Walking on Water: Cosmic Floors in Antiquity and the

Middle Ages
Fabio Barry
When Hagia Sophia, the vast cathedral of Byzantium, was
completed and dedicated with great fanlare shortly after
Christmas 537, the cmptror Justinian could rightly say (as a
later source claims) that he had outdone Solomon. Such was
its splendor that God Almighty might be tempted to descend
among meti and dwell within it (Fig. 1).'
|iistinian's expenditure on the church was fabled: it was
said that forty thousand pounds of silver went into the sanctuary screen alone, and he did not stint on its constrttction or
decoration with gilt tes.serae, liturgical furuiture, silver lamps,
silk hangings, precious chalices and pattens, and acres of
polychrome revetment. The glaring exception to all this artistry seemed to he the point where the whole construction of
faith met the earth's surface: the floor. Here, there were no
vermiculated mosaics, no rainbow imbrications, no intricate
tessellations. Instead, the floor presented an expanse of Proconnesian marble flagstones, traversed otily hy four green
stripes, with any eye-catching and multicolored paving
screened off behind the sanctuary barrier.
Yet visitors to Hagia Sophia were no less impressed by the
nave floor and the image it seemed to conjtire. The slabs were
book matched, meaning that the marble blocks had been
sawn parallel to their stirface and the "unfolded" panels set
edge to edge like the facing leaves of an opened book {Fig.
2). Receptive spectators could read latent images into the
symmetrical veining that resulted, btit, while such confections
often evoked human or animal figures in the manner of
Rorschach's inkblots," in this instance they seemed to figtire
a substance: water. In fact, over more than a millennium,
observer after observer wotild report that the combined undulations of the closely Htted slabs suggested that the entire
floor was a "frozen sea."
The perdurabilit)' of this topos betrays neither flagging
fantasy nor want of itivention. Rather, it reveals the endtiring
propriety of the extraterrestrial image that the faithful could
read into the shifting matter below their feet. As we shall see,
by "walking on water," they were reminded of the world's
watery genesis and its apocalyptic destiny in a glacial purity,
and also that, from beginning to end, God's throne sat
"above the waters," gliding over a celestial sea. Instrumental
in disclosing this concept was the perceived substatice of
marble, especially the type called Proconnesian. Although
the imageless paxing defined no specific narrative, its received materiality (meaning both the material and the substance that the material represented or embodied) and its
fundanuntal situation virttially dictated a specific range of
reference. In formalist analyses that do not evaluate the
material image or embodiment of a building, or that consider
"ornament" a .subtraciive addendum to "structure," the unfigured floor remains a blank slate on which the "plan" is
simply inscribed. A different approach, taken here, is to
pursue the archaeology of philological, geologic, and cos-

mogonic associations intrinsic to the material, avoiding the

cotnmon a.sstunption that costly materials like maible served
only to patade the prestige and "magnificence" of patrons
determined to display their wealth and power. Even if we do
not rule out "conspicuous consumption" as a motive for
marble flooring, we should concede that such display could
represent munificence in the semce of society rather than an
agent of sovereign insecurity.

The Options
I h e simplicity of the floor at Hagia Sophia is all the more
striking in that Jtistinian cotild have chosen from an anay of
paving options, for floors had been venues of artifice and
fanta.sy for centuries, and the materials were often as rich as
the illtisions. Domestic doors had long showcased tnosaic
"paintings" (embkmata); entirely illusionistic floors had been
known since the famous Vnswi^)l Hoor of Sosos of Pergamoti
(early second centuiy BCE) with its simidated reftise lying
above the floor surface. Converseiy, floors with scenes of
swimming fish had implied that the surface was only a film of
particularly clear water.' Even the checkered, geotnetric, and
carpet-weave patterns of aniconic flooi-s might subvert surface to imply a plunging abyss below one's feet."*
Early imperial chinch foundations in the West, like St.
John in Lateran or St. Peter's, seem to have borrowed their
paving schemes, like their building type as a whole, from civic
or palace basilicas. In Rome, in fact, geonietric patterns were
the almost inviolable rule, tliough even then employing a
palette of the choicest marbles.'^ In the eastern empire it was
another story. Extremely rich floor mosaics are foimd in the
fourth-centuiy chtnches of Palestine, Jordan, and Syria,
abounding in personified seasons and the creatures of earth
and sea. Despite a gradual drift toward piirilanical aniconisin
in chtuch floors from the mid-fourth ccntuiy to the early hfth
century, the divergent tradition of nature imagery enjoyed a
measured levival in the fifth and sixth centuries.'' Under
Justitiian there even seems to have been a full-blown renaissance of the medium and the whole decorative repertoire
that had been inherited from antiquity, whether the floors
were laid in churches or his own palace.' In this context the
tinadorned floor of Hagia Sophia pinposefully renounces
both figuration and material variety. The large slabs of marble offered a greater shimmei" than would any mosaic: pattern, a shimmer that when combined with undulating veining
immediately evoked a frozen sea.

Floors as "Seas," East and West

Wlien the imperial maislial Paul the Silentiary recited his
famous ekphroiis on the spot in Hagia Sophia in 563, he

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I.XXXIX

Nl'MBF.R

1 Hagia Sophia, Istanbul, view of the

nave from the west galleiy (photo
graph provided by Corbis)

compared the solea and amho, the walled-in proces.sional way

and pulpit that ptished out into tlie nave (Fig. 3), to a
wave-lashed isthmus in a stormy sea and ventured that those
traversing the church found a safe harbor only in the liturgical destination of the synctuary^ (see App. 1). This natitical
motif recurs in the Diegesis or Narratio, a ninth-century foikloric account of the Hagia Sophia's construction, which commends the pavement its "like the sea or the ttouing waters of
a river," and the ekphrasis of Michael the Deacon (ca. 114050) more extravagantly returns to the theme of a sea dotted
with islands, one of which is the ambo (see App. 2).** The
Narratio also describes the paving as traversed by the rivers
ofparadi.se, meaning the bands of Thessalian marble {verde

avtico) that compartmentalize the nave." This parallel tradition was disseminated as far iis England and Russia (although
it proved comparatively shorter-lived).'" Even Mehmet the
Conqtieror, on the day of Constantinople's fall (May 29,
1453), so admired this "sea in a storm" that he took a sword
to a disobedient solider tiying to prise a slab from the floor."
Cafer C^lebi's slightly later encomium of the same building
(1493-94) also extolled its marble waves, as wotild several
Ottoman poets after him,'^ while the Florentine Bernardo
Bonsignori (1498) was the last Westerner to repeat the obsei"\'ation, when he compared tlie surface to watered silk,
before the pavement was submerged tmder Muslim prayer
mats.'^ Perhaps the erroneotis tradition that Hagia Sophia sat

C O S M I C F L O O R S IN . \ N T I Q I I T Y A N D TMK MIHLH.K AtiF.S

3 Hagia Sophia, st^tiional axononietrir showing ihe solffi and

ambo (adapted Jrom Maiiistone, fiagia Sophia)

2 Hiigia St)phi;i, nave paving, Proconnesian marble, detail

(photograph by the author)

over vast cisterns arose from the same cherished perception,'' or the tradition, reported in the Narratio, that the
church was flooded durinp; the reconstniction of the dome in
563.'-'*
Within Constantinople, the Apostoleion {ca. 536-50), the
church that contained relics of the Aposlles and the tombs of
the emperors, had aLi almost identical floor,"' and the rippling influence of these Justinianic floors can still be obser\'ed in the "pools" that nostalgically fill later Byzantine
churtlu'S like the Chora (Kariye C^,amii, ca. 1316-iJl; Fig. 4)
and the Parekklesion of the Theotokos Pammakaristos
(Fethiye Camii. ca. 1310-14).'^ The same may have held for
the eleventh-century Pantanasse church, also in (;on.stantinople but now destroyed."^ There were probably others, but
today the only sni-viving Byzantine church that shares with
Hagia Sophia the distinction of a floor eniirely fashioned
from Proconnesian marble slabs is the Acheiropoietos in
Thessaloniki (F\^. 5). a mid-fifth-centmy structure, but one
whose paving might date from the mid-seventh.'''
However, the "seafloor" had already traveled west to fill the
naves and crossings of Italian churches, in a variety of techniques. Highly desciipiive sea scenes had featured in the
floors of the early-fourth-century double basilica of nearby
Aquileia (Fig. 6)'^" and in S. Puden/ia, Rome (ca. 384-99).^'
Abstracted versions persisted, as in the crypt floor of S. Savino
(ca. 1120-30) at Piacenza, where zodiacal roundels bob
about in a zigzag sea populated by leaping fish, mermaids,
and siiens (Fig. 7)."~' Mosaic waves also pool in the floors of

4 Chora Church (Kiiriyt- Camii). iinos, ra.

(photograph In tlie auihoi)

eleventh- and twelfth-century Venetian churches like S. Zaccaria, and SS. Maria e Donato on Murano (1141; Fig. 8),
albeit in the guise of inlerlinked crcsccnt-.sliape(l shields (or
/tf^irw).-''* This particular ccMivi-ntion had first arrived in Grado
(theseat of the Venetian patriarchate until as late as 1451) in
the late sixth centnn,': in the nave of S. Fuphcinia (579),
ranks of /W/w stream toward tlie altar, wingti|j-to-\vingtip but
facing in alternate directions (Fig. 9). Overall, these "painted
marbles concealing the squalid earth""' merge into a ripple
efTect so immediate in its e\'ocation of waves tliai one liistorian, Sergio Tavani, even compared the pattein with the
furrowed surface of a tide-swept beach.^'' As it hap|)ens, and
unbeknownst to Tavani, in 1211 a German visitor to a Cru-

630

lltX.EMBER 2007 VOLUME LXXXIX NL1MBE;R !

