Page:History of Architecture in All Countries Vol 1.djvu/457

Rh At Parenzo in Istria there is a basilica, built in the year 542 by the Bishop Euphrasius, and consequently contemporary with these

examples at Ravenna. This church still retains its atrium, baptistery, and other accompaniments, which those at Ravenna have lost. It consists of a basilica in three aisles, with an apse at the end of each, and an atrium in front, beyond which is situated the baptistery; and in front of this again a tower, with a circular chamber in it, though this latter feature seems to be of more modern date. On one side at the east end is a chapel or crypt; but it is by no means clear to what age it belongs, and for what purpose it was erected. It is apparently an excrescence, while all the other parts belong to the original design. Internally the church is 121 feet in length by 32 in width, and possesses all the usual arrangements of a church of that date. Some of its pillars are of the Corinthian order and are borrowed from some older edifice, but others are of pure Byzantine type (Woodcut No. 291), and were they all like this, would oblige us to defer the description of the building to a later page. It may, however, be regarded as a transition specimen, but one of such beauty as to make us regret that the barbarians on the other side of the Adriatic had not studied or appreciated its beauty. Externally the façade retains some of the painted decorations which seem to have been so fashionable at the time it was erected, but internally they have been entirely peeled off the nave, and though the apse is rich in marbles, mosaic and paintings, they are of a much later date than the building itself. As an edifice of the age of Justinian, and as showing the relative position of the various parts that made up an ecclesiastical establishment in those early times, it is singularly deserving of the attention of those to whom the history of art is a matter of interest.