At the Italian Cultural Institute

Ravenna lies seventy miles south of Venice and five miles inland from the Adriatic. Julius Caesar marshalled his army there before crossing the Rubicon to march on Rome in 49 BCE. A few decades later, the Emperor Augustus made the town a naval station with a fleet of 250 triremes. Early in the fifth century Ravenna became the capital of the Western Roman Empire following the separation from Constantinople (formerly Byzantium); and towards the end of the century Ravenna was controlled by the Ostrogoth king we call Theodoric the Great.

Theodoric’s background in Constantinople, as well as the strengthening of eastern influences under the Emperor Justinian and his all-conquering general Belisarius, contributed to the spread of the art and architecture often described as Byzantine. (The adjective was not common in English until long after the ‘fall’ of Constantinople in 1453.) In the current exhibition at the Italian Cultural Institute in London, the blending of Roman and Byzantine art is represented in spectacular form by ‘faithful copies of the ancient mosaics of Ravenna’.

The copies were made in the 1950s by the mosaicists who had restored the originals damaged during the Second World War. They come from six sites: two churches dedicated to local martyrs, San Vitale and Sant’Apollinare; two baptisteries, the fifth-century Battistero Neoniano (a converted Roman bath-house, retaining some of the original mosaics) and the later Battistero degli Ariani; the chapel of the former cathedral, built during the reign of Theodoric (493-526); and the so-called tomb of the Empress Galla Placidia, sister of the Emperor Honorius who transferred the Western capital to Ravenna from Milan (the scholarly consensus is that she was interred in Rome where she died in 450).

Built, like so many of the Ravenna monuments, in simple red brick, theMausoleo di Galla Placidia has a cruciform plan. A lunette at the entrance depicts Christ the Good Shepherd, the semicircle framed by multi-coloured abstract designs. Inside, the rectangular walls, their arches and vaults, all softly illuminated by natural light filtered through alabaster plaques, are decorated with human figures, animals and abstract designs. These mosaics – which many scholars consider the finest in the city – are of a Roman rather than Byzantine character.

The central vault is a dazzling mass of hundreds of golden stars surrounding the focal point of a Latin (rather than Greek) cross; in the corners are the symbols that would come to be associated with the four evangelists (a winged lion for Mark, an angel for Matthew, a bull for Luke and an eagle for John). Beautifully re-created at the ICI is the perhaps familiar but no less delightful mosaic depicting two doves drinking water from a shared bowl: the twinned images of life and love. In the mausoleum at Ravenna, a second pair of doves accompany mosaics of four of the Apostles.

Gold and silver stars set against a dark blue background are also found in the Cappella Arcivescovile. The Jesus in these mosaics is the Jesus of the Church Militant, the church shaped by St Paul, the Jewish soldier, Roman citizen and scourge of early Christians before his conversion on the road to Damascus. In the archiepiscopal chapel Jesus shoulders the cross like a weapon, wearing Roman military garb and standing on the heads of a lion and a serpent. In his left hand is a compressed Latin text declaring that he alone is the Way, the Truth and the Life (and you’d better believe it).

By contrast, other mosaics in the chapel (reproduced at the ICI) feature five different birds, from a starling on a golden background to a peacock on a base of deep blue. Like the masons, sculptors, woodcarvers and painters of the great Gothic cathedrals throughout Europe, the mosaicists in Ravenna mixed the softer sides of life and their own identities with the rigours of the liturgy and the disciplines of work.

The two baptisteries represented in the ICI exhibition are both octagonal (there are ground-plans and photographs of the buildings, their outer forms not being obvious from the selection of mosaics). The cathedral baptistery, or Battistero Neoniano, is named for the bishop who ‘adorned’ the domed ceiling with ‘magnificent mosaics’. At the centre, Jesus is being baptised by John in the River Jordan. The Holy Spirit hovers overhead in the form of a dove, while the translucent water is conjured by wavy lines of pale blue and white tesserae. The river rises to the naked Christ’s waist, but his legs and genitals are visible through it. The central scene in the Battistero degli Ariani is similar, though Jesus is younger.

Admirers of late medieval or early Renaissance depictions of the baptism (such as Giotto’s fresco in Padua, or Piero della Francesca’s painting in the National Gallery) may be even more astonished by the skill and realism displayed in this hard-edged, intractable medium of tiny pieces of marble, limestone, porphyry, glass and mother of pearl.

The baptismal scene is encircled by twelve holy figures: starkly white against a golden background in the Ariani, golden and multi-coloured in the Neoniano, yet each individualised – as they are in the Cappella Arcivescovile. In the Neoniano they are named as the twelve apostles.

The basilica of Sant’Apollinare was built, like the Arian Baptistery, in the reign of Theodoric, one of the more famous heretical Arians; the church of San Vitale was built slightly later by the orthodox Archbishop ‘Churchy’ (‘Arcivescovo Ecclesio’ in modern Italian). In structure they are entirely different, though their exteriors are in plain brick and each has a circular campanile. Sant’Apollinare has the traditional basilica form, with a long nave separated from two side aisles by arcades of Byzantine columns with mosaic friezes above, interspersed by the arched windows of a clerestory.

San Vitale comprises two main elements: an octagonal presbyterium of two storeys (the upper being the matroneum, the ‘women’s gallery’) and an eastern apse resplendent with figurative and abstract mosaics that repeat on a grander scale the decoration of the seven partner exedras. The massive yet elegant pillars (capitals and imposts in Byzantine style) and complementary pilasters are the main support for the richly decorated dome depicting the Paschal Lamb surrounded by the apostles and saints – a structure unprecedented in Western European ecclesiastical architecture and furnished with marble from the region of Constantinople. An early ninth-century commentator wrote that no building in the whole of Italy could match it.

The north and south walls of the apse carry larger-than-life mosaic friezes of the Emperor Justinian and Empress Theodora with their retinues. (The ICI exhibition displays Theodora at full scale.) Close to Theodora, almost apologetically, is the dove of peace. Justinian appears more as soldier-Christian than famous lawgiver. Both their heads are surrounded by golden haloes, while alongside Justinian, archbishop Maximianus stands bald-headed, gloomy-looking and with no hint of sanctification.

Whatever the archbishop’s real feelings might have been, there is no denying the beauty of the mosaics portraying the individuality of anonymous angels, Old Testament prophets, a thoughtful, somewhat mournful Paul and a commanding Peter – very different from the Peter who denied Jesus after his betrayal by Judas and arrest in the Garden of Gethsemane.

Simon Peter appears in the even more spectacular mosaics of Sant’Apollinare both as a ‘fisher of men’ and as the frightened disciple denying Jesus in the high priest’s courtyard. The bands of mosaics here have a more devotional aspect than the imperialism on display in San Vitale. Scenes from the ministry of Jesus and the Passion give a human feel to theological mysteries, with Judas at the Last Supper subtly distanced from the other disciples. The kiss of betrayal is one of the highlights of the ICI exhibition: armed Roman soldiers behind Judas; Peter beside Jesus, reaching for his own sword. While in another splendid mosaic, contrasting in every chromatic and figurative way with the gorgeously attired Three Magi nearby, we are presented with Christ literally separating the sheep from the goats.