Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 20.djvu/314

Rh 296 R A V R A V of perpetuating its kind. The Raven measures about 26 inches in length, and has an expanse of wing considerably exceeding a yard. Its bill and feet are black, and the same may be said of its whole plumage, but the feathers of the upper parts as well as of the breast are very glossy, re- flecting a bright purple or steel-blue. 1 The species inhabits the whole of Europe, and the northern if not the central parts of Asia; but in the latter continent its southern range is not well determined. In America 2 it is, or used to be, found from the shores of the Polar Sea to Guatemala if not to Honduras, but is said hardly to be found of late years in the eastern part of the United States. In Africa its place is taken by three allied but well-differentiated species, two of which (Corvus umbrimis, readily distin- guished by its brown neck, and (7. affinis, 3 having its superior nasal bristles upturned vertically) also occur in South-Western Asia, while the third (C. leptonyx or C. tingitamis, a smaller species characterized by several slight differences) inhabits Barbary and the Atlantic Islands. Further to the southward in the Ethiopian Region three more species appear, whose plumage is varied with white C. scapulatiis, C. albicollis, and C. crassirostris the first two of small size, but the last rivalling the real Raven in that respect. (A. N.) RAVENNA, chief city of an Italian province of the same name, contained 18,571 inhabitants according to the census of 1881. It is situated in the north-east of Italy, in 44 25' N. lat. and 12 12' E. long., about 4 miles from the Adriatic, with which it is now connected by the Cor- sini Canal, the two small rivers Ronco and Montone no longer serving as means of communication between the city and the sea. A railway, 26 miles long, unites Ravenna with Castel Bolognese on the line from Bologna to Rimini. Ravenna owes both its great historic importance in the past and its comparative dulness and obscurity in the present to the same cause, its position in an alluvial plain, formed and continually extended by the deposits brought down by a number of small and rapid streams from the neighbouring Apennines. Any one who glances at a map of the north-western corner of the Adriatic will see at once the general character of the coast, broad lagunes sometimes stretching far inland ; flat alluvial plains intersected by endless dykes ; numerous rivers (of which the Po is by far the largest and makes the most conspicuous delta) descending from the Apennines or the Alps ; and, outside of all, a barrier of islands which have a continual tendency to become adherent to the shore through the new deposits which are brought down, and thus to be turned from islands into low hills. This de- scription suits Venice nearly as well as it suits Ravenna, and the chief difference between these two great historic cities is that the lagunes of Ravenna are about twenty centuries older than those of Venice. The one transcendent interest of Ravenna to a modern traveller consists in its churches. No other city in the world offers so many and such striking examples of the ecclesiastical architecture of the centuries from the 4th to the 8th. The stylo is commonly called Byzantine, and no doubt from the close connexion of Ravenna with Constan- tinople considerable influence was exerted by the latter city on the former ; but some of the most striking features of the churches of Ravenna the colonnades, the mosaics, 1 Pied examples are not at all uncommon in some localities and wholly white varieties are said to have been seen. 2 American birds have been described as forming a distinct species under the name of Corvus carnivorus or C. cacolotl. 3 Mr Sharpe (Cat. B. Brit. Museum, iii. p. 45) separates C. affinis as forming a distinct genus Rhinocorax ; but it is a hard task on any reasonable ground to break up the genus Corvus as long accepted by Bystematists. perhaps the cupolas are not so much Byzantine as rcpr sentative of early Christian art generally. It is truly saic by Mr Freeman : "The outside of a Ravennese basilica is an unadorned and un- attractive pile of brick. If it has any architectural grouping or outline about it, it owes it to the campanile which a later age has added. But if the churches of Ravenna are thus unattractive without, they are emphatically all glorious within. The eye dwell with genuine artistic delight