ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses imagery which was intended to reveal the humanity and divinity perfectly combined in the Son of God, and in particular on the image of Christ as ‘Redeeming Light’, depicted in mosaics commissioned by popes in the first half of the ninth century. Both the Incarnation and the Transfiguration illustrate the perfectly combined human and divine nature of the Incarnate God. In the eighth century, the Transfiguration, the most awe-inspiring epiphany of Christ described in the Gospels, had been treated in Greek and Latin homilies. The Christ panel was found a few meters away from the Crypt of Abbot Epyphanius at S. Vincenzo al Volturno, where it is likely it was originally installed. The analysis scholars have undertaken of Paschal’s iconophilia has opened new ways of looking at his political strategy involving visual media.
