[Footnote 1: See _supra_, p. 24.]
S. Maria in Porto fuori is undoubtedly the greatest monument that
remains to Ravenna of the Middle Age; nothing really comparable with
it is to be found in the city itself.
The earliest of the friars' churches, those great monuments of the
Middle Age in Italy, is S. Chiara which with its convent is now
suppressed and lost in the Recovero di Mendicita (Corso Garibaldi,
19). This convent, which dates certainly from 1255, was founded by
Chiara da Polenta and was rebuilt in 1794. It is from its garden that
we get our best idea of the church which within possesses frescoes of
the Romagnuol school, where in the vault we see the four Evangelists
with their symbols and the four Doctors of the Church. Upon the walls
we see a spoiled fresco of the Presepio, that peculiarly Franciscan
subject, and again the Annunciation, the Adoration of the Magi, the
Baptism of Our Lord, Christ in the Garden, the Crucifixion, and
various saints. These frescoes are the work of the men who painted in
S. Maria in Porto fuori.
It cannot have been much later that the church of S.
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