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Overview
From the lotus flowers of the Senso-ji Temple in Japan, to the religious iconography that adorns places of worship from Vienna to Istanbul, all the way to Chihuly’s glass flora suspended from the lobby of the Bellagio Hotel in Las Vegas—this book takes you on a tour of the extraordinary artworks that demand an alternative viewpoint.
Art historian Catherine McCormack guides you through the stories behind the artworks—their conception, execution, and the artists that visualized them. In many cases, these works make bold but controlled political, religious or cultural statements, revealing much about the society and times in which they were created. Divided by these social themes into four sections—Religion, Culture, Power and Politics—and pictured from various viewpoints in glorious color photography, tour the astounding ceilings of these and more remarkable locations:
- Vatican Palace, Rome, Italy
- Blenheim Palace, Oxfordshire, UK
- Louvre Museum, Paris, France
- Dali Theatre-Museum, Figueres, Catalonia
- Museum of the Revolution, Havana, Cuba
- Capitol Building, Washington, DC, USA
Four eight-page foldout sections showcase some of the world’s most spectacular ceilings in exquisite detail.
First and foremost, this is a visual feast, but also a desirable art book that challenges you to seek out fine art in more unusual places and question the statements they may be making.
“Deepens our perspective of 40 of the most artistic, fascinating and iconic ceilings around the world.” —Forbes
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780711248465 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Quarto Publishing Group USA |
| Publication date: | 07/27/2022 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 240 |
| Sales rank: | 309,401 |
| File size: | 43 MB |
| Note: | This product may take a few minutes to download. |
About the Author
Read an Excerpt
CHAPTER 1
Religion
Regardless of race, geography or creed, all gods occupy the sky. The close of the Neolithic period (before 3000 BCE) saw the transformation of religious beliefs as they shifted from a focus on the power, fertility and spirituality of the earth to the introduction of the sky-god cults. These include the Abrahamic religions and, before those, the gods of ancient Egyptian and then ancient Greek and Roman pagan theology, who occupied Mount Olympus in the sky. In short, from the Indo-European period, we started to look up to see God. It was at this time that humanity began to design sacred spaces with versions of heaven to bridge the gap between that intangible godly place and our own mortal realms harnessed to the earth. But the depiction of gods in art has proven a perpetually divisive topic across world religions.
Christianity sees humankind as a reflection of a form of creator god that made man in his own likeness, a central creed that has motivated an avalanche of images that, themselves, have caused factional strife between different groups. Elsewhere, Islam denies picturing God or any form of life, preferring instead to meditate on the spiritual mysteries of creation through abstracted and geometric repeating patterns. Examples of both approaches can be found in the following pages, from Michelangelo's Sistine Chapel ceiling, which eulogizes the sky-bound father god giving life to the figures of the first woman and the first man, to the Imam Mosque in Isafan, which almost levitates with colour, light and hypnotic repeated pattern to express a state of transcendent godliness outside of the material realm. Interestingly, these seemingly opposing ideologies come together in Antonio Gaudí's Sagrada Família in Barcelona, the unfinished Christian temple that suggests, with its columns and configurations of complex geometrical architecture and decorative design, that an abstract notion of heaven has its roots deep in the material earth.
Ceilings and domes were frequently used for the telling of religious narratives to those who could not read it in words, and so early images of Christianity provided an education in the scriptures and lives of the saints through more easily assimilated visual means. Such images tend to focus on transcendence and sublimation, but also judgment, sacrifice and punishment.
Religious ceilings also inevitably reflect the climate in which they were produced, for example the interest in classical humanism and the sculptures of ancient Greece and Rome, whose impact is felt in the Sistine Chapel, the revivalist fanfare of Byzantium and the Eastern Christian church celebrated in the nineteenth-century Church of the Resurrection of Jesus Christ in St Petersburg, and the reclaiming of historical techniques, styles and spiritual heritage in the face of the contamination of Western art history at Senso-ji temple in Tokyo.
Neonian Baptistery, Italy
Looking up at the glinting mosaic dome of the Neonian Baptistery in Ravenna connects the viewer with a special point in art's early history. These tesserae of coloured stone, mineral, glass and shell take us to an era of images that predates what we now call 'art', a time when the early followers of the cult of Christianity asked themselves how they might picture God. How should they depict the invisible realms of spirituality and what symbols and tools would they use to create a language of religious beliefs that could speak in images rather than words?
