Turkish Delight on a Moonlit Night! - The Byzantine Era

Hey did you hear the news? Emperor Constantine died! ...What year is it? 337. Yes, that's A.D.
Hahaha, funny story... I kinda transported us in the time machine while you were sleeping... What? Don't look so mad! We have to go forward in time a little, too, so I can get some more pictures for the professor!

Here we are, Byzantium! After the fall of Rome following Constantine's death, the west of Europe declined and the East became great and flourished! Right now Justinian is the ruler, and we're here to look at the magnificent basilicas created at this time- oh, basilicas are churches, by the by. 

This is Constantinople (Istanbul in my time), where this style of architecture began. The style was so popular- understandably, look how pretty it is!- that it spread all across Europe through the 5th and 6th centuries, and the style was used for over 1000 years!

Now, off to the first church! This one has quite an odd name...

(Image found here.)

This is the Hagia Sophia. But you call it the i-ah Sophia. Weird, I know. But that funny name means "the church of holy wisdom."
 This is the third Hagia Sophia built, the other two having been torn down by rioters. This one was commissioned by Emperor Justinian and was originally an Eastern Orthodox church. It was built from 532 A.D.- 537 A.D., that's only six years- a short time for people without modern equipment! 

In 1453 Constantinople was conquered by the Ottoman Turks who converted this building into a mosque- a temple for the Islamic religion. The four bell towers around the Hagia Sophia are minarets, they are used to call Islamic worshipers to prayer.

 

(Image found here.)

Do you see the rounded triangular shapes in the ceiling of the building? These triangular pendentives on the inside of this square building allowed a circular dome to be supportable on top. It took them a long time to get this architecture right, and after the discovery of pendentives they were used for the rest of history!

(Image found here.) 

This is some ornate architecture alright! It's like the entire building itself is art!

 

That was a cool stop, now back into the time machine! We're off to see another Byzantine church!

In 726 A.D., the Church split and created two different and opposing groups of people. There were the iconoclasts who destroyed all images and icons and the preservationists who preserved all the images and icons in this period. Art was not being widely created in this time, churches were.

(Image found here.)

Here we are in Venice, Italy!  This is the largest and grandest church of the Second Golden Age (a Renaissance rebirth of the Byzantium) is St. Mark's Basilica. It was built originally in 832 in this spot, but then it was burned down and rebuilt. It was rebuilt again and again until its consecration in 1094, when Saint Mark's body was said to have been discovered in a pillar by the Doge.

 

(Image found here.)

On the outside, as you can see, are many large and elaborate mosaics. And those columns are made of marble, there are 2,643 of them on the outside of this basilica, to be exact. There were four Greek Bronze horses put on the outside in 1254, but these were looted and went around the world before being put in a safe place to be preserved in my time. There aren't many Greek Bronzes that have survived in my time, so they are quite the artifact.

 

(Image found here.)

Look a those ceilings! Wow they're high!
And there's more mosaics all throughout the inside, and there is also venetian glass.

As pretty as this is, let's go look at a more colorful cathedral in Moscow!

 

(Image found here.)

This is St. Basil's cathedral. Although it was built much later than the Byzantine era, from 1555–1561 A.D., it was  highly influenced by Byzantine architecture.

The "onion domes" you see on the top are called Kokoshniki. Try saying that ten times fast.


(Image found here.)

The funny thing is this colorful building was actually ordered to be built by a guy called Ivan the Terrible. But, then again, looking at those clashing colors, I understand why they called him that...

Do you see all those gold portraits throughout the room? They had some of those in St. Mark's Basilica as well. Those are icons, which are religious symbols.

This is one of the most common icons of Jesus Christ:

 

(Image found here.)

If you think they look very stylized and unrealistic, you're right. Icons are made for the religious experience, not an aesthetic one. The artists strove for beauty and essence, not realism. They served as worship centers in peoples' homes and in churches. There are many icons still around and being made in my time as well.
Icons were painted on wood panels using egg tempera, however they weren't made cheap. They always contained gold leaf, sometimes vast amounts of it, so they usually had a patron, which was sometimes a church.

 This is another common icon of the Virgin Mary with baby Jesus:

(Image found here.)

This colorful and emotional style had certain standards. All the religious icons had halos around their heads and very Eastern features, such as long, thin noses and sunken eyes. The babies were painted like little old men, the draping of clothing was unrealistic, the people and elongated fingers and elongated proportions, and the artists used used ladder perspective. Some, but certainly not all of these traits may have been due to the artists being inexperienced in how to paint proper perspective and detail.  


