Page:The Classical Heritage of the Middle Ages.djvu/354

 836 THE CLASSICAL HERITAGE [chap. Making allowance for these differences in types, in the fourth and fifth centuries painting was still one art, having substantially one and the same style throughout the Empire. There is no reason to suppose that in Italy it did not continue in the hands of Greeks, who would there have produced the same kinds of religious pictures as at Constantinople.^ These were the centuries when Christian mosaics reached the zenith of their excellence, as for instance in the church of S. Pudenziana and the mausoleum of Galla Placidia. Nothing in these compositions dis- tinguishes them stylistically from paintings previ- ously executed in Italy under pagan patronage, save their great excellence due to the revival of art under Christian inspiration. However, in tracing the course of that revival in those seats where it longest endured and produced most distinctive results, we shall also be tracing the development of Byzantine art. Rome was no longer the centre of power ; and after Alaric captured the city in 410, her great name gave no sense of security to her inhabitants. The safest place in Italy was Ravenna, lying surrounded by marshes near the Adriatic. There Honorius fixed the imperial court of the West in 404. Ravenna, being the seat of government, was the city in closest touch with Constantinople, the Eastern seat of empire. In consequence of all these circumstances the most beauti- ful mosaics of the fifth century are to be found at Ravenna, adorning the mausoleum of that same ener- getic princess whose beneficence adorned with mosaics 1 The reliefs of the doors of S. Sabina on the Aventine were probably executed in the fifth century by Greek artists.