Laura Chinellato: L’ara di Ratchis a Cividale

Abstract

A good mosaic should have a clear-cut frame, a central panel proposing the main subject, and subsidiary ones amplifying the theme. Laura Chinellato’s L’ara di Ratchis a Cividale is indeed such a successful mosaic of words and ideas. Its frame is made up of a prelude and postlude by two distinguished medieval art scholars, Valentino Pace and Hjalmar Torp; its centerpiece consists of the author’s extensive and enlightened formal, iconographic, epigraphic and material analysis and is further amplified by experts in related areas – Stefano Gasparri (history), Laris della Pietra (liturgy), Maria Teresa Constantini, (conservation, restoration, reconstruction of polychromy), and Alessandro Princivalle and Davide Manzato (scientific analysis and measurements). All in all, this book is a model enterprise creating a material and spiritual ID, indeed a biography, of a key work of Pre-Romanesque figurative arts. As emphasized by Valentino Pace in his Preface, the Altar of Ratchis is “among the most important monuments of the 8th century”, one in which “epigraphy, figured images, signs, material and color converge to communicate a message of faith and prestige, which this book helps us understand”. But it is also a station on a way to the future, for, as stated by Hjalmar Torp in his concluding remarks, this is a work “based on twelve years of research which includes a detailed analysis of 300 years of scholarship constitutes … a firm point of continuous research.”