Building across East and West: Byzantine & Romanesque architecture

Question 1

SantʹApollinare Nuovo

Ravenna, Italy

490

Answer 1

• Codification of Early Christian architectural norms
• System of columns supporting arches
• Religious icognography - rich and decorative entablature of sorts
• Impost blocks - creates rhythmic transition between columsn and arches
• Flat ceiling
• Clerestory windows
• Bare apse

Question 2

San Vitale

Ravenna,

Italy, 526 ‐ 548

Answer 2

• Commissioned by Emperor Justinian
  
  • Attempt to claim eternal life
• Amalgamation of political and religious iconography
• Arches, niches and dome
  
  • Undulating effect, eye constantly moves around thr space
• Double shell octagon, surrounded by ambulatory and gallery
• Justinian depicted in the apse - only Priest allowed
  
  • Offering bread, body of Christ
  • Sacred figure

Question 3

Palatine Chapel

Aachen, Germany

c. 790‐805

Answer 3

• Series of niches and arches in the gallery similar to San Vitale
• Heavy masonry in comparison
• Solid, composite piers
• Roman-like arches, drag eye back to the ground
• More Germanic
• San Vitale is ‘lighter’
  
  • Richer in decoration
  • Galleries almost curve outwards from the wall

Question 4

Imperial Cathedral

(Dom St. Maria und St. Stephan),

Speyer, Germany

1030‐61

Answer 4

• Employment of height - conveys sense of reaching up to the heavens
• Through Roman arch, groin vaulted ceiling
• **Many ways transition between Romanesque and Gothic
  
  • Use of engaged columns, span upwards
  • Use of light
  • Differing materials - heavier masonry

Question 5

Ste Foy

Conques, France

1050‐1130

Answer 5

• Barrel vaulted nave
• Arches arranged along the side aisles
• Important pilgrimage site
• Uses the chevet plan
• Pilgrims enter from Western portal, circumambulate to Eastern end
  
  • Then circulate around the ambulatory + crossing
• Scene of the last judgement in the tympanum