Art Travel Vacation to Ravenna, Italy

 
Ravenna is the ultimate art jewel of Italy. Situated south of Venice on the Adriatic Coast, it is not a well-known tourist destination: how often do we hear of a tour to Italy that includes Ravenna? But as art historians know, this is the place to see the best-preserved and most exquisite mosaics in the Western world. A vacation there is an unforgettable art vision.


This was once a water city, as Venice, with rivers and canals flowing through the urban center and a nearby port open to the riches of the East. Prosperous and well-defended by water, Ravenna was chosen by the Ostrogothic kings to be capital of the Western Roman Empire in the early fifth-century, and was enfolded into the Byzantine Empire by 540. But in the centuries of political decline that followed, the waterways and port were lost to silt build-up and land reclamation. The early decline of a once-great capital, however, can mean its art is better preserved than in cities which go on to modern-day lives, and so in Ravenna mosaic stones laid in well over a thousand years ago still astound in all their material and spiritual vividness.

Mausoleum of Galla Placidia

The mausoleum of Galla Placidia is a modest building of terracotta brick built in the early fifth-century. It is not actually known who is buried within, but legend has it she is Galla Placidia, sister of the Emperor Honorius. She died in Rome in the year 540, and from there her body may have been returned for burial in Ravenna.


Entering the mausoleum, allow yourself a few moments to adjust to the darkness as the mosaics take form before your eyes. The pieces of stone and glass are set in to catch the dim light penetrating the alabaster panels in the windows of the building, and the shimmering of gold and lapis blue in the partial darkness creates the effect of gazing on the very vaults of heaven. In the central cupola glitter hundreds of pointed stars, and a great gold cross floats triumphantly in the blueness of the atmosphere.


The scenes in the lunettes at ground-level are the most moving of all, portraying the promise of salvation in a language of earthly symbolism. Above the door appears Christ as Good Shepherd , tending his flock of sheep. The sheep are, in a sense, ourselves -- they represent the Christian faithful, and Christ caresses one tenderly with an outstretched hand. The artistic skill of the mosaic layer can be seen in his rendering of the sheeps' coats of wool: the stones are not simply one flat color, but are laid in patterns to create a sense of luxuriously growing hair and even of shadows cast on the animals' bodies. Christ himself is posed almost like a Greek god, and the artist must have studied Hellenistic mosaics closely as models for the new Christian art.


In the lunettes of the cross-arms of the mausoleum, the earthly symbolism continues. You will see two stags drinking from a pool of water -- shown flat, as if we are looking from above. A scroll of acanthus leaves winds its way around the animals, suggesting the richest of garden settings. Their drinking actually refers to a line from Psalm 42: “As a hart longs for flowing streams, so longs my soul for thee, O God.” The brick mausoleum, then, is a monument to the death of the body, but its interior mosaics are testimony to faith in the eternal life of the soul.