At Ravenna, the answers to these questions resulted in a majestic display amid a sea of tessellated blue and gold. The two colours are symbolic. They reflect the splendour and beauty of an imagined majestic god in a celestial field of heaven, and represent the very earliest depictions of Christ as a type of sun deity emanating golden light, which emerged in the decoration of sacred spaces as early as the third century [CE].
The building of this baptistery was instigated by the Bishop Ursus and dates to the very closing years of the fourth century. It is an early example of the type of architecture that was created as Christianity took root as the official religion of the Roman Empire during the reign of the Emperor Constantine, who famously converted from paganism to the Christian faith. Built on an octagonal plan, the building had a unique function as the site for the initiation rite of baptism – a ritual that took place only once a year, on the eve of Easter Sunday. It was a place where early Christians went to be reborn and to commune with God, and this is the theme of the interior mosaic decorating the cupola, commissioned by Bishop Neon (451–473) several decades later.
The central medallion of the cupola is directly above the huge baptismal font at ground level and shows a gargantuan figure of John the Baptist baptizing a nude Christ, who is submerged up to the waist in transparent rippling water while God descends as the Holy Spirit in the form of a dove. It is a visual depiction of the words of the New Testament gospel of Mark 1: 9–11: 'Jesus was baptized by John in the Jordan. And when he came up out of the water, immediately he saw the heavens open and the Spirit descending upon him like a dove; and a voice came from heaven, "Thou art my beloved Son; with thee I am well pleased."' Much of this image has been crudely restored during postmedieval alterations, including John's head and arm, Christ's head and shoulders, and the dove. The most significant change is that, originally, Christ was depicted as beardless, in keeping with fourth- and fifth-century early Christian depictions in which the figure of God-made man resembled the youthful and clean-shaven Apollo, the pagan god of sun, enlightenment and creativity. A smaller figure of an elderly man looks on and is a personification of the River Jordan. The picturing of the river as a figure is doubly significant. Firstly, this was a solution to the conundrum of how to depict the idea of 'living water' – a concept that was central to the sacrament of baptism. Secondly, it was a way of recycling the already familiar visual tradition in earlier pagan Roman and Greek art of depicting river deities in human form.
Framing the central scene is a procession of Christ's twelve apostles led by Sts Peter and Paul. According to early Christian bishop Gregory of Nyssa (335–394), the apostles had been anticipated in scripture as 'the ministers of baptism'. They carry crowns, and these have been the subject of much discussion by theological scholars. Some suggest they are symbolic of a reward for the struggles that an initiate into Christianity endures, others see them as emblems of the earthly king who resided in Ravenna during the period in which it was the capital of the Ostrogothic Kingdom (493-553). In fact, the golden dome itself has also been associated with the aurum coronarium, the golden wreath that was bestowed on the emperors of the ancient world at their investiture. The Neonian mosaics can therefore be interpreted as a blending of symbolic associations between the imperial, pagan and Christian worlds of the early first millennium.
A third band, framing the apostles, represents the heavenly night garden, which is set against a deep, nocturnal blue, complete with identifiable flora and an array of paradisiacal birds as well as four empty thrones. These empty seats are known by the Greek word heitomasia, meaning 'prepared throne', and symbolize the anticipated second coming of Christ. The mosaics have not only served a community of spiritual or art-loving pilgrims, but also beguiled the psychoanalyst Carl Jung who visited the Neonian Baptistery in the 1930s, an experience that influenced his ruminations on the subconscious and conscious mind and the archetypal experiences of death and rebirth.
Church of the Resurrection of Jesus Christ, Russia
On 1st March 1881, Russian Emperor Alexander II lay bleeding on the snow-lined embankment of the canal in St Petersburg, his legs shattered and his stomach torn open. He had been on his way to the Mikhailovsky Riding School when social revolutionaries from the militant group Naradnaya Volya (People's Will) threw a bomb at his carriage and then at the emperor himself. Two years later, a dazzling church with five domes would rise in colourful bloom on the very spot where he fell, as if nourished by the spilled blood of the martyred emperor. The church took the name of the Resurrection of Jesus, to draw emphatic parallels between Christ and the slain emperor commemorated with a lavish shrine inside the church. The building, with its sumptuous decoration, served to deify the assassinated emperor, but is also a demonstration of a last gasp of national religious hyberbole. Seized and ransacked by Bolsheviks in 1917, it is no longer a consecrated church, and became known colloquially as the 'Saviour on Spilled Blood' in reference to the details of its foundation. The church has never shaken off this moribund reputation and served as a morgue during the Second World War. It has even gone by the name 'Saviour on the Potatoes' for its use as a warehouse for crop storage in the mid-twentieth century.
