Fig. 64.—Forms on Carved Impost Moulding.
Carving.—Of the carved ornament we can only stay to remark on the large use made of the drill in obtaining points and chains of sharp shadow: and that in the design new motives and old—the acanthus and the vine are found side by side, both equally alive. The acanthus has been redrawn from the leaves which tracery the stones along the shore; and even the archaic lotus, for centuries degraded into “egg and tongue,” buds once again into leaf.
CHAPTER XII
BRONZE, MOSAICS, INSCRIPTIONS
§ 1. BRONZE WORK.
One of the most interesting facts in connection with the building is the lavish use of bronze in construction and decoration. There is every reason to suppose that the bronze casing of the Royal Doorway entering the church from the narthex, was applied long subsequent to the building of the church. We give in [Fig. 65] a sketch of the bronze cornice of this door, with its hooks for the door hangings; the left hand shows the form towards the narthex, the right hand the interior. The deep-splayed casing of the cornice resembling a sarcophagus may have suggested the story quoted by Buzantios,[361] that the body of S. Irene reposed above this doorway. By comparing it with the adjoining marble doorways, it is apparent that the bronze must be laid over similar marble forms, and that this deep-splayed casing simply covers a marble cornice hacked back to one slanting face. Salzenberg gives a detail of the panel at the centre, and the inscription has already been quoted. Such inscriptions were general at the entering in of ancient churches. For instance, a small church[362] in Palestine has the legend, “This is the gate of the Lord, the righteous shall enter in thereat,” and a similar inscription is on the lintel of the early church at Corfu.[363] An isolated lintel at Constantinople has “Open me the gates of righteousness, that I may enter and praise the Lord.” Paulinus says that at the door of his church at Nola was written, “Peace be to thee with peaceful heart and pure, who comest within the secret place of Christ.”
Fig. 65.—Bronze Casing to Royal Doorway. Scale 1/60.
In a paper on the inscriptions at S. Sophia, by C. G. Curtis and S. Aristarchês in the Transactions of the Philological Society[364] of Constantinople the authors point out that S. Sophia was greatly injured by earthquake on the 25th of October, 975, and restored six years afterwards, and say that the form of the letters of the inscription suggests that it was written at this time. Possibly an earthquake gave a very sufficient reason for such a casing, by fracturing the great marble lintel, but there appears to have been a whole series of additions and alterations at this end of the church before this period, and it might very well have been done at the same time as the mosaic above it.
All the doors opening into or from the narthex, with one exception, are cased in bronze on a wood foundation about five inches thick, formed into panels. They are all hung in two leaves, and the back edges against the frame are rounded continuing top and bottom as pivots on which they revolve. The nine doors entering the church are comparatively plain, each leaf being divided into three panels.