6 Uimljle hasilita. Aquilem, detail ui Uuui, tally 4L1I tciituiy

(photograph provided by (lorbis)

5 Acheiropoietos Cliurcli, Thcssaloniki. niid-fith cfnuiiT or

ca. 620 (photograph by the auihor)

sader palace in Beirut had voiced the same thought when he

admired "a fine marble pavement that so well feigns water
stirred by a light wind that, whoever steps over it, seems to be
wading, since they leave no footprints above the sand depicted there."^"'
Along with these floors, which differed in materials antl
techniques, the Proconnesian "seafloor" itself h;id also migrated to occupy the floors of two of the most ambitious
churches built in Italy during the High Middle Ages, the
abbey church of Montecassino and the palatine chapel of
Venice, S. Marco. At Montecassino (1066-71) the "sea" was
covered over in 1725-29 and eradicated by Allied bombing in
1944, but even its presence in an eighteenth<entur)' engraving (Fig. 10) has gone unnoticed because two large intarsiated panels run across it like a carpet runner (presumably in
deference to the longitudinal axis of the Western basilical
liturgy) .^^
The floor of S. Marco, however, survives. Laid sometime
beiwecn 1110 and 1150, it pullulates with tessellated whorls
and quincunxes that figure astral geometries, though even
these shifting patterns could be considered seas, as a nearcontemporary description of a similar pavement observes:
"what is spread on the floor, and what clothes the whole
space like a dress worked in colors might at first be called a

sea. which, moving on all sides in the gentlest waves, is

suddenly petrified."^** Yet the jeweled waves of S. Marco only
accentuate the hiatus of massive Proconnesian slabs under
the crossing.'*' These slabs, which were quarried speciall) for
the occasion, have been collectively known as "il mare" (the
sea) since at least the seventeenth century, though the tradition must be much older (Fig. 11)/"
The island quarries of Proconnesian marble were within
easy seafaring reach of both Constantinople and Thessaloniki, on untroubled sea-lanes relatively immune to marauders, and had provisioned these cities and much of the Mediterranean with architectural marbles for centuries. ^' It might
be argued, therefore, tbat the relatively unadorned floors of
Hagia Sophia and the Acheiropoietos were surfaced with this
plentiful stone with little thought other than elegant utility.
But this marble, and marbles in general, held far older, far
deeper associations ihat went straight to the heart of the
matter. First was the still lively perception that marbles might
be liquid, and second the more particular kinship between
marble and the sea.
Marbles as Liquids
The theories of geology promulgated by Aristotle and Theophrastus had taught that marbles were deposits of purified
earthy matter suspended in water that percolated down
through the earth's crust to deep reservoirs, where the whole
brew was frozen or fired solid by earthly humors.'^ Indeed,
they held that all stones must retain some measure of water
for their particles to cohere at all, and this conception explains the curious observation of a rabbi visiting Rome in the
first century CE that "marble columns were covered with
tapestries so that they might not crack during the heat and
not congeal during the cold."'^"^ In late antiquity marbles were
still perceived as congelations of clammy vapors, and so the

COSMK: FI.OOR.S IN ANTlyiJITY .\NI) THE MIDDLE AGES

53]

8 SS. Maria e Donato, Murano, mosaic floor panel, 1141

(photograph bv ilit- autlioi)

7 S. Savino, Piacenza, ca. 1120-30, plan of the crypt floor,

watercolor by Bozzini (artwork in the public domain)

fifilxentui-y poet Flavius Merobaudes eulogized a marble

font in a now-vanished baptistery with the words "the jewel,
once liquid itself, carries the liquid.""^**
During ihe medieval period these geologic perceptions
received ((iiiiinucd support from Arab science in the East,
while the same texts ma.squeraded as the works of Aristotle in
the West. Thus, in his On the Congelation and Conglutination of
Stones (1021-23), the Arab physician Avicenna (980-1037)
deduced from obsei-\ation of alhnial formations {conglntinotion) and the growth of stalactites (congelation) that there
nuist exist a lapidifying, "mineral force" that freezes water.^^
Such a conclusion would have been considered especially
authoritative, because a Latin epitome of Avicenna's treatise
was often appended to Aristotle's MeteoroU}^ 4 as an extra
chapter ("De mineralibus"), and therefore attributed to "the
Philosopher" himself.^*' Aristode's word was itself sacrosanct
because his Latin translators had infiltrated proto-Christian
nuances into their translations, but the obsen'ations in De
mineralitms continued to be disseminated by sainted writers
like Albertus Magnus as well (1220s).^^
Significantly, Avicenna/Aristotle legarded the transformation in question not as a deposition of solids in water but
rather as the actual metamorphosis of water itself into stone.
Moreover, the widely held and persistent belief that mountains were reservoirs of this marble brew and could renew
themselves by sweating it out into their quarry scars seemed
to receive fimi confirmation at Hierapolis (Pammiikale), in
^** The whole city sat on, and had been built out of, a

huge calcareous mass, and lime-charged water still streams

through its ruined streets today in search of long-vanished
bathhoases, depositing time as it goes (Fig, 12). Although
Hierapolis was abandoned after the tenth centuiy, its memory was sustained in the West by its brief description in
Vitruvins.^''
Hierapolis's actual fabric wa.s travertine, l>ut tlieie is dramatic evidence that such genuinely natural formations fed
wilder rnmors. As late as 1491. an anonvmous Ottoman writer
fount! it necessary to refuie the common bcliet that porphyr)'
was a frozen, water-based dye,"*" and Filarete had even cooked
a piece of marble from a cohimii in the Roman church of the
Aracoeli to disprove the common belief that it was a waterbased conglomerate.'"
Mar/Marmor/Marmora
The presence of marine fossils surely encouraged the perception that certain stones were peirified water, but literary
tradition also invited the association that was enshiincd in
the word marmor'itseU. This Latin noun from which derive all
modern European equivalents (mami-o. mnrhrf, uuirble, Marmor, and so on), itself descended from the Greek verb marmairein, meaning "to glisten." MarmairHn in turn was the
iterative form of a verb whose Sanskrit root. nun. implied
motion. Mar had originally indicated the movement of tlie
waves, and mar-marthe more agitated stirring (or murmuring)
of the sea.'''^
In poetry, this assonance proved pregnant with possibility.
When Homer had spoken of haia marmara [fUad 14.273), he
had simply meant the "shimmering sea," but when the Latin
poet Ennius wrote, about 184 BCE. of a ship "skinnning
the calm sea's golden marble," a whole new realm of metaphor entered the poetic consciousness.'^ There Is no equivalent in English, but the nearest analogue is perhaps "the
glassy sea."
Catullus, Valerius Flaccus, Lucan. Lncretitis, partictilarly
Virgil, and many othei-s all used martnoras a synonym for mar
time and again to imagine the sea's hard surface and hidden
weight. Virgil fathomed mannor'a depths by describing a calm
in which "tides of marble smoothness meet the laboring
oar,"'*'* but the metaphor reaches fruition, and water again
becomes stone, in the verses of Ovid. In wintr\' exile on the
shores of the Black Sea, he wrote that the chill was so fierce

632

ART Bi;i.l.KllM ntCEMBER 2007 VOl.l'Mli LXXXIX NUMBER 4

mfmuschi

WARTYRISv/FEMlAE

9 S. Eiiphcmia. tirado, nave floor, 579

(photograph providfd by Corbis)

that "the ships, shut in by the cold, wll stand fast in the
marble stirface and no oar will be able lo cleave the stiffened
waters.""^'^' Eventually this icy association became so much a
mental habit that tlie emperor Julian, wintering in Paris
(358-59 CE), would write home to describe a frozen Seine in
Impressionist hues as huge sliding plates of Phiygian marble
(or Pavonazzelfo) .^*^

With all this In mind, even ver\' familiar objects begin to

accommodate quite unexpected interpretations. Ajiyoiie who
has visited Rome will know the so-called Bocca della Verita
(Fig. 13), or "Mouth of Truth," into whose maw expectant
tourists insert tbeir hands and swear to tell tbe truth on pain
of amputation. This disk is actually a second-century drain
cover caiTed from a single block of Phrygian marble as a
portrait of Oceanus.^^ Geographically, the stream Oceanus
encircled the world and marked its limits, but he was also a
great cosmic power, the aboriginal wateiy mass from which
the Greek world was born. Thus, his disembodied mask with
its staring, apotropaic eyes serves as the fulcrum of innumerable floors (Fig. 14), and on some of these, and many sarcophagi as well, Ocean's hair and beard materialize out of
piled waves. Thus, on the Bocca della Verita, the deity's head
is contained within the "birthmark" of the marble, so that
when he reared liis head in ptiblic it seemed a body of water
itself, the face of the deep. Conversely, this mask must have
made whatever court it once adorned a microcosm across
which the waters streamed back into Ocean just like those
daily draining off the earth at large.
Likewise, the fourth- or fifth-centuiy sculptor who picked

out an intensely red onyx block with particularly gushing

veining for a Christian sarcophagus in Brescia (Fig. 15) understood the material paradox well enough to enlist this
marble as the vehicle par excellence for depicting tlie Crossing of the Red Sea. \Mien the Israelites had made their
crossing, the sea had .solidified into "a structure, created by a
hanging wall of water, [which] held back the sea and kept it
suspended in tbe air."^^ To complete the allusion, we tnust
remember tliat the Red Sea figures recurrently in poetry in
association with Persian gems, alongside references to blood
and purple dye.^'*
Carystian and Proconnesian Marble

