Participes lucis aeternae: concerning one missing link in the iconography of the First Day of Creation

Abstract

Western Christian iconography of the Creation in the centuries XI-XIII offers many possibilities of following the logic of the development of several early Christian traditions as part of one pattern and in more detail. In the case of the connection of Roman-style artifacts (frescoes and miniatures from Rome and Latium) with the tradition of the Cotton Genesis, we can see that the process of "emancipating" a separate element and transferring it into an alien context gives it a new implication. This applies to the pictures of angels lying 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 eighth-century Langobardian school frescoes in the "Crypt of the Fall" near Matera, we can assume that by that time the angel-day personifications in the Cotton composition could act as the personification of Light in the scene of the First Day of Creation. This gives us 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 Bible of Tours miniatures, and also prompts the iconographic connection of various poses and gestures of angels lying ahead of the Creator in the miniatures of the Creation in "Atlantic" Bibles with the angel-days of the Cotton tradition.