The Sistine Mosaics of S. Maria Maggiore in Rome

In the present re-reading of the Sistine mosaics of S. Maria Maggiore, which embraces the Old and New Testament scenes in their totality, it will be argued that the iconography is a visual manifestation of the Christology predominating in the Roman Episcopate during the interlude between the Councils of Ephesus and Chalcedon (AD 431 to 451). The fact that the Old Testament narration opens with the Life of Abraham and concludes, on the opposite wall, with the Battles of Joshua, including a distinct pictorial indication of the position of Rahab, the harlot of Jericho, who became the great-great-grandmother of King David, has led the present author to the suggestion that the lost panels concluding the cycle may have included at least one Davidic scene. Such a scene would have extolled the soteriological meaning of the human nature of Christ, “the Son of David, the Son of Abraham” (Mt 1:1), thoughts expounded by Leo the Great in his Tomus ad Flavianum, which laid the ground for the Chalcedonian Council. By the same token the thesis will be advanced that, on the triumphal arch, the matron in the blue maphorion, who sits on Christ’s left side, counterbalancing the Virgin in the Adoration of the Magi scene, may be a personification of the women in the genealogical line of Jesus Christ listed in the Gospel of Matthew (Mt 1:1-16). The two women counterpoised in the Adoration scene would thus exalt and substantiate the Gentile, non-Jewish, contribution to the lineage of Our Saviour. The divine providence expressed through these `extraneous ́ links in His ancestry (the key figures of whom were the Gentile women Rahab and Ruth), in the story which led to the Descent of the Logos and the Birth of Christ, may have been the underlying, unifying theme in the vast decoration of the basilica

Adoration · Art · Art history · Christology · Eucharist · Gospel · Iconography · Judaism · Literature · Meaning (existential) · Old Testament · Theology · Byzantine Studies and History · Classical Studies and Legal History · Historical and Religious Studies of Rome · Philosophy

• Five Anastasiae and Two Febroniae

  Open Access•Basil Lourié•Vestnik Volgogradskogo…•2023

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