Identifier: italiancities01blas (find matches)
Title: Italian cities
Year: 1903 (1900s)
Authors: Blashfield, Edwin Howland, 1848-1936 Blashfield, Evangeline Wilbour, d. 1918
Subjects: Art -- Italy Cities and towns -- Italy Italy -- Description and travel
Publisher: New York : Scribner's
Contributing Library: University of California Libraries
Digitizing Sponsor: MSN

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the purple shoes of the Emperors ofthe West had hardly died away from the pavementof Eavenna, and after the Ostrogoths they wereto come again on the feet of the exarchs of thatJustinian and Theodora who still blaze upon thewalls of San Vitale. A little later and the floorof the basilica heard a very different tread, and rangto the mailed heels of Charlemagne. Seizing boththe shadow and the substance, the great Charlestook the crown and the prestige at Kome, the col-umns and the bas-reliefs at Eavenna, as, guardedby Frankish soldiers, wain after wain laden withthe spoils of Theodorics palace, the white oxenof Emilia straining at the yoke, creaked away to-ward Ingelheim and Aix-la-Chapelle. Franks andeven Lombards were, however, still in the futurewhen the Greek workmen on their scaffoldino; abovethe capitals stood before the growing frieze, labori-ously building with little cubes of gold and colorthis Palatiuni of Theodoric, this Classis with 28 RAVENNA INTERIOR OF SAN APOLLINARE NUOVO
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RAVENNA its towers and ships, shaping the Magi and addingone virgin after another till the whole tale oftwenty-two stood processional and complete, facingthe saints and patriarchs of the other side. He wasa real artist, this Greek, for he was of a real artepoch. When he worked upon the friezes, some-where about the year 560, the founder of thechurch, Theodoric, had been long laid away underthe giant monolith which covers his tomb, and hisland had passed into the hand of the ByzantineJustinian, in whose city of Constantinople a trueart-growth was stirring. There, in the new capitalof the world, ideas as new as the city were springingup, and the nation was in that state of agitationand ferment at all times productive of great resultsfor good or evil. A double evolution was being accomplished.From the theological counter-currents, the ideas ofbishops, — Greek, Latin, and African, — the evolutionof dogma; from the art experience of East andVVest, — the arcades of Spalato and of Syri

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