"Mosaici parietali perduti poco noti in San Pietro in Vaticano: primi esiti da una ricognizione delle fonti"

The paper focuses on a series of early Christian and medieval lost wall mosaics that once decorated the interior of St Peter’s Basilica in Rome and that have received little scholarly attention. Some of the evidence analysed in recent studies has therefore been deliberately omitted. The aim is to provide a broader and more complete vision of the mosaic wall decoration of ancient St. Peter’s, but also to increase the possibilities for reflection both on the commissioning of mosaic works by the pontiffs considered in the analysis, on the original presence of some iconographic subjects lost but handed down by the sources, and on the memory of materials and chromatic ranges used in the mosaic textures of the ancient Basilica. The evidence for certain dating is presented first and then that for hypothetical dating, following a chronological criterion within the two sections.