Empress Theodora at San Vitale, Ravenna
I can’t tell you how difficult it was to get this picture. I had to take 25 out-of-focus ones before I finally managed to steady myself enough in the dark interior, from a distance of about 30 feet with the 300 mm lens. This is a detail of a famous mosaic of the Byzantine Empress Theodora in a procession of court ladies and attendants donating a golden bejeweled, liturgical bowl to a church. She is in splendid imperial purple robes (I’ll put an image of the whole piece above) and decorated with sumptuous jewelry. Her court ladies are lovely and also in their Sunday best. It’s just one of Ravenna’s wonders, and for a day ticket of only 9.50 euro, you can visit all the churches, many of them UNESCO World Heritage sites, in the city.
Sant’ Apollinaire, Ravenna
The semi-dome of the church of Sant’ Apollinaire in Classe, just outside the modern city of Ravenna, is a wonder and could be my favorite single mosaic work (use your browser’s ‘back’ button to return to this site). In terms of size it’s big, rivaling some of the apse mosaics in the early Christian churches of Rome. But the colour is the real attraction: a lovely green creating a verdant landscape of paradise, which Saint Apollinaire, in the center, seems to welcome you to with open arms. The springtime landscape is filled with sheep (i.e. Christians) who line up to enter. All about are plants and trees, and birds can be found scattered everywhere. Above, a great cross floats in a blue heaven with golden stars. At the very apex the hand of god comes out of a cloud to bless Apollinaire. The whole scene glows with life and freshness, something I’ve never seen in any other mosaic.
Ravenna and the Glories of Byzantium
It seems strange that if you want to see the most impressive examples of Byzantine mosaics anywhere they are not to be found in Turkey or in Greece, but in Ravenna, Italy. Nowadays a sleepy minor port town, 1500 years ago it was the capital of the Western Byzantine empire and was patronized by emperors and empresses (see post above). One reason they survive here and not elsewhere in the lands that we most associate with Byzantium is that the Byzantines themselves destroyed much of their own figural art (paintings, mosaics, statues) in the periods of iconoclasm in the 9th and 10th centuries. So pre-iconoclastic period Byzantine art is rare, but by the iconoclastic period Ravenna was no longer in the sphere of the capital, and thus its works survived. Mosaics are my favorite mural art form, and I’ve seen some of the best in my travels. Ravenna is still a very special place and I’ll post a few images today. This little detail is from the Mausoleum of Galla Placidia from the 5th century. It shows doves drinking from a bowl, a motif that is seem elsewhere in the building. It alludes to paradise and the clear waters of the rivers of paradise, from which one will be able to drink freely. So the idea of salvation fits with the structure’s funerary context and the hope for a life in heaven thereafter.
A Detail for Previous Post
The runes are difficult to see in the previous picture, so here’s one that shows a close-up. I’ve increased the contrast in Photoshop to make the inscriptions, or what’s left of them after 1000 years, a bit more legible.
If this Kitty Could Talk
Yesterday I was in Venice and went to the Arsenale Gate, the monumental gateway to Venice’s medieval and renaissance-era shipyards and armaments factory area. The gateway was constructed in the late 15th century (1460), but substantially enlarged after 1571 in celebration of the naval victory at the Battle of Lepanto, which checked Ottoman advancement into the Adriatic. Part of the ancillary decorations are a series of lions stolen from various places throughout Venice’s colonial empire. See the one peeking his head out in the distance on the right? He’s from the island of Delos, in the Aegean, and he’s ancient Greek in origin, probably about 2500 years old. Several of his former mates are still standing there on Delos. The big fellow in the foreground left is the guy I want to talk about. He’s known as the ‘Piraeus Lion’. He, too, is an ancient Greek lion, from the 4th century BC. So around 2400 years old. He came from the port of Athens, Greece, which is how he got his name (Piraeus is the port of Athens). Where he originally came from is anybody’s guess, the Romans had put him in place in Piraeus in the first or second century CE. Italian voyagers called Piraeus ‘Porta Leone’ because of this lion. At some point, he was part of a fountain and spewed water from his mouth (the tubing still exists in his body). He was taken away by the Venetian commander Francesco Morosini in 1687. Morosini had been in Athens trying to take the city from the Ottoman Turks. It was one of his rockets that landed in the gunpowder magazine of the acropolis, which happened to be in the Parthenon, thus blowing out the entire south side of columns. So when you go there and see that big space with no columns you can think of dear Francesco. Morosini took, as part of the loot, this lion, and placed it at the Arsenale Gate as a monument to his victory. If that isn’t interesting enough, do you see that curving line on the lion’s ‘shoulder’? There are other curving lines and text is visible. They’re runic inscriptions carved by Viking Varangian soldiers who served the Byzantine emperors. They carved graffiti into the lion some time in the 11th century while the lion was in Piraeus. The Vikings, when they took the port, lost a kinsman named Horsi, and carved the runes in his honour. Part of the inscription reads: “They cut him down in the midst of his forces. But in the harbor the men cut runes by the sea in memory of Horsi, a good warrior. The Swedes set this on the lion. He went his way with good counsel, gold he won in his travels.The warriors cut runes, hewed them in an ornamental scroll. Áskell [and others] and ÞorlæifR had them well cut, they who lived in Roslagen. [N. N.] son of [N. N.] cut these runes. UlfR and [N. N.] colored them in memory of Horsi.” Apparently they were painted when originally done. Like I say, if this lion could talk. It seemed banal to reduce this magnificent feline to the symbol of the evangelist St Mark; he was a creature who stood proud over ancient centuries long before St Mark ever walked the earth.
