From the Great Palace in Constantinople Justinian, probably the greatest o the Byzantine emperors, controlled an empire that ran from Italy, the Balkans, Turkey, the Middle East and the North African littoral. In 540 he conquered Ravenna, which became the seat of Byzantine government in Italy.
There are the great mosaics at Ravenna in its Basilica of San Vitale, which reminds me on the great Haghia Sophia, with the portraits of Justinian and his wife Theodora accompanied by their admirals, bishops, courtiers and eunuchs; the same intrigue-ridden court familiar from the written sources. The interesting thing about surviving corpus of Byzantine art is that away from these two isolated Ravenna panels its art is strictly non-secular. Across of a hundred ruined Byzantine churches in the Middle East the same smooth, resembling faces of the saints and apostles stare down like a gallery of mutes. Then came a surprise. A flock of tourists that were disturbing my intimacy with the mosaics metamorphosed into a choir. The silence and the coolness of San Vitale filled with beautiful Latin singing.
The mosaic of Empress Theodora is solemn and formal, with golden halo, crown and jewels, and a train of court ladies. She is almost depicted as a goddess. Theodora, posthumously ordained to a saint in the orthodox church, had a rather vivid life as evidenced in The Secret History written by Procopius: Brought up in a circus, as soon as she was old enough she joined the women on stage and became a courtesan. For she was not a flautist or a harpist; she was not even qualified to join the dancers; but she merely sold her attractions to anyone who came along, putting her whole body at his disposal... Later she used to tease her lovers by cracking dirty jokes and wiggling her hips suggestively and invited all who came her way, especially if they were still in their teens..
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