Imagine stepping into Cathedral and being transported into a world of glittering mosaics, reflecting sunlight and color from their gold and glass surfaces.
Hello, I’m Daphne Maxwell Reid, and you’re listening to Art on the Air.
Inside Sicily’s Cathedral of Monreale [MOHN ray a lay], gold mosaics, inlaid marble, and porphyry completely surround you.
The image of Christ the all-powerful stares down at you from the eastern apse, mosaics to either side unfold stories from the Hebrew Scriptures and the Christian Gospels. For those who could not read, these dazzling scenes depict the lives of prophets and saints, making visible the history of the church as it was understood in 1172.
Sicily’s King William II aspired to build Monreale’s great Cathedral to outdistance all of those in Europe. It expresses William’s plans to fuse the artistic achievements of the Arab-Islamic, Western Latin, and Eastern Byzantine traditions. To do so, William hired architects, craftsmen, and the best mosaicists from Rome, Constaninople, and Venice.
The nave is filled with golden images of God, Adam and Eve, Noah, and Abraham; stories of Christian miracles lead to the high altar.
Below, we find arcades of Corinthian columns from ancient Greece and Rome, interspersed with Arabic columns veneered in diamond- and chevron- mosaic patterns.
The faithful believed the Cathedral to be holy ground, sacred space in which the viewer is invited to be present at holy events ordained by Heaven on earth.
Anne Barriault
Art on the Air, 2 minute art modules for WCVE FM 88.9 public radio.
©2009 Virginia Museum of Fine Arts