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}
}
  • F. Barry
  • Published 2007
  • Art
  • The Art Bulletin
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… Expand
View on Taylor & Francis
38 Citations
Highly Influential Citations
1
Background Citations
3

38 Citations

Citation Type

Citation Type

Pseudo-Dionysius and the Staging of Divine Order in Sixth-Century Architecture
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… Expand
Manuel I Komnenos and the Stone of Unction
  • I. Drpić
  • Art
  • Byzantine 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… Expand
“God’s Wonder”: Marble as Medium and the Natural Image in Mosques and Modernism
  • F. Flood
  • Art
  • West 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… Expand
The Bronze Object in the Middle Ages
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… Expand
Studenica: An identity in marble
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… Expand
The Underground and the Virgin of Guadalupe: Contexts for the Virgen del Metro, Mexico City 1997-2007
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… Expand
Putting Christians on the map : topographic mosaics from late antique Jordan as representations of authority and status.
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… Expand
Solomon and The Petrified Birds on the Dome of the Rock
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… Expand
Practice and Theory in the Italian Renaissance Workshop: Verrocchio and the Epistemology of Making Art
Northern and Italianate elements, combined with increasing specializations of art and a contemporary recognition of drawing as a high art form related to—but also independent from—the art of… Expand
Thermal Sustainability: Renovation of Imperial Thermae in Late Antiquity
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… Expand
...
1
2
3
4
...

References

SHOWING 1-10 OF 84 REFERENCES
La catechesi figurata dei mosaici della chiesa del vescovo Sergio ad Umm al-Rasas di Giordania
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… Expand
Pheidias and Olympia
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… Expand
The Mosaic Decoration of S. Demetrios, Thessaloniki: a re-examination in the light of the drawings of W. S. George
The important mosaics in the north inner aisle of the Church of S. Demetrios were largely destroyed in the fire of 1917. They had been unrecorded until ten years previously when their covering of… Expand
The Interpretation of the Glass Dream-Expressionist Architecture and the History of the Crystal Metaphor
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… Expand
THE INAUGURATION ANTHEM OF HAGIA-SOPHIA AGAIN
AbstractOn Christmas Day, 1988, I received from Marc Deprez the draft of an article entitled Noel et Hanoucah, which threw some further light on the imagery used in the kontakion translated by me in… Expand
The Vietnam Veterans Memorial and the Washington Mall: Philosophical Thoughts on Political Iconography
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… Expand
The Art of fhe Byzantine Empire
  • Sources and Documents (Toronto: Prentice-Hall,
  • 1986
The only exception seems to be S
  • Pudenziana (see below at n
  • 1983
A Twelfth-Century Description of St. Sophia
Pudenziana in Roma second0 gli scavi recentemente eseguiti (Vatican City: Pontificio Istituto di Archeologia Cristiana
  • also figs
  • 1934
...
1
2
3
4
5
...