
- 258 pages
- English
- ePUB (mobile friendly)
- Available on iOS & Android
About this book
Sancta Sophia is the most interesting building on the world's surface. Like Karnak in Egypt, or the Athenian Parthenon, it is one of the four great pinnacles of architecture, but unlike them this is no ruin, nor does it belong to a past world of constructive ideas although it precedes by seven hundred years the fourth culmination of the building art in Chartres, Amiens, or Bourges, and thus must ever stand as the supreme monument of the Christian cycle. Far from being a ruin, the church is one of the best preserved of so ancient monuments, and in regard to its treatment by the Turks we can only be grateful that S. Sophia has not been situated in the more learned cities of Europe, such as Rome, Aachen, or Oxford, during "the period of revived interest in ecclesiastical antiquities." Our first object has been to attempt some disentanglement of the history of the Church and an analysis of its design and construction; on the one hand, we have been led a step or two into the labyrinth of Constantinopolitan topography, on the other, we have thought that the great Church offers the best point of view for the observation of the Byzantine theory of building.William Richard Lethaby (18 January 1857–17 July 1931) was an English architect and architectural historian whose ideas were highly influential on the late Arts and Crafts and early Modern movements in architecture, and in the fields of conservation and art education.
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Table of contents
- Title page
- TABLE OF CONTENTS
- PREFACE
- CHAPTER I - THE CITY OF CONSTANTINE AND THE FIRST CHURCH
- CHAPTER II - JUSTINIAN’S CHURCH
- CHAPTER III - THE SILENTIARY’S POEM
- CHAPTER IV - THE AMBO
- CHAPTER V - THE RITUAL ARRANGEMENTS AND INTERIOR PARTS OF THE CHURCH
- CHAPTER VI - RELICS, TREASURE AND THE LIGHTING OF THE CHURCH
- CHAPTER VII - LATER HISTORY AND LEGENDS
- CHAPTER VIII - FOSSATI’S REPARATIONS. SALZENBERG’S DESCRIPTION.
- CHAPTER IX - THE ANCIENT PRECINCTS AND EXTERNAL PARTS OF THE CHURCH
- CHAPTER X - BUILDING FORMS AND THE BUILDERS
- CHAPTER XI - MARBLE MASONRY
- CHAPTER XII - BRONZE, MOSAICS, INSCRIPTIONS