1894. 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. The attempt here is 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 Constantinopolian 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.

The clearing away of galleries, the provision of new seating and the renewal of much window tracery have been the principal changes, the greatest loss being the destruction of the Corpus Christi Chapel. The nave is of moderate width and consists of only four bays, the eastern arches being narrower and made to abut against the tower after the manner of flying buttresses. The columns are clusters of four large filleted shafts separated by small ones while the bases are high and evidently meant to be seen above the benches. The caps are shallow and very simple, while the shafts of each pier reappear as part of the arch moulding.

Unique among mission churches of the northern borderlands of colonial Mexico for its ornate architecture and rich iconography, San Xavier del Bac south of Tucson is a pilgrimage destination for countless devotees and tourists. Passing through the facade entry to stand in the nave, one is dazzled by the transept and sanctuary altarpieces of sculpture niches and baroque pilasters, as well as the expanse of the frescoed ceiling. This book is the first study of the iconography at San Xavier since its restoration in the 1990s by an international team of professional conservators. It expands our understanding of the numerous Catholic images and emblems of San Xavier through a close analysis of the newly revealed iconographic elements and an interpretation of the significance of their placement. It also proposes that the selection of specific religious themes and their locations was determined by an unfamiliar convention based on a tree-like design, in which the founder of a religious Order appears as the root and followers above in later branchings, n inversion of the more familiar top-to-bottom hierarchy. Historians Lange and Ahlborn identify all the saintly images and religious elements that adorn San Xavier and suggest how and why they are so arranged. They examine the sculptures and paintings of the church from the facade throughout the cruciform interior in order to determine the organizational concepts that underlie their placement. They note that the selection of images in this Franciscan mission follows traditional Roman Catholic practice for decorating churches in order to instruct novices and reinforce the teaching of conversion in a pictographic catechism of Church doctrine. In short, the book is a dictionary of religious personages and symbols that will help the visitor identify the biblical stories and people portrayed, as well as asso-ciated signs and symbols. Entries include a description of the subject, its location, appropriate cross-references, and a bibliography. Recent illustrations by photographer Helga Teiwes and a floor plan facilitate the location of images by visitors. A handsome, large-format book featuring more than one hundred photographs and supporting line illustrations, Lange and Ahlborn's work confirms the significance of San Xavier's iconography for art historians, students of religion, and visitors alike. It is both an incomparable guide and valuable reference source for the famed mission's magnificent artistic heritage.

1919. Wolff writes in the Preface: Paris Churches, many of them, have an entrancing historical as well as a precious architectural interest. Curious old legends are often connected with their foundation. I have aimed at giving in concise and simple form their history rather than a mass of architectural detail. Those who have time can study for themselves from personal observation, by far the best way, and with the help of books of reference, the intricacies of the architectural features of the Churches. It is a rich field of study. Many people from habit and knowledge are able to take in at a glance the most salient points of architectural interest. What we all love to know in looking upon and wandering through a grand building which has stood for ages, are the circumstances of its birth, the course of its growth, the stories connected with it. A wonderful collection of vignettes describing the great churches of Paris.

Augustus Welby Northmore Pugin (1812-1852) exercised a seminal influence on British architecture in the nineteenth century, though, as he himself acknowledged towards the end of his short life, it was probably more through his writing than through his buildings that he had 'revolushioned the Taste of England'. Pugin's important theoretical and polemical texts contain little by way of autobiography or description and comment on his own architecture. For these we must turn to his journalism and pamphlets. In The Present State of Ecclesiastical Architecture in England, he gives us some minutely detailed accounts with illustrations of his churches up to the year 1842. But his most revealing autobiographical writing is to be found in Some Remarks, published in 1850, which can be seen as essential for understanding the man and his collapse. It takes the story almost to the end of his life, includes an account of his conversion to Catholicism (1835), and describes many of the churches that he built between 1838 and 1850. Together they offer the most comprehensive contemporary guide to Pugin's architecture and a fascinating account of his campaign to revive the glories of the pre-Reformation Catholic Church in the context of the nineteenth-century Romantic Movement and the Catholic Revival. Never reprinted, Some Remarks is here presented in facsimile together with The Present State, and an introduction by the architectural historian and noted Pugin authority Dr Rory O'Donnell FSA - who has also written the introductions to the other volumes in this series of Pugin fascsimile editions.

Colombe provides a detailed description of the architectural peculiarities of these remarkable edifices. With 49 Illustrations and 3 plans. A fascinating and instructive overview of the Popes' Palace.

This scarce antiquarian book is a facsimile reprint of the original. Due to its age, it may contain imperfections such as marks, notations, marginalia and flawed pages. Because we believe this work is culturally important, we have made it available as part of our commitment for protecting, preserving, and promoting the world's literature in affordable, high quality, modern editions that are true to the original work.

