April 7: Mosaics and the Byzantines

My entire image of the Byzantine Empire was changed somewhat when I took a course in Byzantine history, but I still thought of Byzantine art as overly ornate and heavy – sort of like an archaic version of Baroque art.  However, after a couple of days of truly Baroque art, and seeing Christ crucified in ever more grotesque detail, the mosaics of Ravenna have impressed me with their light and uplifting message.  Instead of seeing Christ the sacrificial victim, the emphasis is clearly on Christ the teacher, and seeing some of the oldest Christian art in the world, including the first known “last supper”, has given me a new perspective not only on art, but the history of Christianity.  This is an amazing place, and we have seen less than half of what we planned to see.  We finally retreated to our hotel room, armed with fresh hot pizza and oranges, to digest the mental overload which we have seen in the churches and museums of Ravenna today.

We have found the streets of Ravenna easier to deal with than we did in Verona, in spite of their equally hard cobbled streets and lack of sidewalks.  The town is smaller and more intimate, so even if we do stray off course, we usually end up where we meant to go.  Our hotel is also very centrally located, so we can be almost anywhere in a few minutes.

We saw this bike very near to San Vitale.  I guess the driver of a car didn't!

A typical street, this one leading to the Piazza del Popolo.

We headed out just before 10 this morning and bought our first “combinazione biglietta”, or combination ticket, this time for the churches and ecclesiastical sites.  Our first stop was San Vitale, which is widely considered the most precious example of Byzantine Art outside of Constantinople – oops,  Istanbul.   The mosaics on the floor are enough to write home about, but the mosaics in the apse are wonderful.  San Vitale was martyred in the 3^rd Century AD, less than 200 years after the death of Christ.  The present Church was built in the 520’s and the mosaics were put up over the next 20 years.  

The Christ in the apse is dressed as a Roman, and is not bearded.  

Each column was decorated with slabs of marble cut into four slices and placed to form a symmetrical shape, and they were very impressive, especially as many of them form crosses.

The baptismal pool was for full immersion, and Ian and I both agreed it looked pretty cold! 

The windows are filled with thin sheets of alabaster, not with glass, and the church is in very low light, so I don’t think the pictures look as amazing as the church itself does.  I was especially impressed by the processional portraits of the Emperor Justinian and his empress, Theodora.  They never came to Ravenna, but their portraits show that the town owed them loyalty.

Empress Theodora

View of the apse.

 

The sacrifice of Abraham -- done in mosaic!

Ian and I have been so impressed with the pictures we took today that we have decided to go back to San Vitale on our last day in Ravenna to pay homage again.   

However, beautiful and impressive as these mosaics are, I loved the “Mausoleum” of Galla Placidia even more.  I put mausoleum in quotation marks because it isn’t really a mausoleum at all, just a chapel that the empress had built.   Galla Placidia married the emperor Constantine II, and ruled the empire for ten years after his death in 421 as regent for their son Valentinian. There are three sarcophagi in the chapel, and for years they were said to be of the three imperial family members, but they were added later:  Galla Placidia died in Rome and her grave is known to be there.  

Mausoleum or chapel, the small church is lit by alabaster windows, and the mosaics entirely cover the place.  The dominant colour is blue, but it is punctuated with white and gold and seems like the evening sky.  It is an intimate setting and the mosaics are in excellent repair.  Tourists are asked to stay inside for only five minutes, and I am sure we were longer than that, but there is so much to see!

 We next decided to go to the National Museum – which meant we had to buy combination ticket #2.  This is good for the museums that are NOT affiliated with churches.  

I brought my Kindle with me with the chapter from the Blue Guide on Emilia-Romagna (this region), and it warned that the museum was difficult to view, as there is no signage in English.  The guide described what was important in every room, and we sure got a lot more out of our time there than we would have otherwise.  We had the place virtually to ourselves, which is unfortunate, as the building is amazing and the exhibits there are certainly very interesting and deserve an audience, especially as the museum is mere steps away from San Vitale.  We were aware that we were on CCTV the whole time, since whenever we went the wrong way a curator would pop out of a room and redirect us.  I hope there was no non-socially sanctioned nasal hygiene going on when we thought we were alone!   

This huge museum is located in what used to be the monastery attached to San Vitale, and the cloisters were beautiful.  

There is an eclectic mix of artefacts in this museum, including many Roman marbles.  There were Hermes that had been lost at sea while being transported from Rome to Venice, and were found by divers near here. 

 Of course there were many funeral stelae, and it is always moving to see the loving words and inscriptions that people make to their loved ones. 

In the refectory, the entire frescoed chapel of the ex-church of Santa Chiara (which was converted into the Teatro Rasi) has been preserved, and the apostles continue to work busily at their desks.  Are they writing the gospels, or recording who is naughty and nice?

This is Ian walking through the cloister gallery.  Can you see why we became more and more overwhelmed, and why it is hard to stick to just a few pictures?

The museum’s organization was somewhat random:  between the Etruscan and Roman metalwork and the archeological excavation of a fill site there was a section with a Eighteenth Century pharmacy from Ravenna, complete with ceramic jars – or some of them, for others turned up in the ceramic section.  How did an entire pharmacy happen to be preserved?

There were some beautiful church artefacts, including this stone screen, carved practically into lace.  

