The Creation: Days 6 and 7

12th century
Mosaic
Palatine Chapel, Palermo, Sicily

The inscription on the far left, partially omitted here, is from Genesis 1:24, where God says Producat terra animam viventem in genere suo, iumenta, et reptilia, et bestias terrae, "Let the earth bring forth the living creature in its kind, cattle and creeping things, and beasts of the earth." The various beasts are then shown below the inscription.

Next God creates Adam. The inscription is creavit deus [h]ominem a[d] imaginem suam, paraphrasing 1:26, "Let us make man to our image and likeness." The white line between the two figures references Genesis 2:7, in the second account of Creation: "And the Lord God formed man of the slime of the earth: and breathed into his face the breath of life, and man became a living soul."

To the right of the clerestory window the mosaic shows God seated on his throne on the seventh day, not in Heaven but in a continuation of the landscape that he has created. The inscription is requievit d[eu]s die septimo ab omni opere suo quod patrarat, "God rested on the seventh day from all his work which he had done" (2:2). As in all the panels of the Creation and Fall of Man, he is portrayed with an uncrossed halo and a face identical to Adam's.

View this image in full resolution.
View other panels in the chapel's Creation sequence.
Read more about the Creation of the World.

Photographed at the chapel by Richard Stracke, shared under Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike license.