59 Romanesque and the Mediterranean (2015), 59–89 © British Archaeological Association 2015 MUSLIM ARTISTS AND CHRISTIAN MODELS IN THE PAINTED CEILINGS OF THE CAPPELLA PALATINA Jeremy Johns The ceilings of the Cappella Palatina were decorated by Muslim artists who probably trained in FāÐimid Egypt before coming to Norman Palermo in c. 1140. Most of the figural scenes belong to the traditional Islamic palatial cycle. Less than 10% of them have been attributed to a variety of Christian sources, and were presumably commissioned by the Norman patron or his agents. Four groups of Christian scenes, derived principally from Romanesque models, are discussed, and their likely impact upon the newly arrived Muslim artists is imagined, as they were set to work alongside other immigrant artisans to create the visual aspect of King Roger’s new monarchy, the most characteristic feature of which was the deliberate and polemical juxtaposition of the three cultures of his kingdom — Arabic, Greek and Latin. INTRODUCTION The building now known as the Cappella Palatina or palace chapel was commissioned by Roger, the first king of Sicily (r. 1130–54), at the centre of his principal palace in Palermo (Fig. 1). It was built above an earlier chapel, now usually but misleadingly called a crypt, which occupies the ground floor, so that the Cappella Palatina is elevated on the first floor of the palace (Figs 2 and 3). 1 Construction is most unlikely to have begun before Roger’s coronation on Christmas Day 1130, and the mosaic inscription running round the base of the cupola and bearing a date equivalent to the year 1143 demonstrates that the shell of the build- ing was then complete and its decoration already advanced. 2 There is general agreement amongst schol- ars that the aisled hall to the west of the sanctuary served, at least under King Roger, as an aula regia in which the king sat enthroned on a dais in the middle of the west wall (Figs 4 and 5). 3 The central nave and two side aisles of that hall are covered by the painted wooden ceilings that are the subject of this paper (Fig. 6). The nave ceiling, upon which I shall concentrate, measures 18.5 m × 5 m and is built upon a trabeate framework suspended from wooden brackets slotted into the side walls. The lowest edge of the ceiling just overlaps the mosaics of the walls 10.5 m above the pavement, while the tops of the coffers of the central zone rise to 13 m. The ceiling may be divided into three zones. First, the ‘horizontal’, central zone, is com- posed of three types of coffers — octagons enclosing eight-pointed stars, octagons enclosing cupola, and rhombuses — separated by massive stalactite pen- dants. Second, the ‘vertical’, muqarnas zone, which make the transition from the central zone to the walls of the nave, is built of three types of large, multifac- eted, three-dimensional units composed of small cells according to a strict geometrical scheme: twenty large units (nine on the north and south sides and one on the east and west), alternating with twenty-four small units (ten on each of the long sides and two on each end), and the four corner units which are, in effect, composed of the cells of two large units. 4 The third zone is the bottom cornice, now bearing a 15th- century Latin inscription, which masks the gap between the lower edge of the muqarnas and the top of the mosaics of the walls. A hidden superstructure, which can only be seen in the space between the ceiling and the roof, supports the painted surfaces of the central section and the muqarnas zone, which are built up from thousands of wooden panels, no more than a few millimetres thick, the largest of which measure 660 mm × 430 mm, while the smallest (not including the border panels) are 250 mm × 120 mm. Fir (Abies alba and possibly A. nebrodiensis) seems to have been used for most of the panels, but pine (Pinus negra and P. sylvestris), beech, birch and poplar are all present. 5 Once assembled, the multi-faceted surface of the ceiling was covered with a thin layer of gesso, before being painted with tempera and gilded. 6 Contrary to what has sometimes been thought, there can be no doubt that the ceiling of the nave was