File:History of mediæval art (1893) (14776642461).jpg

Identifier: historyofmedival00rebe (find matches)
Title: History of mediæval art
Year: 1893 (1890s)
Authors: Reber, Franz von, 1834-1919 Clarke, Joseph Thacher, d. 1920
Subjects: Art, Medieval
Publisher: New York : Harper & Bros.
Contributing Library: Boston Public Library
Digitizing Sponsor: Boston Public Library

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he Alps. In thepresbytery the altar, the ambones, and the columns were of silver.The extended surfaces of the upper walls and vaults were coveredwith mosaics upon gold ground. There was no part of the interiorwhich did not tax all the resources of a lavish age. Great as was this magnificence it was surpassed by the artisticconception of the monument. In this enormous enclosure the ad-vantages of a nave, or at least of an emphasized longitudinal axis,and of many of the rectangular forms of the basilica, were happilycombined with the majesty, the rhythmical picturesqueness, and thesafety from fire peculiar to the vaulted churches of concentric plan. ST. SOPHIA. 59 The problem of the most advantageous combination of a dome withlateral aisles was here definitely solved. The Church of St. Sophiawas the proudest achievement of the Byzantine style, and for centu-ries was justly regarded as a model. The fact should not, however,be overlooked that this building shared in full measure the chief
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Fig. 34.—View of the Interior of the Church of St. Sophia in Constantinople. defect of Byzantine, and indeed of all early Christian architecture,namely, the one-sided development of the interior at the expenseof the exterior. Its brick masonry, without revetment, displays notraces of any design beyond the utilitarian construction of the en-closure. There is something excessively clumsy in the heavy andunmembered side piers, in the exterior transition between the cupola 6o EARLY CHRISTIAN AND BYZANTINE ARCHITECTURE. and the square, and in the many squat buttresses which surroundthe subsidiary apses. And a confused character of agglomerationresulted, even before the later additions, from the diverging lines ofthe windows, the varied curves of the apses, and the unrelated sur-faces of the different roofs. To this it must be added that theconches, whose metal sheathing rests directly upon the vaulting,appear to sink into the walls beneath them, these being carried upvertically upon the

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