THE LATERAN BAPTISTERY AND EARLY CHRISTIAN MOSAICS

Owing to Constantine’s patronage, which gave it a Roman imperial identity, and its architectural plan, the Lateran Baptistery holds a pioneering place in the Christian architectural history and formation of typologies. Providing a space for a water-centered ritual, the baptistery’s typological references to Roman water architecture, first and foremost to the Roman baths and monumental fountains, and, due to its octagonal plan, to mausoleums, are noteworthy. The Baptistery’s late antique decoration, the early Christian mosaics in the vestibule’s apsis, the mosaics in the Oratory of St. John the Evangelist and the mosaics in the Chapel of St. Venantius formed and/or reinforced an iconographic language for early Christian art. The mosaics especially promised a new and heavenly life for those who became Christians. In the baptistery and its annex buildings, we encounter themes such as the Passion, the resurrection, and the promise of eternal life, narrated through metaphors from Christian scriptures and christianized interpretations of Roman imperial and pagan iconography. Thus, for those newly initiated into the religion, a new beginning that comes with the purification owing to the baptism is made visible. The Lateran Baptistery had a great influence on the typologies and iconographic programs of later baptisteries, particularly those of Italy. Accordingly, it constitutes a major work for baptistery architecture. Based on an extensive literature review, this study describes and interprets the late antique/early Christian decoration of the Lateran Baptistery and the surviving mosaics in the named chapels and oratory which were added to the structure under the patronage of Pope Sixtus III (432-440), Pope Hilarius (461-468), and Pope John IV (640-642).

Keywords

The Lateran Baptistery, Early Christian Mosaics, Early Christian Iconography, Rome, 4th-7th Centuries