Plan and Isometric Drawing of the Church of Hagia Sophia
Written by Beth Bayley, Archivist Assistant
As nosotros've mentioned previously on this weblog, Robert Van Dainty spent virtually of his life working on an architectural survey of Hagia Sophia. Van Nice may have been the most dedicated person to ever carry out such a project on the building, simply he wasn't the only one. Wilhelm Salzenberg, a mechanical applied science instructor and a government building official, spent less than a yr in Hagia Sophia between 1847 and 1848, publishing a volume of plates in 1854.
While it took Van Nice a lifetime and Salzenberg a few months, each man had his ain unique motivations for undertaking their architectural surveys. Salzenberg and Van Nice differed in their goals, their audition, and of course, the time in which they were working. The resulting drawings are very different from each other, every bit seen here:
West view of Hagia Sophia. Plate from Wilhelm Salzenberg's Alt-christliche Baudenkmale von Constantinopel vom V. bis XII. Jahrhundert. Image courtesy of the Cracow University of Engineering Digital Library.
West view of Hagia Sophia. Plate from Saint Sophia in Istanbul: An Architectural Survey by Robert L. Van Nice. Image courtesy of the Image Collections and Fieldwork Archives, Dumbarton Oaks.
Architectural drawings are not supposed to be subjective, only these drawings are as different as the men who drew them – and it's all because of their motivations.
Since the Fossati Brothers were already in Hagia Sophia in 1847, information technology seemed like a golden opportunity to draw this lovely building and some of its newly uncovered mosaics. So Salzenberg was sent by the Prussian king Friedrich Wilhelm IV to document the building, peculiarly the ornamentation, to bring back ideas for the king to use when designing new buildings in Prussia.
The resulting book, Alt-christliche Baudenkmale von Constantinopel vom V. bis XII. Jahrhundert, is very much a product of its time, and of the creator'due south motivations. Salzenberg, with his squad of engravers, was trying to draw what he saw in the nigh cute way possible. For someone in the middle of the 1800s, i of the things that dazzler meant was symmetry (even though Byzantine buildings aren't symmetrical). The drawings are gorgeous – and the building is gorgeous – but the drawings aren't e'er exactly of the building. Rather than drawing what he saw, Salzenberg drew an idealized representation of Hagia Sophia. He added some features, subtracted others, and exaggerated the edifice's perfection.
View of Hagia Sophia. Plate from Wilhelm Salzenberg's Alt-christliche Baudenkmale von Constantinopel vom 5. bis XII. Jahrhundert. Image courtesy of the Cracow Academy of Technology Digital Library.
Decoration in Hagia Sophia. Plate from Wilhelm Salzenberg's Alt-christliche Baudenkmale von Constantinopel vom V. bis XII. Jahrhundert. Prototype courtesy of the Krakow Academy of Engineering science Digital Library.
The motivations of Robert Van Prissy, who began his own survey of Hagia Sophia 90 years later on, were very unlike. Van Nice and William Emerson, the Dean of Architecture at MIT who sponsored the project for the first two decades, were interested in a clear and complete architectural survey of the building exactly as it stood. In 1937, the Byzantine Institute, like the Fossatis earlier them, was already at that place uncovering and restoring the mosaics, and the presence of the Byzantine Found facilitated Van Nice's access. Van Prissy put out his architectural drawings in 2 installments, in 1965 and 1986. And each cartoon is startling its precision, right down to the placement of each brick, as seen below.
End walls of buttresses in Hagia Sophia. Plate from Saint Sophia in Istanbul: An Architectural Survey by Robert 50. Van Prissy. Image courtesy of the Image Collections and Fieldwork Archives, Dumbarton Oaks.
Salzenberg's book also included drawings of a few other Byzantine churches and sites (see beneath), but over again, it is useful to await at his motivations. He documented mosaics and masonry to capture bright colors and playful patterns wherever he found them, which would have been peculiarly interesting to his patron, the rex.
Ornamentation in Pantokrator Monastery. Plate from Wilhelm Salzenberg's Alt-christliche Baudenkmale von Constantinopel vom V. bis XII. Jahrhundert. Paradigm courtesy of the Cracow University of Technology Digital Library.
Van Nice also looked at other churches and sites, photographing other Byzantine buildings in Istanbul. However, he was ever motivated by a want to describe the truth, to depict exactly what was there. Based on our assessment of the drove, we believe that looking at these other buildings gave Van Squeamish another perspective on his beloved obsession, Hagia Sophia. Van Prissy was interested in documentation without bureaucracy. Ornament only interested him on an equal level with everything else – like the stonemason's marks and the graffiti that he likewise painstakingly documented.
We tin besides larn about Van Nice'southward motivations from his ain words. Van Squeamish kept a vast collection of research notes, which are now in the collection Robert L. Van Nice Fieldwork Records and Papers, ca. 1936-1989. Having these notes is like a window to Van Nice's thoughts, and we can get his perspective on his predecessor. Van Prissy, in his notes, certainly gives Salzenberg his due. He calls the 1854 work "manifestly, the central document on St. Sophia," and says that the book represents:
"an immense corporeality of work for the apparently half dozen months he spent in Ople. More of import the ornament he shows is superbly drawn – panels of marble, inlay, opus sectile, mosaic designs, cornice detail, column caps, ornament, etc. In addition planes of walls are set back past shading and exterior views were given life by cast shadows. Color is used in lithograph. Nosotros do not have photographs that can bear witness detail as well of all these kinds of ornament. His engravings give an splendid idea of the church every bit a whole – the colored section being quite special."
