Tuesday, September 22, 2009

Medieval architecture




Peace, trascendance, happiness, and many other different emotions and ideas are experienced when we observe these beautiful churches, these imponent yet protecting and inspiring buildings. They are more than just buildings, and that is the reason they are still in our world being part of our history of our identity.


Today I am offering you two wonderful pictures, it was hard to choose, becasue none of the pictures that I could found get any close to the beauty of these constructions, so please, before posting make sure you visit many websites, look at many different books so you can appreciate different perspectives of each church.


Im just giving you a couple of hints... one is in Istanbul, it used to be in Constantinopla. The other one.... in Paris.


One is Catholic, the other is Orthodox. One is still a church, you can actually go to mass there, the other is nowadays a museum.


So, what do you have to do?




RESEARCH and POSTING.


You need to include the following:




Select one of the churches.


Offer to us, particular information on architecture or the visual arts inside or outside the church (you need to define the term you are explaining) and explain to us exactly where in the building we can see it).


Offer to us, particular information on the building history or context.


Tell us your opinion.
IT IS VERY IMPORTANT THAT YOU DO NOT REPEAT INFORMATION THAT HAS ALREADY BEEN PROVIDED BY ONE OF YOUR CLASSMATES.


Please INCLUDE pictures whenever it is necessary.


Due: Friday night.




Enjoy this exercise!




Charlie.


2 comments:

  1. Well, I'm going to talk about the building in the second pick. You may have seen it several times in movies or in videogames, but anyways, it is the Notre Dame cathedral, located in Paris, France.

    I'm going to talk about a piece that particullary amazed me from the whole architecture. I mean, the building is just magnificent, but I decided to choose one of the windows, named the West Rose Window, a concept wich was widely used in gothic architecture.

    That piece is in the front of the building and from outside haves a very impresive view, but from the inside... man, it´s the reason, not only because of the way it is structurated, colored, etc... but the dark light it proyects over the whole inside of the building makes you feel like there's only one god, an almost tangible sensation of fear.

    In this window you can see a representation of Virgin Mary and Christ child, surrounded by the prophetes and saints. I would have never noticed it if it wasn't because of the internet...

    Here I leave the link of a photo:
    http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/a0/Pary%C5%BC_notre-dame_rozeta_Lestat.jpg

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  2. The interior and exterior of the Notre Dam Cathedral.
    On this comment I’m gonna write about the Notre Dam Cathedral, the exterior and the interior of the building when it was radically transformed.
    The exterior appearance was radically transformed in the mid-13th century when the small clerestory windows typical of the Early Gothic style were enlarged downward and filled with High Gothic tracery tracery. The enlargement caused the removal of the unusual triforium. Originally the interior had the four-story elevation common to many Early Gothic churches, and the triforium had large round openings instead of the normal arcades.
    The transformation was made because of the art-time, in that time the most popular style was the gothic, so they try to change a little the cathedral structure, so I think that that’s why it made the cathedral so fabulous, because it don’t have just I art style.
    Seen from the exterior the building have appears to be Gothic , something that can show us that this type of art has been used for this building are the profusion of colonnettes and tracery screens, the horizontal and vertical ordering of the facades, the imposing size of the rose windows, and the delicacy of the flying buttresses.
    Even thought I don’t haven’t had the opportunity to visit the building, in the image I really note the Gothic things in the Cathedral, just thinking in the information that Charlie had tell us, and if in the future I have the opportunity to visit something, of couse the Notre Dame Cathedral, will be one of the first things..
    Bibliography: Page visit in 24th September 2009.
    You can find it in: http://www.discoverfrance.net/France/Cathedrals/Paris/Notre-Dame.shtml



    Eliseo Nuñez Ballato

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