The Apse, the Image and the Icon

Abstract

While archaeologists and art historians often discussed statues 1 and mosaics in apses of temples, imperial cult rooms, nymphaea, churches and chapels 2 , the apse as a space for images 3 has never been discussed in a monograph.This is my main focus.The honour of the invitation from the University of Notre Dame, to deliver the Convay Lectures at the Medieval Institute opened up the possibility to me to sketch the topic 'apse as a space of images' in an understandable form.The original character of the lectures was maintained deliberately.To reach material completeness is a desirable virtue of each scholar, but, if I had tried to do so, this would have taken the wind out of my sails.My target was above all to introduce the new question and to check its importance by comparison with the known and less known monuments and texts.Because most of the apse mosaics of the Early Christian and Byzantine period are seemingly well known, new aspects appeared when I asked for the 'apse as a space for images'.Each designer of an apse mosaic had to sound out the width and height of an apse with respect to the iconography and the room to which it was connected.The earliest preserved apse and cupola mosaics with Christian themes -S.Costanza in Rome, S. Aquilino in Milan, Centcelles near Tarragona -were designed for private mausolea or representational rooms where there was no necessity of an altar.The privates had no problem in using Christian images.The 'explosion' of the Christian image takes place within the private realm, not within the offi cial church.In churches, however, Christians erected an altar for the celebration of mass in or in front of each apse.This changed the ambition and the function of the apse into the sacred focus of the church, into the centre of the cult, infl uencing thereby the dynamics of the apse as a space for images, but not necessarily the apse programme.The themes of Early Christian apse mosaics have not much to do with liturgy.The designer of an apse programme (or the consulting cleric) was fi rst of all involved with the question of the representation of God the Father 4 and/or with the radical refusal of the fi gurative image.When the designers of apse mosaics fi nally forgot about the Second Commandment, they had to decide whether the apse should be accessible to other persons besides to Jesus Christ, the apostles and the angels, namely to the Virgin Mary, to the saints and even to the representatives of the clergy and to the layman.As early as the sixth century the apse lost its original exclusivity because from

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