leon, a Touchstone senior editor, have six children and live in Baltimore, Maryland. She is a contributing editor for Touchstone.
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