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It is always the Mihrab which is decorated with the most elaborate richness; generally little columns of lapis lazuli, intensely blue, rise in relief from it, framing mosaics so delicate that they look like brocades of fine lace.
Nearly a thousand years old, it has an indescribable aspect of faded and tarnished splendor, and yet it presents an attractive whole quite unequalled. It combines Saracenic profusion with Christian emblems, weaving in porphyries from Egypt, pillars from St. Sophia, altar pieces from Acre, and a forest of Grecian columns. Especially is this church rich in mosaics those colors that never fade.
Its walls were decorated with large paintings of religious subjects, and its tribunal was studded with elegant mosaics. Thus it rose, simple and yet sublime, awful and yet alluring; in this its beginning, a type of the dawn of the worship which it was elevated to represent.
Apollinare in Classe, where I am to make some copies of the Mosaics, which I hope to begin to-morrow. A scaffolding has been prepared for me; and I went to see that all was ready." And then poor little Paolina was tempted to pour out all her heart and its troubles to her gravely kind and gentle friend.
The plan is a simple octagon, bare brick without, covered with a "tent" roof of amphorae under the tiles; but within, everywhere encrusted with glorious marbles and mosaics. It is to the mosaic of the cupola that we instinctively turn first, for it is, perhaps, the finest left to us in Ravenna. It is divided into three parts. In the midst is the Baptism of Our Lord on a gold ground.
They passed up by a marble terrace and entered the building through an archway so wide and lofty that it might have spanned many ordinary houses. Windows of jeweled glass scattered a thousand tints over walls and columns of barbaric splendor, where encrusted gems of every hue, scintillating with strange fires, were grouped in dazzling mosaics portraying historic scenes in endless pageant.
That was on July 24, 1177, and on the walls of the Doges' Palace we shall see pictures of the Pope's sojourn in Venice and subsequent triumph. The vestibule mosaics are not easy to study, as the best are in the domes immediately overhead. But they are very interesting in their simple directness. Their authors had but one end in view, and that was to tell the story.
The city was walled on the north, west, and south, and its river-front was protected by a mighty dike, built by Menes, the first king of the first dynasty in the hour of chronological daybreak. Within were orderly squares, cross-cut by avenues and relieved from monotony by scattered mosaics of groves.
Glazed tiles are inadmissible, as they become too hot for the naked feet; and if the slightest moisture come upon them they are rendered dangerously slippery. In elaborate baths, marble, and marble mosaics may be used, but the surface must not be too smooth. In providing floorings, the greatest care should be taken to avoid anything liable to become slippery to the tread.
And none of you have remembered that we must prepare supports within, for the execution of the mosaics, with many other difficult arrangements; but I, who see the cupola raised, I have reflected on all these things, and I know that there is no other mode of accomplishing them, than that of which I have spoken. Becoming heated as he proceeded, the more Filippo sought to make his views clear to his hearers, that they might comprehend and agree with him, the more he awakened their doubts, and the less they confided in him, so that, instead of giving him their faith, they held him to be a fool and a babbler.
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