The Patriarch Enoch

Mosaic
Palatine Chapel, Palermo, Sicily

The inscription is from Genesis 5:24, Ambulavit [Enoch] cum Deo, et non apparuit, quia tulit eum Deus, "Enoch walked with God and was seen no more, because God took him." Sirach 49:16 says Enoch "was taken up from the earth" (my italics). The mosaic follows this cue by showing him rising aloft. The animal sacrifice in the lower part of the panel seems intended to make visual the point that Enoch "walked with God" and "pleased God" (Sirach 44:16, Hebrews 11:5).

The Palatine Chapel mosaics were created in the 12th century and restored in the 19th and 20th centuries. To judge from the modeling of the faces and the perspectival rendering of the altar, this panel seems to be of modern origin.

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Photographed at the chapel by Richard Stracke, shared under Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike license.