318. Lower Order of Sta. Sophia. (From Salzenberg.)
All the flat surfaces are covered with a mosaic of marble slabs of the most varied patterns and beautiful colours; the domes, roofs, and curved surfaces, with a gold-grounded mosaic relieved by figures or architectural devices. Though much of the mosaic is now concealed, enough is left to enable the effect of the whole to be judged of, and it certainly is wonderfully grand and pleasing. The one thing wanting is painted glass, like that which adorns the Dome of the Rock at Jerusalem, to render this building as solemnly impressive as it is overpoweringly beautiful.
Sta. Sophia is so essentially different from the greater number of churches, that it is extremely difficult to institute a comparison between them. With regard to external effect, Gothic cathedrals generally excel it; but whether by accident or by the inherent necessity of the style is by no means so clear. In so far as the interior is concerned, no Gothic architect ever rose to the conception of a hall 100 ft. wide, 250 ft. in length, and 180 ft. high, and none ever disposed each part more artistically to obtain the effect he desired to produce. Where the Byzantine style might profit from the experience subsequently gained by Gothic architects is in the use of mouldings. The one defect in the decoration of Sta. Sophia is that it depends too much on colour. It would have been better if the pier-arches, the window-frames, and the string-courses generally had been more strongly accentuated by moulding and panellings, but this is a slight defect among so many beauties.
319. Upper Order of Sta. Sophia. (From Salzenberg.)
A comparison with the great Renaissance cathedrals is more easy, but results even more favourably to the Byzantine example. Two of these have domes which are considerably larger—St. Peter’s at Rome and Sta. Maria at Florence being each 126 ft.; St. Paul’s, London (108), is within a foot of the same diameter, all the rest are smaller.[[228]] This, however, is of less consequence than the fact that they are all adjuncts to the design of the church. None of them are integral or supported by the rest of the design, and all tend to dwarf the buildings they are attached to rather than to heighten the general effect. With scarcely an exception also all the Renaissance cathedrals employ internally great sprawling pillars and pilasters, designed for external use by the Romans, which not only diminish the apparent size of the building but produce an effect of unreality and sham utterly fatal to true art.
In fact, turn it as we will, and compare it as we may with any other buildings of its class, the verdict seems inevitable that Sta. Sophia—internally at least, for we may omit the consideration of the exterior, as unfinished—is the most perfect and most beautiful church which has yet been erected by any Christian people. When its furniture was complete the verdict would probably have been still more strongly in its favour; but so few of the buildings described in these pages retain these adjuncts in anything like completeness that they must be withdrawn from both sides and our remarks be confined to the architecture, and that only.
The church of Sta. Sophia at Thessalonica, according to Greek tradition, was built by Justinian in the latter part of his reign.[[229]] It is a church of considerable dimensions, measuring 140 ft. east and west by 118 ft. in width, with a dome 33 ft. in diameter. It possesses also an upper gallery, and its arrangements generally are well considered and artistic. There does not seem to be any documentary evidence of its age, but judging from the details published in Texier, the date ascribed to it seems probable. This has been further established lately from an inscription found in the apse, which as well as the dome still retain their ancient mosaics; the inscription is incomplete, but Messrs. Duchesne and Bayet, in an appendix to their work on Mount Athos, ascribe it to the second half of the 6th century. The church possesses one special characteristic: above the pendentives is a low drum, circular internally,[[230]] in which windows are pierced, but which, externally, is carried up square: by this means the angle piers are well weighted and are thus enabled to resist more effectually the thrust of the arches carrying the pendentives. The two side walls also, which in Sta. Sophia at Constantinople were built almost flush with the inner arch, leaving outside a widely-projecting arch thrown across between the buttresses to carry the buttresses of the dome, are here placed flush with the outside of the arch, thus giving increased space to the interior.
Domestic Architecture.
The publication of the Count De Vogüé’s book has enabled us to realise the civil and domestic architecture of Syria in the 5th and 6th centuries with a completeness that, a very short time ago, would have been thought impossible. Owing to the fact that every part of the buildings in the Hauran was in stone, and that they were suddenly deserted on the Mahomedan conquest, never, apparently, to be re-occupied, many of the houses remain perfectly entire to the present day, and in Northern Syria only the roofs are gone.