The Apse Mosaic In Early Medieval Rome Time Network And Repetition Erik Thun by Erik Thunø 9781107069909, 9781316309506, 9781316288795, 1107069904, 1316309509, 131628879X instant download after payment.

This book focuses on apse mosaics in Rome, which were commissioned by a series of popes between the sixth and ninth centuries CE. Through a synchronic approach that challenges current conceptions about how works of art interact with historical time, Erik Thunø proposes that the apse mosaics produce an inter-visual network that collapses their chronological succession in time into a continuous present in which the faithful join the saints in the one living body of the Church of Rome. Throughout, this book situates the apse mosaics within the broader context of viewership, the cult of relics, epigraphic tradition, and church ritual while engaging topics concerned with intercession, materiality, repetition and vision.Between the sixth and ninth centuries in Rome, the popes commissioned
a series of splendid apse mosaics that hold a unique place in the medieval
visual culture of the Urbs. The well-known mosaic decoration in the
church of S. Prassede on the Esquiline, built and decorated between 817
and 824, can serve as a paradigm, illuminating how this special series of
early medieval mosaics is tied together as a group and set off from its earlier
and later counterparts (Plate I). The mosaic in the apse vault is the
most eye-catching and interactive part of the whole impressive early
ninth-century visual ensemble (Plate II). Terminating the nave and suspended
above the main altar, a shimmering hierarchy of frontally gazing
saints, gathered against a deep-blue background around a hovering golden
robed Christ, attracts and then fixes the eye of the beholder as he or she
enters the early medieval basilica. From here, the viewer’s gaze is drawn
upward to the other parts of the mosaic decoration that are configured
to interact with the celestial realm in the apse: the Book of Revelation’s
Adoration of the Lamb by the Four Living Creatures and the Twenty-Four
Elders on the apsidal arch surrounding the vault, and the unique depiction
of the Heavenly Jerusalem, as defined by a gem and pearl
…