Ennius had written of the calm sea's "golden marble," Homer

of the "wine-dark sea"; rarely did ancient eyes regard the
waves as "blue." More oftcti than not, they were green, and
one marble that regularly impersonated water was C^aiystian
(oi Cipollino), from Euboea in Greece. Its marine veining,
the poets entbused. "competed wiib the gray-green sea" and
"joyed to behold the waves."'"" Even the quariy was "wavy." "'
As a result, Caiystian was recurrently employed in bath complexes throughout the empire, private or public, and the
desired effects are nowhere more obvious than in the Jrigi.'
dmium of the Villa of the Quiniili on the Via Appia (late
second-early third century CE; Fig. 16).^^ Here, Caiystian
rippies under the geometric floor, the columns are of the
same marble, and if the wall revetment originally were, too,
one would bave felt stibmerged even before entering the
plunge pool. Analogously, the mosaic paxing in the peristyle

C O S M I C F L O O R S IN A N T l y t ' I T V .\ND

TIIF. M I D I t l K A G E S

633

10 Engraving of the floor at Montecassino, from Erasnio Catlohi, Hi.st(ma

Abbatuw Ois.%intm.sis per snendonim serieni

dislribula, Venice: Sebastiano Coleti,

1733, vol. 1, pi. VI (artwork in the
public domain)

itnpluvium in the Maison du Char de Venus (after 317 CE) at

Thuburbo Maius, Tunisia, imitates a book-matched floor of
Camtian marble just like that in ihe Jngklaria of the nearby
pul)lic baths."*^ The floor drains into a cistern below, so one
can only imagine the effects when the drain was plugged (Fig.
17). The longevity of Carystian's marine identity was such
that in tlu- 1490s, Andrea Mantegna capitalized on this same
marble's vciniiig in his design for a fountain (Fig. 18), and in
the 189()s the marble-literate painter Lawrence Aima-Tadema

would knowingly foreground it in his reconstruction of tluBaths of Caracalla (Fig. 19).-"'

By the sixth centuiy, however, it was Proconnesian marble,
the flooring of Hagia Sophia, that had largely snpplanted
C-ar)'stian in its power to epiiomize the sea. (ilisiening white
blocks of this marble had already been quarried from ihc isle
of Proconnesus for centuries, but the Byzantines sought out
the faces streaked with dove gray seams and enhanced tlieir
"ripple" veining b) slicing ihe slabs across the bed and culting

634

BULLETIN DECEMBER 2007 VOLUME LXXX1X NUMBER 4

ff12 Hierapoiis (Pamniukale). Turkey (photograph by the

autlior)

columns on the bias (Fig. 20).''^ Finally, by the time of the

Latin conquest of Constantinople (1204), the equation of
Proconnesian with water was consummated in the knowledge
that the island from which these slabs bailed ("sea-girt Proconnesus," as Paul the Silentiary says) had given the encompassing sea its popular name: Marmara.^*^
The Cosmie Floor
Why should a marine image have been desirable for a church
floor to begin uith? A partial answer comes from considering
Byzantine floors with marine iconography; a more complete
one from considering the implications of the materials themselves, in Hagia Sophia, Proconnesian marble.
Numerous late antique and medieval floor mosaics in both
the eastern and western Mediterranean borrowed their template from the ancient ideogram of the mythical Ocean encircling the inhabitable world {oikoumene):" In the eastern
examples the nave floor (representing the oikoumene) is often
bounded by a decorative border representing Ocean, but on

II S. Marco. Venice. // Mtm, 13th

century (photograph Camcraphoto
Ai'te. Venice)

one occasion Ocean may even have been simulated in the

real canals that surrounded the great cathedral at Edessa,
Syria (ca. 543-54 CE).'''^ in each case, because the devotee
found the world at his feet, the church became a model of
the universe and assumed a cosmic footing. Moreover, if one
pursued the cartographic suggestions of the floor to their
logical conclusion, then the sancttxary occupied the position
of paradise itself (Fig. 21)/''' For, according to Maximus
Confessor (ca. 580-662). the church "has the holy sanctuary
as heaven, but it possesses the fitting appearance of the nave
as earth. So likewise the universe is the church. For it has the
heaven like a sanctuary and the ordering of the earth like u
nave.
As for the materials, to most contemporary eyes, the glittering Cosmati meadows that were strewn across S. Marco
and the church of Monteca.ssino rendered the sanctuary an
Eden of gems that flashed underfoot like the garden of God
described by Ezekiel (28:13. 14), But a watery flo<)r in the
image of an entire sea, as presented by Proconnesian marble,
promised to be the alpha and omega of such premonitory
materiality. For when its shinunering surface lay beneath an
overarching dome of luminous gold, the whole construct
became a simulacrum of God's separation of the waters in
Genesis 1:2-8: "And the Spirit of God moved upon rhe face
of the waters. . . . and God made the firmament, and divided
the waters which were under the firmament from the waters
which were above the firmament. . . . And God called the
firmament 'heaven.'" These verses were fundamental for the
Judaic view of the universe and, thereafter, the Christian and
Muslim versions.*'' Christian depictions of the division of the
upper from lower waters range from the ideograms in an
eleventh-centurv' manuscript of the sixth<entury Topography
of Cosmas Indicopieustes (Fig. 22)"'^ to the more evident
evaporations and precipitations of a thirteenth<entury
French illuminator (Fig. 23).''"' Moreover, not only had Clod
divided the waters but he would also sit "above the watere"
until the end of time. For on judgment Day, Revelation tells

COSMIC KI.OORS IN ANTlQUnV AND THK

14 Head of Oceaiuis, uio.saic floor, 2nd half of the 4th century

GK, Villa of Matcruus, Garranque. uear Toledo. Spain (ai twork
in the public domain; photograph by the author)

13 Bocca della Verita, lst quarter of the 2nd century CE? S.

Maria in Cosmedin, Rome (artwork in the public domain;
h l
by the author)
as, his apocalyptic throne would finally become visible to all
resting on "a sea of glass likt* to Crystal," "a sea of glass
mingled wiih fire" (Rev. 4:6, 15:2).""' Indeed, this is exactly
how we see him. above a shifting sea laced with flame and
flanked by horn-blowing apocalyptic angels, on the proscenium of S. Michele in Alrici.sco (545), Ravenna, mosaics that
were installed within a decade of the inauguration of Hagia
Sophia (Fig. 24).'*' Another such sea, this one caned, also
subtends Ciod's supernal tlirone in the tympanum of the
portal of'St-Piene in Moissac (ca. 1125), this time contemporaiy with the paving of S. Marco.*'*'
Atid in S. Marco, observers could find both seas, the Deep
and the Celestial. A "sea" of nested chevrons (rather than
wickerwork, as it is normally explained) was inscribed betwceti the legs of the so-called throne of Saint Mark, the
prized relic caI^'ed with cherubim, palms, the Lamb of
God. and the four rivers of paradise that stood behind the
ba.silica's high aliar (Fig. 25).'' ^ In S, Marco, Venetians could
also compare the veined "sea" under the crossing nearby with
the linguine-like waves over which theSpiril of God hovers in
the mosaics of the Genesis ttipola in the atrium (Fig. 26).''"
Added to all these musings was, of course, the inescapable
frisson thai Venice was it.self a (it\- founded on water, a fact
that became painfully obvious with every seasonal flood, the

15 "Red Sea" sarcophagus, 4th or .'ith century. Museo Civico

di Brescia. MR .f)832 (artwork in the public domain;
photograph b) the author)

terials. From I'emotest antiquit\' nntil the seventeenth centUTy, few doubted that i ock ciystal was a form of ice that had
been frozen by primordial cold.''^ This suggested that light
(the active principle of the Logos) was frozen into its very
fabric. Thus, when marble, which was a more opaque cotisin
of crystal, was polished it recovered this original light in a
surface slick. The connnon resemblance of shimmer to wetness, the "wet look" that mosaics and luarbles alike could
achieve, therefore, pointed beyond the surface to a substratum of physical affinities. Taken as a whole, the dome of
Hagia Sophia became a "shower of light," tumbling down in
a luminous cascade, washing the walls and soaking the
flixir. The tenth-century soldicr-jjoet John Geometres virtually says as much when he describes the columns of the
Stoudios church (454-63), Constantinople, melting back
into their watery cradle in the earth and discharging over the
floor in the process:

acqua alta.

In Hagia Sophia the two watei-s essentially compose the

basso projvndo underlying the dancing reflections of the ma-

The polished splendor of these stones

Seems another sea without waves

AfiK.S

535

lULLF.TlN DF.CF.MBKR yO{)7 VOl.LMt l.XXXTX NTMHl-LR -1

16 Frigidarium of ihc Villa of the

Qiiinlili, Rome, late 2iui-early Sr
centui-)' CE (photograph by ihc
author)

As though just now it has fallen cahri.

