have been intended to present a series of cupolas, as the side aisles
actually do on a smaller scale, but in its present state, at the point
where the square is reduced to a circle, a flat ceiling is introduced
instead of a cupola. Standing under any one of these, the slightest
foot-step is repeated a great many times, but so rapidly, that it is
difficult to count the reverberations. I reckoned sixteen, but the
effect is rather a continued clatter than a succession of distinct
sounds. From Ferrara I returned to my old quarters at Bologna, and spent
a few days in endeavouring to understand the construction of modern
Greek, with the help of Mezzofanti; after which I set off on my return
by way of Ancona and Loreto to Rome.
I left Bologna at midnight on the 2d of August. My companions were an
Italian gentleman and his lady, inhabitants of Urbino, who were
returning home after a visit to Florence. They complained that they
could not understand a word of Bolognese. We reached Imola at about six
in the morning, where we stayed about an hour, and I visited the
cathedral, but I have nothing worth telling you about it. Our next
stopping place was Faenza, which has given the French name to
earthenware. The piazza here is surrounded by arches on columns, and
over this a wide colonnade supporting a slight roof. The upper columns
are on detached pedestals, with balustrades between them; a continued
pedestal would have been better, but an arrangement of this sort round a
large opening has an architectural effect. The church has its nave
divided into squares, and in each large arch are two smaller ones
opening into the side aisles. This change of design never succeeds. I
left my companions at Faenza, whence a _sediola_, a sort of one-horse
chair, conveyed me to Ravenna.
My driver amused me with a story about Raphael. This artist, according
to the tale, stayed five or six days somewhere at an inn, and paid for
nothing, as indeed he had no money, and the account becoming rather
high, the landlord was alarmed, and urged payment. Raphael demanded the
account, and when he had received it, painted the requisite number of
sequins upon the table, and something over. He then called for the
landlord, and meeting him at the door, pointed to the table, saying,
“There is your account,” and passed on. The landlord, seeing, as he
thought, the gold, and not doubting that he was generously paid,
attended his guest to the gate of the inn, and having seen him depart,
returned to take his money, but was very much surprised on attempting to
sweep it off into his hand, to find that nothing moved; he repeated the
action with no better success. He then called in the waiters and his
neighbours; but though every body saw the money there, nobody could lay
hold of it. At last, an Englishman passed that way, (in relating these
stories to an Englishman, they never fail to introduce one of his
countrymen) who told them it was a most valuable painting, worth a
thousand crowns. The landlord, however, was contented to sell his table
for a hundred sequins, (about 50_l._). What the uneducated mind admires
in a painting is deception, and that alone, and if Raphael was a great
painter, he must, according to their notions, have possessed that power
in a high degree. You hear his name, and those of the other great
painters of Italy, frequently in the mouths of the common people, but
this is the way in which they think of them.
