Architecture -- Italy -- Ravenna; Ravenna (Italy) -- History
The Dominicans have not been more fortunate than the Franciscans.
Somewhat to the north of the Piazza Venti Settembre in the Via Cavour
we find their church S. Domenico. It is said that originally there
stood here a Byzantine church dedicated in honour of S. Maria
Callopes, but this Dr. Ricci denies. S. Domenico was built from its
foundations it seems in October 1269 for the Dominicans and was
enlarged in 1374 according to an inscription in the sacristy; but it
was almost entirely rebuilt in the beginning of the eighteenth
century. The facade and the side portico are perhaps now the most
genuine parts of the church. The chief treasure is, however, not of
the Middle Age at all, but of the Renaissance, and consists of four
large pictures painted in tempera, probably organ shutters,
representing the Annunciation, S. Peter Martyr, and S. Dominic. They
are the excellent work of Niccold Rondinelli the pupil of Giovanni
Bellini.[1]
[Footnote 1: See _infra_, pp. 267 _et seq_.]
[Illustration: TORRE DEL COMUNE]
From S. Domenico we pass again to S. Giovanni Evangelista if only to
note the beautiful Gothic portal of the fourteenth century, of which I
have already spoken,[2] and the spoiled frescoes by Giotto in the
vaulting of the fourth chapel on the left. Giotto, according to
Vasari, came to Ravenna at the instigation of Dante and painted in S.
Francesco, but whatever he may have done there has utterly perished,
and there only remains in Ravenna his spoilt work in this little
chapel in S. Giovanni Evangelista. Here we see in a ceiling divided by
two diagonals, at the centre of which the Lamb and Cross are painted
on a medallion, the four Evangelists enthroned with their symbols and
the four Doctors of the Church, a subject common everywhere and
especially so in Ravenna. These works have suffered very greatly from
restoration, but they seem indeed to be the work of the master in so
far as the design is concerned, all surely that is left after the
repaintings that have befallen them.
[Footnote 2: See _supra_, pp. 175 _et seq_.]
The mosaic pavements of 1213, representing scenes from the third
crusade, in the chapel to the left of the choir should be noted.
We must not leave S. Giovanni Evangelista without a look at the great
tower of the eleventh century which overshadows it. It might seem to
be contemporary with the greater Torre Comunale in the Via Tredici
Giugno as the street is now absurdly named. Nor should any one omit to
visit the Casa Polentana near Porta Ursicina and the Casa Traversari
in the Via S. Vitale, grand old thirteenth-century houses that speak
to us, not certainly of Ravenna's great days, but of a greater day
than ours, and one, too, in which the most tragic of Italians wandered
up and down these windy ways eating his heart out for Florence. Indeed
Dante consumes all our thoughts in mediaeval Ravenna.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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