There were textiles from the 6^th Century, imported from Egypt, and entire room of boxes made of ivory, a long hallway full of medieval armour, and rooms full of ceramcs, including many faience items from Faenza, a town just down the road which originated the technique.

We staggered back into the sunshine and headed for the main square of town, the Piazza del Popolo.  It seemed that every building was from a different century, and each would have had a lot to say, if it could tell its own story.

We had lunch in a little restaurant off the Piazza San Francesco and then visited the Cripta Rasponi, which required us to by combination ticket #3, for mosaic museums.  This was a delightful little garden behind the Palazzo Rasponi, which was destroyed in 1922 in “fighting the Fascists”, and rebuilt as government offices for the province.  The garden had a lovely rooftop view, and a 6^th century tower with mosaics at the bottom (cripta) was evocative of the magnificent building that once stood here.  

By now it was mezzo-giorno, and many businesses were closed until the evening.  We could not get into S. Francesco until 3:00, so we paid a brief visit to Dante’s tomb.  I associate Dante with Florence, but apparently his political rivals had him sentenced to death when he was visiting Rome, and he was never able to return again.  He died in Ravenna, and Florence made several unsuccessful bids to have his body returned to Florence.  This tomb was made in the 18^th Century, and this settled the matter.  There is an eternal flame burning in the monument, and Florence provides the olive oil to light it in Sepember of each year.  At sunset, the bel ls of San Francesco toll thirteen times, and this happened just as we were passing it later in the day.

Our next stop was supposed to be the Arian Bpatistry, but a tour of young people were there, and we decided not to wait.  We headed off to the Basilica di San Apollinare Nuovo, which was built by Theodoric very near his palace in the 6^th Century, so it isn’t very Nuovo at all!  Once again the mosaics were wonderful.  One one side, a proI cession of 22 virgin martyrs are shown leaving the port of Classis.  Each one has a different face and body, and they are led by the three magi.   

A few martyrs.

 

The three magi, as imagined by the Byzantines.

On the other side of the church, is a procession of male martyrs, all of them named, marching in great dignity to the throned Jesus.  There used to be a mosaic of Theodoric astride a horse, but he was Arian, so when the church was reconsecrated in the orthodox tradition, poor Theodoric was replaced with a tent and curtains.  

Above these two bands are fathers of the church, and at the very top are representations from the life of Jesus, showing Jesus as a teacher.  These little images also include the first known picture of the last supper.    The images were very positive and beautiful.

We tried to visit the Palace of Theodoric – not that it is really his palace, but there are supposed to be some nice mosaics inside – but it is only open in the morning, so we will cram it into tomorrow!  We headed back to the Arian Baptistry, and this time had it almost to ourselves.  This is just an octagonal building, the first to be erected by Theodoric, but the mosaic on the ceiling, showing John the Baptist baptizing Christ in the River Jordan, is again a masterpiece.  The piece is set against a gold background, and saints look on as the naked Christ stands in the Jordan.

As we walked away from the Baptistry, we felt drunk on mosaics.  Any one of these churches would be enough to draw us to Ravenna, but now we were approaching brain saturation.

We went back to San Francesca, which is also a nice old church, and which does not have mosaics!  Well, it DID have mosaics, and you can still see the floor mosaics in the crypt under the altar.  However, the water level has changed, and the crypt is now below the water table.  

For a mere 1 Euro, one can turn on the lights and view the mosaics, goldfish floating above.

I took a very slight wrong turn and overshot our destination by a block, and we ended up at the TAMO, the mosaic museum.  This is in a deconsecrated church, and is really well laid out to explain how mosaic art is created, and the history of the art.  While I learned a lot about the development of the art form, from pebbles arranged in geometric patterns, to the development of tesserae, to modern mosaics,  I also locked myself in the bathroom and couldn’t get out.TRo be fair, it actually had a key attached to the lock by a chain, and it was a tricky lock!

By this time, Ian and I were drooling and having difficulty creating and speaking in sentences, so we headed off to do more things.  We found a cable for the Garmin (hurray!) and then went to the Orthodox Baptistry.  Of course, it was beautiful and amazing, but we both felt it reminded us of something we’d seen earlier in the day.  Apparently there is an expected scene in a baptistery:  Jesus is naked in a river, being baptized by St. John. 

Our last stop of the day completed our combination ticket of ecclesiastical sites:  the Museo Arcivescovile & Capella di Sant’Andrea.  Photography is not allowed in this museum, but there are some amazing sights to be seen.  The pictures I include here are "borrowed" from other places on the web.  The Museum is housed in a palazzo, so even the rooms are beautiful.  The mosaics in the Capella were enough to take away any ennui with mosaics, I think because mosaics are just so impressive in a smaller space.  We could really see the faces of the apostles, and the entire space formed one solid work of art.   

The throne of Maximian is another treasure.  It is an ebony bishops throne entirely covered with square ivory carvings.

 I thought this calendar for calculating the datge of Easter was interesting:

 
And, of course, no Bysantine era museum would be complete without its porphyry statue of an emporer, missing its head.

 

We walked out of the museum and decided that we were done!  We made a brief trip to the supermarket for water and oranges, and also got chili and peppermint flavoured potato chips!  I alsways like to try the weirdest flavours I can when I travel, and these ones are actually good.  Even Ian likes them.  We made an even briefer stop for pizza, and got an adorable mushroom and mozzarella calzone that looks like a fish.  Ian did a bit of work, but is now happil reading, and I am now done the blog!