The light atid luster of the columns.
Their lovely sparkle, resembles
A river glisieniug wilh dissolved
Snow, which, almost another sea, flows
Toward the glossy stones of the floor.
Silently.^'
All in all. the glossy materials of the domed church could
he regarded as globally crystalline, tinged by the local color of
earthly generation in the nave walls below or heavenly ether
in the dome above. Divine light bleached the church's upper

shell, paradisiacal landscapes (although rainbows or peacock

wings, or other images of iridescence and multiplicity would
dojust as well) inhabited its walls, and cosmic waters pressed
up against its floor.''^ The symmetry of the whole construct is
prefigured by the earlier poet Claudian. who describes a
crystal ball, or lens, as a miniature replica of the cosmos in his
epigram "On a Crystal Enclosing Water" (ca. 390-95):

The snow white crystal, fashioned by the hand of man.

Showed the variegated image of the peifect universe.
The heaven, clasping within it ihe deep-voiced sea

C O S M I C F L O O R S IN A N T I Q U I T Y A N D T H K M I D I l l . E

AfiES

17 Maison du (^hur df \enLis, aerial view, Thiibiirbu Maias,

Tunisia, peristyle impluvium. after 317 CE (from Alcha Ben
Abed Ben Khadcr. 'nmlnniio Majits. pi. xxvii)

Such liquid and crystalline light was also translated into the
domical water display.s of those Islamic fountains that posed
as heavenly models. An eteventh<entury version in an Arab
house in Cordoba is described thus: "Frotn its head water fell
in the form of a dome upon a Moor of alabaster and marble;
lights were set inside this 'dome' and were thus covered by it."
A celebrator)' poem makes more obvious the microcosm
when it surreptitiously questions:
Tell me what is the torch upon the lamp
That sprouts crystals onto a crystal base?
A stream that will not kill fire in its midst.
Its waters sianding like a wall and missiles,
A sky encriisterl with an onyx skin
Stretched over a ground
The upper waters had been frozen at creation into crystal, a
fact that one knew because at night one could see the stars
through the heavenly spheres, and this archetj'pal constmct
was again borne out by the letter of Scripture. As tlie Book of
Job lays out, when God had "divided the waters," his breath
had ciTstallized the sky, and he had "shut in the sea with
doors, when it brake forth, as if it had issued out of the
womb" (Job 38:8) /^ The simulacmm of the church therefore
fixed the image of creation in a material metaphor that
literally enacted Job's words that "the waters are hid as with a
stone, and the face of the deep is frozen" (Job 38:30).^''
Therefore, a church floor of frozen water could evoke at
one and the same time the Creation and the Apocalypse, by
recalling the ambience of God's throne room beyond hnman
time and out of this world. In the beginning. Cod froze the
waters, and when he renews the universe at the end of time.

18 After Andrea Mantegna, design for a fountain, ca. 1490.

British Museum 1910-2-12-32 (artwork in the public domain;
photograph Clopyright the Trustees of the British Museum)

he will restore the earth's original luminosity; its surface will

no longer be dark and dull but will become a diaphanous
mass as sleek as glass.'' In this light, the brilliant, polished
floor becomes a mirror of the divine plan, and by stepping on
it one enters heaven. Indeed, ihe glacially wliitc floors eventually recorded in various Constantinopolitan churches probably harbored this ambitioti.'**
Judaic Precursors and Islamic Successors
The patrons, architects, and theologians who thought "sea"
when tliey surveyed the floor of Hagia Sophia would recall
the "brazen sea" in the prototypical Temple of Solomon'" or
the waters that flowed from the temple in Ezekiei's vision,
and the various pools atid fountains of Hagia Sophia's ionglost atrium conscionsly prefigured the simulations of the
interior.**" Rabbinical commentaries on the Hetodian Temple make it clear that the visual association between marble
and waterwas very well established in Jndaic lore lotig before
its explicit Byzantine appropriation.'*' A Babyloniati Talmud
of the fotirth century reconnts that Herod 'intended to overlay [the wall] with gold, but the Rabbis told him, 'Leave it
alone for it is more beautiful as it is, since it has the appearance of the waves of the sea.'"*^^ Furthermore, the identity of
the marbles en\isioned by the Amoraim (Talmudic scholars)
was confirmed by their use of the Greco-Latin word viarmar,
and other texts refer to the stones of Perak Onsin, in which

638

'^''T BULLETIN DECEMBK.R 2(107 VOLUME LXXXIX NUMBER 1

20 Great Mosque, Daiinisciis, "Foam of the Sea" (mirhab wall),

709-15, restored 1893 (image provided by Barry Flood)

19 Sir I^wrence Alma-Tadema, iiwrmw Audxiiinuu', lhS!. oil

on canvas. 59% X 37'/i! in. (152.3 X 95.3 cm). Private collection (artwork in the public domain)
can be detected a corruption of the name Proconnesus.
Finally, Tziona Grossmark has shown that a cryptic warning,
"When ye arrive at the stones of pure marble, say not. Water,
water!" derived from a mystical account of ascent to tbe
upper spheres in which one of the travelers "stood at the
entrance to the sixth palace and saw the splendor of the air
of pure marble stones and he opened his mouth two times
and said Water, water. .. "^^ In other words, the material
portended a heavenly vision, and yet another medieval version of the same story places emphasis on this otherworldly
dematerialization by describing the mirage of the "hundreds
of thousauds and millions of waves of water [that] stormed
against [the traveler], and yet there was not a drop of water,
only the ethereal glitter of the marble plates with which the
(Sixth) Palace was tessellated."**^
Nor were Islamic poets blind to the rainy allure of Proconnesian marble. Marcus Milwright has adduced a eulogy by the
ninth-century poet Buhturi on a Samarran palace:
As if the glass walls of its interior
Were waves beating upon the seashore;

21 Floor plan of the basilica of Thyrsos at

Tegea, Arcadia, late 5th century

COSMIC FLOORS IN ANTIQlJirV ANI) THF. MIDnLK AMS

22 Cross section of the cosmos, from Cosmas Indicopieustes.

Topof(raphi(t 4.2, I Uh centu!^. St. Catherine's, Mount Sinai,
Codex (Iraecus 1 743, fol, 65v (artwork in the public domain;
photograph from Huber, Heili^ Berge,fig.45)

As if its striped marble, where its pattern

Meets the opposite prospect, Lthat is, book-matching]
Were streaky l ain-clouds arrayed between clouds, dark
ai]d light.
And striped, coming together and mingling^^
But these pan-Mediterranean water metaphors had no impact on mosque floors, both because they had to be covered
with matting to accommodate the five daily prostrations toward Mecca and because the mosque is essentially an oriented prayer hall with no pretensions to housing the divine
piesence nor portraying the end of days. In the Great
Mosque at Damascus it is the revetment surrounding the
mihrab (Fig. 20) that came to be known as "foam of the sea,"
not the flocjr.'*'' In Islamic and [udaic lore, in Midrashim, and
even in the Qur^an, the image of the watery lloor is in fact
more common in descriptions of palace interiors. Because
God's throne stood over a glassy floor, so did Solomon's, and
when tlie queen of Sheba entered his palace she, too, was
fooled into thinking that its marble floor was a pool of
water." The crystal walls and watery floor of Solomon's paiace would in turn exercise their rule over those sovereigns
who aspired to this paragon of god-given kingship.^*" A glass
pavement was even bnilt, in Syria, in the late eighth or early
ninth century, and the Qur^anic verses describing Solomon's

639

23 Division oj the Waters, from the Maciejowski Bible, French,

13th centuiy. New York, Pierpont Morgan Library MS 638,
fol. 4 (artwork in the public domain)

floor freqtient the walls of medieval palaces with complex

illusionistic or vitreous ornament, the Alhambra being a special case in point.^^ "Glassy seas" and "ocean floors" also
existed in Western palaces or, at least, poets imagined that
they did, as in an early-twelfth-century description of the
audience hall of the comtesse de Blois.^ Likewise, the tenthoreleventh-centuiT Digenis Akrids, n Byzantine ballad strongly
infused with Islamic influences, imagine.s a palace floor paved
"with onyx that had been so highly polished that onlookers
thought it was water frozen into ice."*" The conceit must have
been widespread much earlier, as a sixth<entuiy poet had
tdso explained the floor in a Carthaginian throne room to a
Vandal king as ;ui "unclouded pavement [lliat] seems to be
thickly spread snow. When your feet stand upon it, you would
think they could sink into it."^^
A Qassical Sea: The Temple of Zeus, Olympia
There were arguably classical precedents for the marine floor
of Hagia Sophia, but the most powerful was the cella of the
Temple of Zeus at Olympia (Figs. 27, 28), housing the most
famous chryselephantine statue in Greece, Phidias's enthroned Zeus (ca. 430-420 BCE). On its completion Phidias
had the floor in front of the massive effigy dug out and
"paved, not with white, but with black stone, [and] in a circle
round the black stone [ran] a raised rim of Parian marble, to
keep in the olive oil that flows out there."''"'' Pausanias, the
Greek travel writer who wrote these words six hundred years
after the whole ensemble was bnilt, went on to explain that
the film of oil overlaying the slabs served as a dehiimidifier.

