Ravenna and the Near East: wall mosaics between Vth and VIth centuries

Abstract

As a bridge between East and West, the city of Ravenna, in fifth and sixth centuries, thanks to the wall mosaics of religious buildings, emerges among the main centers of the empire. This is why Ravenna mosaic art fits perfectly into a cultural and artistic koinè that, by parallel historical and political events, has Mediterranean Sea as a common denominator, epicenter of an articulated system of civilization that for centuries has collected and melted harmoniously cultures of heterogeneous people.

With the gradual decline of Rome, a center of development and fertile meeting ground of new cultures became Constantinople, from which Ravenna, three times capital since 402, acquired cosmopolitan characteristics, assimilating and elaborating ideological and cultural contributions. In addition to the undoubted, but not unique, Constantinopolitan influences on the Adriatic city, through the analysis of wall mosaic decorations, it is possible to draw a common thread that ties the last capital of the Western Empire to the centers of the Near East, particularly to the Greek, Cypriot and Syrian areas, in relation to the historical context and to the main iconographical, iconological, stylistic, technical and material elements, pointing out, although heterogeneity, some salient similarities. Decorative programs appear related to dogmatic purposes that go beyond the territorial peculiarities of each center. In this background, mosaic emerges as the most effective means of communication to express, with simplicity and splendor at the same time, the concepts of the divine world and the imperial power, strongly united, following the current ideology, in close connection with the monumental context.