The Apse Mosaic in Early Medieval Rome: Time, Network, and Repetition
Cambridge University Press, 4/20/2015
EAN 9781107069909, ISBN10: 1107069904
Hardcover, 358 pages, 25.4 x 17.8 x 2.1 cm
Language: English
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.
1. Repetition
saints, popes, and golden texts
2. Transformation
from material church to spiritual body
3. Incorporation
becoming a living stone
4. Networking
building a communion sanctorum
Afterword
meaning and presence
Appendix.