Built across two regimes
Work on San Vitale began around 526, when Ravenna was still ruled by the Ostrogoths, under Bishop Ecclesius. It was paid for by a wealthy banker, Julianus Argentarius, who according to the ninth-century chronicler Agnellus spent 26,000 gold coins on it. By the time the church was consecrated in 547 by Bishop Maximian, Justinian’s armies had taken the city, and the decoration became a celebration of the new imperial order.
An octagon inside an octagon
San Vitale is not a long basilica but a centrally planned church. A tall central octagon, crowned by a dome, is surrounded by a lower octagonal walkway, the ambulatory, with a gallery above it. Seven of the eight sides open into curved niches with columns; the eighth leads to the presbytery and the apse. The plan is close to that of the church of Saints Sergius and Bacchus in Constantinople, built in the same years.
The dome is light: its builders used hollow clay tubes fitted into each other, which reduced the weight on the walls. The marble capitals, carved in deep openwork like baskets and topped by blocks carved with crosses, were probably made in workshops near Constantinople and shipped to Ravenna.
The mosaics of the presbytery
The mosaics are concentrated around the altar. In the apse, a youthful Christ sits on a blue globe, offering a crown to Saint Vitalis, while Bishop Ecclesius, on the other side, presents a model of the church. On the side walls, biblical scenes, the offerings of Abel and Melchizedek and the hospitality of Abraham, point to the sacrifice celebrated at the altar below. Moses, prophets and evangelists fill the spaces between.
Lower down on either side of the apse are the two most famous images: the emperor Justinian with Bishop Maximian, clergy, courtiers and guards, and opposite him the empress Theodora with her ladies. They show the rulers bringing gifts to the church, though neither ever came to Ravenna. What the Justinian mosaic shows, and who its figures are, has a page of its own.
A model for Charlemagne
About 250 years later, Charlemagne, who had visited Ravenna, built his palace chapel at Aachen as an octagon with an ambulatory and gallery, clearly inspired by San Vitale. Through Aachen, the plan reached medieval Germany. San Vitale has been part of the UNESCO World Heritage Site of the early Christian monuments of Ravenna since 1996, and it remains one of the few places where early Byzantine art survives in its original setting.
Where to see it
San Vitale stands in the historic centre of Ravenna, in the same enclosure as the Mausoleum of Galla Placidia and the National Museum.
Sources
- Opera di Religione della Diocesi di Ravenna, “Basilica di San Vitale”.
- UNESCO World Heritage Centre, “Early Christian Monuments of Ravenna”.
- Agnellus of Ravenna, Liber Pontificalis Ecclesiae Ravennatis (9th century).
- D. M. Deliyannis, Ravenna in Late Antiquity (Cambridge, 2010).
