This chapter surveys the engagement with material culture of three popes in the second quarter of the ninth century – Eugenius II, Gregory IV and Sergius II – spanning the years 824 through to 847. Although not as prolific as Paschal I in terms of patronage, all have left at least one significant project to have survived to the present day. Eugenius II’s marble clerical enclosure at Santa Sabina initiates a discussion of stone furnishings in Rome’s early medieval churches; Gregory IV’s apse mosaic in San Marco provides interesting insights into his participation in contemporary ecclesiastic politics in northern Italy, and other initiatives testify to continuing preoccupations with urban infrastructure and the cult of relics; and Sergius II’s newly reconstructed church of San Martino ai Monti attests to the continuing presence in Rome of significant teams of builders and decorators.

Examines three groups of ‘consumers’ of visual culture in the opening decades of the eighth century: clerics (non-papal actors), monks, and pilgrims. Three case studies are employed: the recently discovered mural in the narthex of the church of Santa Sabina, the murals from the excavations of the monastery of San Saba, and the mural placed at the tomb of Pope Cornelius in the Catacomb of San Callisto on the Via Appia. These all offer additional evidence for the pervasive presence of ‘Mediterranean’/Byzantine culture.