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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Blue439" data-source="post: 827431" data-attributes="member: 53455">A Carolingian mosaic (2022)It is always difficult to write about the history of Romanesque churches, because they are very old, and back in the day, not a lot was written down, and a lot of what was has since then disappeared in the mists of time... Even the major churches are not very well documented sometimes, let alone the smaller ones. The further back one goes in time, the scarcer and more unreliable the written evidence becomes.The church known today as the Oratory in the village of Germigny-des-Prés near the banks of the Loire in central France, is a good example of that. If we are to trust written History, we know that the church was built there between 803 and 806 by the abbot of Fleury, the abbey where the above photo was taken. So, we are led to believe that there was nothing in that place before. It turns out that couldn’t be more wrong: because the shape of the church (a quatrefoil) and the way the stones were cut intrigued them, some archæologists decided to carry out a non-destructive survey in 2019, which revealed that a lot of the structural walls were in fact from the mid-600s, 150 years before the Carolingian church was built, re-using a number of the pre-existing Merovingian walls...It is also interesting to note that, although rather small and quite out of the way, this church made it to the very first list of Historic Landmarks of 1840... Its value today is also recognized by a UNESCO World Heritage badge.The mosaic was covered by whitewash when it was rediscovered in the 1820s, and restored with 6,800 gold-covered glass tesseræ, on an estimated total of 130,000. The motif is the Ark of the Covenant surrounded by two angels. It is typical of the period just after the iconoclastic strife within the Church, when human representation was frowned upon. The Ark with cherubim and angels was safer as a theme... The Byzantine look probably comes from the fact that, in 800, Abbot Theodulf of Fleury, the re-builder of the church in 803, went with Charlemagne to Rome for the latter’s crowning. There, Theodulf saw Byzantinian mosaics in churches and got his inspiration, possibly bringing back with him to Germigny a team of mosaicists.All shots: Nikon Z7 II, Nikkor 19mm, ƒ/4 PC-E tilt-shift lens, manual focus, FTZ II adapter. Gitzo tripod, Benro geared head.The back of the church:[ATTACH=full]413378[/ATTACH]The chancel and the apse, crowned by the mosaic:[ATTACH=full]413379[/ATTACH]The mosaic:[ATTACH=full]413380[/ATTACH]</blockquote>

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