Let's go to the time machine, we're going to Spain!  

 

(Image found here.)

This is the  Alhambra, which means "the red fortress." In 889 it was a fortress, but since 1333 it has been converted to a palace. It was built during the time of Moorish rule for the last Muslim Emirs (high-ranking Sheiks) in Spain. 

 

(Image found here.)

The Alhambra is famous for it's giant gardens and has gorgeous and vastly ornate Moorish and Byzantine architecture.

(Image found here.) 

Moorish architecture is very unique. They made columns and vaults in a sort of rounded triangular shape, as seen above, and they used stucco.

Islam spread as rapidly as Christianity during this time. You can thank them for the numbers we use, our Arabic numerals (1,2,3...). I'm sure you don't want to be doing your math homework in Roman numerals!

One more stop, a particularly golden mosque.

(Image found here.)

This is the great Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem! It is is a Muslim mosque built on a particularly holy site to Muslims, Jews, and Christians alike. It marks the temple Jesus went to, as well as the place where Mohammed ascended, and the hill where Abraham brought Isaac to sacrifice him in the Old Testament.

 

(Image found here.)

It was built in 685-691 AD, in Byzantine style. The outside, once covered in mosaics, is now covered in bright tiles. The dome is wood covered in gold leaf- I bet you can see it glittering from a mile away! The inside is smaller than it appears, and it is, in fact, built over the top of a giant rock.

One last piece of artwork to point out from this era- this is the Lamentation by Giotto di Bondone. He was the precursor to Renaissance art. As you can see, this is in a very different style than the icons were in. This has real perspective instead of ladder perspective, is more realistic rather than stylized (as you can see, Jesus actually has a normal human anatomy), and there are even people with their backs turned to you! It may seem like they're giving you the cold shoulder,  but don't worry about that, this is actually a big deal in the world of art, it just hadn't been done before!

(Image found here.)

And that's all the highlights of the Byzantine Era. We should really get out of here before the Crusaders come and everything starts getting pillaged again... Plus I'm starting to miss indoor plumbing. Well, see you next time!

When in Rome... Part 2

Good morning! What a charming face to wake up to... 

(Image from here.)

This is the head of Augustus. In my time, he is in the Getty museum. This statue is larger than life, had glass eyes, and has proportions based on the Greeks' ideal human form.

 

(Image from here.)

Here's another gorgeous statue, this one is of Constantine the Great. The statue is also called Colossus of Constantine. He was the first one to legalize Christianity in Rome, so many loved him and believed he had a great soul. To show this, they made his eyes very large, since Romans believe that the eyes are mirrors to the soul. Although the proportions do not look correct at this angle, he is placed very high up so that from the ground he looks more proportional. The original statue was a larger-than-life Constantine sitting down, but in my time we only have chunks of this statue. 

Oh look! A horse!

(Image from here.)

(Image from here.)

This is the equestrian bronze of Marcus Aurelius. Equestrian statues were very popular in Rome. It is one of the only surviving equestrian bronzes in my time. The rest had been pilfered, melted down to make coins or a new statue, or they had been destroyed by medieval Christians who thought the statues were all of pagan gods.


(Image from here.)

What in the world is this, a lighthouse? Oh wait, no, this is the Column of Trajan. The professor told me about this one- it has Trajan's ashes inside. It also has a spiral staircase that leads to the lookout at the top like a lighthouse. See the little statues carved into the column? The entire column recorded Trajan's great adventures, conquests, and victories in those little statues. And 98 feet of his victories too! It's kind of like a very narcissistic comic book artist who makes himself Superman. 
 
(Image from here.)

Oh look an art vender selling Frescos!
(Image from here.)

Fresco is the Italian word for Fresh, these paintings were painted on wet plaster, and commonly in houses in Pompeii. Speaking of which, let's visit Pompeii before it goes up in flames, shall we?


(Image from here.)

Rome is far from Pompeii on foot, but by time machine it's just a blink away!

(Image from here.)

 This is what the ruins of the town look like in my time. It's famous for being destroyed by Mount Vesuvius erupting which had followed a great earthquake that had ruined most of the city. It was excavated before my time, around 1748. It had just been a heap of ashes before they dug up the entire city underneath it. Pompeii was a Roman colony, one with lots of art and luxury that often depicted very crass and erotic images. The entire culture was very disgusting and sinful in their sexuality, and lived hedonistic lives of luxury. Some say that through Mount Vesuvius it was wiped out by God like Sodom and Gomorrah were. 

