From Allegory to Icon:
The Christian Church Triumphant (cat. 16-30)
16
Mosaic with Two Peacocks and VinesStone tesserae Early Christian, 6th century A.D. Width: 68 inches (172.8 cm.) |
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"I am the True Vine... the faithful are the fruitful branches in the Lord's Vineyard"
John 15:1-5
As St. Nilus makes clear in his letter to the prefect Olympiodorus, by the 5th century, some members of the clergy had begun to reject the lavish floor and wall mosaics that had been popular decoration for several centuries. Nevertheless, the custom of covering basilicas with images adopted from the Late-Antique tradition favored by owners of lavish villas continued to thrive. However, there was a tendency toward a flattening of the composition, a heightened iconization of the figurative elements and more attention was devoted to spatial organization and symmetry. The result is a symbolic composition that is easy to read and identify. The reason for these changes was perhaps the desire amongst the Christian faithful to interpret Late-Antique decorative motifs in an allegorical manner that tied them to scripture.
One particular type of mosaic, the so-called bird rinceau, features different species of birds set within the interstices created by running vine tendrils. To a Christian, the birds could be taken literally as exemplifying God's creations, or they could be taken allegorically as symbolic of blessed souls resting in heaven with the vines evoking God's rule over all living things. The frequent appearance of such vines recalls biblical references to the Lord's vineyard and anticipates the later motif of the Tree of Life. Similar motifs were used in the decoration of imperial funerary architecture and survive to this day in the ambulatory vault mosaics of the mausoleum of Santa Costanza in Rome (ca. 337-351). Built for Constantine's daughter, the princess Constantina, the decoration illustrates well the repertoire of pagan ornamental motifs that was employed by Christian artists.
In many instances the bird rinceaux feature two peacocks flanking an urn from which the vines issue forth. The peacock had been admired since Roman times for its rare beauty and was regarded as a symbol of eternal life. The Christians considered the bird one of God's greatest creations and adopted the practice of using them in funerary contexts to evoke themes of Paradise. The urn, previously a common classical funerary motif, became for Christians a baptismal and eucharistic allegory, particularly when flanked by a pair of animals such as peacocks or deer. The motif, when taken in its entirety, could suggest Augustine's fountain of truth, the desire for eternal life and even the just thirsting for fresh springs of ideology.
Though mosaics such as this one remained a popular part of a church's decorative scheme, vinescrolls and animals -- symbolic of the Late-Antique theme of the ‘Good Life’ -- became increasingly marginalized. As church leaders learned the value of an unambiguous, iconic approach to Early Christian art, the advancement of overt Christian iconography such as that on the gilt-silver Pyx (cat. 17), relegated the more decorative Late-Antique schemes to the fringes of mosaics, frescoes, manuscripts and architecture.
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