00:00 today we're going to continue our
00:01 discussion of the architecture that
00:04 resulted from the split between the
00:06 eastern and the Roman Empire and as we
00:09 mentioned last time this split was
00:12 fostered in part because of political
00:14 difficulties having to do with invasions
00:17 of various barbarian tribes coming down
00:20 and threatening Rome and enervating the
00:23 forces of Rome and it also had to do
00:26 with the adoption of Christianity by
00:28 Constantine one of the Roman emperors or
00:31 at least the legalization of
00:32 Christianity after which time
00:34 Christianity spread very very quickly I
00:37 just want to get to this chart again to
00:39 show you the split between the East and
00:42 the West in the West Rome remained the
00:45 capital but its power base becomes
00:48 fragmented and it becomes less and less
00:51 capable of holding together an empire
00:54 and barely able to rule itself so pretty
00:58 much by 476 when the last Roman Emperor
01:02 Rome Ellis Augustus hands his crown over
01:05 to the podium the Western Roman Empire
01:07 is generally considered to come to a
01:09 halt it's kind of interesting if you
01:11 think about Romulus Augustus the last
01:14 Roman Emperor that he has this kind of
01:16 double name part of it from the first
01:19 legendary founder of Rome of Romulus and
01:22 the other part of it from Augustus the
01:24 founder of the Empire and at this point
01:27 he's considered to be so poultry a
01:29 threat that the barbarian king odious or
01:33 doesn't even bother to assassinate he
01:35 just didn't retire quietly to the
01:37 countryside meanwhile the eastern empire
01:40 headquartered in Constantinople becomes
01:43 stronger and stronger and stronger under
01:45 powerful rulers like Justinian for
01:48 example who was not only a brilliant
01:50 warrior but also one of these rulers who
01:52 devoted himself to architecture so under
01:54 the rule of Justinian the influence of
01:58 Brizendine culture and Byzantine
02:00 architecture spread wide and far and we
02:03 see this orange territory here to
02:05 indicate that domain last time we looked
02:09 at the simplest of early Christian
02:12 this is the basilica of san giovanni and
02:14 latha dial from 313 this is the first
02:17 really the first Christian Church and
02:19 it's strange because he was a groom this
02:22 is 300 years after Christ why did it
02:25 take so long for Christian churches even
02:27 to be constructed anybody have a take on
02:31 that yes exactly it was taboo it was
02:37 against the law it offered another model
02:40 of governance and another code of
02:42 beliefs that threatened the code of
02:44 belief that were authorized by the
02:46 government so it was Cobra so it was not
02:48 until the Edict of Milan and not until
02:50 the legalization of Christianity that
02:52 the type of Christian Church was able to
02:54 emerge how would you describe the basic
02:58 organization of San Giovanni and Lateran
03:01 st. John Lateran what's the plan type
03:04 what are the construction principles
03:06 what does it have that is similar to
03:08 Roman architectural precedents what does
03:10 it have that seems not to be picking up
03:12 on the architectural precedent yes sir
03:15 make that into a complete sentence he
03:18 said wooden trusses and wooden trusses
03:20 are true but it just depends on the rest
03:23 of the sentence see if the sentence is
03:24 true right in Roman times it would not
03:27 have been so common to provide the
03:30 roofing of a large structure like this
03:31 with wooden trusses why do you think
03:34 they put wooden trusses here yeah it
03:36 could be that you really required a lot
03:39 of engineering know-how to put the big
03:41 Volt's together and and already by this
03:44 point the resources and the competencies
03:47 are becoming diminished so much so that
03:49 a few hundred years from then they would
03:52 have completely forgotten the
03:53 technologies all together I mean in
03:55 three thirty they could still do volting
03:57 you had things like there was Basilica
03:58 of Maxentius that were more or less
04:00 contemporary spectacular vault but maybe
04:03 it's also a modest kind of architecture
04:05 if one of the ambitions of the
04:07 architecture of ancient Rome was to be
04:09 ostentatious and to demonstrate the
04:11 glory of the government through these
04:12 architectural marvels maybe one of the
04:15 ambitions of early Christian
04:16 architecture was in fact to be humble to
04:20 provide a simple shelter rather than a