You want me to say something of manufacturing and agricultural industry,
but you apply to a very incompetent person, as my attention is too
strongly directed to other inquiries, to allow me time to enter into the
details of these subjects. Yet, of the first, if I say little, I might
plead that there is little to be said. I saw, indeed, at Milan, some
very beautiful cloth. There was a public exhibition for premiums; but
these hot-bed productions, fostered by the government more for shew than
utility, are no criterion by which to judge of the productions of the
country. The political revolutions to which Italy has lately been
subject must have had an adverse influence, and an arbitrary and
changing system of taxation must prevent the employment of any
considerable capital. As to the agriculture, it seems very generally
extended, though not perhaps very perfect. The proprietor is in a sort
of partnership with the cultivator, finding the necessary capital, while
the latter finds labour, and there is commonly an agent employed by the
large proprietors, to see that the countryman performs his part of the
bargain, without secreting any of the profits. With the exception of the
Campagna, even the Roman states are generally in cultivation, and in
that there are considerable difficulties in the way, though the accounts
of mal aria may be exaggerated. The mountains are often better
cultivated than the plains, where the slope is not too steep to admit of
it. In our climate, when we arrive at the height of twelve or fifteen
hundred feet, the cold and wet will hardly permit any profit to the
agriculturist; but in Italy, corn will ripen well in elevations of
between three and four thousand, and deciduous trees flourish. This
gives to Italian mountain scenery a character extremely different from
that of our own country. There are no dreary moors, no wide bogs, and
even no heathy commons. The sandy shores, steep, crumbling banks of clay
or sand, and soil of naked rock, are necessarily abandoned, but
elsewhere the land is employed, and seems in general fertile. This year
has been remarkably dry, and they say that the crops of Indian corn are
suffering on that account. The wheat harvest has been good, and the
grapes are very abundant; the market at Bologna exhibited a profusion of
fruit. Peaches were in immense abundance; more than you will see of
apples and pears in any London market. The best were sold to me as a
stranger, at three bajocs the pound, containing about four full sized
peaches. Figs two bajocs. Of melons there is also a prodigious number. A
good sized one costs four or five bajocs; the water-melons cost more,
because they are larger. There are plenty of pears, but not very good;
few apples. Grapes are just coming in; they are hardly in fact yet ripe,
but the Italians give a decided preference to unripe fruit.
LETTER XL.
RAVENNA.
_Rome, August, 1817._
THERE are several churches at Ravenna of the fifth and sixth centuries,
a period, whose architectural productions are very rare. At the
beginning of the fifth century this city became the capital of the
western empire, and as it was also the seat of government of the
Ostrogoths, and afterwards of the Exarchs, it must have enjoyed a pretty
long period of comparative prosperity, when every thing else was in
ruin. Yet we have by no means a long series of dates in these remains.
The Empress Galla Placidia, sister of Honorius and Arcadius, seems to
have built a good deal between 425 and 450, the year of her death.
Afterwards, Theodoric, who reigned here from 492 to 526, embellished the
city with the best edifices the times were capable of producing; and the
impulse given to architecture seems to have lasted about twenty years
after his death. You are indeed shewn a church, San Vittore, which
pretends to be of the early part of the fourth century, but what remains
of it, even if its history were true, is a mere barn, without character.
The interval which elapsed between the first and last of the churches of
this period, which still remain tolerably perfect, was not accompanied
with any change of style: the ancient basilican form, consisting of
three naves, divided by two ranges of columns supporting arches,
prevailed in most of them. Above the arches is a high wall with narrow
windows, fewer in number than the arches below, and rarely corresponding
with them in position: the roof was of timber, and not concealed from
view; and the middle nave terminates in a semicircular recess covered
with mosaics, forming the apsis. They are much like St. Paul’s at Rome,
but on a reduced scale, and with only one range of columns on each side,
or perhaps they are rather more like some of the smaller of the ancient
churches in that city. Such is the church of the Spirito Santo, built
probably early in the sixth century, which owes its name to a tradition,
that on this spot, the eleven immediate successors of St. Apollinaris,
first bishop of Ravenna, were chosen by the visible agency of the Holy
Ghost, which descended on them successively in the form of a dove. The
columns here are of beautiful materials, but of bad workmanship. I think
not however, worse than those of Constantine’s time. Architecture seems
to have lost more in the twenty years between Dioclesian and
Constantine, than in the two hundred between the latter emperor and
Theodoric; but perhaps I should find, had I the means of a closer
investigation, that I had been deceived in attributing to the earliest
of these three periods, columns and ornaments which had once formed part
of some earlier edifice. If however, we do not observe in the
workmanship, any very distinct marks of difference between the
productions of the fourth and sixth centuries, we do in the design of
the ornamental parts; the capitals and mouldings in the latter being
much more fanciful. In the time of Constantine the architects seem to
have copied the antique, though very badly. Under Theodoric they
abandoned it wantonly, and we find frequent indications of the whimsical
style of capital which afterwards prevailed in the Gothic. In the same
building, however, each capital is alike, or at least intended to be so.
