File:Ravenna, a study (1913) (14577400710).jpg

Identifier: cu31924028356396 (find matches)
Title: Ravenna, a study
Year: 1913 (1910s)
Authors: Hutton, Edward, 1875-
Subjects: Architecture
Publisher: London, J.M. Dent New York, E.P. Dutton
Contributing Library: Cornell University Library
Digitizing Sponsor: MSN

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empress Theodora, straight browed, most gorgeously arrayed, very beautiful and a little sinister, bearing a golden chalice, attended by her splendid ladies and two priests. Upon the extreme left of the picture stands a little fountain before an openV doorway hung with a0^urtain.^yt^^ What/vCan be said of these gorgeous and astonishingly lovely works? Nothing. They speak too eloquently forI themselves. Not there do we see the mere realism of Rome, the careful and often too careful arrangement that Roman art, able to speak bujLjncapablg— of song, always gives us. Here we have something at once more gorgeous and more mysterious and more artistic, a symbolical and—hi^ratic art, the gift of the Orient, of Byzantium. A In the best Roman art of the best period there is always something of the street, something too close to Ufe, too mere a transcription and a copy of actual things, a mere imitation without life of its own. But hereis something outside the classical tradition, outside what
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v-2?^^*^ ) .-.•.WNIUb «> I. IVk; Capital from S. Vitale 202 RAVENNA imperial Rome with its philistinism and its puritanism hasmade of the art of Greece and thrust perhaps for ever uponEurope. Here we are free from the overwhelming common-place of Roman art, its mediocrity and respectable endeavour.Cl^t is, however, not in the gorgeous mosaics alone that we findthe delight and originality of S. Vitale. The whole churchis amazingly different from anything else to be seen in Italy,for it is altogether outside the Roman tradition, an absolutelyByzantine building as well in its construction as in its decora-tion. It must be compared with the later S. Sophia andSS. Sergius and Bacchus of Constantinople.! These, however,are works more assured and more gracious than S. Vitale, andy^ in its plan at leasx S. Vitale is a masterpiece, and altogetherthe one great sanctuary of Byzantine art of the time ofJustinian that we have in the WestJ Every part of it isworthy of the strictest and most e

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