First Scheme.—A reading of Salzenberg’s notes on the figure mosaics will show how little ground there was for his impression that these belonged to the time of Justinian, which the last sentence expresses. Several of these mosaics are dated as being parts of restorations. Thus he shows that Basil I. placed figures on the arch of the great western hemicycle, and that those of the great eastern arch are the work of Palaeologus.
The subject has been much obscured by insecure assumptions and inexact assertions. Labarte, who was one of the first to doubt that Justinian was intended by the figure of the kneeling emperor before Christ over the Royal Door, thought that the Silentiary described figure-mosaics as covering the interior.[395] Gerspach in La Mosaïque calls the emperor ‘Justinian’ and appears to mistake the Pentecost cupola for the great dome. In regard to the date of the lunette containing the emperor, Labarte suggested that it was a work of the seventh century, and that the emperor was Heraclius.[396] Woltmann and Woermann placed it still later and write, “There is no kind of resemblance between the beardless portrait of Justinian at Ravenna and this bearded, gray-headed man. It is more likely to be Basil I. the restorer of the western apse, and this opinion is supported by the miniatures of his time.” The pilgrim Anthony seems to refer to it as Leo the Wise, but the Russians ascribe so many works to this emperor without reason that this is inconclusive. The forms of the letters in the inscriptions, however, show that the mosaic is late. Bayet,[397] who has considered the mosaics afresh, and thinks the silence of Paulus is conclusive as to the absence of figure-mosaics when the poem was written, about 562, himself seems to misread some parts of the poet’s description; thus he thinks patterns in mosaic are intended in lines 607-612. The animals of the atrium may possibly have been of glass mosaic: but we think it more likely that inlaid marble like the dolphins of the interior ([Fig. 49]) is intended. The baskets of fruit, branches with birds, and the golden vine in the church, spoken of in lines 668, &c. seem to refer to the carved and gilt surfaces of the spandrils of the arcade, not to the mosaic, as Bayet supposes.
The figure scheme, so far as it can be traced, closely agrees with the Byzantine Manual of Painting: and the subjects and treatments can be associated with work in other churches of the ninth and tenth centuries which have in several cases almost identical designs. Altogether it may be doubted if a single figure belongs to a time anterior to the iconoclastic period of the eighth century.
We believe the original scheme of decoration is best accounted for without figures, and even if this were not so, we can hardly believe that in the Patriarchal Church at the door of the Palace figures would have lasted through the reigns of the iconoclastic emperors and patriarchs, as they may well have done in remoter churches where the clergy were on the other side. Leo issued his first decree against images in 726. Its purport was not, as is often stated, that pictures should be hung higher in the churches in order that people should not adore them by kissing: “it commanded that they should be totally abolished.”[398]
Fig. 70.—Mosaic of small Vault Compartment next the Bema.
It is well known that a figure of Christ over the entrance to the palace was destroyed by Leo the Isaurian. Dr. Walsh, who was chaplain to our embassy at the Porte about 1820, writes, “There stood till very lately in Constantinople an inscription over the gate of the palace called Chalces. Under a large cross sculptured over the entrance to the palace were the following words:—
“‘The emperor cannot endure that Christ should be represented (graphes) a mute and lifeless image graven on earthly materials. But Leo and his young son Constantine have at their gates engraved the thrice-blessed representation of the cross, the glory of believing monarchs.’”[399]
In 768 Nicetas, the patriarch under Constantine, Leo’s son, is said to have destroyed “the images of gold mosaic and wax encaustic” in all the churches of Constantinople.[400] And in the life of Theophilus we read, “throughout every church the figures of the saints were destroyed, and the forms of beasts and birds were painted in their places.”[401]