Page:The Classical Heritage of the Middle Ages.djvu/355

x] BYZANTINE PAINTING 337 the triumphal arch of S. Paulo Fuori at Rome. And it is at Ravenna that this art most distinctly discloses the development of a definite style which gradually shows itself Byzantine. Yet artistically Ravenna was less than Constantinople. If the Adriatic city was wealthy, powerful, and secure, the city on the Bos- phonis surpassed her in safety, power, and wealth. And Constantinople was more fully Greek than Ra- venna, and was possessed of a store of Greek art with which her founder had endowed her. But the evolu- tion of the Byzantine style in mosaics can no longer be traced in the plundered city of the Bosphorus ; while in grass-grown Ravenna may yet be seen the progress from the renewed and ennobled antique art of the fifth century to the Byzantine style of Justinian's time, which later will show Byzantine characteristics hardening to faults. The decorations of the Mausoleum and of S. Gio- vanni in Fonti represent the culmination at Ravenna of the Christian revival of art, which in Rome fifty years before had culminated in the great mosaic of S. Pudenziana. As yet the Ravenna mosaics show no specific Byzantine traits.^ A next stage is repre- sented by the mosaics of S. Apollinaris Nuovo, built by Theodoric about the year 500. Those in the upper part of the nave narrate the miracles and incidents of Christ's life. They are better compositions than the 1 Besides the noble composition of Christ as the Good Shepherd amid his sheep, the Maosoleam contains (amonjir other pictures) an early and idealized representation of a martyrdom. St. I^wrence bearinf( a cross advances toward the f^ridiron set on a bed of flames ; the picture shown no torture, suggests no pain, but only the triumph of the martyr's faith, z