Identifier: byzantineromanes131jack (find matches)
Title: Byzantine and Romanesque architecture
Year: 1913 (1910s)
Authors: Jackson, Thomas Graham, Sir, 1835-1924
Subjects: Architecture, Byzantine Architecture, Romanesque
Publisher: Cambridge (Eng.) University press
Contributing Library: Wellesley College Library
Digitizing Sponsor: Boston Library Consortium Member Libraries

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res of saints standingin front of an architectural composition, representing ina conventional way churches with apses, hanging lamps,altars and domes, flanked by towers, and adorned withcurtains, while peacocks and storks perch in some of theniches. The ground is of gold. The saints have theirhands extended in attitude of prayer; they have nonimbus, and their names are inscribed, with the monthof their festival. These mosaics, which have been very highly praised,seem to me less interesting than is usual with Byzantine 72 SALONICA (CH. S. GeorgeThemosaicsof thedome work of the kind. Architecture even when treated asit is here, and in the wall decoration of Pompeii, in anabstract and conventional way, never rises to a highlevel of ornament: and here it certainly gives a dullnessto the design. It is difficult to derive any pleasure fromthese fantastic impossible structures, with tabernacle in-securely perched on tabernacle and pavements in false STSOPHL\ SALONICA (Texie^r HALF CROUMDPLAN
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HALF GAUXi^YPLAN SCAl.r or FEET Fig. 17 (from Texier). perspective. Nor do architectural forms lend themselveswell to display of colour, for which the draperies of figuresand the foliage of trees give such splendid opportunitiesin other mosaics at Salonica; and it is to magnificenceof colour that the art of the mosaicist must trust for itssupreme effects. As bearing upon the antiquity of these mosaics, CH. v) SALONICA 73 M. Texier observes that all the saints commemoratedlived before the reign of Constantine. It is in the old cathedral of S. Sophia at Salonica s. Sophia,(Fig. 17) that we first get the domical church on a squareplan instead of the long basilica, and in its arrangementsthere is something tentative, as if it were an experi-ment. The central part of the church consists of a Greekcross, with a dome over the crossing and four barrelvaults over the arms. The eastern arm is prolongedby one bay, and finishes with an apse, which is semi-circular within and polygonal without. A

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