Now onto something a little more savory.

 

(Image from here.)

  

(Image from here.)

This is a Roman mosaic. The Greeks made mosaics first, but the Romans excelled at it. Each piece was only 1-2 centimeters squared, and there were 150 tiles, called tesserae, per square centimeter. There were many different mosaics made from many different artisans, they ranged in size, quality, and color. Some were small and cheap and could be placed in a middle-class home while others were grand and made up of minute tiles, these were worth a lot of money.

 

(Image from here.)

This is the mosaic of Young Women Exercising, which is in the Roman Baths. Another place with mosaics is a Villa in Sicily that had 7,000 feet of mosaics.

And that concludes our Roman art and architecture tour. Time to head back to the time machine and get out of here. Stay classy, Rome.

When in Rome... Part 1

Sometimes I wonder why I stick with you, I mean you can be a lot of work. Do you even know how hard it is to drag you through time and space against your will like this? Forcing you to learn about artistic historical feats all over the ancient world for my crazy professor you've never met and think doesn't exist? I mean really, this is exhausting! 

Yup, I'm just a saint, a martyr even. Well maybe not that last one, but still, you're so lucky I do so much for you. Now come on, the professor needs us to go take a detailed record of the unique architecture of Rome. Why are you resisting like that? Am I going to have to drag you into the time machine again? Wow, you're hard to drag, you should have laid off on the gyros!

Welcome to 8th century B.C. Rome! As you will soon see, the Romans excelled in art and architecture, they stole ideas and methods from many cultures and perfected them. They assimilated all other cultures, quite a feat if you ask me! Did you know the Romans were also the inventors of concrete? Yup, but after they fell the recipe for concrete was lost until the Renaissance era. 

Romans used arches and vaults in architecture. An arch is a cured architectural element used to span an opening, and it had a keystone on the top to support the entire arch. Arches may look simple, but the architecture is a bit complicated:

(Image found here.)

There are many different kinds of arches besides that simple one. 

A vault is an arched roof of covering made of brick, stone, or concrete. There are many different kinds of vaults, here are a few that are often seen in Roman architecture:

 (Image found here.)

 

Let's go see the Colosseum now, it has an archade! Nope, not those kinds of games, but many arches supported by pillars

(Image found here.)

The Colosseum is 16-stories high, 144 feet tall. It can fit 50,000 people. Three emperors were involved in its construction: Vespasian, Titus, and Domitian. The Colosseum is made of concrete, the outside was decorated with plaster and marble. The Colosseum is built with the Standard Roman Sequence of architecture, which went from Doric at the bottom, then Ionic, then Corinthian at the top. This sequence was used often in Roman architecture, hence the word "standard." Statues filled the niches in the walls, and the statues were very ornate, painted, and had glass eyes. They were mostly Greek copies. When it rains, there is a giant tarp of canvas called the velarium which was so big and heavy it took 1,000 men to lift it over the top. The Colosseum was the ultimate entertainment center, and Romans were all about entertainment. A few of the "shows" commonly held here were gladiator battles and mock naval battles since the Colosseum could actually be filled with water!

People had tickets to get in, and they sat at different labeled sections, most likely separated by class. The ruins of the Colosseum still stand in even my time! However, the whole thing would probably still be standing if the Romans hadn't pilfered so much of it. They took most of the materials to use for other building projects- they called it resourceful, we call it ruining history.

Next stop on our Roman tour: the Pantheon.

(Image found here.)

The Pantheon was made to worship all gods. The general belief at the time was to worship any god you want, any of them will bring you closer to the real god or gods. The wall of the Pantheon are 20 feet thick to support the giant dome. The floors were 144 feet in diameter and the dome is 144 feet from the floor. The dome walls were coffered, which are inlaid boxes. The dome is thicker at the base and gets thinner towards the oculus. The oculus is the 30-foot-wide hole at the top of the dome that allows light in, symbolically it was meant to be god's eye watching over everyone.

 

 (Image found here.)

 Because there is a hole in the roof, rain comes into the Pantheon. It doesn't flood, however, because there is a drainage system in the ground. The doors and the dome were originally covered in gold until all the gold was pilfered, like much of the Colosseum was. In the front of the Pantheon is the portico, the porch which is supported by Corinthian-style columns. 