04:22 symbol of glory good
04:26 what else is characteristic about the
04:27 early Christian church plan that we see
04:29 here in st. John Lateran yeah okay they
04:32 have like colonnades inside can you
04:34 think of another word for the colonnades
04:36 this thing that you walk on thank you
04:39 very much excellent yeah it has aisles
04:41 do you know what that big thing that the
04:43 aisle plank is called excellent yeah so
04:48 it has this characteristic plan type of
04:50 aisles flanking a nave yes is your hand
04:55 excellent they added a transept to the
04:57 shape of the Basilica and formed a car
04:59 and you could also precede that by
05:02 saying the basic shape of the Basilica
05:04 which is a Roman type but they added a
05:07 transept to the shape of the Basilica to
05:10 make it across and in making it across
05:12 they made it a particularly Christian
05:13 Church good now one reason you have all
05:17 these aisles here is that the church was
05:20 full of people not simply attending the
05:23 mass but also visiting various altars on
05:26 the side a lot of these turkeys were
05:28 burial places for important people like
05:31 bishops or Cardinals and so the pilgrims
05:35 would would circulate through the aisles
05:37 and they would pay their homage to
05:39 various characters so as a point of
05:42 comparison to this very simple very
05:44 humble vaulting of st. John Lateran I
05:48 just want to remind you of the vaulting
05:49 of the baths of caracalla which are
05:52 astonishing you know really
05:54 technological wonders not simply in
05:56 terms of their shape but also in terms
05:59 of their materiality this is marble this
06:01 is gold Reed this is pulling out all the
06:04 stops in terms of making an architecture
06:07 of grandeur and persuasion and here
06:09 again we have old st. Peter's a few
06:11 years later it shares similar
06:14 characteristics with st. John Lateran it
06:16 is a modest architecture it is an
06:19 architecture that that almost turns its
06:21 back on the structural innovations of
06:24 Roman architecture in favor of this
06:26 simple way of working if you look at the
06:28 wall you see this thin wall with simple
06:33 quite a different situation than the
06:36 kind of thick massive walls you need in
06:38 order to support the vault
06:39 think of something like the baths of
06:41 caracalla and here too we see a bit more
06:45 of the plan organization and that is the
06:48 idea that there's a courtyard in front
06:50 and the courtyard has a kind of double
06:53 purpose one purpose is that there are
06:55 Assemblies there are meetings or rituals
06:57 that take place outside there's a
06:59 fountain in the middle for ritual
07:01 cleansing or baptisms but also it
07:04 becomes another kind of mask between the
07:07 church and the city so it becomes a way
07:11 another way of denying the physical
07:16 importance of the body of the church and
07:18 maybe celebrating the spiritual
07:20 importance of the body of the church a
07:22 different engagement - what architect
07:24 architecture could do than what the
07:26 Romans had so early Christian basilica's
07:29 in Rome that we looked at really
07:30 characterized what was going on in the
07:32 western empire after the legalization of
07:35 Christianity but in the eastern empire a
07:38 really different kind of development
07:40 took place early Christian churches in
07:43 Rome were all about procession all about
07:46 longitudinal spaces all about building
07:48 the symbol of the cross in these Latin
07:51 cross plans but when you get to
07:53 Byzantine architecture the architecture
07:55 in Constantine's new capital
07:57 Constantinople present-day Istanbul you
08:01 begin to get a real predilection for
08:02 centralized buildings and a lot of that
08:05 could have to do with the fact that the
08:07 rituals the method that mass was
08:10 celebrated may have been slightly
08:12 different and I say may have been
08:14 because scholars disagree on this but
08:17 there is a at least one large camp of
08:20 scholarship that says the celebration of
08:23 mass was a kind of secret thing in the
08:26 Eastern Church that the congregation
08:28 didn't worship jointly and in the same
08:32 space as the celebrant of the mass the
08:34 priest but they clustered into the aisle
08:36 spaces at the margins and so this notion
08:39 that the center becomes a place where
08:42 this ritual is observed begins to
08:44 authorize the idea of strong centric
08:46 plans as opposed to a plan like say st.
