The Framing of Sacred Space offers the first topical study of canopies as essential spatial and symbolic units in Byzantine-rite churches. Centrally planned columnar structures--typically comprised of four columns and a roof--canopies had a critical role in the modular processes of church design, from actual church furnishings in the shape of a canopy to the church's structural core. As architectonic objects of basic structural and design integrity, canopies integrate an archetypical image of architecture and provide means for an innovative understanding of the materialization of the idea of the Byzantine church and its multi-focal spatial presence. The Framing of Sacred Space
considers both the material and conceptual framing of sacred space and explains how the canopy bridges the physical and transcendental realms. As a crucial element of church design in the Byzantine world, a world that gradually abandoned the basilica as a typical building of Roman imperial secular architecture, the canopy carried tectonic and theological meanings and, through vaulted, canopied bays and recognizable Byzantine domed churches, established organic architectural, symbolic, and sacred ties between the Old and New Covenants. In such an overarching context, the canopy becomes an architectural parti, a vital concept and dynamic design principle that carries the essence of the Byzantine church. The Framing of Sacred Space highlights significant factors in understanding canopies through specific architectural settings and the Byzantine concepts of space, thus also contributing to larger debates about the creation of sacred space and related architectural taxonomy.
By:
Jelena Bogdanovic (Associate Professor Associate Professor Iowa State University)
Imprint: Oxford University Press Inc
Country of Publication: United States
Dimensions:
Height: 259mm,
Width: 189mm,
Spine: 30mm
Weight: 1.286kg
ISBN: 9780190465186
ISBN 10: 0190465182
Pages: 456
Publication Date: 14 September 2017
Audience:
Professional and scholarly
,
College/higher education
,
Undergraduate
,
A / AS level
Format: Hardback
Publisher's Status: Active
Acknowledgements Notes on sources, translations, and illustrations List of abbreviations List of tables List of illustrations Maps Introduction Chapter 1: Ciborium or Canopy? Textual Evidence on Canopies in the Byzantine Church Chapter 2: Canopies in the Byzantine Church: Archaeological and Architectural Evidence Chapter 3: Place-Making: The Place of the Canopy within the Church Chapter 4: The Micro-Architectural Framing of Sacred Space Chapter 5: Nested in its Own Shape: The Canopy and the Byzantine Church Conclusions Appendices Tables Bibliography Index
Jelena Bogdanovic is Associate Professor of Architecture at Iowa State University. Trained as an architect and an historian of art and architecture, she specializes in the architectural history of Byzantine, Slavic, Western European, and Islamic cultures in the Balkans and the Mediterranean.
Reviews for The Framing of Sacred Space: The Canopy and the Byzantine Church
[A] welcome addition to the study of medieval art and architecture, as well as the framing devices, both physical and rhetorical, that were used to make the divine manifest in ecclesiastical space ... This monograph should be a standard reference and starting-point for future discussions of spatial archetypes in Byzantium and the medieval world. * Nathan S. Dennis, Sacred Architecture *
