Santa Maria Antiqua: The Sistine Chapel of the Early Middle Ages

Since completing her MA at the Courtauld Institute of Art in 24, Eileen Rubery has worked on the frescoes at S. Maria Antiqua, especially interpreting the mid-7th Century frescoes on the apsidal arch, identified by Rushforth as linked to the Lateran Synod that Pope Martin I had presided over in Rome in 649 before being martyred for treason by Emperor Constans II. She has drawn attention to the roles played of the 'Greek' monks, John Moschus, Sophronius of Jerusalem and Maximus Confessor in events surrounding the martyrdom of Pope Martin I for treason by Emperor Constans II.
Images of the healing saints Cyrus and John, whose miracles were recorded in a panegyric by Sophronius of Jerusalem, figure prominently amongst the medical saints depicted in this church, linking it to Cyril of Alexandria who championed these saints. She teaches at Cambridge and Oxford Universities, Birkbeck and the Courtauld Institute within London University and the Victoria and Albert Museum and has led many tours to Early Christian Rome.
Giulia Bordi teaches Medieval Art History at the Roma Tre University. Her research interests lie in the field of medieval wall painting and the interaction between architecture, liturgical furnishings and wall painting in the churches of Rome and Byzantium (4th-13th centuries AD). Since 23 she has been a member of the project : "Medieval painting in Rome, 312-1431. Corpus e Atlante", edited by M. Andaloro and S.
Romano, publishing numerous papers therein. She began to work at S. Maria Antiqua in 2. Exploring its intriguing and complex stratigraphy of painted plaster layers, she is systematicaly mapping them and proposing a new chronology of the church's decorative campaigns from the 6th to the 11th centuries. John Osborne is a medievalist and cultural historian, with a special focus on the art and archaeology of the cities of Rome and Venice in the period between the fifth and thirteenth centuries.
His publications cover topics as varied as the Roman catacombs, the fragmentary mural paintings from excavated churches such as San Clemente and S. Maria Antiqua, the decorative program of the church of San Marco in Venice, 17th-century antiquarian drawings of medieval monuments, and the medieval understanding and use of Rome's heritage of ancient buildings and statuary. He is also interested in problems of cultural transmission between Western Europe and Byzantium.
After the completion of his graduate studies at the University of London's Courtauld Institute of Art (Ph.D. 1979), he has held faculty and administrative positions at the University of Victoria (1979-21), Queen's University (21-25), and between 25 and 215 served as Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences at Carleton University in Ottawa, where he retains a faculty posiiton. Promoted to the rank of full professor in 1989, he has held visiting fellowships at Corpus Christi College, Cambridge ; the Istituto Ellenico di Studi Bizantini, Venice ; and the Dumbarton Oaks Center for Byzantine Studies, Washington.
In 26 he was elected as an Honorary Fellow of the British School at Rome, and in 211 invested as a Knight of the Order of Merit of the Italian Republic.