08:50 John Lateran which is all about the
08:53 about a shared space between the priests
08:55 and the congregation maybe not shared in
08:58 a non-hierarchical way but shared like
09:01 we're sharing this space I'm in the
09:03 front you're in the back
09:04 you're not hunkering down in the
09:06 corridors peeking at me oh we haven't
09:08 read a poem for ages and this is a good
09:11 one because it's about Byzantium it's a
09:14 poem by the Irish poet William Butler
09:16 Yeats and he's looking at this age when
09:21 an architecture of elaborate detail and
09:25 elaborate surface manipulation and
09:27 elaborate collectivity in terms of the
09:30 way workers from all the different
09:32 disciplines came together to make
09:33 artifacts I mean thinking about this as
09:35 something quite different from the
09:38 condition that he lived in where the
09:40 trades are separated the architect says
09:42 one thing the carpenter does what the
09:46 architect tells him to do surrendering
09:47 some of his autonomy in the process for
09:50 Byzantium seemed like this dream place
09:53 where all the workers were expressing
09:56 their own joy in the in the process and
09:59 their own contributions and it became
10:01 this wonderful collective thing so let's
10:04 see what Yeats has to say sailing to
10:07 Byzantium Yeats is good also gates is
10:12 really interested in none of Celtic
10:13 revival he's interested when he's
10:15 writing this in finding away for the
10:17 Arts in Ireland to take off in a similar
10:20 way so this is not something he's just
10:21 looking back at nostalgically but he's
10:23 invoking the idea of Byzantium as
10:25 something toward which Ireland of his
10:28 day might it might aim and I just heard
10:32 on NPR f scott Fitzgerald reading poetry
10:35 so I'm going to read this as though I
10:36 were a scott Fitzgerald I think are we
10:38 better that way Oh sages standing in
10:42 God's holy fire in the gold mosaic of a
10:46 wall come from the holy fire burn in a
10:50 gyre and be the singing masters of my
10:53 soul consume my heart away sick with
10:57 desire and fastened to a dying animal it
11:01 knows not what it is and gather me into
11:07 eternity warmth out of nature
11:11 I shall never take my bodily form from
11:14 any natural thing but such a form as
11:17 Grecian Goldsmith's make of hammered
11:19 gold and gold enameling to keep a drowsy
11:22 Emperor awake or set upon a golden bough
11:25 to sin of lords and ladies of Byzantium
11:29 the foot is passed and passing and to
11:32 come this notion about sick with desire
11:36 and fastened to a dying animal it's a
11:39 nice expression of how the medieval
11:41 people viewed the body right we saw in
11:44 classical thought how the human body is
11:46 this microcosm of divine order
11:49 celebrated for its perfection celebrated
11:52 for its beauty and not that Yeats is
11:54 really a medieval guy but his take on
11:56 the medieval spirit is that the body
11:59 becomes this dying animal that the soul
12:02 is somehow tethered to and only by
12:05 pulling yourself out of nature and
12:07 putting yourself into these eternal
12:09 creations can you somehow save the
12:12 situation we looked at San Vitale as an
12:16 example of a Byzantine church this one
12:18 is in Ravenna and Ravenna after Rome had
12:22 completely collapsed became the capitals
12:25 of Western Empire for a brief period of
12:27 time 401 - 450 there is a nice
12:30 collection of these Byzantine buildings
12:32 there and just by looking at San Vitale
12:34 you can see how chaotic Li different it
12:36 is from the early Christian architecture
12:38 of churches in Rome that we looked at
12:40 here this is one of those centralized
12:42 buildings that somehow being inflected
12:45 to recognize the idea of procession to
12:47 recognize the idea of access but
12:50 nonetheless is incredibly impactful
12:52 ating where the center is and if you
12:54 look at this plan you might think my god
12:56 this is a bizarre plan because you see
12:58 this porch or narthex and you would
13:02 expect there to be some kind of axial
13:04 organization going on and in fact there
13:07 are these two little doors not one door
13:09 in the middle the two little doors and
13:11 if you come in through the lucky left
13:13 door you're on access if you come in
13:15 through the unlucky right door you're
13:17 off access and in the isle space and a
13:21 when information we don't see on this
13:22 drawing which is to say a courtyard in
13:24 front of it that's tucked into a dense
13:26 urban fabric so this edge aligns with
13:30 the ideality of a rectilinear courtyard
13:32 and these little triangle spaces are
13:35 kind of like habitable crochet they're a
13:38 thick wall that you can pass through and
13:41 by passing through these little triangle
13:43 spaces you begin to make realignment
13:46 between the axis of the courtyard which
13:48 is out here and the axis of the church
13:50 which is over here and one reason the
13:53 access of the church would have to
13:54 rotate is that there was a favoring of
13:57 orientations of east-west in churches so
14:01 you wanted to make sure you have this
14:03 propitious orientation of the church but
14:05 you also had to deal with the existing
14:06 courtyard we also noticed when we looked
14:09 at things like San Vitale last time that
14:12 there's a really different attitude
14:14 about the wall and a different attitude
14:16 about how architecture is articulated
14:19 and a lot of that has to do with the
14:21 fact that the wall becomes much much
14:24 flatter the wall becomes a kind of
14:26 luminous surface upon which sparkling
