Representing the Genesis in the Norman Mosaics of Sicily : the Role of Early Christian Rome

The paper is focused on the key role played by narrative cycles of early Christian Rome in developing the iconography of the mosaics of Norman Sicily. Roger II and William I for the Cappella Palatina in Palermo (1130-1166) and William II for the cathedral of Monreale (1173-1189) were searching for visual models able to express their leadership, as well as the cross-cultural identity of their kingdom. To represent the Book of Genesis along the nave, essentials were the cycles painted in Old St Peter’s and St Paul Outside the Walls, known today through some seventeenth century watercolours and reflected by a few Romanesque cycles of central Italy. In the clerestory of the two Sicilian churches the faithfulness to the models is astonishing, nevertheless some details reveal the parallel use of different narrative traditions; hence, a reconsideration of the whole issue is required, in the framework of the cultural interaction of the Mediterranean society during the Middle Ages.