Complete with descriptive illustrations, this useful resource offers essential information, guidelines, and cautionary advice on building projects for churches, synagogues, mosques, temples, and spaces for religious education. Covers issues such as consensus-based decision making, site selection, renovation, and code compliance.Gain insight into working closely with parishioners during the decision making process, incorporating iconography, and the emotional impact of space.

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In sending out this essay, the author asks for indulgence. In the first place, because this is, so far as was known to him, the only attempt to set out, from an architect's point of view, the basis of certain ideas common in the architecture of many lands & religions, the purposes behind the structure & form which may be called the esoteric principles of architecture. And secondly, for an attempt to deal with a subject that could only be rightly handled by one having the equipment of a wide scholarship. Illustrated. Partial Contents: Microcosmos; Four square; At the center of the earth; The Jewel bearing tree; Planetary spheres; Labyrinth; Golden gate of the sun; Pavements like the sea; Ceilings like the sky; Windows of heaven & three hundred & sixty days; Symbol of creation.

In most histories of Italian art we are conscious of a vast hiatus of several centuries, between the ancient classic art of Rome - which was in its decadence when the Western Empire ceased in the 5th century after Christ - and that early rise of art in the 12th century which led to the Renaissance. This hiatus is generally supposed to be a time when art was utterly dead & buried, its corpse in Byzantine dress lying embalmed in its tomb at Ravenna. Contents: Romano-Lombard architects; first foreign emigrations of the Comacines; Romanesque architects; Italian - Gothic & Renaissance architects. Illustrated.

The general idea of the use of a church porch at the present time is apparently that it is a useful place for wet umbrellas, and, while no word can be raised against so admirable a purpose, it was not the object for which it was originally designed. The uses of a porch were manifold, and we shall follow the development of the structure and the various purposes for which it was erected. As the porch is the approach to, and actually part of, the entrance to the material fabric of the church, so the font is the structure for the outward circumstances of the baptismal rite, whereby one enters into the spiritual life of the Church. Only those who fully understand the Christian's standpoint can grasp its real purpose, and many nominal Churchmen fail to see any use in the structure more than that which any small vessel would supply. In the corporeal and spiritual access to the Church is found the harmony of this dual subject.. In the second part of this volume we shall see how the font came to be placed immediately within the principal entrance of a parish church; and we shall endeavour to trace its material development according to the art of the period; and we shall see how it retained the principal feature of its earlier form until after the Reformation, unaffected by the change of method in the rite from that practised in the rest of Western Christendom.

Discusses the architecture, restoration and history of the cathedrals of France with 183 pictures by Joseph Pennell. Floor plans and diagrams of the cathedrals are included.Joseph Pennell was born in 1857 and died in 1926. He began his work as an illustrator by selling drawings of south Philadelphia to Scribner's Monthly in 1881. In addition to his extensive sketches of American cities, he went to the Panama Canal and sketched a number of construction sites. He taught etching at the Arts Students' league in New York, wrote several books, served as an art critic on the Brooklyn Eagle, and helped run the New Society of Sculptors, Painters & Engravers.Pennell is considered to have done more than any other one artist of his time to improve the quality of illustration both in the United States and abroad and to raise its status as an art. He produced more than 900 etched and mezzotint plates, some 621 lithographs, and innumerable drawings and water colors.

This scarce antiquarian book is a facsimile reprint of the original. Due to its age, it may contain imperfections such as marks, notations, marginalia and flawed pages. Because we believe this work is culturally important, we have made it available as part of our commitment for protecting, preserving, and promoting the world's literature in affordable, high quality, modern editions that are true to the original work.

This scarce antiquarian book is a facsimile reprint of the original. Due to its age, it may contain imperfections such as marks, notations, marginalia and flawed pages. Because we believe this work is culturally important, we have made it available as part of our commitment for protecting, preserving, and promoting the world's literature in affordable, high quality, modern editions that are true to the original work.

The author hopes this book will foster the desire to erect a house of worship which will be enduring monuments to the intelligence, the taste and the spiritual sincerity of our advanced times. This volume is not a history, but a modest effort to tell what the temple builders of the ages undertook to do in honor of the deity or the gods they worshiped, and an attempt to draw from the record of the past more sure guidance for the temple builders of today. Gorgeously illustrated throughout the text and contains 10 full page illustrations.

Text in English and French. The aim of this book, by utilizing modern photography, is to illustrate the cathedral on a scale not before attempted. Although this collection is not exhaustive, the authors claim it is fairly representative. It deals mainly with the sculptures on the doorway, although there are views of the general architecture and a few subjects from the interior. Over 120 photographs, fully indexed.