I'm tired of these busy streets and the dusty Colosseum, let's go take a bath!

Yeah, you heard me, we're gonna go check out the Roman baths!

...Don't look at me like that, they're separated by gender! Well... most of them are.

Anyways, let's just go check it out.

(Image found here.)

The baths are a big social gathering for Romans, most people will go at least once a week, the rich people sometimes even go twice a day! Romans are so hygienic! The baths are separated by class, see those sad little ugly puddles over there? Those are the servant baths. And that giant one that looks like a Tahitian resort's pool is the rich peoples' bath. They have three temperatures of water: the coldest, the fridgidarium, the tepidarium which is room tempurature, and the caldarium which is hot. Usually they would go to the tepidarium, then the caldarium, then back to the tepidarium, then into the fridgidarium. The Romans believed that going in these different extreme temperatures was healthy.

 (Image found here.)

These baths had changing rooms which had niches in the walls to hold clothing. Special sandals with thick soles were needed for the baths because the floor was heated (except in the fridgidarium) to keep the baths warm. Walls and floors were heated by a furnace system called a hypocaust, where the baths were above a raised floor, underneath which was an air channel for the warm air to circulate.

 

(Image and above information found here.)

Okay, now that we're nice and clean it's time to go do some more sight-seeing! 

 

(Image found here.)

This is the Arch of Constantine. It's a triumphal arch that commemorates his assumption to power. It's covered in sculpture carvings about how great he is. He must have been quite narcissistic to want to be remembered for all time in such a giant arch. 

 

(Image found here.)

 This is our next stop, the Forum Romano. It was a meeting place for Romans to discuss. It was the town square, and the political and religious center. It was also a very large market.

 (Image found here.)

I'm sure that you're starting to notice that Roman is very advanced for it's time. It's clean, the people are hygienic, and the city is planned out instead. Romans made paved roads, and were the only ones to pave roads at this time, so all roads truly did lead to Rome! They also had a sewer system, a fresh water system, and plotted out "zones," like in my time, where certain land is set aside for certain purpose, like industrial land and residential land. The wealthy homes were often two-stories, had different rooms for different purposes (to worship, to entertain, to eat, ect.) and most had a garden or atrium of some sort. Romans even learned how to make pressurized fountains without electricity!
So many architectural advancements we have in my time were based off ancient Rome.


(Artistic blueprint of a Roman house found here.)

As I said, the Romans have a fresh water system, or aqueducts. These aqueducts were composed of arches and vaults, and went from the mountains where the fresh water was all the way to the city. The water in the aqueducts flowed into the city by the force of gravity; the aqueducts had a grade of only half an inch per mile to achieve this! They were made out of concrete, which is heavy, durable, and cheap. Romans would repair the aqueducts during the summer when it was warm because the concrete had expanded, exposing all the cracks. Rome had 77 aqueducts that supplied Rome with 350 gallons of water per day! This was the most advanced water system of the ancient world.

(Image found here.)

We'd better find a hotel for the night, it's getting late. Tomorrow, in Part 2 we'll go see some actual art!

Mi Casa es Greek Casa! Antient Greece

You know, this time machine is getting a little boring. Maybe we should put in some elevator music or something? Oh look! We're here!

 I present to you my humble abode: my ancient roots, Greece!
Well, okay, I'm half Greek, so? This is still the home of my ancestors! And you can see the resemblance, can't you? No? Well, you can see it in my amazing artistic prowess right? ...Okay, okay, let's just move on...

This is the town of Attica, we're here to see a sculpture the professor was asking about.

(Image from this site.)

Here is the Statue of a (Kouros) Youth. As you can see, it is a sculpture in the round and it is standing in almost the same pose those Egyptian sculptures were. They got better at statues later in Greece, this one was just the earliest marble statue of a human they had done. This guy, although he might not look like much compared to our body builders today, was the ideal athlete of the time. He had such a perfect and athletic body, that he represented the Greek god Apollo. The professor told me there was something special about his smile- that it was Archaic or something. I think it's just creepy.

Let us move on to Krit (Crete) and a better artistic feat: the Kritios Boy.

(Image from here.)