A block from which the arch springs is uniformly placed over the
capital; it is in the shape of the inverted frustum of a pyramid, but
not perfectly regular, as it generally slopes more on the front and back
than on the sides. In the early Saxon architecture, (I use this
incorrect term for want of a better) a block is sometimes found above
the capital, to support the springing of the arch, but it is in the
shape of a thickened abacus, and has sometimes dentils or mouldings,
which show it to be a degradation of the whole entablature; at St.
Mark’s, at Venice, and at Ravenna, it is evidently a stone block,
without any relation to the parts of the ancient order.
The arrangement of this church, or I may say generally of these
churches, is far from displeasing; they are light, and in some degree
elegant; and they would be much more so if the details were better; and
if they were not injured by modern chapels and restorations of a very
different taste. The plan leads the eye to the high altar, and to the
large niche enriched with mosaics and gilding, in front of which it
stands.
The earliest remaining church of this style at Ravenna, if we may
believe Beltrami, (_Il forestiere instruito delle cose notabili della
città di Ravenna_) is that of Santa Agata Maggiore, which was completed
about the year 417. Here again, are columns of granite and rich marbles,
with the same general design, and the same mode of finishing. The
columns are of unequal heights, and the impost blocks are also unequal,
but not so as to reduce the springing of the arches to one level.
Indeed, even these blocks seem to be the spoils of an earlier building.
The height of the nave is about equal to its width, which is hardly as
much as it ought to be. There seems at one time to have been a fashion
at Ravenna, to introduce monograms among the ornaments of the blocks
over the capitals. We have in this church the earliest example, and the
latest in San Vitale, which was built in 534. What names they were
intended to commemorate is very uncertain, as each writer on the subject
forms a new conjecture of his own. The following is at Santa Agata,
[Illustration: Illustration of monogram]
and Montfaucon makes out from it the words TITUS CORNELIUS NEPOS, and
Zirardini, an antiquary of Ravenna, PETRUS EPISCOPUS. You will conceive,
that inscriptions which may be interpreted so differently, are perfect
enigmas, from which nothing can be learned; but it appears to me that
both these learned men are decidedly wrong, since the monogram contains
an F, and no E. The pulpit of this church is of a single piece of
marble, and seems to have been cut out of one drum of a fluted column,
about five feet and a half in diameter. It is supposed to have been some
ornamental or monumental column, for Ravenna does not boast any ancient
edifice which would require a column of that size.
San Giovanni della Sagra was built in 425 by Galla Placidia, in
consequence of a vow she had made, when, having been overtaken by a
storm in returning from Constantinople, she was saved from shipwreck by
the intercession of St. John the evangelist. After it was built, the
lady sought far and wide for some relic of the tutelar saint, but in
vain. Her confessor, St. Barbaziano, proposed that they should pass a
night in prayer in the new church, in order to obtain of the Lord by
miracle, what human means had failed to procure. During the night St.
John appeared in pontifical vestments, with a censer in his hand,
incensing the temple and the altar; St. Barbaziano saw him first, and
knowing him for the beloved disciple of our Saviour, pointed him out to
the empress, who with great joy ran to throw herself on her knees before
him, and to embrace his feet. The saint immediately vanished, leaving
behind him the sandal of his right foot. The empress having thus
obtained the desired relic, deposited it somewhere in the church, but
the precise spot is unknown. The story is represented in sculpture over
the principal entrance, and as this doorway is a production of the
pointed architecture of the thirteenth century, we may obtain an
approximation to the date of the legend. I admire, however, the modesty
which refrained from producing the sacred relic. The church itself was
of the usual form, with marble columns, and a great niche adorned with
mosaics; but the mosaics are gone, and the nave has been a good deal
modernized.
