Second Type Of Byzantine Church example essay topic

Whereas the early Christians developed basic centralized and basilican forms from which much of later medieval architecture in the West evolved, in the East the Byzantines turned to more exotic combinations of forms. These buildings were inspired by rich late Roman traditions, as exemplified by the complexities of Hadrian's Villa at Tivoli, and were often closely tied to imperial patronage. They drew on the intricacies of late antique plans, the form of the double-shell structures, and the growing early Christian predilection for the combined ensemble. This tradition culminated in Justinian's Haghia Sophia. Some of its precursors, and Haghia Sophia itself, in scale and complexity expressed the magnificence and power of empire and church. Large imperial projects abounded in Constantinople: Constantin ian and Theodosia n fortifications, the imperial palace complex, and the Hippodrome, all befitting the capital of the eastern Empire.

Some of these structures used innovative designs, particularly extensive underground cisterns constructed in the fourth and the sixth centuries to store water for the populace of Constantinople. These consisted of myriad small brick groin vaults supported on a forest of columns. Theodosius also built a great basilica, dedicated to Holy Wisdom (Haghia Sophia) on the highest ground of the peninsula separating the Bosporus from the Sea of Marmara. Overwhelming in size and exterior mass, yet ambiguous in apparent interior structure, Haghia Sophia stands magnificent, elusive, glittering, and immaterial in fabric, a fitting symbol of the rejuvenation of Byzantium under Justinian. No such overwhelming interior and exterior effects would be achieved again in medieval architecture until the great Gothic cathedrals of the thirteenth century. The first major type of Byzantine church consisted of variations of the axial five-domed cross, as we have seen at St. John at Ephesus, the Holy Apostles in Constantinople, and its surviving copy of San Marco in Venice.

The plan was also reflected at Saint-Front at P? rigueur, beginning about 1100 and the domed bay proliferated in Romanesque churches of southwestern France. A second type of Byzantine church, a variant of the five-domed configuration, known as the quincunx plan, placed four of the domes over corner bays and accentuated the central dome over the intersection of the longitudinal nave and a transverse space. As in the domed cross type, the transepts were usually contained within the outlines of the building. The shapes of the Pharos church, culminating in the central vault, were fittingly prepared for their sheath of hierarchically arranged mosaics: the Pantocrator (Christ as the Judge of All) in the central dome, with angels and evangelists in the drum and pendentive's, the Virgin in the quarter-sphere vault of the apse, and sacred scenes, saints, and hierarchs below. Because of its magnificently appropriate form and august origins, the Pharos type became the chief inspiration for Orthodox church architecture. Architecture for such a city as Constantinople would naturally be conceived in sympathy with classical ideals and perceptions, and would be influenced by classical qualities of design.

Indeed, the splendid churches erected in Constantinople during the two or three centuries after the building of the Pharos church were based, ultimately, upon classical principles of suitable and precise harmony of parts and the shaping of architecture to relate man to his aspirations. Several of these churches still exist, though crippled by time and altered by later Turkish reconstructions; from them the principles of the magnificent middle Byzantine style can be inferred.