Walking on Water: Cosmic Floors in Antiquity and the Middle Ages
@article{Barry2007WalkingOW, title={Walking on Water: Cosmic Floors in Antiquity and the Middle Ages}, author={Fabio Barry}, journal={The Art Bulletin}, year={2007}, volume={89}, pages={627 - 656} }
For centuries, observers imagined a “frozen sea” in the book-matched marble floor of Hagia Sophia. Enduring perceptions of marble as a liquid substance led to similar descriptions of floors of other medieval churches, east and west, and the concept was consciously revived in late-nineteenth-century London. Such floors could simultaneously evoke primeval chaos and theological images of the sea: devotees who “walked on water” could visualize themselves in a sacred edifice of macrocosmic…
51 Citations
Pseudo-Dionysius and the Staging of Divine Order in Sixth-Century Architecture
- Philosophy
- 2019
This chapter discusses the relationship between the architecture and decoration of churches built during the reign of Emperor Justinian, liturgical performances of the same period, and…
Manuel I Komnenos and the Stone of Unction
- HistoryByzantine and Modern Greek Studies
- 2019
For John Duffy This article explores the fate of the Stone of Unction — the marble slab upon which, according to tradition, the dead body of Christ had been anointed for burial — in twelfth-century…
“God’s Wonder”: Marble as Medium and the Natural Image in Mosques and Modernism
- ArtWest 86th: A Journal of Decorative Arts, Design History, and Material Culture
- 2016
Comparisons have often been made between aesthetic shifts in the arts of late antiquity and the rise of abstraction in early twentieth-century Euro-American art. These include the use of marble in…
The Bronze Object in the Middle Ages
- History, Art
- 2016
This book presents the first full-length study in English of monumental bronzes in the Middle Ages. Taking as its point of departure the common medieval reception of bronze sculpture as living or…
Studenica: An identity in marble
- Philosophy
- 2011
This paper discusses the nature and inherent symbolics of the material of
choice of which the body of the church of the Virgin Euergetis at Studenica
was fashioned. In view of Byzantine…
The Underground and the Virgin of Guadalupe: Contexts for the Virgen del Metro, Mexico City 1997-2007
- Political Science
- 2012
The Virgen del Metro is the culmination of a series of unofficial
“apparitions” of the Virgin of Guadalupe at the end of the twentieth
century. Its location in Mexico City and the circumstances…
Putting Christians on the map : topographic mosaics from late antique Jordan as representations of authority and status.
- History
- 2016
role during the Late Antique period. 173 They could be used to illustrate philosophical beliefs, such as the cosmology presented by the sixth-century merchant 173 See Chapter 1, above, pp. 22-23. 167…
Solomon and The Petrified Birds on the Dome of the Rock
- ArtJournal of Near Eastern Studies
- 2020
On the southern exterior side of the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem, on the right-hand side of the main entrance, there is a small decoration, which consists of two marble slabs—two cross-sections…
Thermal Sustainability: Renovation of Imperial Thermae in Late Antiquity
- HistoryArchitectural Histories
- 2019
Architectural sustainability was a time-honoured practice in the ancient world, seen through evidence of cyclical repair, renovation, and restoration of essential infrastructure. In so doing, the…
Cartography and Culture in Medieval Iceland
- History
- 2015
While previous studies of the medieval Icelandic world maps have tended to be cursorily descriptive, and focus on their roles as representatives of the geographical information available to medieval…
References
SHOWING 1-10 OF 84 REFERENCES
Desired Haven
- HistoryHarvard Theological Review
- 1941
A seafaring people gifted with a lively imagination will not fail to enrich its language with figures suggested by the moods of the sea and by the hardships and dangers of the sailor's calling. Hence…
The Inauguration Anthem of Hagia Sophia Again
- HistoryByzantine and Modern Greek Studies
- 1990
On Christmas Day, 1988,1 received from Marc Deprez the draft of an article entitled Noël et Hanoucah, which threw some further light on the imagery used in the kontakion translated by me in BMGS 12.…
La catechesi figurata dei mosaici della chiesa del vescovo Sergio ad Umm al-Rasas di Giordania
- Art
- 2000
The archaeological findings of the ecclesiastical complex of St. Stephen at Umm el Rasas (Kastron Mefaa) in Trans Jordan, have brought to light two separate churches with floor mosaics of the highest…
Pheidias and Olympia
- History
- 1952
PHEIDIAS and the Parthenon, for a century and a half, have been regarded as virtual synonyms. The kinship has so far extended itself that certain characteristics of the one have been transferred to…
The Interpretation of the Glass Dream-Expressionist Architecture and the History of the Crystal Metaphor
- Art
- 1981
German Expressionist architectural design is generally noted for its free, frenetic forms, for design that left behind all conventions. The futuristic Expressionist glass projects in both amorphous…
Aristotle's Theory of the Formation of Metals and Minerals
- Environmental ScienceThe Classical Quarterly
- 1949
The Twofold Exhalation. Aristotle explains in Book I of the Meteorologica (341b6 ff.) that the heat of the sun causes the earth to give off an exhalation (ναθνμασις), which is of two kinds. One kind,…
The Vietnam Veterans Memorial and the Washington Mall: Philosophical Thoughts on Political Iconography
- ArtCritical Inquiry
- 1986
My reflections on the Vietnam Veterans Memorial (VVM) were provoked some time ago in a quite natural way, by a visit to the Memorial itself. I happened upon it almost by accident, a fact that is due…
Pudenziana in Roma second0 gli scavi recentemente eseguiti (Vatican City: Pontificio Istituto di Archeologia Cristiana
- also figs
- 1934
The Art of fhe Byzantine Empire
- Sources and Documents (Toronto: Prentice-Hall,
- 1986