Its beauties are of a contrary kind to those of that noblest interior of antiquity—the Great Hall of Karnac—or to those of later ages—the Gothic cathedrals. Both of these gain beauty of effect and an increase of apparent extent through the endless intricacies of their perspective, and the changes of aspect at every step arising from the multitude of their columns, and from no possible view showing the whole interior at once. This, on the contrary, trusts to the very reverse of all this—the absence of interruptions and the studious distribution of parts, so that no one conceals another, but that the entire building shall be grasped at once by the eye ([Fig. 425]).
I have not seen St. Sophia’s, though I long to do so, if only to view a form of artistic treatment so different from what I delight in in our own cathedrals. The internal effect does not, however, trust exclusively to this panoptical theory. The contrary theory was too well known from the Christian basilicæ to be lost sight of in this, the greatest of Christian
Fig. 425.—Longitudinal Section, St. Sophia, Constantinople. (From Fergusson.)
temples. It was, in point of fact, added to the other by means of arcades, both in the sides of the nave and in its apsidal projections, opening out mysterious perspectives into the inner recesses of the temple. This union of the more palpable with the more mysterious, of the vast unbroken expanse with the intricately broken perspective, must, as it appears to me, and as I judge from representations, produce an impression more astounding than that of almost any other building; but, when we consider the whole as clothed with the richest beauties of surface; its piers encrusted with inlaid marbles of every hue, its arcades of marble gorgeously carved, its domes and vaultings resplendent with gold mosaic interspersed with solemn figures, and its wide-spreading floors, rich with marble tesselation, over which the buoyant dome floats, self-supported, and seems to sail over you as you move—I cannot conceive of anything more astonishing, more solemn, and more magnificent. Well might its Imperial founder exclaim, when, with pardonable exultation, he viewed the result of his costly aspirations—“Glory be to God, who hath thought me worthy to accomplish so great a work; I have vanquished thee, O Solomon!”
I have dwelt longer on my description of this wonderful building because it is facile princeps among structures on the pendentive domical principle, just as the Pantheon had been among those with the simple dome; and as, in after ages, was St. Peter’s among those whose domes soared upwards as lofty towers.
I must here close my lecture, leaving the continuation of my descriptive sketch of the history of the Cupola, and such remarks as I may have to offer on its uses, its practical application, and its future development, to be followed up in my next.