The art of different ages

On Sunday we went to the churches of St Prudentiana and St Prassede. Tradition has it that these two sisters of the senator Prudens collected the blood of the martyrs after their death and ensured the proper burial of their bodies. The church of St Prudentiana has the oldest apse mosaic in Rome. An apse mosaic consists of pictures done in coloured stone and gold. The pictures use religious symbolism to tell the Essential Christian story. There are a number of symbols used that have multiple meanings. You are supposed to sit and ‘read the story of faith’ from the symbols. Certain symbols are repeated and as you read the story from church to church you can appreciate the difference between the way the people of different eras understood their faith. In the apse mosaic of St Prudentiana, created around 370, Christ sits enthroned, the only person to have a halo. Around him in a pleasant courtyard are the apostles, enjoying the heavenly banquet. Behind Sts Peter (always with a full head of hair) and Paul (severely receding forehead) stand two women, placing victor’s (leafy) crowns on their heads. The women can be Prudentiana and her sister Prassede, they can also represent the Gentile and Jewish Christian churches. In the background is Jerusalem and possibly its new Churches that have been built since Christianity had been made an official religion 60 years before. There is a huge gold and jewelled cross behind Christ, perhaps represented the discovery of the cross in Jerusalem. There is a sense of relaxation and ease. The time of persecution has passed but is still recalled by the victor’s crown and by the extraordinary inscription on the book Christ is holding. The words read “Preserver of the Church of Prudentiana”. Normally such words in Christ’s book would be a section of the Gospel, especially John but here Christ is called the preserver of the Church of the one who ‘preserved’ the martyrs.
Around the corner is the church of her sister St Prassede. Rebuilt in the 9C it has even more mosaics. The side chapel of St Zeno is extraordinary but I’m not going to describe it here. The central mosaics have Christ in the centre as usual but standing on either side of him, in a more formal arrangement than at St Prudentiana’s church, are Sts Peter and Paul with Prudentiana and Prassede on either side. The apostles have an arm around the shoulders of the two women, a very friendly gesture and in appreciation of the service the women had given the church.
Above the high alter is a 17th century painting of the collection of the blood. The central figure has her eyes fixed on heaven watching little angels. In the background we see martyrs being killed, in the middleground two women pointing at the sisters impressed with their actions, and in the foreground the two sisters with calm faces doing their heroic action.
Now at the back of the church is a statue that fascinates by its ghoulishness. Here, made in what looks like paper mache, is St Prassede kneeling, weeping, while she wrings out a cloth dripping with blood. There is no sense of Christ and the martyr’s victory, only of the disaster of violent death. Yet this is a statue that attracts devotion, shown by the ‘votive offerings, in the glass case protecting the statue. These votive offerings are ‘silver hearts’ placed their by someone who has had their prayers answered.
Four different centuries, four different ways that the story is presented. My own fair is fed more by the early mosaics that by the later art.