Abstract

The church of S. Prassede, built and decorated by Pope Paschal I , survives as the example par excellence of the Carolingian Revival in Rome. The plan of the church has long been recognized as a deliberate imitation of the design of Old St. Peter's, though on a much smaller scale. The splendid apse mosaic of Christ and the attendant Adoration of the Lamb by the twenty-four elders, which occupies the apsidal arch, may derive directly from the sixth-century program at SS. Cosmas and Damian, which in turn refers to a fifth-century prototype such as was found at St. Paul's Outside the Walls