Volume 33, Number 11 · June 26, 1986
Miraculous Mosaics
By Willibald Sauerländer
The Mosaics of San Marco in Venice Vol. I, The Eleventh and Twelfth Centuries Vol. II, The Thirteenth Century plates (plates in two volumes)
by Otto Demus, with contributions from Rudolf M. Kloos, by Kurt Weitzmann
University of Chicago Press, 852 (text in two volumes), 160 color plates, 731 black and white pp., $350.00
San Marco in Venice, the palatine chapel of the doge and the state church of the Serenissima, has always been admired as one of the great exotic buildings in the history of European architecture. At the same moment when elsewhere in Europe—at Cluny, along the pilgrimage roads to Santiago, in Norman England, or in the Empire—the first monumental Roman-esque buildings began to rise, Venice built the most ambitious Byzantine church ever erected in the Latin West. There was an only too evident ideological reason for this choice: the Venetians wished the shrine of Saint Mark, their state saint and venerated Apostle, to be a copy of the Church of the Holy Apostles, which had been constructed five centuries earlier by Justinian in the capital of the Eastern empire. The relics of Saint Mark are said to have reached Venice in 829. The present church with its cross plan and its five domes dates from the late eleventh century.
Review, 3116 words
To read the full text of this piece, please choose one of the following options:
|
If you are already a subscriber to the Review's electronic edition, please sign in: |
To subscribe to the electronic edition, please press the button below. |
To purchase access to this article for $3, please press the button below. |