Istanbul, Turkey
Constantinople
What is there today
Hagia Sophia has stood since the year 537 and for almost a thousand years was the building with the largest dome in the world. In the smaller and less visited church of Saint Saviour in Chora survive the fourteenth century mosaics and frescoes that mark the last great flowering of Byzantine art.
Why this image comes from here
Here it was decided how an icon is painted, and here it was decided, after a century of destroying them, that painting them was legitimate. The imperial workshops fixed the canon still followed today, and from them came gold beaten so thin that a leaf weighs less than the air that moves it.
Pieces from this place
- Virgin of the Golden Mantle
- The brocade of the mantle and the crackled ground remember the imperial workshops of Constantinople, where gold was beaten so thin that a leaf weighed less than the air that moved it.