Tailing Tomb

For a moment, all is silent but for the distant barking of a pack of dogs. Before me, the yellow roof of the long'en hall must once have gleamed in newness, but now lies lustreless, cracked and crumbling like the paving stones beneath my feet.

The courtyard with the grey stone altar is surrounded by a stand of darkling pines. Two sentinel hou sit stricken on their lonely plinths, their heavenward gaze obscured by moss and lichen. Behind me, the old memorial tower to the Yongzheng Emperor rises into a hazy sky, its central plaque bare but for the ghost of a Chinese character, the painted wood faded and flaked.

All around is decay and desolation, as perhaps befits a funerary monument.

Then the wind lifts again, carrying the chatter of the few tourists at the site. The sun, soft and watery, begins its long decline, lengthening the shadows that steal around the souvenir vendor as she dozes in her chair.

Basilica di San Vitale

In the subdued interior of the San Vitale, the mosaics gleam green and gold, sublime against the gloom.

Consecrated ten years after the Hagia Sophia in Constantinople – Justinian's other great architectural masterpiece – the apse mosaics of the San Vitale tell of the triumphant return of imperial authority and religious orthodoxy to a region recently reconquered from barbarian rule.

In the conch of the church (pictured above), above a blue orb of earth set in a shimmering golden firmament, sits Christos Cosmocrator: Christ the ruler of the universe. Youthful and beardless, he clasps the scroll of the apocalypse with one hand (it seven seals still reassuringly intact), while extending a crown of martyrdom to St Vitalis* with the other. To his left the Bishop Ecclesius, who commissioned the construction of the San Vitale, delivers up a model of the church to an angel.

Beneath the conch, two panels of mosaics depict Justinian and Theodora processing towards the altar – not that the imperial couple had ever visited the San Vitale. The emperor, crowned and haloed, bears a paten, while the empress carries a chalice. He is depicted at the head of the army and the clergy, in the company of Bishop Maximianus who consecrated the San Vitale. She is accompanied by a train of ladies-in-waiting, having come a long way from the dancing girl and harlot that she was when she first caught Justinian's eye.

Theodoric and his Ostrogothic line, however, are conspicuous by their absence.

* Vitalis of Milan isn't one of the more colourful characters in the canon. Martyred for his faith in Ravenna, he appears to be best known for having the San Vitale named after him.

Summer Exhibition 2012

In this year's Summer Exhibition, some of the smaller works have been collected and hung in a 'wave' to give them 'rhythm' and 'energy'. Visitors are encouraged to follow the 'flow', and I do – although I eventually drift off on a slipstream to explore some of the larger works as well. Here are my top three picks for this year, in reverse order:

3.  TQ 31949 05471 (charcoal on Bristol board)
     Peter Marsh

Marsh's charcoal drawing depicts a street half obscured in darkness. Its houses, brooding and silent, seem derelict; yet in the centre of the piece is what appears to be a spreading tree. The curious sense of foreboding evoked by the work is reinforced by its enigmatic title – a Torquay postcode followed by an incomplete OS reference? Unlikely...

2.  Andvord Bay, Antarctica (oil on wood panel)
     Frances Walker

Walker's triptych is visually arresting, its size conveying something of the sheer scale and elemental expanse of Antarctica. In the background broods the base of a snowy mountain, its peaks reflected in the occluded surface of the icy waters in the foreground. Although the peaks disappear into cloud in part of the triptych, in another is a dazzling patch of sky.

1.  Flood (blue pencil with black and white aquacry and aluminium)
     Shirazeh Houshiary

Blue seems to be the theme this year, as I move from Walker's frozen blue-and-white landscape to Houshiary's mesmerising blue-and-grey canvas, its patterned surface lined as if with ripples. Towards the top of the work, a black inky spot appears to be dissolving – or perhaps it is meant to be a vortex appearing out of the deep. The work carries a hefty price tag of £300,000, making it perhaps the most expensive work on sale at the Exhibition.

Honourable mention to Matthew Darbyshire for his tongue-in-cheek 'Untitled Homeware No. 13', a slightly kitsch yellow flock Buddha draped in a blue Union Jack; and to Lucy Glendinning for 'Feather Child I', a fascinating (and slightly disturbing) work of lifelike sleeping child fledged in down.

London 2012 Olympics

Mandeville and Wenlock outside St Paul's this morning.

It's been a great Games so far, London - go Team GB!

Fujian Tulou: Chengqilou

'Come,' she nods.

I follow as she mounts the stairs, one little old lady step at a time, keeping pace with her in an attempt to be companionable until she waves me on ahead. I wait for her on the landing as she toils upwards in her pink granny blouse: her hair lank and silver, her skin weatherworn and wrinkled. I imagine the life she must have led, the things she must have seen – but to broach any of that would have been tactless. An intrusion. Anyway my command of Chinese isn't up to it.

'Look,' she says, as she catches me up on the second floor. And there, beneath us, like a miniature walled city within a walled city, lies the coiled core of the Chengqilou (pictured above).