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The decoration of the Early Christian churches was mostly with mosaics. The late 4th-century apse mosaic of Santa Pudenziana, named in the text held in Christ's hand as 'ecclesia sancta pudentiana' - Pudens's church - is the most hieratically explicit, and clearly didactic.
Christ, depicted as teacher and lawgiver, although also enthroned in majesty as judge, is seated in front of a hill, representing Golgotha, with a jewelled cross rising from it. On either side of the cross are the four symbols of the Evangelists - the 'tetramorph' - possibly their earliest representation, and on either side of Christ are the Apostles, with St Paul on his right, the position of honour, and St Peter on his left. Behind them are two female figures, a woman in Roman dress behind St Paul, representing 'Ecclesia ex gentibus', because despite the precedence Christ gave to St Peter, St Paul's whole mission was to the Gentiles, and Rome was Gentile hence the precedence usually given in Rome to St Paul. The woman behind St Peter represents 'Ecclesia ex circumcisione', since this was the Jewish people taught by Christ himself, and the first mission field of the Apostles, except St Paul.
Behind the two groups of figures are depicted the churches relevant to the two 'Ecclesiae', the rotunda of the Anastasis or Resurrection in Jerusalem behind St Paul, and the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem behind St Peter. These are valuable pointers to the forms of two of Constantine's major churches in the Holy Land, none of which has survived.
Unfortunately, the mosaic was barbarously damaged in 1588, and some of the figures lost or mutilated, when a misguided cardinal tried to modernize the church according to the tastes of the time. It has also been very heavily restored.
The picture shows the apse mosaic in Santa Pudenziana.
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