The world's history Author:Hans Ferdinand Helmolt Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: 442. The old Byzantine art had then firmly planted itself everywhere in Italy. The arts and crafts of Constantinople enjoyed so excellent a reputation that the b... more »ishop of Siponto, a kinsman of the emperor Zeno, sent to Constantinople for artists " especially skilled " in architecture. At Ravenna, Byzantine craftsmen were employed as early as the time of Galla Placidia (see the illustration in Vol. IV, p. 470). The budding operations of Narses and Belisarius in Italy (the bridge over the Auio on the Via Salaria Nova, the Xenodocheion on the Via Lata, and the monastery of San Juvenale at Orte) were certainly carried out by Byzantine workmen. The cycle of mosaics of San Vitale at Eaveuna, begun after 539, was executed under the immediate influence of Justinian, in order to glorify the dual nature of Christ (cf. above, p. 42), and in special illustration of a biblical line of thought which was, undoubtedly, of Oriental origin, and found in the West its most brilliant representative in Ambrosius of Milan. The churches of Eavenna reveal to us the importance of Byzantium as linking East and West; these Chinese tessellated patterns, which developed from woven fabrics into mural decorations, appear here just as in the Hagia Sophia in Constantinople and in Thessalonica. The palace of Theodoric in Pavia was built after a model in Eavenna. On the other hand, there is less Byzantine architecture in Aix-la-Chapelle than was formerly supposed. The equestrian statue of Theodoric, the marble mosaics, the classical reliefs, came to Aix-la-Chapelle directly from Eavenna, and the palace forecourt (Chalke) is found in Aix-la-Chapelle just as in Ravenna and Constantinople ; in fact the hall which runs through this forecourt has retained its name (Cortinea). But the once prevalent idea of the imitatio...« less