14:29 little glass chips have been laid in
14:32 water to create these beautiful figural
14:35 ornaments this is the court of the
14:37 Emperor Justinian under whose patronage
14:39 San Vitale was constructed so you look
14:42 at a wall like this and again if you
14:45 remember if you remember the walls of
14:47 something like the baths of caracalla
14:50 it's altogether different Caracalla is
14:52 all about plasticity all of that
14:55 heaviness all about the spatialization
14:57 of the wall and this is all about
14:59 surface as though just as the body of
15:04 the person is somehow being denied and
15:06 relegated to a lower role the material
15:09 body of architecture transforms and
15:12 becomes much much more a marker for
15:14 symbolic meanings the geometry is
15:17 important the ornamental program is
15:19 important but the plasticity of the
15:22 building begins to become undermined
15:27 Justinian's best church and really one
15:29 of the best churches ever is the aya
15:31 sofia in istanbul constantinople this
15:36 was built over a church that Constantine
15:38 had constructed that was burnt down in
15:41 riots but Nika riots as I think 5:30
15:45 until Justinian in a sense picking up
15:48 the mantle of confident and challenging
15:50 Constantine in a fairly direct way by
15:53 building his church over the ruins of
15:55 Constantine's church so that's a tall
15:59 order and Justinian is thinking a lot
16:02 about what it is to build a church in
16:05 Rome and what is in Rome and what is
16:07 Rome in Constantinople and he has his
16:10 architects Isadora of Miletus and media
16:13 thralls build him this thing which is
16:17 quite a shocker given everything we've
16:19 been looking at before and I say it's
16:23 because it seems as though it's some
16:25 kind of hybrid a kind of oscillation
16:31 between two kinds of conditions in a
16:34 sense it's a basilica in a sense it's
16:37 kind of like the early Christian
16:38 basilica's look we have a courtyard we
16:41 have an axis we have an app we have some
16:44 aisles it's exactly what we want in a
16:46 basilica but at the same time it's
16:50 implied we have a giant dome a giant
16:55 dome surmounted by a giant dome and not
16:58 only do we have a giant dome but the
17:01 dome becomes expansive and linear so
17:04 that the thing that reads as the nave if
17:07 we think this is a basilica becomes a
17:09 cereal dome if we think about this as a
17:12 centralized plan a completely new
17:15 structural device is being introduced
17:17 here that makes it possible to
17:19 simultaneously have the idea of center
17:22 and dome and the idea of this extended
17:25 space and that device is called the
17:27 pendentive the pendentive is just a
17:30 device to put a circular dome over a
17:33 square base it has to do with the notion
17:37 of these curving triangles really
17:40 come down with point loads at the
17:43 corners of the square and the curving
17:45 triangles curve up and a circle is cut
17:48 around them so that you can then over
17:52 these curtain things if you cut a circle
17:54 out you put the dome there so if you
17:56 look at the plan here these little
17:57 curved triangles that you see in plan
18:00 are actually these curving surfaces
18:02 called the pendentives that make the
18:04 transition from square to circle so
18:08 that's really great spatially it's
18:10 really great spatially because it opens
18:12 the stage phase up it's really great
18:15 spatially also because remember the
18:17 Pantheon dome we had these ponderous
18:19 walls you needed the walls because the
18:21 loads were coming down all along the
18:24 edge and it was tough to make a breach
18:26 in those walls because you have all this
18:28 lateral thrust kicking out you needed a
18:30 lot of mass but here it's really great
18:33 spatially also because remember the
18:35 Pantheon dome we have these ponderous
18:37 walls you needed the walls because the
18:40 loads were coming down all along the
18:42 edge and it was tough to make a breach
18:45 in those walls because you have all this
18:47 lateral thrust kicking out you needed a
18:49 lot of mass but here perimeter loads
18:53 have been resolved to point loads which
18:55 is pretty smart and what are you going
18:57 to do with the lateral thrust because
18:59 you're still getting lateral thrust
19:00 kicking out and and that too gets dealt
19:04 with in a sneaky and dematerialized way
19:07 by displacing the support from the
19:10 perimeter to the edges so these half
19:13 domes that we have here right over here
19:16 clipping onto the central dome of
19:18 Auggie's afiyah active grazing instead
19:21 of having massive walls bracing the
19:24 lateral thrust we now have domes that
19:27 take the load so the thrust is coming
19:29 down coming down and then this double
19:34 shell that functionally is the isle of a
19:36 basilica also becomes a way that poche
19:39 in a sense gets hollowed out you have
19:42 part of the crochet here cartilage
19:44 O'Shea here and a habitable void in
19:47 between and that seems crazy like how
19:49 can you hollow out the poche and still
19:52 have a good structure and still have
19:53 something that's rich
19:54 but you see it all the time like you've
19:56 seen eye beams right the steel beams
19:58 that are used routinely for construction
20:00 they're called eye beams because they
20:02 look like the letter I why are they so
20:06 wide up on top and why are they so
20:08 narrow in the middle wouldn't it be
20:10 better to just have a big hulking beam
20:13 no it wouldn't be why is that hmm well
20:18 weight is certainly one thing but also
20:20 the structural properties have to do yes
