Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
A third period of building activity some 200 years later, after the
Latin occupation, gave us the church as it now is. At this time the
nave area was left essentially unchanged except for redecoration. But
the inner narthex was rebuilt, the outer narthex and the parecclesion
or side chapel were added, the small side apses reconstructed, and
the northern passage with its gallery was built in its present form. In
addition to all these structural alterations, the whole of the present
decoration of the church, its marble revetment, its mosaics and its
frescoes, is the work of this period, from 1315 to 1321. The man to
whom we owe all this was the Grand Logethete Theodore Metochites,
whose mosaic portrait we will see over the door from the inner narthex
into the nave. The church was converted into a mosque by Atik Ali
Paşa in the early sixteenth century. The paintings were never wholly
obliterated, though in the course of centuries they were covered with
plaster, paint and dirt, and many were shaken down by earthquakes.
They have now been brilliantly restored, as far as genuine restoration
is possible.
THE MOSAICS
The mosaics and frescoes are far and away the most important and
extensive series of Byzantine paintings in the city and among the
most interesting in the world. Notice that they are of almost exactly
the same date as the work of Giotto in Italy and though quite unlike
Giotto's work in detail, they seem to breathe the same spirit of life
and reality, so typical of the dawn of the Renaissance; they are a far
cry from the formal and stylized painting of the earlier Byzantine
tradition. To view them intelligently, as the artist intended them to
be seen, one must follow their iconographic order; they fall naturally
by position and theme into six groups:
I.
Six large dedicatory or devotional panels in the outer
and inner narthexes
II.
The Ancestry of Christ in the two domes of the inner
narthex
III.
The Cycle of the Life of the Blessed Virgin in the first
three bays of the inner narthex
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