Christ Pantocrator
Church of Our Savior, University of Southern California Los Angeles, California
Read the article in Fine Art Connoisseur Magazine about this work here.
This tympanum adorns the newly built Church of Our Savior at the Caruso Catholic Center on the campus of USC; it's a beautiful church done in the Neo-Romanesque style. The tympanum was installed in 2012, just weeks before the consecration of the new church.
The tympanum's symbolism represents a Christ Pantocrator, known similarly as Christ in Majesty. Christ is seen walking through a Vesica Piscis, an ancient symbol of the shared sacred space between Heaven and earth, inhabited by Christ.
On either side sit two angels - the Angel of the Alpha and the Angel of the Omega - representing metaphorically the cosmological role of Christ as the beginning and end of all things. Bearing trumpets which herald Christ's message, the angels' meaning is reinforced by a rising sun and setting moon appearing on the horizon, in the distance, above each figure.
The sky in the background appears a bit darker than the rest of the work, even though it's the same piece of Carrara marble. That's because it's more highly polished; over time, as the rougher and less polished sections of the work gather dust, the polished sections will remain cleaner and brighter. Eventually, the constellations incised into the sky above the sun and moon will become visible; in a sense, this work will remain unfinished for a few more years.