But Van Nice's own passion for exactitude meant he couldn't aid only enumerate Salzenberg's flaws. Over several notecards (one of which is titled "CREDIBLITY OF WITNESSES") he lists some of the problems with Salzenberg'due south work:
-Salzenberg, … introduced elements in i buttress that be in a different 1, etc.
-…He completely omitted imported elements projecting from St. Sophia's east façade.
-His delineation of column caps of gallery bays [was flawed]
-No floor slabs
-No entrances to minarets
-He shows… in placage of soffits of footing level arches of exedrae a kind of overall carved design that doesn't exist…
-His east façade lacks, for some reason, the small projections along sides of the dome-base.
-He has a well misplaced in the south alley.
-His squinches are at 45 (degrees) to the dome-base of operations.
-Arches to the west gallery from the side are horizontal instead of rounded.
-Vault thicknesses are exaggerated.
-West semidome is also thick.
Below is an example of one of Van Nice's many research notecards.
Note that Van Dainty wonders nearly Salzenberg, "Does he, any place, say that parts of his drawings are purely conjectural?" Image from the collection Robert 50. Van Nice Fieldwork Records and Papers, ca. 1936-1989. Courtesy of the Epitome Collections and Fieldwork Athenaeum, Dumbarton Oaks.
Van Squeamish's focus was always accurateness, and he was uncomfortable with the idea of "invented" details. He believed in what he was doing, and in his other notes, it is clear that it was very of import to him to get the truth downward on paper:
"Salzenberg's conventionalized plans, which brand everything symmetrical, ornament regular and repetitive, etc, while introducing…features which merely don't be…It seems, therefore, that nosotros would be doing the greatest service if we set down only what we detect and separate all conjecture from the main drawings…Thus to the lowest degree we shall not be setting misinformation afloat."
Here is a comparison of two cutaway views, Van Overnice's positivistic, show-based image and Salzenberg's more fanciful, ornament-focused view:
Longitudinal section looking south, and cutaway isometric view in Hagia Sophia. Plate from Saint Sophia in Istanbul: An Architectural Survey by Robert L. Van Dainty. Epitome courtesy of the Image Collections and Fieldwork Archives, Dumbarton Oaks.
Mosaic and marble decoration of the bema in Hagia Sophia. Plate from Wilhelm Salzenberg's Alt-christliche Baudenkmale von Constantinopel vom V. bis XII. Jahrhundert. Prototype courtesy of the Cracow University of Technology Digital Library.
While thinking about goals and motivations, i final affair to take into business relationship is the time in which these men were working. Salzenberg was bringing images of Hagia Sophia back to people, including a king, who had never seen it. The king was very involved with compages, personally cartoon the buildings he wanted built before giving the sketch to court architects. Simply the king was also interested in ornamentation, and probably used the mosaics that Salzenberg drew equally a model for the mosaics in his own Klosterhof, according to Robert S. Nelson in Hagia Sophia 1850-1950: Holy Wisdom Modernistic Monument. Sharing images with each other took a lot of time in the mid-1800s, and for Salzenberg, dazzler and usability took precedence over accurateness.
Van Dainty's motivations were also influenced by the period in which he was working. The first part of the 20th century was an exciting fourth dimension – in fact, Van Nice told his ain children that he had wanted to exist involved with antiquities always since hearing about the 1922 discovery of King Tut'due south tomb. Van Dainty was doing his work in a fourth dimension when Life magazine was featuring articles and pictures of Byzantine mosaics, and then access to information was already very different, and sharing images with each other much quicker. For Van Nice, the betoken was not merely to bring the building to his patrons. Instead, it was a point of pride to be able to evangelize drawings of the building exactly as it stood in the 20thursday century. Van Dainty documented for the sake of documentation and noesis nearly the edifice, while Salzenberg was sent to bring back something beautiful and useful.
These ii books are non only separated by a century, just by a vast altitude of motivation and intention. They now serve to complement each other, and scholars are lucky to have them both.
Salzenberg's volume, Alt-christliche Baudenkmale von Constantinopel vom V. bis XII. Jahrhundert: auf Befehl seiner Majestät des Königs / aufgenommen und historisch erläutert von Due west. Salzenberg ; im Anhange, des Silentiarius Paulus Beschreibung der heiligen Sophia und des Ambon, metrisch übersetzt und mit Anmerkungen versehen von Dr. C. W. Kortüm ; herausgegeben von dem Königl. Ministerium für Handel, Gewerbe, und öffentliche Arbeiten. is 20 x 26 inches, and 39 pages of plates. The PDF is available from Cracow Academy of Applied science, and the images used in this postal service are from their PDF.
Van Dainty's book, Saint Sophia in Istanbul: An Architectural Survey, is 23 10 35 inches, and 46 pages of plates.
Source: https://icfadumbartonoaks.wordpress.com/2013/09/20/motivation-methods-and-meaning-architectural-drawings-of-hagia-sophia/
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