MAUSOLEUM OF SAINT CONSTANCE. - It was built by Constantina or Constance, daughter of the emperor Constantine, as her mausoleum, when around 337 she settled in the praedium on the Via Nomentana (cf. F. Savio, Costantina figlia dell'imperatore Costantino Magno e la basilica di S. Agnese a Roma, in Atti dell'Accad. delle Scienze di Torino, 42 [1907], pp. 659, 732). Elements that have recently come to light may confirm its use also as a baptistery. In a period distinct from that of the construction, the elliptical buttressed enclosure was added, which bounds a burial field. Transformed into a church, it seems to have been restored in the time of Innocent III; Alexander IV consecrated an altar there (1256). By the artists of the Renaissance, who often depicted it in their drawings, the building was considered a temple of Bacchus. At the beginning of the 17th century (1620) it was restored by Cardinal Fabrizio Veralli, who destroyed the remains of the mosaic of the dome.
The construction has a circular plan, preceded by a forecourt with a pincer-shaped colonnade; twelve pairs of columns arranged radially and at somewhat irregular intervals, so as to suggest a cross, are connected by arches on which the drum with large round-arched windows and the dome are set. The latter has meridional ribs in brick connected by a poured concrete mass. Between the central space and the perimeter wall runs an ambulatory covered with a barrel vault, scantily lit by small windows. On the outside there are still traces of a portico covered with a vault and having only a decorative function. In the perimeter wall there open on the inside alternately semicircular and rectangular niches - a motif typical of mausoleums - and, corresponding to the arms of the cross, apsidal recesses and large niches. The emotional power of the monument is founded on the contrast between the illuminated central space and the ambulatory in semi-darkness. The historical interest of the building, which is the only imperial mausoleum preserved integrally, consists in the fact that the dome is set on an inner ring distinct from that of the perimeter, a motif of Roman origin that would find its fullest development in Byzantine architecture.
The interior of the mausoleum was splendidly decorated: the dome with mosaics representing perhaps scenes of the Old and New Testaments and the drum with marble inlays; of both there survive only scanty graphic records from the 16th century. The mosaics of the annular vault are preserved, though greatly altered by the restorations of the 19th century; various compartments take up geometric motifs, or motifs of bands or circles drawn from Roman mosaic floors and from fabrics, others depend on lithostrata of the asiroton type, purified however of all too crude realism; in still others there are vine tendrils with busts and scenes of the vintage, an evident allusion to the «vinea Domini». Similar scenes are on the porphyry sarcophagus of Constantina, now in the Vatican Museum, coming precisely from this mausoleum. The mosaics, which have a decorative character, are still executed with an impressionistic taste and are of neutral subject or with vague allusions to the new religion. Of Christian subject, on the other hand, are the contemporary ones of the apses with the «traditio legis» and the «traditio clavium», which are among the oldest examples of such subjects. - See pl. XLV.
Bibliography13 works
Guglielmo Matthiae