Mirabilia Romae. Rivista interdisciplinare di Studi su Roma medievale
Abstract
This article re-examines the complex arrangement of sacred space in the
Benedictine church of Santa Maria in Capitolio (known as Aracoeli since the
twelfth century), which included a Cosmatesque slab incorporating a late-antique
mensa with Achillean reliefs. One goal serves to deepen our understanding of the
impact that the reuse of this artifact – and, thus, the ‘physical’ interaction with it
– may have had on the production of the marble-worker who undertook the reuse,
particularly on a work as dense with meaning as the front of the confessio of the
ara coeli. A re-interpretation is proposed of the message that this artefact was intended
to communicate, not only through iconographic analysis but also through
examination of its materiality, highlighting how the Cosmatesque marbler used the
mosaic in a special manner to add layers of meaning to the relief. On the basis of
documentary, literary, epigraphic and material evidence, as well as stylistic-formal
comparisons, we propose that the setting described by early-modern travellers was
made at least in two phases: an ancient porphyry basin was reused as ara coeli
(functioning as high altar) at the time of Anacletus II, ca. 1130, whilst the front
of the confessio with the Augustan legend, variously dated between the fourth and
fourteenth centuries, is to be attributed to Jacopo di Lorenzo, during the pontificate
of Innocent III (1198-1216). This historical and art-historical re-assessment leads on
to wider considerations on the transmission of ideas and artifacts across time and
space, as well as to more specific acquisitions, such as the pertinence of some Cosmatesque
slabs, later reused in the church floor, to a thirteenth-century ambo.