640

ART BlJl.l.KTIN DECEMBER 21)07 VOLUME LXXXIX NUMBER 4

24 S. Michele in Africisco, Ravenna,

apse proscenium, 545. Bode Museum,
Berlin (artwork in the puhlic domain)

preventing the effigy's wooden armature from warping and

thereby slonghing its ivory skin. But this preventative function ot olive oil has no basis in physics, and it is doubtful that
the Greeks, whose staple crop was olive oil, would ever have
believed that it did. A trickle of dissenting voices has instead
recognized that the viscous oil was actually meant to transform the black surface into a huge, seamless mirror.**"*
It was said that the Zeus seemed so alive that he almost
moved, that if he stood up he would knock off the temple
roof, and his shimmering materials purveyed a hyperreality of
heavenly appearances.^'' The black pool rendered him visible
but untouchable, and encircling parapets barred access to
the poolside to beat the bounds of the supreme god's precinct. The floor, like the later "black stone" that gave its name
to the ancient monument in the Roman forum, the Lapis
Niger,^^ became hallowed ground because one literally could
not step on it. Thus, Zeus occupied his own kingdom, and by
reflection resided in a personal abyss of incomparabillty, the
materials bracketing the range of creation from Olympus to
Tartarus.^' Even the curb of the pool seemed to undercut the
internal columns of the cella, pulling the rug from under the
whole edifice.^^ So Zeus loomed over a great divide, not of
dead blackness {atrr, or ix\a<;) but the brilliant black of
raven blue reflections {niger, or Kuctveo?) that suggested hidden depths and even the unformed, bottomless darkness that
all Mediterranean myth associated mth primeval chaos. The
overall eftect is characterized in the text of yet another age,
the Hypnerotomachia (1499), where Polifilo enters tlie amphitheater and finds that
the whole pavement of the arena . .. seemed to consist of
a single, solid Obsidian stone of extreme blackness and
invincible hardness, so smooth and polished tliat at the
first step I withdrew my right foot, fearing that I was about
to fall into the abyss and perish. . . . In this clear stone one

could see the limpid profundity of the sky perfectly reflected as in a calm and placid sea, and othei^vise ever\'thing around or above it, much better reflected than in
the shiniest mirror,^"
The tradition was far more ancient still than Olympia. In
some Egyptian temples that predate Phidias by two millennia,
black basalt pavements were "associated witli structuring tlie
space as a microcosm: a point where contact is possible between earth {the sphere of the living), represented by tlie
black material, and the cele.stial zone represented by the light
color of the upper walls and the ceiling which was painted with
yellow stars on a blue ground." "^^ At least one of these floors was
actually open to the sky.
Phidias no doubt intended to achieve the same effect as
would the British sculptor Richard Wilson in 1987 when he
filled a whitewashed art gallery- with recycled sump oil to
create a space "where the internal volume is greater than its
physical boundaries" (Eig. 29)."" Wilson's illusion was faultless, the entire space bisected by a horizon of a hair's breadth,
and when the spectator ascended the Cor-Ten steel ramp
excavated in its midst, the experience was like mounting a
diving board.
Wilson's installation was lit only by the soft light from a
sawtooth roof above. Phidias's statue of Zeus must originally
have been lit by candelabra and hanging lamps, of whose
arrangement we now know nothing except that the oily mirror would have reflected them. Neither Zeus nor his father
presided over Chaos (which preceded them), and the splendid isolation so .skillfully engineered was more likely to mirror
the supreme niler's throne in the heavens. William Richard
Lethaby, the only observer yet to offer a tnily imaginative
alternative to Pau.sanias's explanation, ventured that "it must
have re.semhled the deep still sea, the sea of heaven which
bore the throne of Zeus, and in which the stars floated.""'"'

COSMIC FLOORS IN ANTlyUITY AND TUK MIDDLE ACES

2 6 t l e n e s i s m p o l a , S . M > u v . . , I.Jili c c i U i i i y ( i i r i w o r k i n l l i i -

public domain; photograph by the author)

25 "Throne of Saint Mark," S. Marco, Venice, 7th century?

(artwork in the public domain)

However much they differ in materials, execntion, and

polish, these Egyptian, Greek, and Byzantine floors, a.s well as
Richard Wil.son's equivalent at the Saatchi Galleiy, share a
common premise. Their liquid surfaces dissolve the floor and
make the rock bottom drop out of the world of the spectator,
who is then induced to tread a precarious line through
extraterrestrial space. More particularly, in the case of Hagia
Sophia, the conjunction of marble and sea explicitly collapses
the antitypes of creation, sea and mountain, into one horizon
on which human finitude is set between lucid firmness and
timbrous chao.s.
At Hagia Sophia, the exploitation of book-matching gave
rise to a .stony sea that emerged from an inherent ordering.
This miracle of art erased the indices of facture and helped
sacralize the interior by assimilating the new creation to the
product of artful Nature rather tlian man-made artwork. No
figura! imagery had appeared in Hagla Sophia's mosaics

before the ninth century; in short, this was an aniconic floor

for an aniconic church.'"*' The floor therefore avoided any
of the pagan connotations of the personiiied "Sea" that was,
for example, the focus of the church of the Apostles at
Madaba (578-79; Fig. SO).""* But, as I remarked at the ouLset,
although the imageless paving of Hagia Sophia preordained
no specific narratives, its received materiality and fundamental situation virttially predestined a proper range of
reference.
For a start, the worshiper who headed across the waters to
the sanctuar)- in Hagia Sophia, or Grado, for that matter,
retraced the steps of Peter in his march of faith across the
stormy Sea of Galilee to meet Christ "the rock" (Matthew
14.29); Ghrist had quelled the chaotic waves of tlii.s sea just as
his Father had stayed those at Clreation.'"^' To slip beneath
the surface would be to fall from God's favor, to await, like
Jonah, reclamation from the depths; in fact, several odes in
the later Byzantine canon call on salvation in paraphrases of
Jonah's prayer in the belly of the whale.""* Moreover, it was
with this very biblical event in mind thai a niuth-centuiy
chronicler would have us believe ihat fialla Placidia. after a
shipwreck in 424, built a new church to Saini Jolni the
Evangelist in Ravenna. Below mosaics depicting her [>erils on
the open sea she had a pavement laid thai was "eveiywhere a
wavy sea [undosum undique mare]," as though it were "stirred
by the winds, to produce the image of a tempestuous
storm."'"'
In S. Marco, pausing at the crossing is like waiting before
tlie glassy sea of God's throne room. The same was once true
for the abbey church of Monteca.ssino, which hoped to surpass Hagia Sophia and whose floor wa.s probably laid by
C'onstiuuinopolitan crafLsmen (Fig. 10). As Alfanus of Salerno's contemporary poem on iLs splend(jr"s sijigs: "Here the
green and porphyretic stones make the alabasters shine; and
at the same time the Proconnesian paving matches these

642

ART BULLETIN DECEMBER 2007 VOLUMt LXXXIX NUMBER A

27 Temple of Zens. Olympia, plan wilh the pool of oil marked

in black (redrawn from Curtius et al., Olympia: Die Ergehnisse dr
von dern Deutschen Reirh veranstalteten Ausgrabung.

. . . , Tafilbilder,

vol. 1 [1892J, pi. 11)

marbles to each other in such a way that this work may

become a glassy sea."'""
For others. Hagia Sophia's floor recalled the words of
Job. The lector who chanted the Kontakion (homiletic anthem) on its second inauguration on Christmas Day 562,
from the amboin the middle of the "sea," told the masses that
"in the beginning the firmament solidified in the midst of the
waters . .. with a flowing snbstance, as it is believed to be,
above i t . . . . But here things are better and utterly wonderful:
no flux, for the favor of God is the foundation on which resLs
the temple of God's Wisdom."'"'* The lector sang in lucid,
contemporary Greek, but when Paul the Silentiary lectured
to the more select crowd of emperor and patriarch a few
weeks later, from some gallery vantage overlooking the "sea,"
he declaimed Homeric hexameters.'^** The linguistic shift
reflected a revived republic of letters and the court culture
that sponsored them, but it was also a timeless, epic voice
rising to the heroic ambitions of the edifice, and one that
simultaneou.sly sought to harmonize Greek and biblical antiquity. Homer himself, like Virgil, had already been subject

to intense exegesis by theologians exhuming the proto-Christian allegory supposedly buried in his texts."' Describing the
tides of the populace that virtually assault the priest in their
fervor to reach the Word (meaning Scripture, but at the
place of the spoken word, tbe pulpit). Paul the Silentiary
draw.s not only on Homer's figure of waves of Achaians
besieging Troy but also on the common sermonizing metaphor of the fertile island of the church as a "rock of faith" in
a raging sea of sin. Likewise, when Paul speaks of the voyage
of the faithful across the sea to the safe haven of the sanctuar)'. he calls on a tradition as old as classical literatnrc itself,
referring not only to life's tiavails but even the struggles of
literary composition.'^"^ It is all the more appropriate that
Paul declaims in the voice of the Odyssey, for this was an epic
that even classical commentators suspected lay beyond the
domain of factuality (exokmnismos), since Odysseus's wanderings took place on that immense Ocean, which lay beyond
earth's limits and touched the heavens. And when the lector
of the Kontakion describes the windows of Hagia Sophia as
"spiritual luminaries fixed to the divine firmament," he adds
that they enlighten "in the night of life those drifting about
on the ocean of sin." Paul the Silentiary even claims that the
church surpasses the Pharos of Alexandria." ^ We have eveiy
right to suspect that both authors juxtapose the still waters of
the church interior with the peripheral tenitoiy of sin as
ocean in which even the best sailor may lose his course,"''
words that reverberated with Hagia Sophia's actual siting, a
man-made mountain that dominated the straits of the Bosporus and the Sea of Marmara.
Coda: English Arehitecture and Neo-Byzantinism

