DETAIL, CEILING MOSAIC OF THE AMBULATORY, MAUSOLEUM OF CONSTANTINA, 340-345 CE. S. COSTANZA The mosaic that adorns the ceiling of the anular corridor around the central space of the mausoleum of Constantina and Helena changes pattern every few metres. Flanking the two portraits in clipei of the two sisters are scenes of winemaking. Here we see naked little boys, Erotes without the wings and in a bluish colour, trying to knock bunches of grapes into a cart driven by another tiny blue child, this one wearing a green tunic and urging a pair of tiny oxen forward. The cart is already full of grapes. Meanwhile, various birds up in the vines are also vying for the grapes. This is part of a simile for death - just as the grape is crushed to release the wine, the body dies to release the soul - which had been used by non-Christians before it was assimilated into the Christian tradition.

For a belated #MosaicMonday, a detail from the ceiling #mosaic of #SantaCostanza in #Rome, 340-345 CE. Here we have a grape harvest with tiny blue children climbing along the vines with a hooked staff, in competition with birds to get the fruit. Below, a child drives a tiny cart. #AncientBluesky 🏺

MOSAIC FEMALE PORTRAIT, 340-345 CE. S. COSTANZA The imperial mausoleum attached to the cemetery basilica of S. Agnese has its fair share of mysteries. One is the identity of the two clipeated portraits in mosaic in the right and left centres of the corridor around the central space of the mausoleum. For years one was identified as Constantina, and the other her husband Hannibalianus, both of them decided unsaintly (Ammianus Marcellinus calls them "insatiable in their taste for human blood"). However, both portraits are of women, albeit with short hair and an upward gaze à la Alexander the Great. The current theory is that these are portraits of Constantina and her sister Helena, wife of the later and short-lived emperor Julian "the Apostate".

For #MosaicMonday, a #clipeus portrait of a daughter of the emperor #Constantine, either #Constantina or #Helena, wife of the emperor #Julian, from the anular corridor of #SantaCostanza in #Rome, 340-345 CE. She's oddly masculine, with short tousled hair and eyes looking upward. #AncientBluesky 🏺

APSE MOSAIC, C5-C7. S. COSTANZA This is one of only two surviving mosaics in the small apses, niches really, directly across from each other on the lateral axis of this circular mausoleum now thought to have been built perhaps c. 360 for the emperor Constantine's daughter Helena, replacing a smaller mausoleum on the same site for Helena's sister Constantina. Helena was the wife of the emperor Julian the Apostate, and the great mosaic cycles of the ambulatory, which has survived, and the dome, which has not, must have been made at his order, and were Christian despite Julian's preference for the old religion. According to this theory, the huge porphyry sarcophagus now known as Constantina's was in fact her sister Helena's, and stood in the centre of the mausoleum while Constantina's was a smaller porphyry basin in the rear niche. The mausoleum must have become a pilgrimage site for a purely fictional St Constance as early as the C7, when this mosaic was made. It is far inferior to the mosaics of the ambulatory from the C4. It shows Christ at centre giving the keys to St Peter at left, surrounded by date palms. The best part of the mosaic is its lovely frame of garlands of grapes and pomegranates, which may date from the C5. In fact the dating and use of this mausoleum in the post-Constantinian period is quite obscure: in 865 pope Nicholas I celebrated Mass here, but it was only consecrated as a church far later, in 1256, by pope Alexander IV.

#MosaicMonday brings us a not very good #mosaic in the former #mausoleum of #Constantine's daughters #Constantina and #Helena at #SantaCostanza in #Rome, which prompts questions about the building's use in the early #medieval period.