above the marble-faced walls. Garlands and decorative medallions
resembling snowflakes on a dark blue ground adorn the barrel vaults
of the nave and cross arms. The tower has a large golden cross set
against a star-studded sky. Representations of saints and apostles
cover the other surfaces. At the end of the nave is a mosaic repre-
senting Saint Lawrence next to the gridiron on which he was tor-
tured. The martyred saint carries a cross, suggesting that faith in
Christ led to his salvation.
Christ as Good Shepherd is the subject of the lunette (FIG.
11-16) above the entrance. No earlier version of the Good Shep-
herd is as regal as this one. Instead of carrying a lamb on his shoul-
ders, Jesus sits among his flock, haloed and robed in gold and purple.
To his left and right, the sheep are distributed evenly in groups of
three. But their arrangement is rather loose and informal, and they11-15Mausoleum of Galla Placidia, Ravenna, Italy,
ca. 425.
This cruciform chapel with a domed crossing is an early
example of the combination of central and longitudinal
plans. The unadorned brick shell encloses a rich ensemble
of mosaics (FIG. 11-1).11-16Christ as
the Good Shepherd,
mosaic from the
entrance wall of the
Mausoleum of Galla
Placidia, Ravenna,
Italy, ca. 425.
Jesus sits among
his flock, haloed
and robed in gold
and purple. The land-
scape and the fig-
ures, with their cast
shadows, are the
work of a mosaicist
still deeply rooted
in the naturalistic
classical tradition.MAUSOLEUM OF GALLA PLACIDIAThe so-
called Mausoleum of Galla Placidia, Honorius’s half-sister,
is a rather small cruciform (cross-shaped) structure (FIG.
11-15) with barrel-vaulted arms and a tower at the
crossing.Built shortly after 425, almost a quarter century
before Galla Placidia’s death in 450, it was probably in-
tended as a chapel to the martyred Saint Lawrence. The
building was once thought, however, to be Galla Placidia’s
tomb, hence its name today. Originally, the chapel ad-
joined the narthex of the now greatly altered palace-
church of Santa Croce (Holy Cross), which was also cruci-
form in plan. The chapel’s cross arms are of unequal length, so that
the building has a longitudinal orientation, unlike the centrally
planned Santa Costanza (FIGS. 11-11and 11-12), but since all four
arms are very short, the emphasis is on the tallcrossing tower with its
vault resembling a dome. This small, unassuming building thus rep-
resents one of the earliest successful fusions of the two basic Late
Antique plans—the longitudinal, used for basilican churches, and
the central, used primarily for baptisteries and mausoleums. It in-
troduced, on a small scale, a building type that was to have a long
history in church architecture: the longitudinally planned building
with a vaulted or domed crossing.
The chapel’s unadorned brick shell encloses one of the richest
mosaic ensembles (FIG. 11-1) in Early Christian art. Mosaics (see
“Mosaics,” page 303) cover every square inch of the interior surfaces
302 Chapter 11 LATE ANTIQUITY11-16A
Orthodox
Baptistery,
Ravenna,
ca. 458.