Medieval architecture, its origins and development, with lists of monuments and bibliographies (1909) (14578912557)

Identifier: architectureorigins02port (find matches)
Title: Medieval architecture, its origins and development, with lists of monuments and bibliographies
Year: 1909 (1900s)
Authors: Porter, Arthur Kingsley, 1883-1933
Subjects: Architecture, Medieval
Publisher: New York, The Baker and Taylor Company
Contributing Library: Getty Research Institute
Digitizing Sponsor: Getty Research Institute



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ound in recondite allu-sions to Homer. In a word, the Byzantines felt themselvesGreeks and the inheritors of Hellenic culture and refinement.Strange, indeed, it would have been, had they not turned theireyes from the glories of Greek literature to the glories of Greekarchitecture, from Homer to the Parthenon. And strange itwould have been, had so cultivated a people not perceived thesuperiority of Greek to Roman decoration, and attempted tointroduce into their own art some part of the beauty of theformer. Side by side with the contact with Greece there was even acloser contact with the Orient, for Constantinople was the gate-way of Europe, and across the Bosphorus lay Asia and all theglamour of the Orient. The East, then as now, was full of thecharm of rich ornament and of rich colors; rugs and silks andfabrics and hangings and jewels were ever pouring westwardfrom Persia and India and China. From this contact with theOrient the Byzantines derived an extraordinary love of color and 98
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III. 68. — Order and Spandrel of Hagia Sophia, Constantinople. (From Salzenberg) ORIENTAL COLOR a sense of its values such as hitherto had hardly been known inEurope. The Greeks, it is true, had lavishly used colors, andoften bright colors; but the tones employed (judging from thefaded traces that have come down to us) were bright and lumi-nous— not unlike the tints that we associate with the frescoesof the early Tuscan school of Italian painting, and hence quiteunlike the rich Byzantine tones. Roman colors, on the otherhand, were crude and harsh; the most glaring reds and yellowsand blacks were thrown together in total disregard of all es-thetics; color schemes seem to have been unknown except inworks either copied directly from the Greek originals or exe-cuted by a Greek artist, as certain of the frescoes of Pompeii.Byzantine coloring, therefore, forms a striking contrast to bothGreek and Roman. It is the richest and deepest imaginable,delighting in a truly Oriental gorgeousness