on the long unbroken rows of pillar and arches, their marble shafts, their floriated capitals, sometime the work of the Christian craftsman, sometimes the spoils of heathen- dom pressed into the service of the sanctuary. . . . The whole plan of these buildings allows a great field for void spaces ; but tr, void spaces thus left are filled up by these wonderful mosaic pair ings which look down upon us as fresh as they were thirteen hundr years back." Every traveller to Ravenna is impressed by the vivi ness of these decorations, which were older when Giotto painted his first fresco than Giotto's frescos are now ; but we can here only allude to the subject, referring the reader to the article MOSAIC (vol. xvi. p. 852 sq.). The following are the most important churches ol Ravenna, arranged in the order of the dates generally attributed to them : Church. Builder. Date. 1. Metropolitan Church, or Ecclesia Ur- siana, and baptistery adjoining 2 8 Giovanni Evangelista S. Ursus 370-390 (?) | 425 about 430 about 450 >i about 458 493-526 about 530 about 535 worship.) Galla Placidia 3. S. Agata 4. S. Pier Crysologo (chapel) Gemellus S. Peter Chrysologus . . Baduarius Galla Placidia 5. S. Giovanni Battista 6. 88. Nazario e Celso 7. S. Pier Maggiore (now S. Francesco). . 8. 8. Teodoro (now Santo Spiri to) A. .. 9. S. Maria in Cosmodin (Arian bap- tistery) A. 10. S. Martino in Coelo Aureo (now S. Apollinare Nuovo) A. 11. S. Vitale Bishop Neon (?) Theodoric (?) Julianus Argentarius. . Bishon Rr.filesins . 12. S. Maria Maggiore 13. S. Apollinare in Classe Julianus Argentarius . . (The churches marked A. were originally erected for the Arian The cathedral (No. 1) has been so much modernized as to have lost its interest ; but the baptistery adjoining it, decorated by Bishops Neon and Maximiau in the 5th and 6th centuries, an octagonal building with mosaics of the apostles on the roof, is still unspoiled. SS. Nazario e Celso (No. 6) is a little building in the form of a Latin cross, and is better known as the mausoleum of Galla Placidia, whose tomb and those of three emperors, her hus- band, brother, and son, are deposited here. It is surmounted with a cupola surrounded with four semi-domes, on which are depicted figures of the Good Shepherd with His sheep, of evangelists, prophets, &c., and two stags drinking at a fountain. S. Apollinare Nuovo (No. 10) has above the arches of the nave what is perhaps the greatest triumph of mosaic art, two processions of virgins and of martyrs marching, the former from the city of Classis, the latter from the palace of Theodoric, to the Saviour. In the former group Christ sits upon the lap of His mother, and the Magi are interposed between Him and the procession of virgins. In the latter He is en- throned in glory and guarded by four ministrant angels. S. Vitale (No. 11) is doubly interesting as having furnished the model after which Charles the Great built his imperial minster at Aix-la-Chapelle and as containing full-length contemporary portraits in mosaic of Justinian and Theodora, surrounded by ecclesiastics, courtiers, and soldiers of the guard. It is surmounted by a dome, is circular in form, and has eight apsidal chapels all round it, one of which, correspond- ing to the choir in an ordinary church, is prolonged to about four times the length of the other apses. Unfortunately, only in this choir have the mosaics been preserved, but they are of the highest possible interest. S. Apollinare in Classe (No. 13), once the centre of a busy population of sailors, shopkeepers, and dock -labourers, now stands absolutely alone in a wide and desolate expanse 2 miles from the sea. The decorations of the church have suffered from damp there are frequently some inches of water on the pavement but the twenty-four stately marble columns with Corinthian capitals form a magnificent prelude to an apse covered with mosaics, among which is conspicuous a great jewelled cross, symbolizing the Saviour on the Mount of Transfiguration ; Moses and Elias lean forth from the clouds on either side, and in the valley below the apostles wait, represented symbolically as sheep. Many mosaic portraits of bishops of Ravenna are on the walls of the church, and a mosaic picture, representing Constantino Pogonatus and his brothers be- stowing a privilegium on Bishop Reparatus about the year 670. History. Strabo mentions a tradition that Ravenna was founded by Thessalians, who afterwards, finding themselves pressed on by