National Museum of Ravenna, National museum and art collection in Ravenna, Italy.
The National Museum of Ravenna occupies the former Benedictine monastery of San Vitale and displays archaeological finds, artworks, and historical artifacts across several exhibition rooms. The collection spans multiple periods and documents the artistic and cultural history of the region.
The core of the collection comes from the Camaldolese monks of Classe, especially Pietro Canneti. After religious orders were suppressed, the monastery's objects passed to the city, which founded the Museo Classense Municipale in 1804. Enrico Pazzi reorganised the holdings in 1884–1885 in the monastery and church of San Romualdo; the museum became state property in 1887 and moved to the San Vitale monastery in 1913.
The ivory collection's centrepiece is the Murano Diptych, made in Egypt in the early 6th century as the front cover of a Gospel book, carved with Christ enthroned among four apostles, four of his miracles and scenes from Jonah. The icon collection of nearly two hundred panels is mostly in the Cretan-Venetian manner of the 15th to 17th centuries, mainly Virgin and Child types such as the Glycophilousa and Odighitria.
The museum sits on Via San Vitale, beside the Basilica of San Vitale, in the former Benedictine monastery. Its rooms and cloisters are arranged around the courtyard, which holds Roman and early Christian sculpture, stone crosses of the 4th–5th centuries and sarcophagi. The detached 14th-century frescoes by Pietro da Rimini, taken from the former church of Santa Chiara, are among the works to seek out.
The museum's ivory collection centres on the Murano Diptych, carved in Egypt in the early 6th century as the front cover of a Gospel book. Christ enthroned among four apostles fills the middle; below are the three young Jews in the furnace, four of Jesus' miracles at the sides, and episodes of Jonah at the bottom.
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