"In quel loco fui 10, Pier Damiano,
e Pietro Peccator fu nella casa
Di nostra Donna in sul lito Adriano,"[2]
is commented upon in one of Boccaccio's letters to his friend Petrarch.[3] It is true both Peters were of Ravenna, but whereas Blessed Pietro Il Peccatore was of the Onesti family, as was S. Romuald, S. Pietro Damiano was not; the last died in 1072 at Faenza as we have seen, the first as we may think in 1119.
[Footnote 1: It is I confess doubtful whether Pietro degli Onesti was ever called Il Peccatore till a later epoch. The authenticity of the letters in which he so styles himself is open to question and the inscription on his tomb is it seems of the fifteenth century.]
[Footnote 2: Paradiso, xxi. 121-123. "In quel loco" refers to Fonte
Avellana.]
[Footnote 3: Cf. Corazzini, Lettere edite ed inedite di Giovanni
Boccaccio (Firenze, 1877), p. 307.]
Now though all were famous and all were of Ravenna it is the last and I suppose the least of them who is most closely connected with the city. The others went away and won, not only great place in the world, but an everlasting fame. Blessed Pietro Il Peccatore stayed in Ravenna and built there outside the walls in the marsh between Ravenna and Classe the great home of Our Lady, S. Maria in Porto fuori. About the middle of the eleventh century, Dr Ricci tells us, certain religious retired into the solitude by the shore of the Adriatic and there built a little church or oratory that was called S. Maria in fossula. In this act we may certainly see the example of S. Romuald. But about 1096 there joined himself to them Pietro degli Onesti called Il Peccatore, and perhaps because he was of the Onesti he built there a new and a larger church, it is said in fulfilment of a vow made, as was Galla Placidia's, in a storm at sea. It is this church which in great part we still see, with additions of the thirteenth century, a lonely and beautiful thing in the emptiness of the sodden fields to the south-east of Ravenna between the Canale del Molino and the Fiumi Uniti.
The lonely and melancholy church of S. Maria in Porto fuori is a basilica consisting of three naves which formed a part of the original church of the Blessed Pietro, and a presbytery, apse, and chapels which are of the thirteenth century. There we see some frescoes of a very beautiful and early character which have been erroneously attributed to Giotto, and as erroneously it might seem to Peter of Rimini.
[Illustration: INTERIOR OF S. MARIA IN PORTO FUORI]
They were the gift of a certain Graziadeo, a notary who in 1246 provided the cost of the work, which was carried out it would seem by Maso da Faenza (1314), Rastello da Forll (1350-60), Giovanni da Ravenna (1368-96), and other painters of the Romagnuol school.[1] These works, which are among the loveliest we have of the school, may be noted as follows: in the nave to the left we see the Madonna and Child with four saints; here, too, is S. Julian. Upon the triumphal arch we see in the midst the Saviour and on the one side Antichrist and the martyrdom of the saints, on the other the defeat and end of Antichrist who is beheaded by angels. Beneath are scenes of Paradise and Hell. On the roof of the choir we see the Evangelists with their symbols and the Doctors of the Church. Upon the right the Death, Assumption, and Coronation of the Blessed Virgin, together with the Massacre of the Innocents and the Last Supper and perhaps S. Francis and S. Clare. Upon the left we have the Birth and Presentation of the Blessed Virgin in the Temple. The last two figures upon the right here are said to be portraits of Giotto and Guido da Polenta by those who attribute these works to the Florentine master. In the chapel on the left we see pope John I. before Theodoric, pope John in prison, and in the lunette the martyrdom of a saint. Close by are other frescoes repainted of S. Apollinaris and S. Antony Abbot. In the chapel on the right we see perhaps S. John baptising a king, S. John preaching, and Blessed Pietro Il Peccatore healing the blind and sick. Here too would appear to be scenes from the life of S. Matthew, but unhappily the subjects are all of them obscure and difficult to interpret. At the end of the apse we see the three Maries at the Sepulchre and the Incredulity of S. Thomas.
[Footnote 1: Cf. Dr. Ricci, Guida di Ravenna (Bologna, fourth edition), and see Anselmi, Memorie del Pittore Trecentista Petrus da Rimini in La Romagna (1906), vol. III. fasc. Settembre.]