Cambridge Ancient Hi.. - Index of

908 30. the visual arts
church because of the attention to scale and the relative size of the figures
as the mosaic stretches higher into the vaults.
The semicircular panel of Abraham is in the prominent tympanum of
the left wall, facing the representation of Abel and Melchizedek opposite;
both panels are very clearly a reference to the theme of sacrifice and
through it to the eucharist which is celebrated in the sanctuary. 49 As in S.
Maria Maggiore, the Abraham scene has clear symbolic references – the
bread, for example, is marked like the bread of the eucharist; reference to
sacrifice is intensified by the inclusion of the Isaac scene. But the flatness
and linearity of the Abraham panel style is in contrast to the more impressionist
S. Maria Maggiore mosaics. This change of style from the earlier
mosaics – for some commentators, this greater distance from antique illusionist
style – does have the expressive value that it conveys more starkly
the dogmatic significance of the scene. 50 The purpose of the oak tree may
be to define the authenticity of the location of the event, but perspectivally
the artist ignores its presence – one is not supposed to imagine that
Abraham walked literally around the tree as he went from house to table.
The side walls of the sanctuary of San Vitale were, therefore, conspicuously
decorated with Old Testament scenes with typological significance,
and around them with Old Testament prophets; but these images are symbolically
and hierarchically lower on the walls than the evangelist portraits
of the New Testament writers (with their emblems) above them. A reading
of the mosaics of San Vitale must allow for intersecting currents and
levels of symbolic meaning; the selection of subjects is both sophisticated
and designed technically to be highly visible. These church walls show the
typological, narrative and liturgical evocations which likewise are apparent
in the fifth century in Rome; but several additional strands are also to be
detected. There are overt references to salvation and paradise in the apse
composition (and to the earthly paradise, perhaps, in the luxurious animal
and vegetal imagery of the central vault mosaic). Christ is seated on a globe
in the apse above the four rivers of paradise and between a ‘court’ retinue
of two archangels; St Vitalis is given his martyr’s crown, and the founder
of the church, Ecclesius, holds a model of the octagonal church. One also
detects that the three figures in the central axis of the sanctuary composition
– the young Christ, the lamb in the vault and God the Father at the
apex of the opening arch – are a reference to the orthodox concept of the
Trinity, and overtly counter to Arian and Monophysite theology.
There are yet other components in the sanctuary decoration, most
notably the famous panels, low down and near the altar, which represent
(to the left) Justinian (holding a paten for the bread of the eucharist), the
current archbishop, Maximian, and his clergy, and the imperial court and
army; and opposite them (on the right) the representation of Theodora and
49 Another level of interpretation is proposed by Leach (1983). 50 Walter (1984).
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