Ravenna

Ravenna is one of those places that has always kind of rattled around in the back of my head--"I'd like to go there sometime." In college, I took an art history class focused on the evolution of cathedrals and cathedral art. It was a pretty good course, I guess, as I have retained a good amount of information from it and have slowly, over many years, been hitting all of the sites that we read about. 

Anyway, this week we made it to Ravenna and did our usual research draft ahead of our visit. Becca was busy with logistics, so she sat this one out, but the rest of us presented on:

• Mausoleum of Galla Placidia - Scott
• Neonian Baptistry - Alex
• Church of San Vitale - Katie
• Archbishop's Chapel and Museum - Luke
• Domus Tappeti di Pietra - Katie

We also visited the Basilica of Sant'Appollinare Nuovo, and a single post-Byzantine site, Dante's tomb. There are a number of additional sites of interest in the city, but we planned for only one day and the kids can only hit so many old buildings before tiring, even with gelato/refueling stops along the way.

Ravenna was the capital of the western Roman empire after Constantine moved the imperial capital to the east, then it was the capital for Odoacer's and Theodoric's (Ostrogothic) kingdoms. And after Justinian (Belisarius, actually) recaptured Italy for the east, it became the capital of Byzantine Italy. The Byzantines managed to hold onto it as a kind of city-state during the Lombard invasions, but eventually the Pope took it over as one of the Papal States. Nearby Venice had a go, then back to the Pope, then the French in the Cisalpine Republic under Napoleon, back to the Pope, and finally it was incorporated into unified Italy in the 1860s. All of this passing around is interesting, but for the modern tourist it's important mainly because all of the various rulers were Christian, and, thus, the early Christian monuments have come down to us with remarkable preservation.

This is not to say that they are untouched. The Ostrogoths were Arians, the Byzantines Catholic, so many of the monuments from the Gothic period were repurposed, or re-drawn, to expunge "heretical" themes. In addition, the entire area is swampy and these large stone buildings have been sinking for centuries--in some cases up to three meters--which means that the floors of the buildings today are much closer to the ceilings than they were when they were built.

Anyway, the kids will write about their sites, so I'll stick to Galla Placidia. She was the daughter of emperor Theodosius the Great, was captured in Rome by Alaric in 410, was taken to France and married to the Visigothic king, had a child in Barcelona that died along with her husband, was traded back to Rome where she married an emperor who died leaving her as empress. The building in Ravenna is popularly called her mausoleum, and was constructed late in her life, but there is no evidence that she was ever buried there or, indeed, that it was ever intended to be her burial place. She's a fascinating person who deserves more attention from popular history, but she's otherwise not terribly relevant to our visit.

The mausoleum was built between 425 and 450 CE and is now five feet lower than it was then. It has spectacular mosaics on the ceilings, including a couple that are clear representations of the transition from the realism of classical period to the stylized and flat style of medieval art. If Giotto marks the transition from the medieval to the Renaissance, the GP mosaics mark the (earlier) transition from realistic to medieval.

Lunette mosaic, possibly with St. Lawrence.

Opposite lunette, showing Jesus as shepherd.

Both lunettes are a bit mysterious. The identity of the saint drifting toward the fire is uncertain--Galla Placidia spent time in Spain so, perhaps, he is a Spanish saint. The bookcase contains the four gospels, and both the fire and the cabinet have some sense of depth to them (that depth is lost by the time we see mosaics in San Vitale and Sant'Appollinare, which were completed 50-100 years later), and the saint's robes have a flow and realism that is totally absent in the later mosaics. Also note the deep blue star patterns in the ceiling, which are very striking.

The Jesus figure is twisted, again with realistic clothes, and sheep in the fore- and background. Contrast both mosaics with the later mosaics in Sant'Appollinare, shown above Becca's head below. The procession of saints are flat, identical, lacking in any depth or motion.

Procession of saints in Sant'Appollinare; the upper mosaics are Gothic while the lower mosaics Byzantine and, thus, more recent. These effaced the earlier mosaics that contained Arian themes.

And one more photo, just for fun, from the Archbishop's chapel around the year 500:

Jesus, dressed as a Roman warrior (!!) stomping on a lion and a snake, from Psalm 91: "Thou shalt tread upon the lion and adder."