Something better is to be had in the utterly desolate baptistery close by known as S. Maria in Cosmedin.  This was originally, as we may think, the ancient bath of which Agnellus speaks, and it was converted into a baptistery by the Arians, and later consecrated for Catholic uses under the title of S. Maria in Cosmedin and used as an oratory.  It is an octagonal building whose walls support a cupola which is covered with mosaics in circles like that of the original baptistery of the city.  In the midst we see Christ almost a youth standing naked in Jordan immersed to his waist.  Upon His left, S. John stands upon a rock, his staff in his left hand, while his right rests upon the head of Our Lord.  Opposite to him sits enthroned the old god of Jordan, a reed in his hand, listening, perhaps, to the words of the Father:  “This is my beloved Son in whom I am well pleased.”  Over Christ’s head the Dove is displayed in the golden heaven.

About the central mosaic is set a band of palm leaves, while on the outer circle we see the twelve Apostles very much like the martyrs of S. Apollinare standing dressed in white, their crowns in their hands between palms.  Only S. Peter and another, perhaps S. John or S. Paul, do not bear crowns, but S. Peter his keys and the other a book.  Between them is set a throne on which stands a jewelled cross.

It is exceedingly difficult to say when these mosaics were executed, for they have been so entirely restored that very little of the original work is left to us.  They are certainly very early for work of the Catholic restoration; and yet they remind one strongly of the processions of S. Apollinare Nuovo.  If as a whole the design of these mosaics is of the time of the archbishop S. Agnellus, it is curious that the subject of the Baptism should have been used for a church which by his act had ceased to be a baptistery.  The most reasonable hypothesis would seem to be that the design and choice of subject is in the main due to the Arians; that the central disc remains late work of their time in so far as it is original at all.  While the apostles may be in the main the work of the Catholic restoration.

Theodoric was, as these works serve to show, a great builder of churches in his capital.  Not all of them have remained to our day.  Dr. Ricci has thought that we see something of one of them in the Portico Antico of the Piazza Maggiore where there are eight columns of granite upon the left of the Palazzo del Comune with late Roman capitals, four of which have the monogram of the Gothic king.  The church of S. Andrea,[1] according to Dr Ricci, stood by the city wall, near where the Venetians in the fifteenth century built their Rocca, destroying the church to make room for it.  Dr. Ricci suggests that when they began to construct the Portico of the Piazza they used, as indeed they more than any other people were wont to do, the material of the demolished church in their new building and among it these great columns with their Roman capitals and strange monograms.