File:History of art (1921) (14783376365).jpg

Identifier: historyofar02faur (find matches)
Title: History of art
Year: 1921 (1920s)
Authors: Faure, Elie, 1873-1937 Pach, Walter, 1883-1958
Subjects: Art
Publisher: New York and London : Harper & brothers
Contributing Library: PIMS - University of Toronto
Digitizing Sponsor: University of Toronto

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Ravenna (vi Century). Nave of Sant Apollinare Nuovo. is a natural one and well balanced in its elements. Ifthis spirit is less apparent in the great painted idolsand in the shining mosaics that decorate the conventsand churches from top to bottom, it is because there isless of suppleness in the material, because the surfacesto be covered make severer demands, because a decora-tive scheme is more necessary, and because the artistis under closer surveillance. Sometimes, upon contactwith the soil of Italy, at Ravenna, especially, the imagesturn into pictures full of movement, and figures pass 214 MEDIEVAL ART among the trees, among the herds, on the sea, or onthe shore. Almost always they are stiff, ranged in
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Ravenna (vi Century). Capital. (Sanf Apollinare Nuovo.) parallel lines, and possessing no more of the humanityof the Greeks than that expressed in the timid inclina-tions they make, one toward another, bending theii BYZANTIUM 215 heads and necks as if to recall the undulation of thegreat wave that once flowed over the pediments of theold temples. And yet, the soul of antiquity survivesin the great, simple gestures, the silence, the calmglances, the indefinable nobility and majesty thatdescend from the agony of the past. The soul of an-tiquity survives through their mere existence, becausethe people can pray before them, because they haveinvaded the altar, the chapels, and the reliquaries withthe gold and the silver and the ivory from which theyare cut and the jewels with which they are incrusted.During a century and a half of imperial ordinances, ofecclesiastical interdicts, of revolts and carnage, whenthe great sculptures of Asia and Greece lie broken inthe sanctuaries everywhere, no

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