E08564
Images and objects - Wall paintings and mosaics
Mosaic figures between the windows of the main apse:
There are four windows in the apse of Eufrasius' church, dividing the apse-wall into five spaces. These are decorated as follows:
1.The Annunciation - 2. An unlabelled full-length figure, almost certainly Zechariah (the father of the Baptist) - 3. An angel - 4. An unlabelled full-length figure, almost certainly John the Baptist - 5. The Visitation.
These mosaics had suffered particularly serious damage before the major restoration of the mosaics of Poreč in 1890-1900, so there is more uncertainty over their original appearance than there is over the mosaics higher up in the apse. However, Terry and Maguire (1977, 16-18, 104-109, and figs. 227 and 239), who examined the documentary evidence thoroughly as well as the mosaics themselves from scaffolding, concluded that enough original work survives to confirm that the two saints are Zechariah and John the Baptist. We refer readers to their detailed account of these mosaics, and to their conclusions.
Commissioning/producing an image
Public display of an image
Source
The 'basilica of Eufrasius' is the southern, and larger, church of the palaeochristian double-cathedral of Poreč. Detailed survey and excavation reveals that Eufrasius partially reused the walls of an earlier church on the same site, but his intervention was extensive and transformational: new columns, capitals and bases in imported Proconnesian marble; mosaic floors; stucco-work; sumptuous opus sectile panels in the main apse; and the mosaics that are the subject of this and several other database entries.The precise dates of Eufrasius' episcopate are unknown, and nothing is known about him before he became bishop of Poreč - the only reference to him in textual sources is to a bishop Eufrasius, who must surely be our bishop, condemned as a defender of the Three Chapters in a letter of Pope Pelagius I of 559. Stylistic analysis of the mosaics, stucco-work and opus sectile, and comparison with very similar datable work in Ravenna (just across the north Adriatic), supports a mid-sixth-century date for Eufrasius' episcopate and his church (Terry and Maguire 2007, 59-69).
Discussion
As argued by Terry and Maguire (1977, 136-7), these two images are almost certainly not 'cultic', in the sense of inviting active veneration; rather Zechariah and John are here as adjuncts to the adjacent scenes of the Annunciation and Visitation. We have, however, included them in our database, so as to offer full coverage of the images of saints at Poreč.Bibliography
For Eufrasius:Pietri, C. and Pietri, L., Prosopographie chrétienne du Bas-Empire, 2 Prosopographie de l'Italie chrétienne (313-604), 2 vols. (Ècole française de Rome 1999), vol. 1, 671-2, 'Eufrasius'.
For the mosaics and their state of preservation:
Terry, A. and H. Maguire, Dynamic Splendor. The Wall Mosaics in the Cathedral of Eufrasius at Poreč, 2 vols, (Pennsylvania State University Press) 2007.
Images
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Terry and Maguire, fig. 107
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Terry and Maguire, fig. 122
Bryan Ward-Perkins
25/11/2024
| ID | Name | Name in Source | Identity | S00020 | John the Baptist | Certain | S00597 | Zechariah, father of John the Baptist | Certain |
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Please quote this record referring to its author, database name, number, and, if possible, stable URL:
Bryan Ward-Perkins, Cult of Saints, E08564 - http://csla.history.ox.ac.uk/record.php?recid=E08564