My final Note on Ravenna’s mosaics — Here is the St Andrew’s Chapel in the Archiepiscopal Palace Museum, dating to the late 6th C (though several sections have been heavily restored).

As with many of the previous places we visited in my five other Notes on Ravenna, there’s some interesting iconography going on that is decidedly non-standard today. The IX Monogram (the Greek for J and C) in the center of the ceiling, for example, was one of many Christograms in use before things settled to the standard Chi Ro (Which uses the Greek versions of C and R).

I especially like the young looking Christ figure in slide 4, in unusual dress, holding a cross, book stating “I am the Way, Truth, and Life” — and squashing a lion and snake underfoot.

The text in image 5 contains an “Ode to Light.”

(Photos from November 2024.)