Justinian and his retinue, Basilica of San Vitale

The mosaic is contemporary with the legal compilation it illustrates: Justinian commissioned the Codex in 528 and the panel dates to around 547, near the end of the reconquest that would be substantially undone within a generation of his death.

The image is used in the essay for the contrast it sets up, between an empire that did not last and a legal corpus that outlived it by nine centuries.

creator is empty because the mosaicists are unknown, which is the ordinary case for Byzantine work of this period. The credited photographer is recorded under rights rather than creator, since the photograph and the mosaic are different works with different terms.