Justinian I & the Ravenna Mosaicists

Justinian never picked up a brush. He was an emperor — and arguably the most consequential patron in the history of Byzantine art. When he rebuilt the Hagia Sophia in Constantinople and commissioned the extraordinary mosaic programs in Ravenna's churches, he was doing something more than decorating buildings. He was constructing a theology in light.

The craftsmen who executed his vision remain almost entirely anonymous. We know they came from Constantinople, that they worked in large organized teams, and that they possessed a technical mastery of glass tesserae — the tiny colored tiles of mosaic — that has never been surpassed. They knew that slightly angled tiles catch light differently than flat ones, and they used this to create surfaces that seemed to breathe and shimmer in candlelight.

What Justinian wanted — and what his mosaicists gave him — was an image of divine sovereignty so overwhelming that entering the church felt like entering a different order of reality. He largely succeeded. The church of San Vitale in Ravenna still does this, on a Tuesday afternoon in November, when you are the only one there.