Navicella

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. A small, often circular vessel or container typically used in a religious context or for decorative purposes
2. A diminutive form of a ship or boat, especially one symbolically associated with journeys of the soul
3. A term describing a small shrine or niche that holds sacred objects, often found in churches and devotional spaces

Etymology: "Navicella" is a diminutive of Latin "navis," meaning ship, so it literally means little ship. The Latin ending shrinks the noun, and the word describes a small vessel, the kind a fisherman might row across a lake. Its real life is in Christian art. The most famous navicella is a mosaic by Giotto, made for the old St Peter's Basilica in Rome, showing Peter's boat on the Sea of Galilee with Christ walking on the water. Medieval readers took the boat as a figure for the Church, tossed by storms but kept afloat by faith. The mosaic survives only in fragments and later copies, but it gave the small ship its lasting association with that scene.

Synonyms: little ship, small boat