Revisiting: Ravello
I visited Ravello, on the Amalfi Coast, just three weeks ago, but it seems like months. So it goes with travel; one’s sense of time is strangely warped. For me the highlight was the great Byzantine bronze portal of the cathedral. The doors were made in 1179 by Barisano da Trani, who cast several such doors in his life, three of them still extant. This picture shows one of the panels, the one of St George killing the dragon with his lance. It’s charmingly cartoon-like, but smart in its design with arcing curves giving a sense of action and buoyancy. St George gives a little smile as he looks out at you, as if killing a dragon is the easiest thing in the world. On the other hand his horse looks strong and fierce, but George handles him without effort. He’s an exemplar of Christian heroism bravely battling evil, a message that must have had much currency in the war-torn world of twelfth-century south Italy, and, indeed, the entire Eastern Mediterranean at that time. The doors date from the time of Norman rule of Sicily and south Italy.
Tintoretto at San Rocco
In Venice in the Renaissance period and later there were institutions called scuole. They were religious confraternities made of laypeople, and some of them, the Scuole Grande, grew to be very rich and influential. The most spectacular of the still remaining scuole buildings, complete with its grand series of paintings by Tintoretto (b. Jacopo Comin, know also as Jacopo Robusti; 1518-1594), is the Scuole Grande di San Rocco. In the 1560s Tintoretto began a great series of large wall and ceiling paintings for the interior of the scuole. It’s dark inside, so difficult to take pictures (flash not allowed), but I chose this detail from the huge Crucifixion of Christ scene. It shows the raising of the cross of the ‘good thief’ who was crucified along with Christ. Tintoretto wanted to show the efforts of the tormentors, but also the body of the thief, well-muscled and dramatically foreshortened.
The Colleoni
I’m getting my share of famous Renaissance bronze equestrian statues. Two days ago it was Donatello’s ‘Gattemelata’ and today it was the Colleoni, by Verocchio, in Venice. Verocchio’s work came about 25 years later than Donatello’s, but you can see the debt to the earlier work. Verocchio went for more drama and less stateliness. Colleoni himself looks crazed, and his horse wild, while Donatello’s Erasmo di Narni (see earlier post) looks placid and his horse under complete control.
Revisiting: the Vatican
It’s one of the world’s most famous statues and was re-discovered in Rome in 1506. The Laocoon, named after the main figure of the group, shows the Trojan priest Laocoon and his sons being attacked by serpents; punishment for Laocoon discouraging the Trojans from accepting the Trojan horse into the city (not in Homer’s account, but belonging to epic poems that took Homer as a starting point and elaborated his story). Part of the tragedy is, of course, that Laocoon was right in his prophecy, but malevolent Olympian gods and goddesses were working behind the scenes and Laocoon got caught in the crossfire. Few sculptures have generated so much art historical commentary. Pliny the Elder may have been the first to write about it in ancient Roman times. Though the present marble statue may be a copy of a bronze Greek original. How it got lost is a mystery. Perhaps Roman Christians, disgusted by it, hammered it to pieces and buried it, the fragments only to be discovered again 1100 years later.
Revisiting: Rome
The most impressive triumphal arch in Rome is the arch of Constantine, built between 312 and 315 CE to commemorate Constantine’s victory over Maxentius at the Milvian Bridge of Rome (though there are other theories; it may have been begun by Maxentius). But the famous emperor cheated; he stole many relief sculptures from monuments built by earlier emperors such as Trajan, Hadrian, and Marcus Aurelius. Very little of the sculpture, in fact, was produced in Constantine’s own age, and they’re the smallest and less technically accomplished pieces . It’s one of the great re-uses of the art of the past and an eloquent example of how Roman emperors were happy to aggrandize themselves at the expense of their predecessors. It’s overall design, though, is good, despite the pastiche quality and the collage of earlier fragments. It’s huge, but it’s location next to the Coliseum makes it appear just a bit smaller than it otherwise might.
Autumn in Padua
I first came to Padua in the summer of 1981. Then, I camped out in the park next to the Scrovegni Chapel in part of the ruins of the old Roman amphitheater that gave the building its other moniker: the Arena Chapel. I remember setting out my bedroll and sleeping bag amongst the addicts’ spent needles and other paraphernalia. As I lay down, and as darkness set in, little fireflies darted about my head and I imagined myself to be a huge Gulliver lying in a Lilliputian airport. This picture was taken only yards from that spot, now cleaned up and re-landscaped. I would have forgotten all of that but for the amazing and memorable sight of the firefly airplanes.
Brenta Scene
In Padua today there were many great works of art and architecture to see. But the fall colours in the parks and along the Brenta River were stunning. I don’t get to see autumn colours much, I realized, and appreciated them a lot as I walked about. This picture was taken in the middle of the city, an unlikely place for this old rowboat sitting peacefully in the slow, still waters of the Brenta. Yellow leaves were falling upon it in the breeze.
The Honey Cat
In the late 1440s and early 1450s Donatello was working in Padua. Today I went to the site of one of his most famous works, the equestrian statue of the condottiere (mercenary soldier) Erasmo di Narni, who was nicknamed ‘Gattamelata’ (the ‘Honey Cat’). The poor statue is in a rough state, and the pigeons who roost on it throughout the days and nights–and consequently crap on it day and night–are taking their toll. It’s time to restore it and move it into a museum, as was done with the similar, though much older, equestrian statue of Marcus Aurelius in Rome, or, for that matter, the four horses of San Marco in Venice. Erasmo stoically waits his turn, probably wondering why that cute little David, also by Donatello, gets such a cozy home in the Bargello. Erasmo is only one of many endangered bronzes throughout Italy. And I had to wait too, to take my pictures of him without pigeons on his head, which I felt robbed him of his dignity–or Donatello’s dignity. They alighted so fast, when I found the statue momentarily bird-less, I took the picture immediately, catching one of the pigeons in flight.
