Navicella Mosaic

The Navicella Mosaic is a famous artwork by Giotto di Bondone made in the year 1298. Cardinal Jacopo Stefaneschi, who was then the leading artistic patron, commissioned the artwork. The Navicella was a large mosaic covering a wall above the entrance arcade of the Old Saint Peter’s Basilica in Rome.

The commission and Giotto's authorship have firmer foundations than the precise year. The anniversary book of Saint Peter's, in an entry compiled around 1361–62, records Cardinal Jacopo Stefaneschi's gift and a payment of 2,200 gold florins for the mosaic. It describes Christ raising Peter with his right hand to prevent him from drowning. This is unusually valuable evidence for a work whose original surface has largely disappeared. ^[1]

The frequently repeated date 1298 comes through a different, indirect chain: Giulio Mancini's early seventeenth-century transcription of a text called a martyrology, whose original has not been verified. Michael Viktor Schwarz considers the report worth taking seriously and favours an early date, but the year remains contested. It is better understood as a transmitted date than as the date on a surviving execution contract. Stefaneschi was an important Roman patron; calling him the single leading patron gives a misleading impression of the city's many competing commissions. ^[2]

A mosaic across the courtyard

Its location was strategic for viewing by everyone leaving the basilica. Those who used the main route passed under the Navicella mosaic while the rest saw it across the courtyard. Initially, the artwork was on the Santa Maria Tower, which was an important chapel. Unfortunately, the mosaic underwent destruction in the sixteenth and seventeenth century. Constantine's building was brought to the ground before the construction of the new St Peter’s Basilica. However, that was not the end of the road for the mosaic. Giotto’s masterpiece was reconstructed, and a copy of the mosaic is still hanging above the central entrance of the church although it is only a fragment of the original.

Santa Maria in Turri was a church forming the gateway to the atrium of Old Saint Peter's. The name refers to this gateway church, not a freestanding tower. The mosaic occupied its upper west wall, facing the basilica across the courtyard. Entering pilgrims passed beneath it and initially had it behind them. They could then turn eastwards to pray towards the image before continuing to Peter's tomb. A visitor's account of 1575 describes that turning and prayer, so the mosaic's audience included people approaching the basilica as well as those leaving it. ^[22]

The basilica's replacement was a gradual rebuilding, with successive losses and alterations to the old complex. The surviving portico composition belongs to a different architectural setting and a much later phase of the work's history. It occupies the lunette above the portico's central entrance, opposite the basilica doors. The Vatican's description places it opposite Bernini's relief of Christ entrusting his sheep to Peter. It is an architectural mosaic, extensively remade in the seventeenth century, rather than a portable picture hanging there. Some old tesserae may have been reused, but the present ensemble cannot stand as an untouched fragment of Giotto's design. ^{[22] [23]}

Peter's rescue in the storm

Navicella means little ship and the artwork depicts a scene of Peter walking on water according to the gospel of St Mathew. The Navicella was set-up with a backdrop of stormy sea waters with the apostles overcome by waves. The upper right and left of mosaic illustrate the strong winds depicted by the wind gods. The boat sails bellows due to the strong wind. Towards the foreground, you can see Christ unshaken by the storm and remains upright. Giotto depicts the apostles as terrified of the scene unfolding. Peter is slowly sinking and looks to Jesus for support. On the foreground, Giotto included a man fishing, which was claimed by Vasari to be a self-portrait of Giotto. However, the fisherman shows the mission of the apostles to go out and make disciples.

Matthew 14:22–33 supplies the episode. It follows the feeding of the multitude: Jesus sends the disciples ahead by boat, dismisses the crowd and goes up the mountain to pray. During the night he approaches across the water. Peter steps out at his invitation, becomes frightened by the wind and begins to sink; Jesus immediately takes hold of him. The wind ceases after they enter the boat, and the disciples acknowledge Jesus as God's Son. The emphasis falls on rescue during a failure of confidence. John 21 tells a separate story in which Peter enters the water to reach the risen Christ on shore. ^[24]

The fisherman has a particularly persistent afterlife. In his 1568 account Vasari praises the patience of a man fishing from a rock, finding expectation in his face and attitude. That passage does not identify him as Giotto. The self-portrait identification remains an unconfirmed tradition. Schwarz reads the angler both against antique fishing imagery and as an allusion to Peter's vocation as a fisher of people. These are possible meanings, rather than an identification supplied by Matthew's storm narrative. ^[25]