20:23 yeah absolutely what I said before about
20:26 corrugated cardboard is that certain
20:28 geometries become self bracing so in the
20:31 case of agia sofia these voltage cells
20:34 down here become self bracing and the
20:37 geometry of the arch becomes something
20:40 that works incredibly well as a kind of
20:41 composite structure to brace the lateral
20:43 thrust on this side the pendentives
20:46 worked very successfully as a structural
20:48 device to dematerialize the building's
20:51 envelope so that there can be this
20:52 transparency and permeability of space
20:55 at the ground plane they also work very
20:58 well symbolically if you look at the
21:00 plan you see a square and a circle
21:04 that's the diagram we looked at that
21:07 represented the Vitruvian Man
21:08 it's the diagram that represents the
21:11 perfect nesting together between a
21:13 symbol of the cosmos the circle and a
21:16 symbol of the earth the square and in
21:19 the sense that Aggie Sofia is a
21:21 Christian Church the fact that it is a
21:23 triangle that acts as an intermediary
21:26 between the heavens and the earth the
21:28 circles on the square
21:29 is particularly loaded with significance
21:31 because the triangle is the symbol for
21:34 the Trinity the Christian unity of the
21:38 Father Son and Holy Ghost and so it is
21:40 the Trinity or the Christian faith that
21:42 brings together the cosmos in the earth
21:45 into a happy reconciliation so this is
21:49 what the idea Sophia looks like from a
21:51 distance you can see a real direct
21:54 expression of the interior space on the
21:57 exterior space there is this wonderful
22:00 cascading of domes down from one to the
22:03 other and if you look at it in its
22:04 present condition it looks a little bit
22:07 flanked by minarets these little
22:10 needle-like things that has to do with
22:12 the fact that that of course Turkey now
22:14 is an Islamic country for the most part
22:17 and over the centuries it has has gone
22:20 toward serving one face to serving
22:21 another and I think right now it's a
22:23 public monument although I'm not 100%
22:25 sure so I don't know these diagrams show
22:28 you any better how these pendentives are
22:31 working here you can see the curved
22:33 surface of the pendentive pretty clearly
22:35 and here you can see the base upon which
22:38 the domes Springs where you have this
22:41 very thin ring of pendentives coming
22:45 down to this kind of double structure at
22:48 the perimeter over here and so a point
22:52 of comparison that's pretty useful is
22:54 the Pantheon is I think if you're
22:56 building in Constantinople the new Rome
22:59 and you're building over the ruins of an
23:02 old church that Constantine put there
23:04 you're not simply dealing with
23:06 Constantine but we're dealing with the
23:07 old Rome too and so we're dealing with a
23:10 Pantheon if you're dealing with a
23:12 centralized Church so the Pantheon is
23:15 fabulous don't get me wrong but also
23:17 kind of stupid the technique for
23:19 building the Pantheon dome is is not
23:21 wizardry it is something that is a
23:24 fairly straightforward way to make a
23:25 dome in many ways not so different from
23:27 the dome of the treasury of atreus that
23:29 we saw in Mycenae where there's a slight
23:32 displacement of material having to do
23:35 with compression rings that stack up and
23:37 finally you get it down of course it's
23:40 much more elaborated than the treasury
23:42 of atreus but it's a simple construction
23:44 it's not using elaborate ingenuity as
23:47 opposed to the idea Sofia which seems to
23:50 take the ambitions of the pantheon and
23:53 then do materialize the end work with
23:55 some kind of spectacular way we don't
23:58 have records from antiquity telling us
24:01 what the ancients thought about their
24:04 buildings but we do have a scribe who
24:07 worked for Justinian who described the
24:10 contemporary impression of the agia
24:12 sofia a guy called procopius and it's
24:15 pretty great I'm just going to read a
24:16 little bit of it and this is amazing
24:18 this is a guy many hundreds of years
24:21 go describing the effect of this church
24:24 it abounds exceedingly in sunlight and
24:28 then the reflections of the sunrays from
24:30 the marble indeed one might say that its
24:34 interior is not illuminated from without
24:36 by the Sun but that the radius comes
24:39 into being within it such an abundance
24:43 of light bathes the shrine the dome is
24:46 marvelous in its grace but by reason of
24:49 seeming insecurity of its composition
24:51 altogether terrifying for it seems
24:54 somehow to float in the air and on no
24:57 firm basis but to be poised aloft to the
25:00 peril of those inside it and that's just
25:03 a spectacular description of the ability
25:07 of this architecture to impress in a way
25:10 that's quite different from the way this
25:12 the Roman architecture impressed Roman
25:14 architecture may be impressed through
25:15 super abundance of material Wow how'd
25:19 they get all this stuff here the
25:21 Byzantine architecture at least the idea
25:22 Sofia amazing because it seems to defy
25:26 gravity and it seems to be so thin and
25:29 so so a material yet nonetheless
25:32 contains this kind of pure disposition
25:37 of space and light if you look at the
25:40 idea Sofia on the outside and compare it
25:42 to the Pantheon you can see that the
25:44 typology or let's say at least the
25:46 facade articulations the Pantheon is not
25:49 a bit interesting to the people building
25:51 the idea Sofia and to me that makes
25:54 sense does anybody have an idea about
