Byzantine architecture is not only a school of construction, it is also a school of painting. Most of the churches of Constantinople have unfortunately lost the latter part of their personality. They are mere ghosts, their skeletons wrapped in a shroud of whitewash. Still the Greek artist retained his skill to the last, and the decorative work of S. Saviour in the Chora will stand comparison even with the similar work in S. Sophia.
In Byzantine times the greatness of S. Sophia tended to crush competition. No other ecclesiastical building approached the 'Great Church.' But structural ability was only latent, and displayed its old power again in the erection of the imperial mosques of the early Turkish Sultans, for they too are monuments of Greek architectural genius.
The origins of Byzantine architecture have been discussed at great length by Strzygowski, Rivoira, and many other able writers. Much work still remains to be done in the investigation of the later Roman and early Byzantine work; nor does it seem probable that the difficult questions of the Eastern or the Western origin of Byzantine art will ever be finally settled.
The beginnings of Byzantine architecture have never been satisfactorily accounted for. With S. Sophia it springs almost at once into full glory; after S. Sophia comes the long decline. It may, however, be noted that the 'endings' of Roman architecture are similarly obscure. Such buildings as the Colosseum, in which the order is applied to an arched building, are evidently transitional, the Roman construction and the Greek decoration, though joined, not being merged into one perfect style. Even in the baths and other great buildings of Imperial Rome the decoration is still Greek in form and not yet fully adapted to the arched construction. At Spalatro, in such parts as the Porta Aurea, a developed style seems to be on the point of emerging, but it is not too much to say that in no great Roman building do we find a perfect and homogeneous style.
There is nothing in either the planning or the construction of S. Sophia which cannot be derived from the buildings of the Roman Imperial period, with the exception of the pendentive, a feature which had to be evolved before the dome could be used with freedom on any building plan on a square. The great brick-concrete vaulted construction is that of the Roman baths, and with this is united a system of decoration founded on the classic models, but showing no trace of the Greek beam tradition which had ruled in Rome.
S. Sophia then may be regarded as the culminating point of one great Roman-Byzantine school, of which the art of classic Rome shows the rise, and the later Byzantine art the decline. This view is in accord with history, for Constantinople was New Rome, and here, if anywhere, we should expect to find preserved the traditions of Old Rome.
The division of Western Mediaeval Architecture into the two schools of Romanesque and Gothic presents a parallel case. It is now realised that no logical separation can be made between the two so-called styles. Similarly we may continue to speak of the Classic Roman style and of the Byzantine style, although the two really belong to one great era in the history of art.
[10] Eastern Palestine Memoirs, p. 172. A similar dome is given by Choisy, L'Art de bâtir chez les Byzantins, Plate XV.
[11]De Vogüé, Syrie centrale, i. p. 45, Plate VII.
[12] Dürm, Handbuch, Part II. vol. iii. pp. 115, 149. A restored plan is given in Lethaby's Mediaeval Art, p. 47.