Mid-Morning Art Thread [Kris]

Richard the Lionheart Receives Communion in Hagia Sophia
Gaspare Fossati

In 1837, Gaspare Fossati, by command of the Russian Czar, moved to Istanbul to design and construct a new Russian Embassy. While there, he was hired by the Ottoman sultan to restore the Hagia Sophia. During Ottoman rule, the interior mosaics of the great Byzantine church were covered over in plaster. Fossati and his team removed the plaster, repaired the church’s structure, and restored its mosaics. He also produced a series of lithographs that documented the building’s interior and exterior. When everything was complete, the mosaics were covered up again. Fossati’s personal experience with Hagia Sophia can be seen in this work painted while he was still in Istanbul. The detail is exquisite.

This work is primarily about scale. Most of the canvas is taken up by the vast nave of Hagia Sophia which dwarfs a group of people at the bottom. There has to be close to a hundred figures here, but they are puny. Since I have never visited the building, I thought Fossati exaggerated the proportions some to enhance the viewer’s awe (not unheard of in art), so I googled some photographs. From what I can tell, this depiction seems pretty accurate. If anything, he might have reduced the scale somewhat!

Fossati wants us to feel the enormity of the space. I also think he wants us to marvel at how open and light it feels. That is one of the great paradoxes of this building. Hagia Sophia is massive but feels light. The height of the building, from floor to the center of the main dome is 182 feet! I cannot imagine the awe of walking into such a space. So, imagine the awe of the first people to enter the newly finished building.

Hagia Sophia was (is) an architectural wonder. When it was completed in the Sixth Century AD, it was the largest Christian church, and the largest interior space of any kind, in the world. The dome itself was a particular problem that took several tries to get right. Around its base, a row of arched windows, which on a sunny day, creates a ring of light round the bottom of the dome. The effect was so mind-blowing, one ancient writer thought it looked like the dome was actually suspended from Heaven. An explosion of other architectural innovations spread the immense space out further.

This is a mysterious painting. It doesn’t depict history. Richard I never visited Constantinople and so could never have visited the church or had communion there. So why did Fossati paint this? What was his point? He was a Swiss working for the Muslim Ottomans. When Fossati painted this, Ayasofia was used as a mosque. I wonder how his work on the Hagia Sophia and the censored art affected him. Here is a depiction of Richard Lionheart, one of the leaders of the Third Crusade participating in a Christian sacrament in the greatest church in Christendom. Is this painting a fantasy? Does it carry a subtle message of defiance or Western/Christian pride? Possibly a desire for Christian unity in the depiction of a Western Christian leader taking the sacrament in the home church of Eastern Orthodoxy?

Probably not. However interesting that all might be, I think the primary message of this work is the magnificence of the Hagia Sophia itself. It dominates. It dwarfs. The arches, domes, half-domes, vaults, and galleries; the mosaics and marble paneling are all rendered in minute detail to amaze. While the mystery in this work’s title persists, there is an irony that I found more interesting. For a painting about vastness and monumentality, it’s pretty small — only about two by one-and-a-half feet.

posted by Open Blogger at 09:30 AM

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