What the early copies preserve

The prints made in 1559 by Nicolas Beatrizet and in 1567 by Labacco are essential witnesses to the lost composition. They were produced before its removal from the gateway wall, yet even they disagree. Beatrizet's detailed engraving reverses the scene: Christ and Peter appear on the left, with the fisherman and buildings on the right. Labacco preserves the opposite orientation. In both, the huge sail gives the ship an unstable, top-heavy silhouette; ropes cut diagonally across the space and the water is crowded with fish. These conspicuous details make the scene much busier than a simple encounter between two isolated figures. ^[26]

Nicolas Béatrizet’s engraving after the Navicella, circa 1559. This reversed printed composition is a witness to the lost mosaic, not a surviving medieval mosaic. Image source. Public domain. Proportionally reduced reproduction; original composition, colour and photographic lighting retained.

Schwarz judges Labacco useful for the broad arrangement, particularly the large foreground figures and the boat placed behind them. For Christ's posture, however, he favours Beatrizet and other witnesses. Labacco turns Christ towards Peter, producing an easily understood exchange between rescuer and rescued. In Beatrizet, Christ faces out towards the viewer while extending his hand to Peter. That frontal address gives a person standing in the courtyard a place in the encounter. A print can thus preserve the arrangement while changing a gesture central to its meaning. ^[26]

Francesco Beretta's painted copy of 1628 offers another kind of evidence. It is oil on canvas, not the medieval mosaic itself. By then the mosaic had been removed in sections in 1610, stored and installed again in 1617–18 above a fountain on the north side of Saint Peter's Square. Its border had been discarded, the field reduced and extensive areas replaced. The restoration account records renewal of the gold background, water, Peter, cloud figures, winds and fisherman. Beretta can transmit older forms in less altered passages, especially Christ and some apostles, while elsewhere recording seventeenth-century reconstruction. ^[26]

In Beretta's canvas, Christ stands conspicuously tall beside the kneeling Peter. The tiny donor's head at the bottom scarcely competes with the monumental bodies above. This scale difference is more extreme than in the prints. An additional drawn copy, made around 1590, shows Stefaneschi's head turned out towards the spectator. Read together, the witnesses suggest a donor presented to the public within the act of prayer. Each records the design through a different act of copying. ^[27]

Stefaneschi's gift and its inscription

The artwork also had a portrait of Cardinal Jacopo Stefaneschi (an act of gratitude for commissioning the work) and an inscription of the verse from Mathew. The Navicella mosaic has been an icon of faith in the church viewed by the congregation as they leave the church. Navicella was a giant rectangular artwork, which could be seen from a distance. It was measured at 13.5 by 9.5 metres on an uninterrupted surface. People were impressed with the accurate representation of the seascape and the dramatic effect of the looming storm. The brightness of the mosaic induced a reaction from the congregants. Throughout history, the masterpiece was destroyed. The movement led to significant losses, and the demolition of the church had adverse effects on the original Navicella.

The dimensions quoted above belong to reconstruction, not to the measurement of an intact surviving original. Schwarz estimates approximately 13–15 metres in width and 9–10 metres in height from the recorded dimensions of the gateway church. Such figures convey its extraordinary architectural scale while leaving the precise boundaries uncertain. Similarly, the inscription was a four-line Latin poem, or titulus, rather than simply a verse copied from Matthew. An early description locates its lettering in marble on the architectural frieze beneath the mosaic. ^{[22] [28]}

The poem addresses God, recalling Peter's walk, his faltering and his rescue before asking that he may reach the harbour. Its final image extends the Gospel story, which does not mention that harbour. Stefaneschi, himself a writer, is a plausible author, though authorship is not secured by a signature. The poem and donor figure allow the commission to be understood within prayer, salvation and remembrance. The anniversary book links the cardinal's benefactions with continuing liturgical commemoration at Saint Peter's; his appearance in the image need not be explained simply as the artist's gratitude. ^{[1] [28]}

The harbour has also attracted political readings. Some scholars have connected it with Rome and a plea for the papacy's return from Avignon; others have read the ship and Peter as an assertion of papal authority. Schwarz challenges those conclusions as necessary meanings of the words. He proposes the harbour of salvation, with the rescued Peter offering hope to other fallible believers. The alternatives matter for dating: an anti-Avignon interpretation cannot first be assumed and then used to prove that the mosaic must follow the papal move to Avignon in 1309. ^[29]

The devotional reading gains force from the place of the image. Stefaneschi belonged to the chapter of Saint Peter's, whose responsibilities included care for pilgrims and penitents. On Schwarz's interpretation, the saint who falters and is saved could speak directly to people seeking forgiveness at his tomb. This remains an interpretation of the patron's purpose, but it connects the depicted rescue, the prayer in the titulus and the bodily movement of visitors across the atrium. ^[29]

The two surviving angel medallions

At first, the inscription disappeared, and due to weather and the consequent demolitions, only two pieces of the original masterpiece survived. The fragments were two figures of angels. One is found in the Vatican while the other was moved to the St Peters church in Boville Ernica. The pieces were restored in paint and hang inside the church to protect it from the weather.

