ИКОНОГРАФИЯ РОСПИСЕЙ ТРАНСЕНН В ЦЕРКВИ САНТА-МАРИЯ АНТИКВА (РИМ, VIII В.) ЗАМЕТКИ ПО ПОВОДУ ИНТЕРПРЕТАЦИИ

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Abstract

Статья содержит иконографический анализ ветхозаветного цикла стенной росписи церкви Санта-Мария Антиква в Риме (I в. н. э.). Ансамбль росписи, не имеющий аналогов в Риме по полноте и сохранности, был создан между VI и\ТП вв. Автор настоящего исследования уделяет особое внимание самым ранним произведениям, созданным в начале VI в., когда римское искусство находилось под ощутимым влиянием Византии. ; The S. Maria Antiqua complex, located at the slope of the Palatine Hill in Rome, belongs to the building campaign of Emperor Domitian in the late 1st c. Its rich program of frescoes is executed in successive stages from the time of consecration of the church in the early 6th c. until the 9th c. The eldest, including those in the focus of the present study, dates to a period when the Eastern influence in Rome was deeply felt. The present iconographical analysis focus on the extremely fragmentary Old Testament cycle depicted inside the transennae, the low barriers separating the central axis of the bema (presbytery) and naos (nave) from the adjoining spaces. This cycle was executed during the pontificate of John VII (A.D. 705-707). On these barriers are found frescoes which depict Old Testament scenes. Panels containing figure scenes will seem to have covered the entire length of the transennae, but only a few of these have been preserved. These are all located on the beholder's right side when facing the apse: Juxtapposed within the bema we find the well preserved scenes showing David trampling on Goliath and The Sickness of Hezekiah; on the transenna separating the bema from the naos, facing the naos, we find a scene from the story of Judith and Holofernes drawn from the Old Testament apocrypha. Added to these fairly well-preserved panels, the content of which can be read with certainty, there are two very fragmentary ones within the naos: a fresco showing a fighting horseman and a fallen warrior and a fragment showing a person in royal vestments walking towards a throne. The linking of the David and Hezekiah panels, as well as the inclusion of the Judith panel, will strongly seem to exclude that the cycle is a continious narrative; it is the coupling of rather separate episodes that will seem to mediate the deeper meaning of the cycle. The article argues for the thesis that (1) all scenes of the transennae, including those that are completely lost, derive from the Old Testament and Old Testament apocrypha. Moreover, (2) the David and Hezekiah panels in the bema point to a strong Christological [i.e. pro Chalcedonian] bias in the program, stressing the soteriological meaning of the human ancestry of Christ, the Davidic Messiah: If this suggestion can be accepted, the program is strongly anti-monotheletic. Finally, (3) the coupling of the David and Hezekiah panels in the bema, as well as the presence of the Judith and Holofernes scenes and the fragment showing a horse and a fallen warrior points to a military symbolism, that may spring from the political situation in the early 8th c., namely the Arabian presence in Palestine and North Africa, and their dangerous threat of Constantinople.