Architecture -- Italy -- Ravenna; Ravenna (Italy) -- History
[Footnote 2: Four of those missing, Dr. Ricci tells us, have of late
years been discovered, one in the Naples Museum (1893), one in the
collection of Count Stroganoff (1903), one at Pesaro (1894), and
another in the Archaeological Museum at Milan (1905).]
We shall come upon S. Maximianus again in S. Vitale, where something
must be said of him. He lies, as has already been noted, in one of the
great sarcophagi in the second chapel on the right in the cathedral.
From the _Arcivescovado_ we pass to what is now the most remarkable
building of the group--the Baptistery.
Dr. Ricci tells us that it was originally one of the halls of the
baths that were near the present cathedral. But it was converted into
a baptistery and ornamented with mosaics by the archbishop Neon of
Ravenna (_c_. 449-459) as its inscriptions tell us and is signed with
his monogram. The original floor is three metres below that we see,
and a second floor about a metre and a half above the original floor
has been discovered; this it would seem is that made by Neon, while a
third remains about half a metre under the pavement we use, and upon
this are set the eight columns, with their capitals, two of them
Byzantine and the rest Roman, which uphold the arches of the upper
arcade upon which is set the great drum of the dome. The plan is a
simple octagon, bare brick without, covered with a "tent" roof of
amphorae under the tiles; but within, everywhere encrusted with
glorious marbles and mosaics.
It is to the mosaic of the cupola that we instinctively turn first,
for it is, perhaps, the finest left to us in Ravenna. It is divided
into three parts. In the midst is the Baptism of Our Lord on a gold
ground. Christ stands up to His waist in the clear waters of the
Jordan, the god of which river waits upon Him. S. John high up on the
bank, his staff, topped with a cross, in his hand, pours the water
from a shell upon Our Lord's head while the Dove, an almost heraldic
figure, is seen above About this circular mosaic is set a greater
circle in which we see, upon a blue ground, the twelve Apostles in
procession, each bearing his crown. Nothing left to us of that age is
finer or more gravely splendid than these mosaics, they seem to be the
highest expression of a great art which has known how to reject the
brutal realism of an earlier time and to seize perfectly the secret of
decoration. Nothing of the kind more masterly remains to us in Europe.
Beneath these two circles another is set in which are eight panels,
each of three parts, where are represented eight temples, four of them
with thrones signed with the Cross, and four of them with altars upon
which the book of the Gospel is open.
[Illustration: THE BAPTISTERY AND CAMPANILE OF THE CATHEDRAL]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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