File:Italian cities (1903) (14753628876).jpg

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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nt of church his-tory, are artistically an anticlimax to one who comesto them from the nobler and more richly coloredmosaics of San Vitale, and it is hardly worth whileto dilute the strength of the impression made by theearlier and finer work. As the shadows climb thestill ruddy tower, an earthy chill fills the air,the huge, deserted church begins to cover its roughfagade of brickwork with a clinging cobweb-likerobe of fever mist, and we hurry away to thePinetum. After the Byzantine church-builders, seven cen-turies of oblivion followed for Ravenna, when thegreatest name of the Italian middle ages, that ofDante, illustrated her again. He died here in exile,and the Piazza of San Francesco, where he liesburied, epitomizes Ravenna, — Greek, mediaeval, andrepublican. There, in the pleasant sunlight underthe Gothic arches, are the sarcophagi of earlyChristians, dispossessed now and tenanted by Ra-vennese lords of the middle ages; opposite is the 40 RAVENNA ENTRANCE COURT OF SAN FRANCESCO
Text Appearing After Image:
RAVENNA accredited house of Trancesca da Eimini; LordByrons window is just beyond; at ones right isthe tomb of Dante; and at ones left, loaded withwreaths, a memorial tablet to Mazzini; the DivineComedy, Childe Harold, and the epoptea ofmodern Italian independence! Could one ask forricher suggestiveness of art and history ? It is, in-deed, almost too rich and too complex. Here inItaly, where the civilizations overlie one another, andwhere history is piled strata upon strata, we areperforce obliged to limit our impressions. In thisland which has been so much lived in, where therehas been so much doing and undoing, so over-muchhating and loving, memories are importunate andspirits defy exorcism. On every hand the illus-trious or romantic past crowds in upon the mind.The Greek jostles the Etruscan; the Mediaevaltreads on the heels of the Eoman; Goth and Lom-bard trample down the Byzantine ; the Mediaevalburgher is hard pushed by the man of the Eenais-sance, and the Garibaldino elbows the

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