centuries, down to our own time, Byzantine artists have had before them this one model, copied and imitated by all, but never rivalled.
PLAN OF THE CHURCH OF HOLY WISDOM.
The architects of Justinian's great church deserve that their names should be remembered: they were Anthemius of Tralles and Isidore of Miletus, both from Asia Minor. Under them were one hundred foremen, under each foreman a hundred masons. These ten thousand workmen built with small bricks a church on this plan. A vast cupola rests, through pendentives, on four great arches that join as many massive piers. East and west against these arches rest half cupolas on semicircles; from each of them, again, open out three smaller domed apses. North and south the arches are filled in with walls pierced by two galleries of arcading that open on to aisles divided into two stories. The outer walls of these aisles meet eastern and western walls, forming an almost perfect square.[1] Along the west front runs a double narthex, from which nine doors lead into the church, and in front of the narthex was a great atrium (forecourt), now destroyed. The cupola which crowns the pyramid of curving lines is not high. The Byzantine builders always understood the difference between a dome and a tower, and made their domes low and very broad, like the curve of the sky. No other covering gives such a sense of vastness to a space as these saucer-shaped cupolas.
To adorn his great church Justinian spent fabulous sums. The old Greek builders had been content with the more reticent beauty of white marble. Justinian wanted a dazzling gorgeous-
- ↑ It is 77 by 76·70 metres.