This guy's looking much better than the last. He's actually got some muscles! Unfortunately he's also missing most of his limbs... However, the reason this statue looks so much better is because he is standing in Contrapposto. No, he's not standing in pasta, he's doing a certain pose! As you can see, one hip is slightly raised while the opposite knee is bent, giving him a relaxed and natural pose, unlike our stiff Youth.

Both the Statue of a Youth and the Kritios Boy were done during the Archaic era of Greece. Why don't we go back into the time machine and move on to the next period: the Classical period.

(Image from here.)

This is a frize, which is a sculpture from the east pediment (the triangular area on the top of the facade) of the Parthenon. It is the Three Goddesses (Hestia, Dione, and Aphrodite). These three lovely headless ladies are commemorating the birth of Athena. Although it may not look very lively in our time, when it was first made it was painted in very vibrant colors. Look, there's the artist doing a sculpture now! Hm, interesting, all his models are wearing wet clothes so he can get better definition on the folds and body anatomy, what a good idea! ...Oh, now he's yelling at us to leave. I guess he doesn't like to have an audience. Oh well, back into the time machine again! 

And now for the Helenistic period! This is the time where the East meets the West, quite literately, that's what it means.

 

(Image from here.)

This statue is The Dying Gaul. A Gaul is a Celtic man. I wonder how my other ancestors from Ireland ended up in ancient Greece? Well, sadly in current times this statue does not exist, we only have a Roman copy of it. Roman copies are actually how we know in my time what Greece sculptures looked like, since so many have been destroyed partially or completely.  

Come on, we need to go now. There's one last thing from this time period I want to show you. 

(Image from here.)

 

(Image from here.)

This is by far my favorite Greek marble sculpture, The Nike of Samothrace (also known as The Winged Victory). This is a sculpture of an angel landing on the bow of a ship to proclaim victory. The most interesting thing about this sculpture, according to my professor, is not the sculpture itself but the negative space, as you can see from the side-view image. In my time this sculpture is in the Louvre museum in France, a long way from home.

Here is an interesting artistic rendition of it. Sorta looks like a John Lennon version, I think.

(Image from here.)

Now we're off to Milos! Here is the Venus de Milo (in Roman), or the Aphrodite de Milo (in Greek).

(Image from here.)

This is a sculpture of the most beautiful woman in all of Greece, the Greek goddess Aphrodite (also the Roman goddess Venus). This is 6 feet and 8 inches in height, what a tall glass of water! This statue embodied the ideal woman in Greek society. Gee, wish I looked like that. 

Oh shoot! I think I left my sunglasses at the Parthanon! We have to go back!

Well, since we didn't before, why don't we get a good look at the Acropolis. 

(Image from here.) 

Athens is such a pretty city, don't you think? The Acropolis is the highest point in the city, and such a busy place too! They have many buildings up here from temples to the place where the city would come to vote, the Parthenon.

(Image from here.)

This building employed all the best artists around all of Greece to build. It took eight years, and no one even had blueprints for it! What a collaboration! This building is made up over over 70,000 unique pieces. This is in a Doric style of architecture, as you can see from the 33-foot-tall columns.

(The three orders of architecture in ancient Greece. There's the Doric style I was talking about.)
(Image from here.)

 It was made during the Classical period. It celebrates Athena Parthenos, a goddess, and even has a 40-foot-tall gold statue of her inside.

Oh look, my sunglasses, yay! Well... While we're here, let's see some more art! This is The Porch of Maidens.

 

(Images 1, 2, and 3.)

These are caryatids, which are female figures used in place of columns to support architecture. I feel bad for these ladies, their backs' must feel awful! They are on the erectheum, a Greek temple on the Acropolis.

I brought back this painted postcard for the professor, isn't it nice? They were selling these right outside the Acropolis!

(Image from here.)

 Just a few more things I wanted to write about for the professor and we'll be on our way again. One is the famous poetry of ancient Greece.

 

 (Left image from here, right image from here.)

These are amphoras, which are jugs that carry liquid and have two handles. They are generally either black with red-orange painting on them or red-orange with black painting on them. Don't touch them please! This poetry store is expensive!

 

And here is our last piece of artwork to find: a Greek Key

(Image from here.) 

 

 (Image from here.)

These easily distinguishable images are still used in artwork relating to Greece in my time. The top is the original Greek key while the bottom image is a bit of a variation. 

It was fun visiting my home and all, but this is so long ago I really don't know anyone and I'm ready to travel through the time-space-continuum again. See you next time, Greece!

 

(Image from here.)