PROTECTED by the marshes of the Po Valley, Ravenna was for some two centuries the outstanding artistic centre on the Italian peninsula. There was a town here long before the Emperor Augustus chose the site of his new naval port of Classe, and the growing city was walled by Claudius. Its relative security was the reason why in 402 the Emperor Honorius chose this as the capital of his western empire in place of Milan. His sister and heir, Galla Placidia, was in turn succeeded by Valentinian III. When the empire was destroyed by the barbarian Odoacer in 476, he too made Ravenna the capital of his kingdom. He in turn was defeated by Theodoric the Goth (ruled 493–526), who also retained Ravenna as his capital and became an advocate of what its critics termed the Arian Heresy. Theodoric’s successors were vanquished in 540 by the forces of the Byzantine Emperor Justinian. Ravenna remained the capital of the Byzantine Exarchate until the Lungobard conquest of 751. Thereafter her significance waned. Long a pawn in the struggle between the Holy Roman Empire and the papacy, Ravenna was controlled by Venice – her painters echoing their patrons’ political allegiance – from 1441 until 1509, when Pope Julius II reasserted papal rule. The letters written at Ravenna by Lord Byron, intent on his affair with Teresa Guiccioli, give some idea of the dull prosperity that papal control engendered. And it was only well into the nineteenth century that the importance of the great monuments of Ravenna was recognized.
The city is not large, and for the visitor who has time it makes sense to see the great buildings and study their mosaics in a roughly chronological order. Two of the most remarkable are entered through the courtyard of the Museo Nazionale. Resist the temptation to commence with the church of San Vitale, however elated you may be by the wonderful sense of space, and cut through it to the so-called Mausoleum of Galla Placidia that was apparently built, not long before 450, by the empress. The plan is a Latin cross. The astonishingly well-preserved mosaics are coeval with the building and represent a natural evolution from earlier Roman work in the medium. The dominant colour is a deep nocturnal blue against which the white robes of the saints stand out in a luminous manner.
Mausoleum of Galla Placida, mosaic decoration of soffit.
San Vitale: apse mosaic, Christ with two Archangels, San Vitale and Bishop Ecclesio with a model of the church.
Then return to San Vitale, which was consecrated in 547. The plan was novel, an octagon with a central cupola, and the architecture is perfectly complemented by the remarkable cycle of mosaics in the eastern section. The apse and the vault above, with the lateral walls, are resolved into a wonderfully unified whole in which green predominates, with gold and, once again, white. In historical terms the most revealing compositions are those with, respectively, the Emperor Justinian and his empress, Theodora, flanked by their attendants. Seeing these no contemporary onlooker could have doubted the reality of Byzantine power.
Some way to the south, near the late baroque cathedral, is the octagonal Orthodox Baptistery, whose mosaics are of not long after 450. The great cupola was treated in three tiers, a circular Baptism in the centre, apostles under a canopy and, below these, altars flanked by decorative panels. The cathedral contains two unusually fine sarcophagi from Ravenna’s heyday, and there are fine mosaics in the small Cappella di San Giorgio now accessed through the associated museum. Further east, beyond the central piazza, is the Baptistery of the Arians, build under the Goths early in the sixth century; here too the cupola is crowned by a mosaic of the Baptism.
A short walk southwards down the Via Roma leads to Sant’Apollinare Nuovo, the remarkable church built by the Arian King Theodoric. The splendid round campanile is of the ninth century, but the tremendous cycle of mosaics in the nave is largely of Theodoric’s time. Again there are three tiers, the uppermost of scenes from the life of Christ, then prophets and saints, and, below, views of Theodoric’s palace with male martyrs paying homage to Christ, balanced by a representation of the port of Classe, with virgins preceded by the Magi adoring the Madonna and Child. Theodoric’s palace lay behind the church. Taking Via Alberoni just beyond this and turning left after going under the railway, or approaching from the north by following the walls of the Renaissance Castello Brancaleoni, it is a short walk to the king’s other major monument, his mausoleum. Significantly this is of a traditional Roman type, the successor of the great circular mausolea of antiquity. The recent restoration is exemplary but antiseptic.
The last outstanding building of early Ravenna is outside the walls, sadly encroached upon by modern roads. Sant’Apollinare in Classe was built near the port that was so vital to Ravenna’s power. Consecrated in 549, it is the close contemporary of San Vitale, but altogether more ambitious in scale. The splendid detached campanile is a later addition, perhaps of the tenth century, and the brick church itself has been much restored. The scale of the interior is most impressive; and one senses something of its original richness from the marching grey and white veined columns, although much of the marble facing was appropriated for reuse at Rimini by Sigismondo Malatesta in 1449. The eye is drawn to the apse with the magnificent sixth-century mosaic of the Transfiguration, in which Christ is represented by the Cross. Below is Saint Apollinaris in episcopal robes, flanked by twelve lambs, symbolizing the faithful, and a representation of Paradise, with stylized trees, plants and flowers among small rocks. Here again green is used to almost mesmerizing effect.
With the fall of the Byzantine Exarchate, Ravenna ceased to be a capital. The campaniles of Sant’Apollinare Nuovo and Sant’Apollinare in Classe are the great monuments of Romanesque Ravenna. In the fifteenth century the Venetians sought to redevelop the city, with some success. Their impact can also be sensed in Ravenna’s museum, the former Galleria dell’Accademia. There are serene altarpieces by Niccolò Rondinelli, a Ravennaborn adherent of Bellini. His near contemporaries, the brothers Zaganelli, by contrast veered towards their Ferrarese and Bolognese counterparts. The star of the collection is unquestionably the recumbent funerary statue of 1525 by Tullio Lombardo commemorating the warrior Guidarello Guidarelli.
Sant’Appollinare Nuovo: mosaic, Port of Classe.