San Francesco is another church of the same disposition, which has
undergone a similar treatment; this seems also of the time of Galla
Placidia. Sant Apollinare Nuovo, which deserves the first place among
these buildings for its magnitude and decorations, is a foundation of
Theodoric, but the choir is comparatively modern. It has, according to
Beltrami, the sort of portico called _Ardica_, a word derived from the
Greek ναρθεξ, but I do not understand precisely in what its peculiarity
consists. It is formed by means of groined arches supported on columns.
Internally, this church seems to have been in every respect more highly
finished than any of the others. The windows are more numerous, and
there is a continued moulding under them. The nave terminates in a large
ornamented arch, and the walls are adorned with mosaics, some of the
heads in which have a good deal of character. One of these mosaics
represents the front of the palace of Theodoric; three large, but
unequal arches in the centre, support a pediment, and a range of smaller
and lower arches extends on each side. All the arches rest on columns,
and veils hang between the columns. This has no sort of resemblance to
the fragment still remaining, of which I shall speak by and by, but
perhaps that was no part of the front.
The last church of this style in date, and the last I shall give you any
account of, is that of St. Apollinaris, at Classe, about three miles
from Ravenna. Classis seems to have been the station of the Roman fleet,
and to have formed, with Ravenna proper and Cæsarea, one great city. It
was adorned, we are told, with magnificent public edifices, and with
numerous churches. Nothing, however, now remains, except this church,
with its bell-tower; and a few of the buildings of the convent. St.
Apollinaris was the beloved disciple of St. Peter. He was the apostle
and teacher of the people of Ravenna, and the church was built upon the
ruins of the temple of Apollo. It is a pity that this gives a sort of
double occasion to the name, and throws a doubt on both stories. The
building was erected by order of Justinian, and consecrated by the
archbishop St. Maximian in the year 549. The columns which support the
nave are of very beautiful Greek marble. The windows are in pairs, few
and small; each pair is seen externally in an arched recess, of which
there is a series, both in the clerestory, and in the aisles below. The
latter were probably connected with the portico, which returned along
the sides of the church, as well as occupying the front, but these
lateral parts are now destroyed. To return to the inside: the columns
are valuable for their materials alone: they are badly worked, and the
capitals are very rude and clumsy imitations of those of the Composite
order. The height of the nave is about a quarter more than the width;
and the proportion is very good. The aisles are very wide, and I believe
this contributes to the light and agreeable appearance of the building.
In the nave, the walls are mostly whitewashed; but the tribune or apsis
is covered with mosaics, as is the arch in front of it. Whitewash is not
an agreeable finish anywhere, but this disposition of it is at least
better than that which I have complained of in the Florentine churches.
There is a representation of the transfiguration in the tribune, which,
if it do not in itself possess much merit either of design or execution,
is nevertheless curious, as an attempt of that period, to express an
historical fact, instead of the mere upright unemployed figures of
saints usually exhibited in these mosaics. Indeed, Ravenna is quite the
place to study the architecture and painting of these two centuries, but
I doubt if it can shew any sculpture. Sant Apollinare is rich in
sarcophagi and inscribed marbles, but I allowed myself there much too
short a time. In fact, I almost always have to lament, after leaving a
city of much interest, that I had passed through it too hastily.
I shall now proceed to some other religious edifices, in which this
general arrangement was not observed. The Baptistery is an octagonal
building almost covered with mosaics, and containing also some
bas-reliefs in stucco, perhaps not of the same date. It has a number of
little columns of pavonazetto, bigio antico, and marmo greco, taken from
ancient edifices. Externally, there is a small square opening above the
door, which is also square-headed; and above, each face presents two
double-headed windows. The date of the building is supposed to be that
of the ancient cathedral now destroyed, that is, the latter end of the
fourth century: the mosaic is attributed to an archbishop Neone, who
lived about the year 430. It covers the dome, as well as most of the
walls. The baptism of our Saviour in the Jordan by St. John, is
represented on the former, and the river-god seems also to be introduced
into the composition. As is usual in the ancient baptisteries, there was
originally preparation for baptism by immersion, but like most of the
other buildings at Ravenna, it has been filled up two or three feet, in
order to be above the water, of which the soil is full. It seems at
first sight as if the removal of the sea from Ravenna should have made
the ground drier, but a little reflection will convince us that the
contrary must be the case, as the sea continuing on the same level, the
water has farther to run before it can discharge itself, and for water
thus to drain itself through the earth, a considerable inclination is
necessary.