These two roundels, each approximately 65 centimetres across, have separate conservation histories. They are associated with the lost framing ensemble rather than appearing among the sailors in the principal scene. The exact disposition of that framing remains reconstructed. The diocesan account confirms the mosaic at San Pietro Ispano in Boville Ernica; the Fondazione Zeri catalogue records the other angel in the Vatican Grottoes and attributes it to Giotto's workshop. An association with Giotto's commission does not establish that he personally set every surviving piece of glass. ^{[30] [31]}

The Boville angel is the bust with a dark blue surrounding band, golden halo and widely spread wings. Small gold and pale tesserae trace the feathers against darker passages, while the head turns slightly away from a full frontal view. Its present completeness needs to be read alongside its restoration history. Schwarz compares the severely damaged state published by Enrico Stevenson in 1888 with the subsequently reconstructed face and figure. He judges the later intervention so extensive that the visible angel largely reflects work around 1900. That is Schwarz's severe assessment of the surviving surface, rather than a reason to erase the object's historical connection with the Navicella. ^[30]

The Vatican angel was rediscovered in 1924 beneath an eighteenth-century copy of itself. Schwarz judges that it retains substantially more medieval mosaic, while warning about modern additions. Conservation did not end with the interventions discussed in his comparison. A Ministry of Culture account of the 2004–06 treatment records removal of twentieth-century overpainting and adjustment of the relationship between original mosaic and imitated mosaic added in 1950. An older photograph with painted hands, cross and emphatic folds consequently cannot be treated as a timeless record of the fragment's condition. ^{[30] [32]}

The angels preserve tangible material from the work's history; the prints and painted copies preserve aspects of its larger design. Each answers a different question. A medallion cannot show how the apostles were grouped aboard the ship, while an engraving cannot tell us how an original glass tessera caught the courtyard light. Their combined evidence makes the Navicella accessible without removing the distance between its medieval appearance and what survives. This also qualifies the suggestion that the two angels are simply all that remains: the present portico remake may incorporate old material, but its extent and arrangement do not restore the original scene. ^{[22] [30]}

Why the lost mosaic remained famous

Before the destructive removals, Leon Battista Alberti singled out the Navicella in his painting treatise of 1435–36. He praised the different gestures and expressions of eleven disciples watching their companion on the water. His account establishes the mosaic's importance to Renaissance thinking about how painted figures could communicate emotion. It gives us a response to the work from well before Beretta's copy, though it is a concise critical example rather than an inventory of every figure. ^[33]

The surviving copies repay that distinction. Their sailors turn, grip the boat or reach towards the rigging, creating several kinds of attention within the same hull. Schwarz argues that some respond to Peter while others confront their own danger in the storm. His identification of a figure hiding his face as Judas is more tentative: the prints and Beretta differ over the halo, and other scholars have proposed Thomas. The four figures on clouds have likewise received competing identifications. Their identification as the Evangelists remains a proposal. ^[34]

Schwarz also places the design within Rome's inheritance of antique imagery. The coiling waves, abundant fish, elaborate vessel and personified winds recall ancient maritime scenes, particularly Jonah sarcophagi. The gold-robed frontal Christ recalls monumental early Christian mosaics. These comparisons help explain why the Navicella could look deeply Roman while telling a vivid Gospel story. Schwarz connects that language with the renewal of Rome's great basilicas and, more tentatively, rivalry among their patrons. The historical circumstances offer a richer setting for Giotto's invention without proving a single political programme. ^[34]

Vasari's admiration brings the material achievement back into view. He marvelled that pieces of glass could unite the lights and shadows of the swelling sail so convincingly. Together with Alberti's account of human response, this gives the lost work two durable qualities: the force of a storm made present in mosaic and the varied reactions of vulnerable people within it. Peter's reaching hand remained the point where that enormous public image became an encounter a viewer could understand. ^{[25] [33]}