ABSTRACT
Little is known about how middle and late Byzantine viewers would have responded when looking at religious art of the pre-iconoclastic era. The early Byzantine apse mosaic at the Monastery of the Latomou in Thessaloniki (known as Hosios David) is useful and possibly unique in its ability to illuminate this issue, because the mosaic itself survives, along with textual and artistic evidence attesting to its significance during the medieval period. With its lush landscape rather than neutral ground, its unidentified figures, and long-haired, youthful Christ, the mosaic is a typical early Christian image. Yet exceptionally, this ex voto composition went on in the Byzantine period to serve as the basis for at least two known paintings venerated as icons. This chapter is devoted to exploring this rare functional transformation.
