GALLA PLACIDIA. – Daughter of Theodosius I, born around 386; in 402 she followed her brother Honorius to Ravenna when he became Western Emperor. Taken prisoner by Alaric, she was given in marriage to his brother-in-law Ataulf, whom she wed after Alaric’s death, perhaps to advance Ataulf’s imperial pretensions. When Ataulf was assassinated in 415 by Sigeric, Galla Placidia was welcomed back by her brother Honorius in Ravenna and married to the patrician Constantius (416?). On 8 February 421 Honorius granted Constantius and Galla Placidia the rank of Augusti and elevated their young son Valentinian to the rank of Caesar. After Constantius’s death (September 421 or 422), Galla Placidia, perhaps during a journey to Byzantium, fell out with Honorius. She returned to Italy after August 423 to secure her son Valentinian’s succession rights, which had been confirmed by Theodosius II after Honorius’s death, Valentinian having been elevated to the rank of Caesar.
During the minority of Valentinian III, Galla Placidia, from the palace in Ravenna, governed the Western Empire. Intrigues and murders marred her rule until February 450, when she is found in Rome together with Valentinian and his wife Eudoxia. On 22 February St Leo the Great delivered a homily before the imperial court in which he alluded to Theodosius I’s favouring of the Monophysite heresy. In response to this allusion, Valentinian, Eudoxia, and Galla Placidia sent letters to Theodosius. Galla Placidia’s letter is particularly vehement and is the last trace of her political activity. She died on 27 November 450 and was buried in the imperial mausoleum near St Peter’s in the Vatican.
According to later sources, Galla Placidia’s remains were transferred to Ravenna, to the famous mausoleum that bears her name, a monument of Byzantine art. C. Cecchelli suggests it is probable that Constantius, her husband, was also buried in the mausoleum. Galla Placidia’s name is inscribed on the triumphal arch of the basilica of St Paul in Rome, which she restored during the time of St Leo the Great.
The Mausoleum of GALLA PLACIDIA. – In Ravenna. To the south and connected by a narrow passage to the basilica of the Holy Cross, which was built in Ravenna around 420, in the second quarter of the 5th century, the small chapel was erected that has come down to us through the centuries under the name of the Mausoleum of Galla Placidia. After the front part of the basilica was demolished in 1602, it now stands nearly two metres below ground level in a green meadow, made to appear even smaller by the proximity of the Justinianic Basilica of St Vitalis. It has a slightly irregular cruciform plan, inclined slightly to the west, and is surmounted by a central dome, which in the lunettes has terracotta jars and at the apex a marble pinecone. The exterior, simple in its reddish brick facing with characteristic large bricks, is enlivened in the lower part by blind arcades and pilasters resting on a socle now entirely underground. The interior, however, in the vaults and lunettes is completely covered with mosaics, still classical in their ornamentation and figures, which are among the best preserved in Ravenna and among the finest left to us by early Christian art. The entire concept of this mosaic decoration is directed toward funerary cult and the exaltation of the Cross, which stands out at the centre of the dome against an azure sky sparkling with golden stars. In the spandrels are the symbols of the Evangelists, and inside are figures of the Apostles. In the lunette above the door is Christ the Good Shepherd, who in John 10 says of himself: “I am the door of the sheep... he who enters through me will be saved.” In the lunettes of the side arms, amid gilded foliage, are stags at the fountain, and in the lunette opposite the entrance is a depiction that has been and remains the most debated in its interpretation: St Lawrence and Christ the Judge? For most it represents the Roman deacon in a white tunic with clavus, holding the Cross and a book, standing before the gridiron of his martyrdom and a cupboard containing the Four Gospels. For all those, however, who see in the mosaic cycle of this chapel nothing other than the unfolding of an apocalyptic and eschatological concept, following Seston, it represents the Divine Judge, who through the Gospels will open the path to salvation for the just, while sinners will find on the altar of holocausts (the gridiron beneath which fire burns) their punishment. Despite all arguments, the simplest and most obvious interpretation remains that of St Lawrence, to whom the chapel seems to have been dedicated from the outset. Yet, bearing in mind the funerary concept of our mosaics, one may advance the hypothesis that the scene from the Old Testament, so common in funerary art and depicting the Three Young Men in the Furnace, was here intended to be replaced by that of the Christian martyr triumphant over fire, who through this victory has attained heaven and glory.
In the small monastery, which ancient documents call that of St Lawrence, then of SS Nazarius and Celsus, and finally also of SS Gervasius and Protasius, was Galla Placidia, who died in Rome on 27 November 450, ever buried? It is difficult to prove; indeed, everything seems to argue against this thesis. Nevertheless, the historians of Ravenna, almost unanimously, have always pointed to the large and roughly hewn Greek marble sarcophagus as the Augusta’s tomb, and to the other two, ancient and finely crafted, one certainly dating after the 5th century, as those of her relatives (Constantius [her husband?], Honorius [?], Valentinian [her son?]), though there is no trace of them in the original pavement of the chapel and certainly they were not originally in their present location. – See pl. CXXXVIII.