This book is a critical study of the role played by architecture and texts in promoting political and religious ideologies in the ancient world. It explains a palace as an element in royal propaganda seeking to influence social concepts about kingship, and a text about a temple as influencing social concepts about the relationship between God and human beings. Applying the methods of analysis developed in built environment studies, the author interprets the palace and temple building programs of Sennacherib, King of Assyria, and Solomon, King of Israel. The physical evidence for the palace and the verbal evidence for the temple are explained as presenting communicative icons intended to influence contemporary political and religious concepts. The volume concludes with innovative interpretations of the contributions of architectural and verbal icons to religious and political reform.

This unique publication, catalogue of the Holy See Pavilion at the XVI International Architecture Exhibition at the Venice Biennale, presents ten chapels designed by ten of the most important contemporary architects whose work was inspired by the chapel in the forest built in the Stockholm Cemetery, in 1920, by the famous architect Gunnar Asplund. The chapel is defined as a place of orientation, encounter, and meditation created in a natural setting of a vast woodland and regarded as a metaphor of the pilgrimage of life. In light of this, the architects of the Holy See Pavilion have worked without following the commonly recognized reference models, as the number and variety of the projects presented illustrates.

Standing in the nave of a cathedral, it is hard not to wonder how ordinary human beings could have created sky-scraping, dizzyingly high buildings on which even the top-most parts were delicately decorated, in an age before even the simplest of power tools. Stone on Stone presents the full story of the men who built the cathedrals of the medieval era: who they were, how they lived and how with the simplest of hand tools they created the astonishing buildings that hundreds of years later still stand as monuments to their ingenuity and skill. Topics covered include the context for building such huge places of worship; the men who built: who they were, and the challenges they had to face; finding the materials; construction techniques; building control and finally, who paid for it all.

The first illustrated, architectural history of the 'Alid shrines, increasingly endangered by the conflict in Syria The 'Alids (descendants of the Prophet Muhammad) are among the most revered figures in Islam, beloved by virtually all Muslims, regardless of sectarian affiliation. This study argues that despite the common identification of shrines as 'Shi'i' spaces, they have in fact always been unique places of pragmatic intersectarian exchange and shared piety, even - and perhaps especially - during periods of sectarian conflict. Using a rich variety of previously unexplored sources, including textual, archaeological, architectural, and epigraphic evidence, Stephennie Mulder shows how these shrines created a unifying Muslim 'holy land' in medieval Syria, and proposes a fresh conceptual approach to thinking about landscape in Islamic art. In doing so, she argues against a common paradigm of medieval sectarian conflict, complicates the notion of Sunni Revival, and provides new evidence for the negotiated complexity of sectarian interactions in the period.

A large synthesis of commemorative monuments with discussion of earlier studies and ideas on monuments in the county of Norfolk. Jonathan Finch divides the study chronologically: monuments before 1400, 1400-1549, post-Reformation monuments, 1700-1849. The large volume of data is firmly placed within its temporal, spatial and social context which places it apart from other syntheses of these monuments. In this study Finch is able to identify broad and often very subtle patterns of change in the act of commemoration and the role of monuments, highlighting in particular the gradual shift from Christian iconography of the cross slab to more personal inscriptions, reflecting a change from the visual to textual and a growing concern with the fate of the individual rather than the fate of the dead in general.

This handsomely illustrated volume explores the medieval Deccani temple complexes at the UNESCO World Heritage Site of Pattadakal, with careful attention to their makers. The vibrant red sandstone temples of India's Deccan Plateau, such as the Pattadakal temple cluster, have attracted visitors since the eighth century or earlier. A UNESCO World Heritage Site and the coronation place of the Chalukya dynasty, Pattadakal and its neighboring sites are of major historical importance. In Shiva's Waterfront Temples, Subhashini Kaligotla situates these buildings in the cosmopolitan milieu of Deccan India and considers how their makers and awestruck visitors would have seen them in their day. Kaligotla reconstructs how architects and builders approached the sites, including their use of ornamentation, responsiveness to courtly values such as pleasure and play, and ingenious juxtaposition of the first millennium's Nagara and Dravida aesthetics, a blend largely unique to Deccan plateau architecture. With over 130 color illustrations, this original book elucidates the Deccan's special place in the lexicon of medieval South Asian architecture.

Considers many facets of the medieval church, dealing with institutions, buildings, personalities and literature. The text explores the origins of the diocese and the parish, the history of the See of Hereford and of York Minster. It discusses the arrival of the archdeacon, the Normans as cathedral builders and the kings of England and Scotland as monastic patrons. The studies of monastic life deal with the European question of monastic vocation and with St Bernard's part in the sensational expansion of the early 12th century. An epilogue takes us to the 14th century, contrasting Chaucer's parson with an actual Norfolk rector.