I didn't add any text to the last post, so I thought that I'd explain some of these images. The Pala d'Oro, that priceless gold, enamel and jewelled altarpiece in San Marco, explained by our wonderful Nick True
A practical demonstration in how egg tempera art is created, by Nigel McGilchrist, and a journey across the southern stretches of the lagoon to the deserted Abbey of Pomposa, first built in the 6th century and then enlarged in the 11th century by the talented and charismatic Abbot Guido to become an extraordinary centre of Benedictine monks, where the first ever musical stave was created by the monk, also confusingly called Guido (of Arezzo), written music, that we take for granted came from Pomposa.
From there we travelled down to Ravenna, to wonder at the 4th to 7th century mosaics that successive Romano.'Barbarian' rulers commissioned, from the Regent-Empress Gala Placidia (died 450) to Theodoric the Great, king of the Ostrogoths, to Justinian I
Mind-boggling to consider that these mosaics were being created a THOUSAND YEARS before the Renaissance artists such as Titian and Michelangelo were even born!