Bernardo Bonsignori is the ta.st Western traveler to have

recorded the patterns of Hagia Sophia's marine paving, but
eveu before it returned to actual view in 19S4 it resurfac ed in
the Western consciousness through Joseph von Hammer-

28 Temple of Zeus, cross section

(aiter Curtius et al., Olympia, vol. 1,
pi. 9)

COSMIC FLOORS IN ANTIQl.'irY AND THF. MFDDt.E AGKS

Q43

29 Richard Wilson, 20:50, 1987

(photograph provided by the Saatchi
Galleiy, Londou)

Ptirgstail's quotation of Pseudo-Codinus in his 1822 guide to

Istanbul and it.s environs. Tbus, wben the British architect
George Edmund Street (1824-1881) visited Venice a few
years later, he remembered the book's passing description of
the floor of Hagia Sophia as a stormy sea, and took the
metaphor as evidence that the rising and falling .surface of
S. Marco's much settled floor was intentional."''
In Venice this idea was nothing new. Since at least the
mid-ighteenth century ciceroni had been telling Grand
Tourists that sea legs were needed to cross S. Marco's shifting
floor.'"' But Street became so infatuated with the notion that
Venetian masons had crafted the undulatious of this paving
tliat he lectured publicly on the subject in 1859, and by 1879
his unwavering faith in its authenticit\' led him to lobby the
Italian government against proposals to re-lay the floor. He
was too late to save the left aisle, which is noticeably
smoother, and the controversy raged beyond his deatb into
the late 1880s."^ It was in the eye of this political storm,
according to Richard Ormond's new dating, that John Singer
Sargent painted an internal view of S. Marco and devoted
ovei half the canvas to a moist and rolling floor (Fig. 31).""
"Instead of being laid level and even," Street says, the floor
"swells up and down as thotigh its stirface were tlie petrified
waves of the sea, ou which those who embark in the ship of
the church may kneel in prayer with safety, the undulating
surface serving only to remind them of the stormy sea of
life.""^ It was for the same stated symbolism diatjohn Francis
Bentley (1839-1902), architect of London's neo-Byzantine
Westminster Caihedral (begtm 1895), catne to design its
floor as a Proconnesian pool darting with every variety of fish
that was, he said, "promised to St. Peter's net" (Fig. 32).'^"
Besides the heritage of mmmma. Street and Bentley were
reckoning with another etymology, the nave as "navis" {ship)

30

( . i l u u t h 1)1 l l i c A j x i s i l c s . M i u l . i l K i . J n L ( i . i i L

(ciili;!!

of

Abyssos, 578-79 (artwork in the public domain)

and its cargo of souls on life's sea of troubles. Whether they

knew it or not, the meaning they imputed to the floor went
back many centuries, appealing in tlie writings of many
church fathers, including Chromatius, who was bishop of
Aquileia around the ttn n of the fifth century and therefore
delivered his elaborate sermons on the theme overlooking
the cavorting fish and fishermen in that nave.'^'
Bentley himself drew his ideas directly from Lethaby
(1857-1931), who had quoted Street's opinion, though crit-

544

BULLETIN DECEMBER 2007 VOLUME t.XXXIX NUMBER 4

31 John Singer Sargent, Interior of

S. Mari-fi, ca. 1880-82, oil on canvas,
21 X 28'/^ in. Piivale collection
(artwork in the public domain;
pholograph provided by Richard
Ormond)

32 John Francis Bentley, designs for the paving of Westminster

Cathedral, 1901. Private collection

ically, on the floor of S. Marco. Strangely, the watery floor

figures only in passing in Lethaby's Sancta Saphia in Constantinople (1894), but it had been a prime example in the chapter
"On Pavements as Seas" in his Architecture, Mysticism and Myth
of 1891.'^^ Because Lethaby's book was intended to proselytize architects and general public alike, it was devoid of
footnotes, but it assembled what biblical, ClassicaJ, Byzantine,

33 Robert Weir Schtiltz, paving plan, Hosios Lukas. British

School at Athens (artwork in the public domain)

COSMIC FLOORS I.N ANTIQUITY AND THF, MIDDLE AOES

obsenations, and they have languished in the doldrnms ever

since. But they succeeded in catalyzing a band of younger
architects at the close of the century to seek some exit from
the sterility of Victorian historicism by plumbing the mystic
potential latent in architectural representation.'""^' Some of
these younger men were in.spired to seek out the arts and
crafts of the Byzantine mason in situ. William Sykes George
(1881-1962), for example, pnjduced under the patronage of
the fourth Marquess of Bute a meticulous suivey of Hagios
Demetrios in Thessaloniki before it was consumed by fire in
1917.''-* Robert Weir Schult/ (1860-1951) published several
texts on Byzantine art at ilie turn of the centui7 (Fig. 33) and
engaged in an extensive photographic survey of Byzantine
monimients of Greece, whose plates have only recently come
to light (Fig. 34).'''' Schultz in particular became an aficionado of Lethaby and later wrote that the latter's book
"opened up to us younger men a hitherto undreamed of
world of romance in architecture. . . . I was about to do a
small private chapel, into it went a pavement like the sea and
a ceiling like the sky, as an accepted tradition."'^* Schultz, in
fact, designed and executed at least two marine pavements
{both for the Butes), one of which sumves in Westminster
Cathedral (Fig. 3 5 ) . ' "

34 Robiri VV'cii Sthultz (st'alcti) and Sitintv liai iisk-y,

1888-89 (photogTaph in the public domain, provided by the

Warburg Institute, London)
and Arabic sources he knew or were translated for him by
friends to argue that floors had often been conceived as
"seas." l^thaby's academic colleagues paid no attention to his

35 Weir Schultz, Chapel of St.

Andrew. Westminster Cathedral,
1910-15 (photograph by tbe author)

Most of this chapel's floor is taken up by book-matched

paneling with runny veining, but this paneling is skirted by an
inlaid meandersignifying the ocean as the stream that encircles the earth and marks its limiLsthrough which marble
fish and crabs zodiacally swim to clinch tlie particular aquatic
nuance of the chapel, its dedication to Saint Andrew as
"fisher of souls." The design may now seem an overly literal
reclamation of tradition, somewhat cartoonish, even a bit of
a "cold shower," as the critic of the London Timfs put it on its
unveiling in 1915. But inlaid marble fish had once ornamented the pavement of the Pantokrator in Istanbul, and tlu-

546

'^^^

BUI,I,F,T1N DI'ICF-MBKR 2007 VOLUME LXXXIX NLIMBFR 4

36 Basilica of Doumctios {Hagios

Demetrios), NikopoHs (Actiuni),
mosaic in the north wing of" the
transept, ca. 5*25-50 (from A.
Philadelphius. "Anaskaphai
Nikopoleos," Archaiolo^ke Ephemeris,

1916: figs. 6-14 after p. 72)

year in which the Westminster floor was inaugurated witnessed the unearthing of an unforeseen prototype at Nikopolis (Actiuni) in western Greece (Fig. 36).'"^^ The transept
floor of the basilica of Doumetios (ca. 525-50) is also encircled by highly realistic, mosaic stream.s with fish, waterbJrds,
and even fishermen, and the inscription conveniently spells
out, "Here you see the immense and splendid ocean that
liolds in its gtasp the earth."'^^

37 Maya Lin, Vietnam Memorial, Washington, D.C., 1982

(photograph provided by Justin Watt, justinsomnia.org)

Transmissions
Although it is only coincidence, there is a certain poetic
justice in the fact that after the closing of the temples, Phidias's statue of Zeus came to be transferred to the palace of
Lausus in Constantinople only a few stteets away from Hagia
Sophia.'^"^ The effigy was destroyed by fire in 475 CE, half a
centuiy before the memor)' of its original location could have
had any influence ou the articulation of the Hagia Sophia,
but the effigy had already infiltrated Byzantine consciousness
by becoming the most popular tnodel for the Pantokrator,
the colossal face or half-length figure tliat once looked down
from the domes of all Byzantine churches.^^^
The phantom of Phidia.s's stattie also hatmts Washington, U.C, since at the end of the National Mall. Abraham
Lincoln sits enthroned in a Greek temple at the head of a
reflecting pool btiilt to the scale of the city. The Lincoln
Memorial was an intellectual recollection of a great liistorical
model, but to one side stretches a monument that provides
an unconscious example of the transmissions explored here,
of materiality, the ideas that materials cany with them, tlie
substances they represent, and the sensations they provoke.
The Vietnam Memorial by Maya Lin (Fig. 37) is dedicated tt)
all Vietnam veterans, living and dead, and in its sepulchral
aspect makes the most direct claims on the earth, becoming
a coal face as it were. Bttt its high polish also dis.solves mate-

COSMIC FLOORS IN ANTIQUITY AND THF. MIDOI.F. AdES

with the beauty of the craft.sman's art. Yet, it does not stand
altogether cut off in the central space, like a sea-girt i.sland, but
it rather resembles some wave-lashed land, extended through
the while-capped billows by an islhmus into the middle of the
sea, and beingjoined fast at one point il cannot be a true island.
Projecting into the watery deep, it is still joined to the mainland
coast by the isthmus, as by a cable. . . .
Here tbe priest who brings (be good tidings passes along upon
Fabio Batry (PliD, Columbia University) is lecturer in art history al
his return from tlic ambo, holding aloll tlie golden b(k; and
the University of St. Andrews. He has published studies rangingfrom while the crowd strives in honor oC the immaculate God to touch
the Baroque dome and (he metaph\sics of light lo the urbanistic the sacred book with their lips and hands, the coundess waves of
alienation of the Roman ghettos, from architecture and liturgy to the the surging people break around. Thus like an isthmus beaten by
architecture and painting of deiiotional solitude [School of Art His- waves on eithei" side, does this space strctc h out, and it leads tbe
tory, University of St. Andrews, Fife, Scotland KY16 9AR, fmbWst- priest who descends from the lofty crags of this vantage point to
the shrine of the holy table.
andrews. ac. uk}.

rial boundaries to create a virtual wall and literally provide a

place for reflection.'^^ It is an experience accessible to all
visitors to the memorial, who feel that somehow they gaze
through its surface back into the past, or laterally into a
parallel world.