The outward appearance of the building references Russian church design of much earlier periods, such as St Basil's Cathedral in Moscow (consecrated 1561), and is symptomatic of a widespread revival of nationalism during the reign of Alexander II, which continued after his death as the official style of his heir Alexander III. Alexander's assassination prompted an upsurge in organized religion and the Spilled Blood was one part of an invigorated programme of church building that saw the construction of 695 major cathedrals across the country. This nostalgia for old Russia had informed the visual rhetoric of emperor Nicholas I, the father of the assassinated Alexander II. During his reign he promoted public interest and academic studies in Byzantine history to illicit an increased reverence for the historical past, perhaps in response to the perceived threat of more Western influences on St Petersburg.
Emphasis was placed on the heritage of the early Christian church in the Byzantine world and the continuation of that lineage into late- nineteenth-century Russia. This theme continues inside the church, with a radiant mosaic decoration that spans over 7,000 sq m (75,350 sq ft) of walls and ceiling and is made from twenty types of stone, including semi-precious jasper and topaz. These glistening patchworks, with heavily outlined and hieratically depicted figures, imitate the interiors of churches from the Eastern part of the Roman Empire, the territory known as Byzantium, which was the seat of imperial power from the late fourth century to 1453. The region that eventually became Russia was linked to the Byzantine capital of Constantinople (now Istanbul) through trade and the acceptance of the Greek Orthodox religion. Even the Russian language evolved from Byzantine monks, with the name of the imperial Russian ruler – the tsar – a derivative of the Roman title caesar. And when the power of Byzantium began to wane, Russia saw herself as the natural inheritor of cultural and imperial Christian power as Moscow (the former capital) declared itself to be a 'Third Rome', with all the associated glory and military prowess that had immortalized its ancient predecessor.
On the interior of the central dome, a whirlpool of violet and blue and sea green settles around the image of Christ Pantocrator – a theological presentational format of Christ that is particular to the Eastern church. Here he is, a stern judge and all-powerful God, hands raised in a rhetorical gesture of teaching or blessing. Eight dark, doe-eyed angels attend him in a circle around the base of the dome. The Greek characters [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] appear in Christ's cruciform halo; while a literal translation is 'the being one', it makes more sense if read as 'the one who is'. These are the words that were received by Moses in the Old Testament when he stood on Mount Sinai and asked to whom he was speaking when he heard the words of God. The inclusion of these symbols seems to be distinctive to Russian and Slavic religious images dating as far back as the twelfth century, and their inclusion here, in this church, in the very late nineteenth century, forges a symbolic link between Jesus Christ of the New Testament, and the awesome god of the Old Testament, as well as with the unbreakable secession of Russian religious heritage as expressed through icons and image-making in churches. While the mosaic designs take their inspiration from church decoration dating back as far as the sixth century [CE], the images here are also informed by the stylistic techniques of the popular and successful nineteenth-century painters whose works provided a template for the mosaic decoration. For example, there is an attention to contouring of the bodies and faces and a three-dimensionality that is absent from early Christian mosaic design, such as that seen in the Neonian Baptistery in Ravenna (see p. 14), while many of the figures would not look out of place in the European and Russian salons of romantic and mythological academic painting with whom the commissioned artists were professionally involved.
Sagrada Família, Spain
The Catalan architect Antoni Gaudí was hit by a tram and killed in Barcelona in 1926, two weeks shy of his seventy-fourth birthday. He left behind him the unfinished project of the Basílica i Temple Expiatori de la Sagrada Família, a gargantuan project that had occupied him for the majority of his career. The church was consecrated in 2010 by Pope Benedict XVI, despite still being in the process of construction. Now an unmistakable landmark of the city, it rises above the Barcelona skyline fusing the heritage of medieval Gothic cathedral architecture with the architect's own idiosyncratic strain of Catalan modernism.
