Blogging from Ravenna, Italy on November 14th, 2019

Bloggers: Mack and Sophia

Steps Taken: 10,000

After our lobby lecture with Professor Bradley the night before, we were excited to see some of the incredible sites in the development of Christianity that he had been talking about.

We arrived at our first site, which consisted of one mausoleum and one church, before it opened, so we entered the museum for a brief lecture on the historical background of the Mausoleum of Galla Placidia. The children’s classroom where we had our lecture also gave some of us the chance to practice our coloring skills (in preparation for the mosaics of course).

In the museum we also looked at several reliefs. These included the famous Ravenna Relief, which depicts Augustus and Livia as Mars Ultor and Venus Genetrix, respectively. The relief had been thoughtfully relegated to an unsuspecting corner that the typical visitor might miss, but not FSP19.

With the Mausoleum of Galla Placidia would come flashbacks to the Mausoleum of Santa Costanza, or so we thought, until we walked in and found a complete lack of subtlety in the use of Christian motifs—which contrasted starkly with the nuances of Constantinian Christian architecture and art. The unassuming brick exterior of the building did not prepare us for the dazzling glass mosaics of saints, stags, and sheep that covered the ceiling. The imagery was made complete with a cross surrounded by stars in the dome.

For the next stop on our church crawl we visited the Basilica of San Vitale. We quickly noticed the gold backgrounds used in the Byzantine period. The mosaics helped us understand the relationship between the empire and the church through the depiction of processions where the emperor and empress, Justinian and Theodora, carried offerings towards the eucharist. The divination of the imperial family through the use of the halo was new to us, but Theodora’s purple robes reminded us of a certain empress at Arbeia…

After lunch we headed to the Basilica di Sant’Apollinare Nuovo (not to be confused with the Basilica di Sant’Apollinare in Classe that we will see tomorrow). This Basilica forced us to think about the way people interact with a church through representations of processions and scenes from the life of Jesus that invite viewer participation. We then wandered into two Baptistries where we noted how the depiction of Jesus’ baptism would have mirrored the baptism taking place in the font below, again invoking active participation with the physical space.

We ended our day with a pizza party sendoff for Professor Bradley and Dr. Arik. If there’s one thing FSP 2019 has learned on this trip it is how to finish off a pizza!