26 THE MOSAICS OF THE SOUTHERN VESTIBULE
contours and the closed top [28], still some examples analogous to the letter in
our mosaic are found in the manuscripts of the tenth century [29].
Several other letters have a form characteristic for monuments of an earlier
epoch than the one we are suggesting, but they are also found in the tenth and
eleventh centuries. The epsilon with a lengthened horizontal bar over-passing
the general contour of the letter appears from the sixth to seventh centuries
[30], and it is found even as late as the middle of the eleventh century [31].
The same is true of the beta, the upper loop of which is smaller than the lower
one, and which is underlined by a long horizontal stroke. Under this shape the
letter appears from the reign of Basil I (867-886) [32], but it is also found in the
following century [33].
In general character, the letters composing the inscriptions on this Panel in
St. Sophia are elongated, a little irregular and narrowly spaced. In monumental
epigraphy such writing is found from the eighth to the middle of the eleventh
centuries [34]. After the eleventh century and even slightly before it, an evolu-
tion is to be traced. The letters are drawn with more regular strokes, they are
wider and more spaced, and the effect achieved is more decorative [35]. From
this point of view the inscriptions in the Vestibule cannot be later than the first
half of the eleventh century. On the other hand, the comparisons made above
allow us to approach the question more closely and permit us to move the date
of these inscriptions back to the tenth or the beginning of the eleventh century.

THE SUBJECT OF THE MOSAIC
The Composition of the Mosaic
The figure of the Virgin and Child occupying the centre of the group is one
of the most familiar forms employed for the subject; it is known in Christian
Art from the fourth and fifth centuries and was currently used by the painters
of icons in post-Byzantine times. The image is characterized by the attitude
of the Child, who sits on the Virgin’s knees in the central line of her body and
looks full-face at the spectator, and by the gesture of the Virgin, one of whose
hands is resting on the Child’s shoulder and the other lowered towards His leg.
The variants which are sometimes met are without great importance, and the
fundamental type is always recognizable [36].
No name remains definitely attached to this type of the Virgin. The title
‘Mother of God higher than the Heavens’ indicated in the Manuals of Painters
of Mount Athos [37] is appropriate only when the image is placed in the apse
of a church. There it is not the iconographical subject that justifies this epithet,
but the position of the icon; as, according to the Byzantine theologians, the