At Monreale

The cathedral of Monreale is an extraordinary structure just south of the city of Palermo in Sicily. I visited this amazing church for the first time in 2017 and can highly recommend it as a unique and unforgettable experience. Apart from its raised position, with great views, and wonderful architecture, Monreale is famous for its Byzantine mosaics, some 10,000 square metres of them apparently, all done at the command of Guglielmo II (1153-1189), the last of the great Norman kings of Sicily.

One of the cloisters attached to Monreale, seen from the roof of the building.

This article is not about Monreale per se, nor about its fantastic cycles of mosaics, but rather, about a particular curiosity noted while studying photographs of two similar events depicted on the walls: the Crucifixion of Christ and the Crucifixion of Saint Peter. Christ, as we all know, was crucified in the 'normal' way, that is to say, upright (there is some argument about His having been actually nailed to the cross, as it was more usual for people to be tied to it), whereas St Peter on the other hand, apparently demanded that his cross be inserted into the ground upside down! This 'fact' is pertinent to our discussion.

The subject of the Crucifixion of Christ is situated on the western wall of the left transept while that of St Peter is near the other St Peter mosaics, in the apse on the right. As already mentioned, the mosaics are Byzantine in style and this means, to put it very simply, that figures, faces and gestures are generally represented according to well-established formal criteria; references to the way a real human body actually looks are, let's say, unwelcome!

What I want to discuss is the way the bodies of these two figures, Christ and St Peter, have been so differently drawn. Let's begin with the figure of Christ (in its Latin inscription: CRVCIFIXIO. IESV CHRISTI.). His body is remarkable in its apparent detailed knowledge of the objective reality or facts of anatomy, quite out of keeping with the overall Byzantine figurative environment in which it sits. This artist has, to my mind, obviously worked from a living model, i.e. a real man, as opposed to simply following an established scheme; or, he has studied classical statuary as a reference for human anatomy.

The Crucifixion of Christ, mosaic, late 12th century (?)
Il Duomo di Monreale, Sicily, Italy

In the area around the shoulders, the major shoulder muscle, the deltoid, is shown as it actually looks and, more importantly - and unusually - the smaller inserted muscle, the coracobrachialis, under the arm-pit, is clearly visible under this figure's stretched out arm, as is the bicep. The torso also contains explicit renderings of real muscles and muscle groups: the serratus anterior and the obliquus externus on the side of the chest, as well as the pectoralis major and the clavicle bone at the front. Christ's rib cage (thorax) is further remarkable for being conceived as a kind of egg shape - as in reality - with the latissimus dorsi muscles visible behind it. The insertions of muscles in the outstretched arms - biceps, coracobrachialis, triceps and then the forearm muscles - all suggest this artist has actually looked at how a real human body is formed.

He has also observed the complex - and complicated to render - knee joint, distinctly different in this scene from the knees in other images in the cathedral (e.g. the Temptation of Adam and Eve and the Miraculous Draught of Fishes). He has shown the patella (knee-cap) and the 'fatty pads' underneath it, together with the protrusions formed by the fascia lata and the lateral condyle of the tibia. The inferior extremity of the vastus medialis is also clear. Although the lower legs of the Christ are unremarkable, except for the way the foot comes out from under the arch formed by the ankles, the same level of awareness of objective realty seems to pertain in the legs of the centurion on the extreme right of this image. His straight leg shows a similar grasp of realistic detail to that we have seen in the figure of Christ, and his bent leg - shown in profile - clearly possesses a patella!

The Crucifixion of Saint Peter, mosaic, late 12th century (?)
Il Duomo di Monreale, Sicily, Italy.

In the Crucifixion of St Peter (in its Latin inscription: CRVCIFIXIO. SCS. PETR.) we have a similar but inverted subject; however, this image is much more the 'standardised' rendering of the event, and of the human body. Basic structures are there - forearms, biceps, triceps, pectorals and so on - but they are standardised, they are drawn according to a template, not according to observation. St Peter has a large chest, but, apart from the pectoral muscles, there is only the merest hint of any others. The latissimus dorsi seem to be there, but unattached to the shoulders. The chest and abdomen areas are hardly more than an observant beginner might come up with, having been asked to draw a man's body!

In this figure of St Peter, although he is putatively hanging upside-down, there is not the slightest suggestion of distribution downwards of the weight of his body. To all intents and purposes, he is a man crucified right-way up (i.e. normally) with his weight resting on the foot platform under his feet! Interestingly, this weight problem has been ignored in even its most obvious manifestation, the gravity-resisting loin cloth! This cloth is shown 'hanging' up (!), again, as it would appear - correctly - on a person crucified in the normal manner. St Peter's loin cloth however, resists (miraculously) the pull of gravity, presumably to protect the saint's modesty. And, indeed, although the hapless saint has nails in his hands, securing thereby his arms, his feet, as shown by the activity of his executioners (seemingly standing on the arms of the cross!), have none; which poses the question, again related to gravity: how is his body being supported, upside down? 1

It is clear that the artist in this case has simply followed a standard scheme for a crucified figure and, moreover, simply inverted such a pattern for an 'abnormal' crucifixion. Not only has he not consulted reality for the anatomy of his figure, he has ignored it as far as weight and gravity are concerned! I do not wish to seem to be criticising our St Peter artist, as the problems (if they are such) here described are those common to all 'artisans' working in such circumstances; even the ignoring of gravity is not an unusual feature in representations of the death of St Peter. I only mention these things to point up the very obvious differences in the handling of a very similar subject by, presumably, two different artists 2.