25:55 why that would make sense why wouldn't
25:58 you want your great Christian Church to
25:59 look like the pantheon it's a pantheon
26:02 such a great Church right it's a pagan
26:05 temple the pagan temple to a whole bunch
26:07 of pagan gods a Christian Church should
26:09 look different and so there's no
26:11 interest whatsoever in reprising the
26:13 kinds of elements that articulated the
26:15 facades of pagan churches and here's I
26:19 think a good view of how these
26:21 structural systems differ we noticed
26:23 when we looked at the walls of the
26:25 Pantheon that there were these niches
26:27 carved inside that helped transfer the
26:30 load and the geometry of which helped
26:33 brace the structure and
26:35 see that even so it's quite a thick
26:38 thing whereas in the case of the idea
26:40 Sofia it's incredibly light and
26:42 incredibly delicate and even more so in
26:45 Justinian's age when recruiting us was
26:47 writing this it was a thinner less brace
26:50 thing than it is now this sometimes
26:53 happens with great architecture you
26:55 build it so closely to the tolerances
27:00 so the idea Sofia has fallen down at
27:02 least three or four times sometimes
27:04 because of earthquakes and sometimes
27:05 because they were just too much in the
27:09 daredevil mode when they constructed it
27:11 if you see it now you will see that
27:13 there are all kinds of buttresses all
27:15 around it that are helping to brace the
27:18 lateral thrust that this idea was a good
27:21 idea but you throw a little bit of
27:22 earthquake shaking in there and the best
27:24 ideas and the most over design
27:27 structures will fall let alone the idea
27:29 Sofia so let's look at this interior
27:32 space that procopius was talking about
27:33 it is pretty amazing even with all the
27:36 retrofitting of the buttresses this
27:39 slide is a bit too green it's really
27:41 golden in color be little glass Tesori a
27:45 Tessera is a little glass piece of a
27:47 mosaic are luminous and golden and look
27:51 at how the dome sits on the Sun dentists
27:54 this is really quite amazing right this
27:57 is the dome this is the space of the
28:00 church you would have to say a dome is
28:03 heavy I've seen the Pantheon how can you
28:06 have this ring of Windows here how is
28:09 that possible what are you doing God
28:12 must be powerful to make this thing
28:13 stand up I am terrified but the solution
28:17 is that the very structure of this dome
28:19 is quite different than the structure of
28:21 the Pantheon dome the Pantheon dome had
28:23 to do with the horizontal stacking of
28:25 rings that IKEA Sofia dome has to do
28:28 with ribs just as the planned structure
28:31 uses the pendentive to isolate the loads
28:34 to point rather than perimeter surfaces
28:37 so too is the dome structure organized
28:41 by all these ribs that come together so
28:43 you have lots and lots of little point
28:45 loads that come down on the pendentives
28:47 rather than a continuous
28:48 the rapper look at the modeling of
28:51 surface incredibly different from the
28:55 way surface was articulated in classical
28:58 architecture and against the argument
29:01 about the plasticity and the engagement
29:05 with close observation of nature you
29:07 look at a corinthian column capital and
29:09 there are these little relieves
29:11 unfurling and sometimes little blossoms
29:14 things that seem very graceful things
29:17 that are very much cut in in relief to
29:21 allow your hand to move around the space
29:23 and here instead it is pattern making it
29:26 is surface making it's almost as if the
29:28 column capital is being dealt with as a
29:31 ornamented surface in the same way that
29:33 the wall is being dealt with an alumina
29:37 ornamented surface rather than something
29:39 that bed bears weight and I think a lot
29:41 of it does have to do with these very
29:43 very different ambitions the idea that
29:46 light is created within the church and
29:48 emanate out is a beautiful observation
29:52 of what a church could do and this idea
29:54 that associate's 8th and divine present
29:59 it something that continues through
30:01 church building symbolism when the
30:03 Western Empire fragmented various cities
30:06 were identified as seats of power Milan
30:09 was one Ravenna was one aqua Alea to the
30:13 north of Venice was one and Venice was
30:15 nothing Venice was this pathetic little
30:18 fishing village Venice was a little bit
30:21 of high ground and a couple of fishing
30:25 boat boat and actually right now if you
30:27 ever go to Venice you'll see that it's
30:28 an island it's not connected to the
30:31 mainland it's this thing floating out in
30:33 the middle of the Adriatic and it's
30:36 artificial ground also in order to build
30:39 in Venice you have to get these trees
30:42 that they bring in from Croatia because
30:45 they have good trees there and they
30:47 drive them down so you get 50 foot long
30:50 trees and they still do this nowadays
30:53 it's kind of amazing and they have these
30:55 like methods of hammering these things
30:58 down so that you build up this new
31:01 fortified ground plane
31:02 upon which you can build your buildings
31:05 so Venice wanted to become a city of
31:08 greater prominence it began to expand it
31:11 began to develop an arsenal that built
31:13 great vessels for sea travel but also
31:16 for warfare Venice became an important
31:19 port but it was still nothing as a city
31:23 and the reason it was nothing as a city
31:24 is that it didn't have a Roman past it
31:27 didn't have the imprimatur of ancient
31:30 Rome and it didn't have a major Church
