NOTE: Free essay sample provided on this page should be used for references or sample purposes only. The sample essay is available to anyone, so any direct quoting without mentioning the source will be considered plagiarism by schools, colleges and universities that use plagiarism detection software. To get a completely brand-new, plagiarism-free essay, please use our essay writing service.
One click instant price quote
P 1 -IP - HUM 140 - 0602 A- 07 Art Appreciation Constantinople, founded by the Roman emperor Constantine in 325 on the shores of the Bosporus, was intended as the new capital of the empire closer to the eastern border. But the establishment of an eastern capital effectively robbed Rome of its monopolistic power and thus eventually undermined it, giving rise to the split of the empire into a Greek East and Latin West. The resulting schism between the Greek Orthodox, or Byzantine, Church and the Latin-speaking Roman Catholic Church was also reflected in the different evolution of their architecture. This split became virtually codified by the death of Theodosius in 395 and the concomitant division of the empire between Honorius in the West and Arcadius in the East. By the time of Justinian in the sixth century, the locus of power firmly resided in the East, and the division between Byzantium and the Latin West had become irrevocable. Under most unpromising conditions the Byzantines fashioned a spiritual and material culture which came to be coveted by the surrounding world.
From the sixth century until the beginning of the ninth they were engaged in external and internal struggles of the gravest nature. The tide of Islam swept back the southern and eastern frontiers. The government and the Church were locked in a fierce controversy about the propriety of image worship, and both narrowly missed extinction by chaotic extra classical forces which the late antique world had barely excluded. The Empire survived because its comparatively orderly Roman frame was defended by heroic efforts and patched by compromise and adjustment. During the long struggle the medieval Byzantine state was formed; in the end high Byzantine culture emerged, a civilization in the ancient sense, dividing the shores of the Mediterranean with Islam. Byzantine institutions were seen as granted by God and presided over by the Emperor, and every facet of life reflected this doctrine.
All centered in Constantinople, where an organized government painstakingly maintained that image of a great Christian prince, especially favored by God and armored with gold, of which the distant nations dreamed. The straightforward exterior of the so-called Mausoleum of Galla Placidia in Ravenna, probably dating from the middle of the fifth century, with its plain brick surfaces, repeated cubical shapes, and simple lines of blank arcading, belies the extraordinary nature of its interior, which is perfect example of Byzantine style. This the architect obviously intended; exterior effects were being increasingly subdued and played down in order to awe the beholder and effectively translate his emotions when he stepped from the familiar world into the unannounced beauty and mystery of the spiritual house. Barrel vaults and a pendentive dome join the vertical planes of the walls in a mysterious envelope like that of the nearby contemporary Baptistry of the Orthodox. In the latter building an octagonal shell was magically closed to a hemispherical dome by a lacework of blank arcades and a dematerializing encrustation of color. The several horizontal registers of this transition are inhabited by a hierarchically ascending iconography of sacramentally appropriate figures and scenes.
This proto-Byzantine near denial of architectural solids by a nonstructural, optically and symbolically dominant lining is one of the major achievements of Christian art. After Justinian's death the construction of public churches nearly ceased, and for three centuries the palace was the only really important building site. An intricacy of varied structures spread gradually from the original palace of Constantine by the Hippodrome. Only a few foundations and textual references remain, together with a tenth-century record of the elaborate court ceremonies; paper reconstructions of the palace are extremely conjectural. 33 Yet two buildings, perhaps the most important ones, emerge more clearly than the rest. One, the Chrysotriclinos, was a late sixth-century audience hall rich with golden mosaics. Octagonal in plan and lit by sixteen dome windows, its apse housed the throne; throughout, the building published the secular dogma of the court.
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: Constantinian and Theodosius 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 Perigueux, 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. Bibliography: Leland M. Roth, Understanding Architecture: Its Elements, History and Meaning (New York: HarperCollins Publishers, Icon Books, 1993), 22 - 27.
Otto Deals, Byzantine Mosaic Decoration: Aspects of Monumental Art in Byzantium (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1953). Richard Krautheimer, Early Christian and Byzantine Architecture, Pelican History of Art, 3 rd ed. (Harmondsworth and New York: Penguin Books, 1979), 40 - 41.
Free research essays on topics related to: sixth century, constantinople, early christian, byzantine, architecture
Research essay sample on Sixth Century Early Christian