Finally, in reference to the drawing of knees, in the scene of the Crucifixion of St Peter, we can also see the standard 'Monreale knee' symbols in the legs of the Roman soldiers on the right. Two roughly joined circles are used to suggest knees, knee-caps or patellas, frequently, as in the scene of the Creation of Adam on the right wall of the central nave, having no structural or physically functional quality at all, and appearing more as holes in the legs than as anything else.

Oddly, the two hammer-wielding executioners in the St Peter mosaic do seem to have been derived from, or at least, based on, observation of real life. The legs of both are much less stylised than those of the soldiers for instance, and although not well resolved, some attempt to indicate the objective reality of life has been made.

What does all this mean? The preceding remarks are based on a study of photographs of the stupendous decoration of the fantastical cathedral of Monreale in Sicily. The building is described as a late-Norman structure, thought to have been begun in 1172, so the 12th century. This is important because the description "late-Norman" - Norman architecture being usually associated with 'round arches' - and the date, 1172, put us into the period of the initial use of the 'pointed' or 'Gothic arch' in Europe. And, in fact, despite being a Norman structure, built by a Norman king (Guglielmo II), both the interior and the exterior (especially the apses) are built - at least partly - using the pointed arch. The style of the contemporary internal mosaic decoration is undoubtedly Byzantine (Byzantine being a Greek development); in fact, the words accompanying the supposed earlier images in the apses are Greek, whereas, in the main body of the church, the accompanying words are in Latin 3. In any case, according to recent art-historical studies, the mosaic cycles date from about the time of the initial construction of the building and up to the mid-1200s; we are not dealing with the Renaissance therefore. The Renaissance (beginning roughly in the early 1400s, [a moot point]) was a period of re-awakening interest in classical models, not only in art, but also in architecture, literature, philosophy and the sciences. So, where did the body of this Crucified Christ, made some time around 1176, come from?

A view of the main apse of the cathedral of Monreale, again seen from the roof; note the clearly pointed arches used in its construction.

In these mosaics, in those images telling the Biblical and Christological stories, where there is an urban background setting, there are no (?) pointed arches; doorways, windows and archways are either rectangular or rounded, i.e. pre-Christian or Romanesque. And yet, there are pointed arches throughout the real building structure itself, both inside and out, and we have at least one paleo-classical revival, or, extremely late-classical image, the Crucifixion of Christ in mosaic work!

The absence of pointed arches in the background buildings represented in the scenes may be due to the fact that, in the 1st century AD, and before, pointed arches did not, so far as we know, exist in Europe. They would have been anachronistic in images representing the time of Christ4. But men and women who looked like you and me did exist and yet the people in these images are represented in an almost flat, stylised and schematised fashion, bearing little more similarity to real-life men and women than the background buildings do to real structures. And yet, there is that Crucified Christ!

1 A wonderful and wholly more 'realistic' treatment may be seen in Caravaggio's version of this same theme in Sta Maria del Popolo, in Rome.

2 I have no idea whether or not two different artists are responsible for the two separate crucifixions; it would seem so, given the aspects of both discussed above. It is also possible however, that one and the same artist is responsible for both and that, having made the Christ image, he was pulled back into line, so to speak. It could just as easily be that having made the St Peter image in the 'normal' way, he was then allowed to 'experiment' with his new ideas!

3 The traditional description of the huge Christs found in the apses of Byzantine churches as "the Pantocrator" (the all powerful) is written in Greek with, like the Latin inscriptions, many other words abbreviated (see below). But these words, "The Pantocrator" are like this: 'ΟΠΑΝΤΟΚΡΑΤωΡ', the 'Ν'' an oddly stylised one and the capital 'omega' - 'Ω' -  seems to have been substituted with a lower case one: 'ω', with the second 'T' attached to it.

Christ Pantocrator in the top of the main apse at Monreale, mosaic, late 12th century (?)

4 Nevertheless, that historical fact did not inhibit some late-medieval artists who happily gave their biblical buildings pointed arches! - and put their actors in contemporary, i.e. medieval, clothes. As far as clothing goes, even at Monreale, the clothes of some of the minor actors are contemporary to the period of its construction. The supposed 'biblical' fashion of the principal players (Jesus, Mary, saints and angels) however, was strictly canonical.
In this context we might also note that Guglielmo II was supposed to have had red hair, and, bearing in mind that he was the king and the man who ordered the construction of this great building, it is interesting that in the stories of Christ - not in the Pantocrator image however - Christ clearly has red hair! Another curious fact is that, whenever a table set with food is illustrated, there appears to be rabbit on the menu!