Der Kaiser mit dem Christogrammnimbus zur silbernen Largitionsschale Valentinians in Genf

Abstract

A flat silver bowl from Late Antiquity at the Musée d'Art et d'Histoire at Geneva bears the inscription LARGITAS D N VALENTINIANI AVGVSTI and the image of an emperor represented as a victorious soldier surrounded by his military entourage. The secondary application of the emperor's effigy is a very unusual particularity. Even though the relief has lost depth all over its surface, one can still distinguish clearly the spectacular feature of a Christogram decorating the imperial halo. Nothing similar is known in the iconography of rulership, neither in the 4th century, at the inception of its christianization, nor in subsequent times. The attempt to explain this extravagance is directly linked with that to identify the emperor Valentinian, one of three rulers of the West bearing this name - each one of them has been suggested - and simultaneously to achieve a more precise dotation. Most probably, we are presented here with Valentinian II (375-92); the Basilica Conflict of 385/86 in Milan seems to offer a matching historical environment for the edition of the bowl. Not only were the credo and the property of the Basilica Portiana (supposedly identical with S. Lorenzo) objects of this conflict between the heterodox court of Milan and the Nicene bishop Ambrose; but, in addition, the long evolving competition between the imperial state and the Church of God came to an explosion. Taking into account that in this struggle the ruling elite sought a decisive participation of Valentinian II in the role of a religious juror, the court may well have ventured even into the outrageous iconography of an imperial halo with a Christogram. Furthermore, we have evidence here for the secular power using the means of active bribery, of which the largesse bowl at Geneva may have constituted an element. Nonetheless, the winner of the struggle was Ambrose, who, in turn, may have made sure that the Chi-Rho-nimbus should henceforth remain tabu for imperial images, attributing it unambigiously to Christ. In support of this hypothesis, we can observe a certain predilection for the halo with Christogram in representations of the Saviour during the 5th century in the West, as well as the appearance of the most famous example right here at Milan: it is present in the chapel of S.Aquilino, an annex of the church of S. Lorenzo, in the scene of the apostles presided by Christ in a vault mosaic of around 400 A. D. On the assumption that we are facing here an imperial mausoleum, whose iconography was, moreover, most probably devised by Ambrose himself, it can be surmised that the bishop insisted on this iconographical marker specifically above the tomb of Valentinian II.