The facade of the church of S. Rufino in Assisi (end of the XIIth cent.) owns the portal with the richest iconography of all the portals of the many medieval churches of the town.
As you can see in the picture above, many symbolic images were carved on the two sides and on the arch of the gate; all these carvings actually contribute to the complex and subtle meaning expressed by all the elements of the facade. As far as is my knowledge, there are not studies about it.
So, aim of this short outline will be dealing with some aspects of the iconography of the lunette.
In the arch of the lunette you can find some carvings: the Virgin with the Son on the throne, Christ (Cross in the aureole and throne) inside a circle and, on the right, the image of a saint that's probably St. Rufinus.
All these characters stand on an inclined plan (the "beginning" on the left is clearly highter than the "end" on the right); a little head has been sculpted on the extreme left (the highest, with long hair) while a lower head (medium hair) is between the Virgin and Christ and the lowest head (short hair) is on the extreme right (short hair).
In this case, you can consider Christ inside the circle as a quite typical iconography of the "Chronocrator" (the "builder" of the Time) and the circle (where you can notice a sort of stylized vegetation) as the universe (wordly dimension) that is "rolled" by Christ along the inclined line of the annual course from (since) the lowest point on the right to (until) the highest point on the left -raising part of the course of the year-and back - setting part of the course of the year.
So Christ, who's "Anima mundi" and "Sun of Justice" too, brings the world from the early part of the year to the last part when the universe will "roll back" after having reached the tallest point.
From this point of view, the three little heads so can be considered allusions to moments of the "growth"of the year (short hair-long hair). Usually this sort of very simple iconography is related with solstices and equinoxes, but in this case they seem mainly connected with the early part of the year; actually the head in the centre certainly coincides with the spring - equinox that is the most important reference for the Easter.
We can add that the presence of St. Mary and St. Rufinus can be easily explained recalling their power of intercession in favour of human kind when the "rolling" of the universe will stop and the Universal Judgement will weight all the men.
You can even notice that their position, as regars to the "heads", is connected with the time of their feast during the year.
A final question could be: why did they "set up" this serie of carvigs with their cosmological meaninigs in a portal of a Christian church?
The basic answer could be: every expression of the medieval cathechism always has its own cosmological dimension; a second answer could be: in the ancient cosmology a great importance was given to the concept of Heaven- Gates ("Ianua coeli") and the portal of a christian church is always a simbolical reference of a "Heaven Gate".
It's clear that these last subjects -cosmological dimension of the medieval christian cathechism and "Heaven Gates"- would need a deeper and wider explanation but in this case, it is only possible to defer it following outlines.
Carlo Valdameri
Translation by the author
Iconografia medievale - Medieval iconography