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Participes lucis aeternae: A propos des personnages secondaires dans l’iconographie du premier jour de la création
Western Christian iconography of the Creation in the eleventh-thirteenth centuries offers many opportunities for following the logic of the interaction of several early Christian traditions within one composition and at the level of its individual details. In the case of the connection of Roman-style artifacts (frescoes and miniatures from Rome and Latium) with the early tradition concerning the Lord Cotton Genesis and the Venice San Marco’s nartex mosaics, one can trace the process of “emancipating” a separate element and its transferring it into an alien context thus giving it a new implication. That applies to the pictures of angels standing before the Creator, which are replacing or duplicating the personifications of Light and Darkness in the miniatures of Roman Atlantic Bibles. Thanks to the recent discovery of the ninth-century Lombard school frescoes in the Crypt of the Fall near Matera, it can be assumed that by that time the day personifications in the composition could act as the personification of Light in the scene of the First Day of Creation. This gives the opportunity to find an iconographic explanation of the appearance in the next century of the orant angels in the Creation of Adam in the miniatures of Tours Bibles, and prompts the iconographic connection of various poses and gestures of angels standing before the Creator in the miniatures of the Creation in Atlantic Bibles with the personification of the Creation in the early prothograph of San Marco mosaics.
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