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The decoration of the Early Christian churches was mostly with mosaics. One of the most elaborate series of mosaics is in Santa Costanza, a domed circular building reputed to have been used as the burial chapel of Constantine's daughter. The mosaics are ambivalent in their imagery; the probably late Antique ones in the vaulting of the ambulatory are only Christian in that some of the motifs, such as birds pecking grapes, luxuriant foliage and birds in a garden amid vases, the grape harvest, with putti pressing the grapes, later acquired Christian meanings.
The late 4th-century mosaics in the apses of the chapels off the ambulatory represent the Christian subject of "Traditio Legis" (Christ giving the Law to St Paul) and "Traditio Clavium" (Christ giving the keys to St Peter.
The picture shows the Traditio Legis. In the representation of this scene usually St Peter is the recipient of the scroll of the Law, since it was St Peter that Christ had named as the rock upon whom His Church was to be built.
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