Appendix 1

Appendix 2

Paul the Silentiary on the ambo of Hagia Sophia (563)

Michael the Deacon (ca. 1140-50)

(Vril Mango andjohn Parker, "A Twelfth-Cfntury Description of
St. Sopbia," Dumbarton Oaks Papers 4 (1960): 237. 239:

Paul le Silentiaire: Description de Sainte-Sophie de Constnnlinoj)le, ed.

Marie-Christine Fayant and Pierre Chuvin (Die; A Die, 1997),

146-49:

224 'Q5 &e 9aXacraL0taLV iv

225 8aL6aXtr| ajax'cv^aai Kai duTreXoev'Tt KopLi|ipw
Kal SaXepip Xet^ioii^L Kai evSevSpOLatv epiTTuatS'
Tr|y 8e TrapaTrXwoyTe? k-noX^iCdvavv oSiTat,
dXyea pouKoXeoi'Te? aXiKjiiiToto (iepi(ii'Ti5*
ouTOj ciTTetpeaLoio KOT' v6ta p.CTaa jieXdQpou
230 Xdeat TTupYwfleis ava
bm&aUos \i\iiJiui XiQuiv Kai KdXXet Te
Nal ^lr|p ou8' oye trdi
Xwpoi^ aXiCwwoiati' onoitog fj6eai I'TJ
dXX' dpa pdWou eoiKei' dXippo9i(}) TLVL yaLT),
235 ni' TToXiou TTpopXfiTa St' oi6(iaTO? laSjiog eXa
|itaaaTioL>? TTtXdytaoL, \iiT)'5 6' diTo Se
r) 8e QaXaoaioiOLv CTTLTTpoOeouaa pee9poLg
239 laG^iLtH' dyxLdXoio
247 "EvQev UTTOTpoTTd6r|i
SioL-iaaeTOt. 'IeM.ev'Tjg Se
9eoi)
250 x^i^tf^ i^o'*^ iraXdnas Upfji' TTepi pipXov epeToai,
KiinQTa Ki\'V\ivii)U TTeptdyyuTaL daTTCTa Siijitiiv.
Kai p" 6 lief diict^iTrXfiyi TiTaiveTai tLKeXo? i
Xwpos, dinQwbiV TTpo? dvaKTopa aejii'd
254 dvBpa KaTa9pa)aK0VTa

TO 8dTTe5oi' 66 TreXayos oXov KOL T^) TrXaTei Kal Trj

'fi* Kudveat ydp Tii^es Sivai Tots XiBois i
, ws et Kal XiBoy KaGfjKas e l s
avK{vx\aas.

TOOTO TO TreXayos di'e'

ei? di^apaivovTa fiXioy, Kal

eyou TI^J TTpoXapowTi, Kal aXXou eir'
(ouTto ydp Kam TWV e-mKuaewv yiveTai |ir|
auyxwpou|iyou e^ di^TtTTvoia? TOO del
KujiOTos pT^yi'uaeai), r\ tepd Q^^vb6v\\
Kal dXXri pa9|ils CTT' dXXri tieTewpiCeTaf Tatg 5
'dycDTdTOJ pa9|XLat KUpToufxevats KupaTcaSuis Kal
dpyupou
KOXTTOV

The floor is like the sea, both in its width and in its form; for
certain blue waves are raised up against ibe sione, just as
though you had cast a pebble into waier and had disturbed its
calm. This sea has broken out into a gulf to eastward, and one
wave having been, LUS it were, piled up ag-ainst iLs prede<es.sor,
and another against tlie next (for tluis also docs it liappen
during floods, the ever-approaching wave never allowing itself to
be broken by the contraiy wind), ihe sacred Sphendone has
been formed into steps, and one step is raised up above another,
and the highest steps which curve in billows have been fl(x>ded
over by an eflftision of silver worth many talents.

Notes

(Translation adapted from Cyril A. Mango, The Art of the ByzanThis article is based on chapter fi nf my PhD disseriation "Painiing in Stone;
tine Empire, 312-1453: Sources and Documents [Toronto: Prentice- The Symbolism of Colored Marbk's in the Visiuil Aris and I.itrramic from
Anliqihty until lhc F.nlighiennK'ni.- siibmiiicd lo the Deparimciu ol" Art
Hall, 1972], 95-96):
And as an island rises amidst the waves of the sea, adorned with
cornfields, and vineyards, and blossoming meadows, and
wooded heights, while tbe travelers who sail by are gladdened by
it and are .soothed of tlie anxieties and exertions of tbe sea; so in
tbe midst of the boundless temple rises upright tbe tower-like
ambo of stone adorned widi its meadows of marble, wrougbt

HistoiT and Archaeology ai OiliiinbJH Uiiivci.siiy (^007) and sn|icr\isfcl by

Professor Joseph C;onnors. Research cm the (hnjXiT tn'^an as a telUiw ai the
Summer Instiiuif in liumaniiies. Venicf IniernationHl Univci-siiy ('J(H)2). and
was completed as David E. Fiiilfy Fellow at ihe O n i e r lor Adraiui'd Siudy in
the- Visual Arts (^1)02-3) and as (Iraduytf Clniaiorial hitern in ihe Dcpariment
of Sculpture at ihe National Gallen' ol Art, WiLshinKlon, D.C ('.J(IOS-4). It
could not have been completed wiihmit the rcsoiiices of Ihe I.ihran and
Inlcr-Lihrary Loan offict- of the National (lallfiy. where I benelited Irom the
resourcefulness of Ted Dal/iell and Tom Maj^ill. Tlianks also RO lo Dor<iihy

