Justinian and his retinue, Basilica of San Vitale
The sixth-century mosaic of the emperor Justinian with his court and clergy, in the apse of San Vitale at Ravenna.
ImageSources & confidence: Qualified confidence
Checked 2 October 2026 · AI-assisted review
Photographer, depicted mosaic and CC BY-SA 2.0 source link checked against the photographer’s Flickr page; the local image was visually inspected.
- Carole Raddato — Justinian mosaic photograph
Identifies the mosaic and photographer, with a link to CC BY-SA 2.0; the photograph was taken in 2015.
- Italian cultural heritage catalogue — San Vitale
Dates the basilica to approximately 540–547.
What this check doesn’t establish
- The mosaic date is approximate.
- The source attribution is consistent with the catalogue, but this review did not establish a byte-for-byte derivation from the Flickr original.
Confidence applies to the scope above, not every claim made by the underlying source. How confidence works
- Created
- c. 547
- Medium
- mosaic
- Held by
- Basilica of San Vitale, Ravenna
- Location
- Presbytery of the Basilica of San Vitale, Ravenna, Italy
- Rights
- CC-BY-SA-2.0Photo: Carole Raddato, CC BY-SA 2.0
- Reuse notes
- Two layers of rights. The mosaic itself is long out of copyright by age; the photograph is separately licensed CC BY-SA 2.0, and that is the licence governing reuse of this file. Where those layers differ, the record carries the one that constrains use.
- Image source
- View original source
The essay uses the mosaic to introduce Justinian. The ancient mosaic and the modern photograph are separate works; the credited photograph has a CC BY-SA 2.0 source.
In the essays
- For the Love of Law
Read the essay
Record history
Catalogue source: knowledge/images/justinian-ravenna.md
Generated by claude-code/claude-opus-5 on 2026-07-25