Free Strolling Through Istanbul: The Classic Guide to the City by John Freely, Hilary Sumner-Boyd Page B

for Church synods.
    The second in date of the imperial portraits is located at the east end of the south gallery, next to the apse; it depicts the famous Empress Zoe and her third husband, Constantine IX Monomachos. At the centre of the composition we see the enthroned figure of Christ, his right hand raised in a gesture of benediction, his left holding the book of Gospels. On Christ’s right stands the Emperor holding in his hands the offering of a money bag, and to his left is the Empress holding an inscribed scroll. Above the Emperor’s head an inscription reads: “Constantine, in Christ the Lord Autocrat, faithful Emperor of the Romans, Monomachus.” Above the head of the Empress we read: “Zoe, the most pious Augusta.” The scroll in her hand has the same legends as that over the Emperor’s head, save that the words Autocrat and Monomachus are omitted for want of space.
    Now the curious thing about this mosaic is that all three heads and the two inscriptions concerning Constantine have been altered. A possible explanation for this is furnished by a review of the life and loves of the extraordinary Empress Zoe, daughter of Constantine VIII and one of the few women to rule Byzantium in her own right. A virgin till the age of 50, Zoe was then married by her father to Romanus Argyros so as to produce a male heir to the throne. Though it was too late for Zoe to produce children, she enjoyed her new life to the full, taking a spectacular series of lovers in the years that were left to her. After the death of her first husband, Romanus III (r. 1028–34), Zoe married Michael IV (r. 1034–41), and after his death she wed Constantine IX (r. 1042–55). It has been suggested that the mosaic in the gallery of Haghia Sophia was originally done between 1028 and 1034 and portrayed Zoe with her first husband, Romanus III, and that the faces were destroyed during the short and fanatically anti-Zoe reign of Michael V, the adopted son of the Empress. When Zoe ascended the throne in 1042 with her third husband, Constantine IX, she presumably had the faces restored, substituting that of Constantine for Romanus and altering the inscriptions accordingly. Zoe died in 1050, aged 72; Michael Psellus tells us that to the end, though her hand trembled and her back was bent with age, “her face had a beauty altogether fresh.” So she still appears today in her mosaic portrait in Haghia Sophia.
    The third and last of the imperial portraits is just to the right of the one we have been dealing with. Here we see the Mother of God holding the infant Christ; to her right stands an emperor offering a bag of gold and to her left a red-haired empress holding a scroll. The imperial figures are identified by inscriptions as: “John, in Christ the Lord faithful Emperor, Porphyrogenitus and Autocrat of the Romans, Comnenus”, and “Eirene, the most pious Augusta.” The mosaic extends onto the narrow panel of side wall at right angles to the main composition; we see there the figure of a young prince, identified by an inscription as “Alexius, in Christ, faithful Emperor of the Romans, Porphyrogenitus.” These are the portraits of the Emperor John II Comnenus (r. 1118–43); his wife, the Empress Eirene, daughter of King Ladislaus of Hungary; and their eldest son, Prince Alexius. The main panel has been dated to 1118, the year of John’s accession, and the portrait of Alexius to 1122, when at the age of 17 he became co-emperor with his father. Young Alexius did not live to succeed John, for he died not long after his coronation; we can almost see the signs of approaching death in his pale and lined features. The Emperor was known in his time as Kalo John, or John the Good. The Byzantine historian Nicetas Choniates wrote of John that “he was the best of all the emperors from the family of the Comneni who ever sat upon the Roman throne.” Eirene was noted for her piety and for her kindness to the poor, for which she is honoured as a saint in the