Sailing to Ravenna

 

Cupola mosaic in the Baptisterio Ariano 

I confess, we rode a train--we did not sail into Ravenna. I must admit I am a devout secular humanist, but have a peculiar (and very real love) of Medieval Greek art--especially fresco, architecture and mosaic work. Coming to Ravenna, I felt much of the awe Yeats describes so well in his immortal yearnings in "Sailing to Byzantium". As irony has it, Ravenna hoards the lion's share of early Byzantine art: eight stunning masterpieces of mosaic (there was a ninth that was taken to Berlin--a story for another time). The only other comparable mosaic of the Justinianic period is on Mount Sinai, in Egypt. 

I don't know that anyone could determine accurately, but I suspect there may have once been a hundred--or far more--such churches across the Mediterranean--all of which had their artwork removed by Iconoclasts between 726-843 when there was an all out effort to destroy all religious imagery involving humans. The only comparable mass destruction of art I can compare it to would be the Cultural Revolution in Red China when trillions of dollars worth or ancient art, manuscripts, buildings were smashed, burned and destroyed.  Ravenna's remaining mosaics survived when the Lombards ousted the Byzantines--and St. Catherine's survived because it was such a backwater. My Byzantine art professor (John Hoag of the University of Colorado) described walking ankle deep through fallen tesserae in ruined Byzantine cathedrals in North Africa.

I photographed the image above yesterday (April 8)--it was the last of the 8 Unesco World Heritage Sites in Ravenna we visited--and I think the oldest. It was constructed during the reign of Theodoric, who believed in Arian Christianity--the smallness of Christ in the river Jordan reflects the Arian conviction in Christ's subordination to God. Theodoric grew up in Constantinople and likely used artisans from that city both for construction and decoration of his baptistery. When Ravenna was re-captured by East Rome ("Byzantium") the baptistery was decommissioned and a very similar "Orthodox" baptistery was built not far away. Below you can see what the cupola mosaic looks like at that building.

Cupola of the Baptisterio neoniano 

There are numerous stylistic differences between the two cupolas (aside from the size of Jesus)--the principal one I would naturally notice was that the Arian date palms were replaced with very stylized Acanthus plants.

I have known about the Ravenna since I was a child and then studied these in Dr. Hoog's incredible class 52 years ago. As I have gradually, over the decades, visited and revisited the dozen or so Byzantine churches with wall mosaics in Greece and Turkey that survived the nearly a millenium or more, I am left with only a handful yet to visit--mostly 10th Century masterpieces in Sicily (and of course Egypt).

Each time I do so I experience some of the ecstasy Yeats describes so well--particularly powerfully in the third verse I transcribe below:

III

O sages standing in God's holy fire

As in the gold mosaic of a wall,

Come from the holy fire, perne in a gyre,

And be the singing-masters of my soul.

Consume my heart away; sick with desire

And fastened to a dying animal

It knows not what it is; and gather me

Into the artifice of eternity.