Gardners Art through the Ages A Global History

stable than the original.) In scale, Hagia Sophia rivals the architec-

tural wonders of Rome: the Pantheon, the Baths of Caracalla, and

the Basilica of Constantine (see Chapter 10). In exterior view (FIG.

12-2), the great dome dominates the structure, but the building’s

present external aspects are much changed from their original ap-

pearance. Huge buttresses were added to the Justinianic design, and

after the Ottoman conquest of 1453, when Hagia Sophia became a

mosque, the Turks constructed four towering minarets. The build-

ing, secularized in the 20th century, is now a museum.

The characteristic Byzantine plainness and unpretentiousness

of the exterior (which in this case also disguise the massive scale)

scarcely prepare visitors for the building’s interior (FIG. 12-4). A

poet and member of Justinian’s court, Paul the Silentiary (an usher

responsible for maintaining silence in the palace), vividly described

the original magnificence of Hagia Sophia’s interior:

Who... shall sing the marble meadows gathered upon the mighty

walls and spreading pavement....[There is stone] from the green

flanks of Carystus [and] the speckled Phrygian stone, sometimes

rosy mixed with white, sometimes gleaming with purple and silver

Early Byzantine Art 313

12-3Anthemius of Trallesand
Isidorus of Miletus,plan (top)
and restored cutaway view (bottom)
of Hagia Sophia, Constantinople
(Istanbul), Turkey, 532–537
(John Burge).

In Hagia Sophia, Justinian’s architects
succeeded in fusing two previously
independent architectural traditions:
the vertically oriented central-plan
building and the longitudinally
oriented basilica.

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12-2Anthemius of Trallesand Isidorus of Miletus,aerial view
of Hagia Sophia (looking north), Constantinople (Istanbul), Turkey,
532–537.

The reign of Justinian marks the beginning of the first golden age of
Byzantine art. Hagia Sophia was the most magnificent of the more than
30 churches that Justinian built or restored in Constantinople alone.

HAGIA SOPHIAThe most important monument of Early
Byzantine art is Hagia Sophia (FIG. 12-2), the Church of Holy Wis-
dom, in Constantinople.Anthemius of Trallesand Isidorus of
Miletus,a mathematician and a physicist—neither man an archi-
tect in the modern sense of the word—designed and built the
church for Justinian between 532 and 537. They began work imme-
diately after fire destroyed an earlier church on the site during the
Nika riot in January 532. Justinian intended the new church to rival
all other churches ever built and even to surpass in scale and magnif-
icence the Temple of Solomon in Jerusalem. The result was Byzan-
tium’s grandest building and one of the supreme accomplishments
of world architecture.
Hagia Sophia’s dimensions are formidable for any structure not
built of steel. In plan (FIG. 12-3,top), it is about 270 feet long and
240 feet wide. The dome is 108 feet in diameter, and its crown rises
some 180 feet above the pavement (FIG. 12-3,bottom). (The first
dome collapsed in 558. Its replacement required repair in the 9th
and 14th centuries. The present dome is greater in height and more