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and loves of the extraordinary Empress Zoe, daughter of Constantine
VIII and one of the few women to rule Byzantium in her own right.
A virgin till the age of 50, Zoe was then married by her father to
Romanus Argyros so as to produce a male heir to the throne. Though
it was too late for Zoe to produce children, she enjoyed her new
life to the full, taking a spectacular series of lovers in the years that
were left to her. After the death of her first husband, Romanus III (r.
1028-34), Zoe married Michael IV (r. 1034-41), and after his death
she wed Constantine IX (r. 1042-55). It has been suggested that the
mosaic in the gallery of Haghia Sophia was originally done between
1028 and 1034 and portrayed Zoe with her first husband, Romanus
III, and that the faces were destroyed during the short and fanatically
anti-Zoe reign of Michael V, the adopted son of the Empress. When
Zoe ascended the throne in 1042 with her third husband, Constantine
IX, she presumably had the faces restored, substituting that of
Constantine for Romanus and altering the inscriptions accordingly.
Zoe died in 1050, aged 72; Michael Psellus tells us that to the end,
though her hand trembled and her back was bent with age, “her face
had a beauty altogether fresh.” So she still appears today in her mosaic
portrait in Haghia Sophia.
The third and last of the imperial portraits is just to the right of
the one we have been dealing with. Here we see the Mother of God
holding the infant Christ; to her right stands an emperor ofering a
bag of gold and to her left a red-haired empress holding a scroll. The
imperial figures are identified by inscriptions as: “John, in Christ the
Lord faithful Emperor, Porphyrogenitus and Autocrat of the Romans,
Comnenus”, and “Eirene, the most pious Augusta.” The mosaic
extends onto the narrow panel of side wall at right angles to the main
composition; we see there the figure of a young prince, identified by
an inscription as “Alexius, in Christ, faithful Emperor of the Romans,
Porphyrogenitus.” These are the portraits of the Emperor John II
Comnenus (r. 1118-43); his wife, the Empress Eirene, daughter of
King Ladislaus of Hungary; and their eldest son, Prince Alexius. The
main panel has been dated to 1118, the year of John's accession, and
the portrait of Alexius to 1122, when at the age of 17 he became
co-emperor with his father. Young Alexius did not live to succeed
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