The scandalous mosaics of Aquileia: the first public representation of Christian art is Friulian
It rains on the Roman forum. Drops gush vividly from columns, glide over vestiges of a glorious past. They splash energy on the ruins. Aquileia welcomes me on Liberation Day, damp and resentful.
The pavement struggles to absorb the slow and copious rivulets. In this stubborn and contrary Friuli in the Augustan age (44 B.C.-A.D. 14) stood an imposing and proud metropolis. Only traces of incalculable beauty remain of the splendors of this northern Roman colony, a crossroads of profound cultural exchanges and rich markets. A city wiped out by the Huns in 452.
Destroyed and obliterated by Attila. They are here for the mosaics, preserved in the enchanting Basilica of Santa Maria Assunta. They date from the early fourth century A.D. Magnificent and mysterious, iconic and democratic.
The edict of Constantine, 313 AD, granted freedom of worship to Christians, ending bloody persecution. Master mosaicists, by the dozens, hundreds, gave free rein in the floors of the Basilica to their vision of Christianity. Before ecclesial bulls imposed iconographic models with which to spread the good news. No images of saints and madonnas, but fish, peacocks, donkeys and rams. Pagan mythology filtered through the pure and free sensibility of Christ’s first artists. Andrea Bellavite, director of the Aquileia Mosaics Office, takes us on a tour of discovery of the oldest Christian public place of worship.
“Before the edict of Constantine, Christianity could not be professed publicly. Artistic representations were limited to private, clandestine places. The first public artistic testimony after the edict is found neither in Rome nor in Jerusalem, but in Aquileia.”.
No name has reached us of any artist who distinguished himself by skill, grace, or technique in mosaic making. Bellavite has a theory: “I am convinced that mosaicists worked in groups, were nomads, circus people. They moved where the patrons required their technique. And they remained anonymous because forty years after they worked inside this basilica their masterpieces were concealed, covered up. The Church could not accept that the word be freely interpreted according to each person’s sensibility and imposed its own liturgy, universal and recognized.”.
The scandalous frescoes were hastily covered and only unearthed in 1907. They shine today as they did then. “They are mosaics of stones, some very precious. No tesserae have been colored. The pigment is original, bright, shining.” Originally the building consisted of three classrooms. In the southern one extends the largest mosaic floor in the entire Roman West: 760 square meters filled with symbols and allegories showing the faithful the way to salvation. A marine environment populated by octopuses, cuttlefish, dolphins, and ducks. The eastern span is entirely occupied by episodes from the biblical story of Jonah. Bellavite rescues us.
“It is the only reference that allows us to interpret the mosaics from a Christian perspective. Everything else is the result of the fervent and unconditioned imagination of these early artists of Christ, free and democratic, scandalous in their own way. They hand down to us fish, birds, shepherds, Solomon’s knot.”
It was precisely the knot that over the centuries became the symbol in which Aquileia recognized itself.
“It represents unity in diversity, the conjunction of heaven and earth.” There is no shortage of surprises in the Crypt of the Excavations, under the bell tower. Here the mosaics of the north hall were found. For Bellavite the most fascinating: “The lobster, the donkey, the fox, the ram: symbols not yet deciphered, difficult to interpret. And an inscription, an encrypted message that Bellavite deciphers. “IANVARIVS DE DEI DONO V(otum) S(olvit) P(edes) DCCCLXXX.” “I believe the reference is to the benefactor who donated the land so that the hall and consequently the mosaics could be made. A generosity that consigned it to history.”
Outside the Basilica it continues to rain. A group of Balkan tourists listen through earphones to a guide’s explanations. Uninterrupted. I walk backwards along Via Julia Augusta to the forum area. Aquileia, unchanging and proud, greets me.
