The Shores of the Adriatic Part 20

At Agram a stele is preserved, found at Salona, which is of the shape of Coptic altars. On it is a representation of Jonah being vomited by the whale, and a head, with a curious kind of form at the bottom like the plan of an apse with a rail returned across the entrance. Dr.

Strzygowski gives similarly shaped stelai from Alexandria and Cairo, with incised awkward scrolls, and some of Arab date. He suggests that the shape originated with the altars in the apses above the relics of martyrs, and says that the Salona example (which is of the eighth century) is the most ancient that he knows, and the only Western example. The ivory chair of Maximian at Ravenna is another case in point. Maximian, before he was chosen bishop of Ravenna, had made a journey in the East, and visited Alexandria. Agnellus gives extracts from his own account of his visit. Apparently he ordered the chair from the ivory carvers there after his elevation, for the costume in the Joseph subjects, and the choice of that history, as well as the admixture of animal forms in the ornament, point to an Egyptian origin.

It seems probable that Ravenna was the centre from which the influence spread westwards. There were many Orientals in the city, Syrians being so numerous that they were able to nominate one of their number for the episcopal dignity. With the taking of the place by the Lombards the way was made open for the best craftsmen to migrate to the more important city of Pavia, the Lombard capital, and so to spread the Oriental influence farther and farther westward, though of course it also penetrated France by the ordinary trade routes through Narbonne and Ma.r.s.eilles. It is a curious fact that the plan of the great Rhenish churches, with the apses and transepts at each end, is found in North Africa at a much earlier date, which suggests direct intercourse, of which no record has survived.

The tracing of the various currents which united to form the full flowing river of that magnificent style known as Romanesque is a fascinating subject, but not one to be taken up at the end of a book which has already run to a considerable length. The fusing of antique Occidental art with Oriental may be said to have been the princ.i.p.al factor in its production; and, though the sh.o.r.es of the Adriatic were not the district in which its greatest triumphs were achieved, it was here that the fruitful union first took place which at various periods since has rejuvenated the dulled artistic senses of the Western peoples with the exciting stimulus of mysticism, of the unfamiliar, of that charm of colour and gorgeousness of effect, which are characteristic of the products of the Oriental imagination.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Map]