(Irado. and Parenzo. l'onstantinople and Thessalonica. also. were independent centres, radiating- over ;;roof: 1:11u1s;., Bottle preserves the earliest Christian works at Santa ('ostanza. similar in Catacomb frescoes. and at Santa 1'1111mi/hula. the counterpart of the Christian sarcophagi with Christ and the .\pos tle-. The earliest series where mosaie painting attempts a gyeat scheme of subjects taken from the ()Id and NeW Testaments is in Santa Alaria Alaggiore in Dome, tot apse. triumphal arch. and nave. The mosaic, over the chancel arch of Saint Paul's, representing subjects from the .\pnealypse, date from the fifth century. In both eases the composit hut is still confused, the art has not vet found itself. It was front Creek artists that the solution came, in the introduction of the itniform gold Imekg,Tomid, against which the figure.: stood out (dearly, as emnpared with the old white ground. At Ravenna we see this stele in its earliest glory in the two baptisteries (fifth century), and especially in the mausoleum of Calla Placidia (440) and later in the Church of Sant' Apollinare Nuovo (e.5(l0-550). The lat
ter monument has its (Mire main walls covered with a triple row of mosaics. Creek also is the culminating work of the sixth cen tury, the decoration of San Vitale, also at Ravenna, with its IWO great historic panels of Justinian and Theodora, the Byzantine court and the ecclesiastical grandees.
Meanwhile the 1:onian school had somewhat fallen from its supremacy, for the only great work after Saint Paul's was the mosaic of Saints Cosmos and Damian (530), after which Rome suffered from the wars between the Coths and Byzantines and the attacks of the Lombards. The decline reached Ravenna in the seventh cen tury. as is shown at Sant' in Ciasse, and continued in route, with Italo-Byzantine stiffness, as in the works at San Lorenzo, Sant' Agnese, and San Venanzio. The coloring is still superb, hut the figures are rigid and staring.