Der illusionistische oculus auf dem Deckengemälde aus Brigetio und das kosmologische Zimmer des Cosmas Indicopleustes

Abstract

In the years 1994-1996 a painted vault of a house in the Roman civilian town Brigetio was excavated in present-day Komarom/Szőny, Hungary. The wall-paintings, which date back to the late 2nd-early 3rd cents. A.D., represent the personifications of the Four Seasons as female busts in the corners, four panthers in the middle of the side-walls and a circular central motive with the figure of a nude woman and a horse. On the basis of relevant astrological sources the paintings on the vault can be interpreted as symbolic representations of the spheres of the sky (the aer and the aether) and of eternity. The central medallion, which creates a delusive impression of an oculus, shows the fixed constellations Andromeda and Pegasus in the highest spheres of the sky. Parallel ideas from the Roman pagan art and the Christian / early Byzantine art indicate that the concept was widespread from the 1st to the 6th cents. A.D., being echoed also by the descriptions and illustrations in some sources of the late antiquity, like, for instance, the Christian Topography of Cosmas Indicopleustes.