Sound and Sights of 6th Century San Vitale in Ravenna

Medieval Histories

9 years ago

Deal of the Mosaic in the Apse in San Vitale in Ravenna. Source: Wikipedia

San Vitale in Ravenna is one of the great wonders of this world. But how did 6th century people experience the sights and sounds of this magnificent building?

Exterior of San Vitale in Ravenna. Source: Wikipedia

Would that we might experience the world as it once was! However, more often than not we are left with a rather “flat” experience, when we enter one of the great monuments of the past. One of the reasons is, that it is complicated to fill the room with more than just the visual expressions, which the monument in its present-day form deliver to us. Sorely, we lack the sounds, the flickering lights and the smells of bygone days.

What to do? Archaeo-acustics is a new way of reconstructing at least some of these experiences. At the same time, this deliver us new and very valuable insight into the buildings, which are studied in detail through 3D reconstructions of sight and sound.

One building, which has undergone this new arcaeo-acustic treatment is San Vitale in Ravenna.

San Vitale was begun by Bishop Ecclesius AD 521 – 32. Later this work progressed under Bishops Ursicinus and Victor. The church was consecrated in 547 by Bishop Maximian. It was built in a cemetery and should probably be seen as a funerary. The basic design was without doubt Byzantine and comprised a central octagon with seven arched niches and a square chancel to the east, resting on eight piers and an ambulating oratory. A gallery or matrimonium was built on top of this. The building is a mixture of Byzantine and local traditions. The interior was richly embellished with marble and mosaics, while a mixture of marble and porphyry decorate the lower part of the apse. One of these mosaics is in the apse showing Christ clothed in imperial purple and seated on a blue sphere. He is flanked by two angels and to the left, San Vitale and to the right bishop Ecclesius holding a model of his church

Architectural Reconstruction in 3D

Part of the new study of the church have focused on the virtual reconstruction of the building in order to figure out how it was in fact designed and built. By investigating the exact design David J. Knight and Lamberto Tronchin have discovered that the church was in fact very carefully thought out. For instance they found that while the seven pairs of Proconnesian marble columns have octagonal bases resting on circular plinths, the arrangement in the Matronium on the second story was reversed. Here circular bases rest on square plinths. One conclusion is that the architects presumably had a model made of the church in order to demonstrate the architectural interplay of the different elements. Another argument for this is the very careful use of Roman land measurements in the articulation of the different parts of the building. “…important Roman land measurement remained part of the vocabulary of urban planning into the middle of the sixth-century”, writes the scientists (p. 6).

It is armed with this understanding they can claim that it is probable that the model held by Ecclesius in the mosaic in the apse (see featured photo) is probably the model built by the architects. This was a church, which presented itself as a unified whole.

3D Model and Acoustic Reconstruction

Interior of San Vitale in Ravenna. Source: Wikipedia

This detailed study of the actual building has also been used as a basis for a 3D or virtual reconstruction, which has served as a model for studying the church as an acoustic space. By “filling” the model with a recording of a piece of traditional chant from Ravenna, the general absorption and dispersal of sound could be documented. More specifically two artists – a man and a woman – sang the preserved chant Lux de Luce Deus tenebris illuxit Averni from the Easter Vigil, lucernarium. Although very little remains of Ravenna’s liturgical music, Milan preserves the full repertory of the liturgical chant, while two precious chants have been preserved in manuscripts from Benevento. One of these is the Lux de Luce, which is generally believed to be of northern origin; and predating the Lombard conquest.

Exactly how the archaeological visualisation has been carried out technically is well-hidden in a black box, which only the specialists have the key to open (anyone interested can get the full description in the article listed below and try to figure it out). What is interesting are the results. It appears that San Vitale was especially well designed to further clarity of an oratorical acclamation. “If the officiating priest intoned on an E, the entire volume of air within the church would resonate”, writes Knight and Tronchin.

Visual Experiments

Mosaic in the Apse of San Vitale in Ravenna. What is probably the original architectural model of the new church may be seen in the hands of the Bishop to the right. Source: Wikipedia

Another experiment was conducted by reconstructing the original windows in the church. Remnants of these still exist and are preserved in the Diocesan Museum collection nearby. These windows were made of intense blue, green, rose, purple and light brown and each measured 17 – 26 cm. By supplementing the 3D model of San Vitale carried out by Gianna Giannakopoulou in 2007 with these windows a sense of the bejewelled and flickering light served to document the acoustic and sensory experience of the church.

It appears that while men had ample visual access to the witness the central ritual (the Eucharist), the women were deprived of this both visually and acoustically. On the other hand, some of the women (those seated on the upper storey) might have had privileged access to studying the details in the glittering mosaics.

Lacking in this presentation is only the olfactory experience of incense mixing with the burning olive oil from the lamps, the smell of the wax candles on the altar, and the sensory impact, which chancel screens and hanging tapestries might have provided. These questions are however dealt with in the dense but extremely interesting thesis of David J. Knight, which the article builds upon.