TITLE:
Two Newly Researched Cycles of Mosaics in San Marco, Venice: Mary’s Childhood and Genesis1
AUTHORS:
Elena Ene Drăghici-Vasilescu
KEYWORDS:
San Marco/St Mark’s Venice, Mary’s Infancy, Cotton Manuscript, Genesis Cycle of Images, British Library
JOURNAL NAME:
Open Journal of Social Sciences,
Vol.12 No.8,
August
20,
2024
ABSTRACT: The article presents two cycles of mosaics in San Marco, Venice that need to be better known. They are thus: Mary’s childhood within the western bay of the south transept, and Genesis, which is situated in the atrium. The latter is especially intriguing as it very probably was inspired in its conception by a written source that has survived (albeit fragmentarily) to the present day: the Cotton manuscript (its part that is now in the British Library, London). There is a resurgence in the research concerning the second series of visual episodes which I discuss here (that within the atrium), and even though at least three books have been written about both cycles2, they still need more public exposure. I shall begin my text with a short history of Venice itself and of San Marco basilica/cathedral, and then focus especially on its decoration, particularly that made in mosaic within the above two mentioned areas of the building. This paper was written because the colleagues at ASPROM (the Association for the Study and Promotion of Roman Mosaics in Britain) asked me to give a lecture at their Summer Symposium in the Ashmolean Museum, University of Oxford, on the 22nd of June, 2024. That happened not long after the closure of an exhibition about mosaics titled The Romans and us, which I curated between 3rd of January and 6th of April 2024 in Wolfson College, University of Oxford. After the Symposium in June the audience suggested that I shall publish the text I presented.