31:32 didn't have any great relics many needed
31:35 some they needed to get some relics in
31:38 order to establish the presence of an
31:41 important church this painting by the
31:44 Mannerist painter Tintoretto Venetian
31:47 painter probably from around a 15-6
31:49 shows you is project this kind of
31:53 crusade that the Venetians mounted to go
31:56 to Alexandria in Egypt where in st. mark
31:59 the Apostle was interred and to go there
32:02 and steal his body okay and the reason
32:07 they wanted to steal his body is this is
32:08 an important well this isn't an apostle
32:11 if they could get the body of Saint Mark
32:12 de Venice then they would be able to
32:14 establish a church then they would be
32:16 able to across those rooms then the
32:18 status of the city would become not
32:20 simply mercantile but also important in
32:23 terms of its Chris presence in the
32:25 Christian Pantheon so this is the
32:27 removal of the body of Saint Mark and it
32:30 just painting is quite fabulous
32:32 this is manner of space at its best look
32:36 at the disequilibrium between the left
32:38 side of the painting and the right side
32:40 of the painting the left side of the
32:42 painting seems to be pushing so far
32:44 forward toward use that is almost
32:46 bursting through the picture plan and at
32:48 the same time the right side of the
32:50 painting seems to be rushing back so far
32:53 and so fast that even the people seem to
32:56 be flung into the aisles of the
32:59 colonnade and next to them so there's
33:02 this disequilibrium of spatial tension
33:05 and side to side and the compositional
33:07 way of representing that I think goes
33:10 hand-in-hand with this incredibly
33:12 powerful task of removing the body of
33:16 and thereby founding a new status for
33:19 Venice what one more little anecdote
33:21 about the removal of the body of st.
33:23 mark who knows if this is true or not
33:25 but it is commonly written up in
33:27 guidebooks to Venice okay one thing to
33:30 go to Alexandria and have a crusade
33:31 another thing to find the body of st.
33:34 mark still harder to get the body of st.
33:37 mark through customs which apparently
33:39 they had during the Crusades which seems
33:42 crazy but how are you going to get out
33:45 the body of st. mark and what they did
33:48 was pack it in pork so they took this
33:51 shriveled old mummy of Saint Mark and
33:54 packed it in a big crate of pork and
33:57 when they were going through the
33:59 controls the Muslims who were their
34:02 soldiers guarding the boundary said what
34:04 have you got in there and they said pork
34:07 want to take a look and the Muslims have
34:09 no no no pork is disgusting and so they
34:12 got the pork smeared body of st. mark
34:14 out for Venice and that was a great day
34:17 for Venice on the Left we see one of the
34:21 most important churches in
34:23 Constantinople a Justinian Church not
34:26 really because of its importance
34:28 certainly I guess Aafia was the most
34:30 important church but because of its form
34:32 its typological organization it gives us
34:35 one of the first instances of a quincunx
34:39 it's funny words a quincunx is just a
34:42 five domed church so the basic plan type
34:46 that we have here at the Church of the
34:47 Holy Apostles is what type of cost Greek
34:52 thank you why do you say Greek yeah
34:54 because it's like equal a Greek Cross
34:56 has the arms of the Cross more or less
35:00 equal around the center as opposed to a
35:03 Latin cross which is the kind of cross
35:05 we saw in the early Christian churches
35:07 in Rome which have a long processional
35:10 nave so the Greek cross is our centric
35:13 and the quincunx in particular has these
35:16 five domes and this becomes highly
35:20 copied model for what a church under the
35:22 eastern empire might look like or any
35:25 Byzantine church and the the type is
35:28 conserved for a long period of time
35:29 we have the justinian churches come from
35:32 around five twenty five thirty this is
35:35 st. marks from the 11th century more or
35:38 less reprising the same plan type as the
35:41 truth of the Holy Apostles once again
35:43 it's a kind of great-looking quincunx
35:45 with maybe a few transformations but
35:48 truly not many even the idea of the
35:51 material surface of the interior that we
35:54 saw way back in Ravenna and
35:56 Constantinople in buildings like some
35:59 San Vitale in Ravenna Oradea Sophia in
36:02 Constantinople Istanbul we she here in
36:05 st. Mark's and that is this denial of
36:09 the material presence of surface in
36:10 favour of the creation of this luminous
36:13 field of pattern and ornament and the
36:17 facade of st. Mark's is pretty amazing
36:19 because it makes explicit use of spoils
36:22 the Venetians have this great arsenal
36:24 the Venetians have this great Navy the
36:27 Venetians are conquering both sides of
36:29 the Adriatic the Venetians are
36:31 conquering Greece the Venetians are
36:33 making incursions into Alexandria the
36:35 Venetians are conquering Constantinople
36:38 the Venetians have a lot of these kind
36:40 of successful battles but for the most
36:42 part they were authorized Crusades
36:45 because they were going off to the land
36:47 of people who had not converted to
36:49 Christianity but at a certain point the
36:51 Venetians got so greedy
36:52 they basically rated Istanbul they had
36:55 rated Constantinople and they took these
36:57 horses out of one of the fora in
37:01 Constantinople this quadri goes before
37:03 bronze horses and they're now on display
37:06 right on top of the portico to the st.