The Church of Santa Maria in Cosmedim, or at least the ancient part of
it, was also a baptistery. It was appropriated to the use of the Arians,
between whom and the Catholics, or rather the Athanasians, there was
nothing in common. The lower part has been modernized, but the mosaic of
the dome still remains. On this also is represented the Baptism of our
Saviour, with the right hand of the baptist on his head, as if to press
him gently into the water. This and other mosaics at Ravenna have been
published by Campini, _Vet. Monim._
The Church of San Vitale is another octagonal building which was quite
the boast of its age. It was begun by Julianus Argentarius, in
conjunction with Saint Ecclesio, who lived about 534, and consecrated by
St. Maximian, who lived in the middle of the sixth century. Eight piers
support as many arches; between the piers are semicircular recesses of
two stories, each story having two columns, between which and the
principal piers are three arches. The spaces between these columns, on
the lower part, open into the side aisles, in the upper, into a gallery.
Above the principal arches, the building becomes circular, and
terminates in a dome, which for the purpose of lightness is constructed
of empty earthen pots. I have already mentioned some instances of this
sort of work at Rome; there are other examples at Ravenna, but this is
the most perfect, and the most interesting. The pots are of two sorts:
those forming the dome are small and twisted; and beginning
horizontally, have the point of one inserted in the mouth of the
preceding, in a continued spiral. The others, which partially fill the
spandrils, are larger, twisted only at the point, and placed vertically.
The form of the lower part of the building, and consequently of the
general circuit of the edifice, appears to be irregular; and the ancient
entrance opposite the recess for the altar, having been shut up on the
erection of the annexed monastery, the present is disadvantageously
opened on one side. The building is highly, but unequally enriched with
marbles and historical mosaics; and contains some ancient bas-reliefs
and inscriptions. Several monograms are sculptured on the impost blocks,
the search after whose meaning has long been the amusement of the
antiquaries of Ravenna. Most of them however still remain without even a
probable guess at the explanation. The lower columns of the seven
semicircular recesses are of Greek marble, and very well wrought, except
two or three; all the upper ones are ill executed. We may be sure that
those which are well formed were taken from older buildings, but not
quite so certain that all the ill-made ones were formed originally for
this. The effect of this whimsical architecture is very striking. The
architect has produced a great deal of beauty quite out of all the usual
rules; not so much perhaps, as if he had employed his taste and talents
in a more correct style, but still in sufficient degree to make his work
an object deserving the study of future architects, which a handsomer
building might not have been. Singularity often merits examination, when
it by no means deserves imitation.
A little church in the shape of a cross, dedicated to Sts. Nazarus and
Celsus, forms the Sepulchre of Galla Placidia, who built it in her
lifetime. It is about 40 feet long, and 32 in the transept; the arms
being about 14 feet wide. The walls were once covered with marbles;
these have disappeared, but all the vaulting is still covered with
figures and arabesques in mosaic. On each side of the nave a plain
marble sarcophagus is incrusted in the wall; and there is a larger one,
adorned with sculpture, at each end of the transept; but the largest of
all, which stands at the head of the cross, and once contained the bones
of the empress herself, is quite plain, having been, as is supposed,
originally covered with metal. There is said to have been a small window
at the back of this chest, through which, in 1577, some children put a
lighted candle, and the clothes and body of the empress were thereby
consumed; on which account it was shut up; but I could discern no trace
of its existence.
[Illustration:
A.B. Clayton. del. from Sketches by J. Woods.
TOMB OF THEODERIC. ]