page_title: Navicella (mosaic)
section_title: Copies
hierarchical_section_title: Navicella (mosaic) / Copies
caption_attribution_description: English: Engraving of the portico of Old St. Peter's Basilica featuring Giotto's Navicella
context_page_description: The Navicella or Bark of St. Peter, of Old Saint Peter's Basilica in Rome, was a large and famous mosaic by Giotto di Bondone that occupied a large part of the wall above the entrance arcade, facing the main facade of the basilica across the courtyard. It depicted the version from the Gospel of Matthew of Christ walking on the water, the only one of the three gospel accounts where Saint Peter is summoned to join him. It was almost entirely destroyed during the construction of the new Saint Peter's Basilica in the 17th century, but fragments were preserved from the sides of the composition, and what is effectively a new work, incorporating some original fragments, was restored to a position at the centre of the portico of the new building in 1675.
  The mosaic, designed to be seen from a distance, was extremely large. A full-scale copy in oil, commissioned by the Vatican from Francesco Berretta in 1628, after much of the work had already been lost round the edges, measures 7.4 by 9.9 metres. The full mosaic was probably about 9.4 by 13 metres, with an inscription in Latin verse running below the image.
context_section_description: There are a number of records of the original design in drawings and prints—at least 17 are recorded.  The earliest are a number of drawings attributed to the Florentine artist Parri Spinelli (c. 1387–1453), of which the most detailed is in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, and others are in Chantilly, Cleveland, Ohio and Bayonne. However, the variations between these, and other drawings by Spinelli of surviving works, show that he was in the habit of making rather loose interpretations of works that he recorded in drawings. Most later copies date from after parts of the mosaic were already lost, and none form a complete record of the full design. Some prints, like an engraving by Nicolas Beatrizet of about 1559, are reversed (mirror-image) copies.
caption: 1673 engraving showing the mosaic on Old St. Peter's Basilica
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