Stepping inside the building is like entering an enchanted forest, as twisting helicoidal columns seemingly grow out of the ground, splitting into branches that support a weighty vaulted ceiling of tessellated sunflower shapes, while a rainbow haze filters through the coloured glass windows. Like giant beanstalks these columns form a solid vertical bridge between the mortal world at ground level and the celestial space above, and seem to suggest that heaven has its roots deep inside the earth. It was Gaudí's intention that anyone entering the church should gain a simultaneous view of the vaults of the nave, transept and apse – a spectacular vision, given that the central vault of the nave reaches 45 m (145 ft) in height, while the apse climbs to a vertiginous 75 m (245 ft).
The Sagrada Família revisits the overpoweringly majestic architectural language of the French Gothic style from the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, as seen in cathedrals such as Chartres, Amiens and Rouen. These buildings used amplified scale and proportions to draw the eye up towards an imagined celestial realm. The resulting space between the heads of congregants and the lofty vaults that towered over them was filled with prayer, song and chanting, while a diffused coloured light permeated through stained glass to give the sensory effect of an otherworldly paradise. In Barcelona, Gaudí eschewed the traditional engineering solutions that supported such masonry, replacing flying buttresses with unique solutions found in the mathematical complexity of the natural world. This manifested in weight-bearing columns modelled on the hyperbolic paraboloids of tree trunks and their branches, along with conoids, fractals and spirals. As such, the church is a harmonious synthesis of the built and natural environments, all underpinned by Gaudí's devout belief in God as the supreme architect of nature. As he himself suggested: 'Those who look for the laws of Nature as a support for their new works collaborate with God.'
(Continues…)
Excerpted from "The Art of Looking Up"
by .
Copyright © 2019 Catherine McCormack.
Excerpted by permission of The Quarto Group.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
Table of Contents
1,
Religion, 12,
Neonian Baptistery, Ravenna, Italy, 14,
Church of the Resurrection of Jesus Christ, St Petersburg, Russia, 20,
Battistero Neoniano, Ravenna, Italy, 26,
Sagrada Família, Barcelona, Spain, 32,
Imam Mosque, Isfahan, Iran, 30,
Vatican Palace, Rome, Italy, 38,
Church of the Buckle, Göreme, Turkey, 44,
San Pantalon Venice, Italy, 50,
DebreBerhan Selassie Church, Gondar, Ethiopia, 54,
Senso-ji Temple, Tokyo, Japan, 58,
2,
Culture, 64,
Palais Garnier, Paris, France, 66,
Burgtheater, Vienna, Austria, 72,
Louvre Museum, Paris, France, 78,
Dalí Theatre-Museum, Figueres, Catalonia, 82,
Strahov Monastery, Prague, Czech Republic, 86,
Metro Stations, Stockholm, Sweden, 92,
National Theatre, San José, Costa Rica, 98,
Uffizi Gallery, Florence, Italy, 104,
Toluca Botanical Gardens, Mexico City, Mexico, 110,
Bellagio Hotel and Casino, Las Vegas, USA, 116,
3,
Power, 122,
Banqueting House, London, UK, 124,
Alhambra Palace, Granada, Spain, 128,
Palazzo del Te, Mantua, Italy, 134,
Badal Mahal, Rajasthan, India, 140,
Palazzo Barberini, Rome, Italy, 144,
Topkapi Palace, Istanbul, Turkey, 150,
Blenheim Palace, Oxfordshire, UK, 156,
Palazzo Chiericati, Vicenza, Italy, 162,
Royal Palace of Brussels, Brussels, Belgium, 168,
Chinese Palace, St Petersburg, Russia, 174,
Würzburg Residence, Würzburg, Germany, 178,
4,
Politics, 184,
Palazzo Farnese, Rome, Italy, 186,
Augsburg Town Hall, Augsburg, Germany, 192,
City Hall, Barcelona, Spain, 198,
Old Royal Naval College, London, UK, 204,
United Nations Office, Geneva, Switzerland, 210,
Museum of the Revolution, Havana, Cuba, 214,
Palazzo Ducale, Venice, Italy, 220,
Capitol Building, Washington DC, USA, 226,
Further Reading, 233,
Index, 234,
Picture Credits, 239,