37:10 Mark's Church and we have all kinds of
37:12 things like look here a Constantine's
37:14 the Venetians got those two and lots of
37:17 columns not only from Constantinople but
37:21 also columns from Greek temples columns
37:24 from anybody who wasn't guarding their
37:26 columns well enough and therein crust
37:28 encrusted on the facade and they are
37:30 spoiled and spoil simply means things
37:34 that you take away as kind of Profis of
37:36 your victory over another culture but
37:39 really it was considered to be very bad
37:43 crusade against Constantinople just
37:45 because they had good stuff that you
37:47 wanted that seems really difficult to
37:50 justify from any kind of religious base
37:52 from the time of just Ganz there's a
37:55 kind of low let's say in terms of great
37:58 architectural projects until around 800
38:01 when Sharla on comes onto the scene but
38:05 it doesn't mean that culture was at a
38:06 standstill it just means that culture at
38:09 the the centers of culture and cultural
38:11 production shifted away from the state
38:14 and shifted away from the centralized
38:16 church to monasteries there was a great
38:19 kind of flourishing of monastic culture
38:22 and the earliest month for hermit monks
38:24 you would be out in the wilderness
38:28 meditating not talking to anybody
38:30 fasting but st. Benedict in around 5:30
38:36 began to consolidate the monks together
38:38 and form the Benedictine Order and one
38:41 of the missions of the Benedictine Order
38:43 was to be the conservators of culture so
38:45 a task that the monks would have would
38:48 be copying manuscripts
38:49 you may have seen pictures of these
38:51 Illustrated manuscripts or if you've
38:53 gone into any museum that have these on
38:55 display they're really really beautiful
38:57 things their hand and beautiful
39:01 calligraphy things lots of illustration
39:03 goldleaf in the margin so you have the
39:06 Benedictine creating these centers of
39:09 learning these institutions to conserve
39:11 culture and at the same time they're
39:13 creating this big administrative Network
39:16 from one Benedictine monastery to
39:19 another Benedictine monastery to another
39:21 base Benedictine monastery so that if
39:23 anything counts as a kind of organized
39:25 infrastructure during this period
39:27 between pay Justinian and pastranaland
39:32 it is the structure of the monastic
39:34 order but let's just kind of look at our
39:38 little timeline to get us up to
39:40 Charlemagne in 312 Constantine legalized
39:46 Christianity with the Edict of Milan
39:49 Clovis adopt Christianity in 496
39:56 really becoming solidly established in
39:59 European territory in the seventh
40:01 century you have the rise of monasticism
40:03 these monasteries established by
40:06 Benedict are flourishing and not only
40:09 Benedictine monasteries but also other
40:11 sects of monasteries it 610 Mohammed
40:14 founds the Islamic religion so you now
40:17 begin to have other strong cultural
40:19 impulses coming into play and from 6-10
40:24 to 733 there's a large spread of Islam
40:27 through Arabia southern Europe Africa
40:30 Asia and India it's extremely effective
40:34 in terms of moving quickly across a lot
40:38 sharo Martel defeats the Arabs at the
40:42 Battle of Tor and with this he stops the
40:45 spread of Islam tourism south of Paris
40:48 so tor is right in the middle of Europe
40:51 that battle was really one of the
40:54 decisive turning point in keeping Europe
40:57 and a Christian country and expelling
40:59 the Arabs to the south and with that
41:01 battle Shara Martel begins to
41:04 consolidate power not simply in the area
41:07 around ile-de-france the area around
41:09 Paris but also he begins to bring
41:11 together a lot of city-states and France
41:13 and consolidate them together and make a
41:16 new empire we talk about Cheryl Martel
41:19 Charles as the originator of a period
41:24 called Carolingian cha Martel son was
41:29 Pepin and Pepin son we shall Charlie mom
41:33 and Charlie mom continued this project
41:36 of consolidation initiated by Charles
41:39 Martel and Pepin and really at a certain
41:43 point decided to declare himself to be
41:46 the Holy Roman Emperor so when we talk
41:49 to you next time we'll continue our
41:50 discussion of Carolingian architecture
41:53 and specifically we'll talk about the
41:55 Imperial Palace and awesome
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