San Michele in Africisco, Byzantine church in Ravenna, Italy.
San Michele in Africisco is a 6th-century church in Ravenna built with Byzantine architectural features and decorated interior surfaces. The building contained carefully finished marble panels throughout its interior and featured a mosaic composition in the apse.
The building was commissioned in the 6th century by a wealthy banker named Giuliano Argentarius. It underwent major transformations during the Napoleonic period and was later repurposed for different uses.
The name Africisco referred to the local quarter and may derive from Phrygia in Asia Minor. The apse mosaic showed a beardless Christ holding a gemmed cross and an open codex inscribed "Qui vidit me, vidit et patrem" and "Ego et Pater unum sumus", flanked by the archangels Michael and Gabriel, with Saints Cosmas and Damian at the sides.
The former church stands at Via IV Novembre 37, near the Arian cathedral and baptistery; the sources give this address, not via Casa Matha. It now houses a Max Mara clothing shop, so the interior is not visitable as a church. The apse mosaic is in Berlin's Bode Museum; a chancel screen, two capitals and floor mosaic fragments are in the National Museum of Ravenna.
The most valuable mosaic decoration from the apse was transported to Berlin in the 19th century and now resides in the Bode Museum there. This transfer occurred through complex negotiations between King Frederick William IV and the Pope.
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