DOI Seite / Zitierlink:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.27180#0412
PYRAMID AND TEMPLE
of the contact are only noticeable where we are responsible
for making the first advances towards a reconciliation and
we are the receivers. In the Norman cathedral and royal
palaces of Sicily which are still under Saracen influence the
remains of oriental ways of life are enough to weaken
appreciably the Nordic form. In the midst of our astonish-
ment at the magnificence of the mosaics at Monreale we have
a lurking sense of strangeness which completely destroys
the simplicity of such pictures. The cathedral lacks abun-
dance of space, and the arid forms of the building make the
enormous mosaic look like an interloper from outside who
cannot enter into living relations with the congregation.
The chapel in the royal palace at Palermo with its tall and
over-elegant pointed arches, its mosaics and its frightful
stalactite ceiling is merely another luxurious ornament, and
in spirit belongs more to the East than to ourselves.
A drop of oriental taste is still discernible in the black
and white ornamentation of the cathedrals of Umbria and
Tuscany; and we may doubt whether it was altogether
favourable to the Italianization of Gothic.
The so-called Little Agia Sophia, once dedicated to SS.
Sergius and Bacchus, is a sketch for the big one and is superior
inasmuch as the central system, as in S. Vitale at Ravenna,
is consistently carried out. That is how Anthemius started.
His creative will remains free as yet from personal ambition
and is exercised about the harmony of complete symmetry.
Here, too, we note his indifference to the exterior, which had
merely to provide for material security. To this day it would
not be a serious business to convert the interior back into a
Byzantine jewel. The mosaics are even more thoroughly
covered with cold Protestant white. Probably they lie
undisturbed under the whitewash. The pleasant square in
front of the church, from which we gazed at the Turkish
coast, might be a corner of Ravenna.
Agia Sophia has a heap of illegitimate offshoots in
376
of the contact are only noticeable where we are responsible
for making the first advances towards a reconciliation and
we are the receivers. In the Norman cathedral and royal
palaces of Sicily which are still under Saracen influence the
remains of oriental ways of life are enough to weaken
appreciably the Nordic form. In the midst of our astonish-
ment at the magnificence of the mosaics at Monreale we have
a lurking sense of strangeness which completely destroys
the simplicity of such pictures. The cathedral lacks abun-
dance of space, and the arid forms of the building make the
enormous mosaic look like an interloper from outside who
cannot enter into living relations with the congregation.
The chapel in the royal palace at Palermo with its tall and
over-elegant pointed arches, its mosaics and its frightful
stalactite ceiling is merely another luxurious ornament, and
in spirit belongs more to the East than to ourselves.
A drop of oriental taste is still discernible in the black
and white ornamentation of the cathedrals of Umbria and
Tuscany; and we may doubt whether it was altogether
favourable to the Italianization of Gothic.
The so-called Little Agia Sophia, once dedicated to SS.
Sergius and Bacchus, is a sketch for the big one and is superior
inasmuch as the central system, as in S. Vitale at Ravenna,
is consistently carried out. That is how Anthemius started.
His creative will remains free as yet from personal ambition
and is exercised about the harmony of complete symmetry.
Here, too, we note his indifference to the exterior, which had
merely to provide for material security. To this day it would
not be a serious business to convert the interior back into a
Byzantine jewel. The mosaics are even more thoroughly
covered with cold Protestant white. Probably they lie
undisturbed under the whitewash. The pleasant square in
front of the church, from which we gazed at the Turkish
coast, might be a corner of Ravenna.
Agia Sophia has a heap of illegitimate offshoots in
376