AN INCOMPLETE HISTORY OF MEDIEVAL ART LVII
CONVERSIONS: HAGIOS GEORGIOS
The Dacian Galerius was one of the four co-emperors of the consortium imperii, or tetrarchy, organized by Diocletian in A.D. 293. After his elevation to the position of augustus of the eastern empire in A.D. 305, Galerius built a palace complex in the Greek city of Salonica. On axis with the palace is an enormous circular building. Supported by of brick-faced concrete drum wall 6 meters thick, the building’s brick dome was the second largest after the Pantheon. The interior of the rotunda was sheathed in colored marble revetment and lit both by an oculus and large windows.
Although the building’s design is clearly based on the Pantheon, it is not a temple. Unwilling to spend the afterlife in a crowded imperial mausoleum in Rome, Galerius followed the example of retired-tetrarch Diocletian and built a centrally-planned tomb on the grounds of the palace.
Late in the fourth century, the rotunda serving as the tomb of a pagan emperor was converted into the centrally-planned Christian church of Hagios Georgios. Given this radical change in use, alterations to the building were required, although they were carried out piecemeal. The oculus was closed, a narthex added to the western side and choir to the east side, giving the building a basilican orientation like San Vitale in Ravenna. The addition of a wide ambulatory around the perimeter of the drum necessitated the piercing of the massive walls with seven access passageways. Although these openings, along with the arch pierced for the choir, weakened the wall, the ambulatory functioned as a continuous buttress, compensating for wall’s reduced load-bearing capacity. This solution stabilized the building until an earthquake leveled the ambulatory in the early seventh century, causing a segment of the dome to collapse shortly thereafter. The collapse destroyed a large section of the mosaic program, the finest addition to the building of the Christian period.
The program of the dome mosaics begins at the base with a ring of martyr saints, standing, in the orants position, before elaborate architectural backdrops. These structures were based on Roman theatrical architecture but the golden columns studded with jewels and populated by peacocks (symbols of eternal life) indicate that they represent the Heavenly Jerusalem, where the holy dead reside.
The figures of the apostles and the Virgin that appeared in the tier above the saints are now reduced to sandaled feet on a strip of grass. In the third tier, four winged angels, of which fragmentary heads, wings and hands survive, support a rainbow inscribed in a Roman victory wreath inscribed in a ring of stars. At the center of the composition, the material light of the oculus was replaced by the Theophany. This image of Christ was removed either by iconoclasts or the Ottomans, but its clearly-legible underdrawing indicates that He was depicted standing, holding a crossed staff.
Having endured iconoclasm, the conversion of the church into a mosque, a church again, and a museum, and multiple earthquakes, the mosaics are in ruinous condition. The passages that survive, however, are among the most refined works in the Byzantine canon. The artists were probably based either in Ravenna or in Constantinople may have been summoned to Thessaloniki to carry out an imperial commission.
Composed of richly patterned and colored angular planes, the flattened gowns of the martyrs mask any suggestion of anatomy. Released from the corruptions of the flesh, these figures are further dematerialized by the changeful light playing across the glass tesserae. This extreme etherealization is the new Christian way of visualizing the ideal body, which exists outside of time and beyond matter. The advent of this fully-developed and utterly unclassical formal language concludes the slow transition from classical antiquity into the medieval world.