648 ART BULLETIN DECEMBER 2007 VOt.UME LXXXIX NrMBF.R 4

Bosomworth, Faya Causey, Roben C'oates-Stcvens, Barry' Flood, Peter Gatadza,
Meg Rosier. Marcus Milwrighi. Nicholas Penny, and Gavin Siamp for every
sort of assistance. I am especially indebted to Robin Middleton and Richard
Wittman, who independently recommended I read W. R. Leihaby. Versions of
the paper were given (iii 200.S-4) at the National Gallery of Art, the British
School at Rome, the Medieval Studies Conference ai Kalamazoo, Michigan,
and Duinbarton Oaks, where I profited from the response of Eunice Daughtemian Maguire and Henry Maguire. Richard Brilliant and Caroline Elam
commented on early drafts, and, as ever, its scope was enriched by continual
e-mail exchanges with Peter Carl.
Unless otherwise indicated, translations are mine.
1. The literature on Hagia Sophia is vast, btit see mainly Rowland Mainstone, Hap^a Sitphia: Archilefture. Structure and Liturgy ofjustivian s Great
Church (New York: Thames and Hudson, 1988); and \V. Eugene Kleinbauer, Snint Sofihia at ('.onstantinoplp: Sin^iUiriter in Mundo (Dublin,
N.H.: William L. Bauhaii. 1999). For older Uteraiure, see Lioba Theis,
"Zur Geschichie der wissenschaftlichen Eiforschting der Hagia
Sophia," in Dii- Haf^a S<yphi<i in Islanlml: BiliUn- axis \eclis jahrhunderten
und (iosparf Fossalis Itestauriming drrjnhre 1847 his 1849, ed. Volker
Hoffmann (Bern: Peter Lang, 1999), 55-80. For the building's aflerlife, see Gulru Necipoglii, "Tlie Life of an Imperial Monument: Hagta
Sophia after Byzaniitim." in Hngia Si>j>hiafromthe A^ ofjiistiniiin to the
Presmt, ed. Ahmel S. (^^akmak and Robert Mark (Cambridge: Clambridge University Press, 1992), 195-225; and Robert S. Nelson, Hagia
Sophia, IS^0-l9'>0: Holy Wisdom. Moderr) Monutnent (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004). The ninth-century jVorrflto asserts that
Justinian claimed that he had "outdone Solomon," but the comparison is also implicit in the Kntitakion of .'jfi2 (for both, see below).
2. John Onians, "Abstraction and Imagination in l^te Antiquity." Art
History 3 (1980): 1-23; and James Trilling, "The Image Not Made by
Hands and tbr Byzantine Way of Seeing," in T/i^ Holy Fare atid the Paradox of Rffyrfsmtaiiori: Papersfroma CoUoijuium Hel4 at the Bihliuthfca
Htniziana. Rome and the VilUi Spelman. Florence. 1996. ed. Herbert L.
Kfssler and Gerhardt Wolf (Bologna: Nuowi Alfa, 1998), 109-28.
Onians (8-9) cites Paul the Silentiary and the Narratio on the watery
floor.
S. Pliny, Histmia Naturalis {HN} 36.184. For the techniques, see Vitru\dus, De archiUrtura {De arch.) 1.7.
4. For a provocative outline, see Richard Brilliant, Roman Arl: From the
Republic to QmsUintirtp (London: Phaidon, 1974), 135-48; evocatively
developed in Norman Brj'son, Looking at the Ovnlitoked: Four Essays cm
Slill Life Painting (London: Reaktion, 1990), 33-34. For a magisterial
survey, see Katherine M. D. Diinbabin, Mosaics of the Greek and Roman
W'nrld (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999).
5. Federico Guidobaldi and Alessandra Guiglia Guidobaldi, Pavimenli
marmorri di Rtimn. dal A'' cil IX seroh (Vatican City: Pontificio Istituto di
Archeologia Cristiana, 1983), passim, esp. 19-58. The only exception
seems to be S. Puden^iana (see below at n. 21).
6. Henry Magtiire, "Christians, Pagans, and the Representation of Nature." in Bege^ng von Heidentum und Christentum in spiitantiken Agfptcn:
Riggisberger Berichte 1, ed. Dietrich Willers (Riggisberg: Abegg-Stiftimg,
1993), 131-60, esp. 132-53.
7. Ernst Kitzinger, "Mosaic Pavements in the Greek East and the Question of a 'Renaissance' under Justinian," in Actes dit Vie Congrks Interntitioncd d't'.tuiies Byzantines, Paris, 27 juillfl-2 aoUl 1948 (Paris: Comite
Franfais dcs Etudes Byzantines. 1950), vol. 2, 209-23. On Byzantine
marble (not mosaic) floors, see Semai Eyice, "Two Mosaic [sic] PavemenLs from Bithynia," Dumhartcm Ocihs Papers 17 (1963): 373-83; Alessandra Guigiia Guidobaldi, "Note preliminari per inia definizione
dell'arte pa\imentale costantinopolitana dei primi secoli," in XV7. Intematimialiv Hyiatitinhtenkcingrex.'i, Wien, 49. Oklnber }98l: Akten, ed.
Herbert Hunger (Vienna: Verlag der Osterreichischen Akademie der
Wissetischaften, 1981), 403-13; Urs Peschlow, "Zum byzantinischen
opus sectile-Boden," in Bfilrage zur Allertumskunde Klrinaxims: Featschrift
fin Kurt Bittel, ed. Rainer M. Boehmer and Harald Haupimann
(Mainz: Philipp von Zabern, 1983), 435-77, pis. 89-93; Guiglia
Guidobaldi. "Tradizione locale c influenze bii'antlne nei pavimenti
cosmate.scbi." Bolletlino d'Arte^in (1984): 57-72; idem, "VOpus Seclile
pavinientale in area bizantina," in Aiti del II colUupiio dell'Associaziime
Italinna per lo Studio e la Consenmiione del Monaico, Rai'eima. 29 aprile3 maggio 1993. ed. Raffaella Farioli Campanati (Ravenna: Edizioni del
Girasole, 1994), ti43-63; idem, "La decorazione pavinientale bizantina
in eta paleologa," in L'lirtf di liisanzio e I'ltalia al tempo del PnkaUigi,
126I-M53. ed. ,Ajitonio Iacobini and Mauro Della V'alle (Rome: Argos. 1999), 321-58; Henry Maguire, "The Medieval Flooi-s of the
Gi^eat Palace," in Byzimtine Constantinoplt-: Monuments, Trtfmgraphy. and
Everyday Life, ed. Nevra Necipoglu (Leiden: Brill .Academic Ptiblishei-s,
2001), L53-74: and Yildiz Demiriz, f>i^i/il hizam dfiseme mozuikleri [Interlaced Byzantine Mosaic Pavements] (Istanbul: Yonim, 2002). The
mosaic floor in the Great Palace of C^onstantinople probably dates lo

abotit 500-550. For a summary of the controversy over its dating, see
Dunbabin, Mosaics, 232-35.
8. Cyril Mango and John Parker, "A Twelfth-Onmry Description iif
St. Sophia," Dumbarton OciMs Papers 14 (1960): 243: and George P.
Majeska, "Notes on the Archaeology of St. Sophia at CJonstantinople:
The Cireeii Marble Bands on the Fluor," Dumbartcm Oaks I'apm 32
(1978): 299. For a meticulous record of ihe paving, see Robert L. \'an
Nice, Saint Siyphia in Istanbul: An Architectural Surrey. 2 vols. (Washington, D.C.: Dumbarton Oaks, 1965-86), vol. 2, pi. 10. The best aerial
photograph is in Mainstiine, Hagia Sophia. 226, fig. 50.
9. When tlie church was refurbished (.558-62), "for the lloor [Jtisiinian]
was unable to find slabs of sucb greai size and variety, and so he sent
Manasses [or Narses] . . . to Proconnesus to cut slabs chat would denote tbe earth, while ibe green ones signify the rivers that How into
the sea." The same text asserts earlier thai the whole lloor is a sea
crossed by the rivers, which is not incompatible with the topography
of Cosmas Indicoplenstes and olhers, who thought the rivers of paradise poured across the Ocean like aqueducts (cf. Psalms 23:2: "For it
was He who founded ii upon ihe seas / and planied il upon the rivers beneatb"). The pavement strips are also called pfiinin, wliich in
this context might well be Iranslated as "yard lines."
Tlie Nanatio is in Tbeodor Preger, Scriplores ori^num Constantinofiolitanarum. (1901-7: reprint. New York: Amo Pre.ss, 1975), 74-108; trans.
Gilbei t Dagron, Constantimypb imciginaire.: Etucks sur If recufil des "I'atria" (Paris: Pres.ses Universitaires dc France, 1984), 207. Commentary
in Majeska, "Notes," 299-308; partial trans, in Cyril A. Mango, The Art
oJ the Btzantine Empire. 312-1453: Sources and Documents (Toronto:
Ptentice-Hall, 1972), 96-102. For redactions of the text, see Evangelia
Vitti, ed.. Die Erz&hlung Ulier den Ban der Hagici Sophia in Konstantinopel:
Krituche Edition mehrerer Veisionen (Amsterdam: A. M. Hakker, 1986),
462.10-16. 67.5-8 (a): 486.2-4, 487.7-11 (k); 303.16-20 (f); 561.1-5
(n): 578.23-28 (x): .598.14-21 {<[); 616.23-25 (y). The other conspicuous exception to Proconnesian in tbe nave is the huge roia (or
omphalion) with orbiting loiae inserted possibly about 1200; see Alfons
M. Schneider, Byzanz: Vomrbeiten zur Topographic ttncl ArrhAolngie der
Studt (Berlin: Archaologisches instiiut des Deutschen Reiches, 1936),
34-37.
10. Rachdji de Direto decani Lundoniensis ofmra histmica / The Historical Works
of Master Ralph de Diceto. Dean of London, ed. William Stubhs, 2 vnls.
(London: Longtiian, 1876), vol. I, 9.3-94: "quatttior aiitcin venas viHdes quas posuit in pavimento tetnpli nomina\it iii'"". Flumina quae
exeunt de Paradiso." The Nanatio wds known to another English
chronicler, Ralph Niger, though he does not cite the section on the
rivers: Radulfi Nigri Chnmica: The Chronicles of Ralph Nign\ ed. Robert
Anstrnther (London:J. Russell Smith, 1851). De Diceto could not understand phinai. which he rendered venas. Rene Marichal, " 1 ^ construction de Sainte-Sophia de Constantinople dans l'anonyme grec
(xe siecle?) et les versions vieux-nisses," Byzanlinoslavica 21 (1960):
257, 259.
11. "They paved the earth with a raw marble of many coloui-s. in such a
way that, if one looks at the Einpyretmi [dome] it .seems to be a sky
full of stars and, if one looks at the pavement from the Empyreum, [it
seems] a sea in a storm. .. . [Mehmet] decided to ascend lo the convex plane . . . from the apertures wbich opened into the galleries of
the intermediate Onors he stopped to admire the pavement which
resembles a petrified sea." Beg Tursiin, Tarih-i Eblfetli (Istanbul: Ahmet Ihsan ve Surekasi, 1330 [1962]), .56; transliterated texi in latin
characters in A. Mertol Tnlum, 'I'ursun Bey: Tarihi FJ)U'l-feth (Istanbul:
Baha Matbaas. 1977), 63-64; Italian trans. Agostino Pertusi, La caduta
di Costaniinopoli, 2 vols. (Milan: Arnaldo Mondadori, 1976), vol. 1,
329-30, lines 666-719.
12. .Vgah Sirri Levend, ed., Tiirk Edebiyatinda Sehr-Engizler ve Sehr-Enpzlerde
Istanbul (Istanbul: Istanbul Felhi Dernegi, 1958), 76-78; cited in Necipoglu, "Life of an Imperial Monument," 202 n. 15.
13. "Tile pavement is completely made from marble slabsjust like St. Peter's in Rome, but these are sawn and then bedded and placed in
such a way that tlie whole floor seems covered with ciambellcitti, so well
does it display those waves [el pavimento f tutto di Icipide di mnnno chome
Han Hero di Rvma, ma seghate e poi muratr et adaptate in modo che tutto
pare coperto di ciambelhtti tanto l>ene dimostra qiii'lle onrle]": Bernardo Bonsignori to Niccolo Michelowi, September 1498, Biblioteca Nazionale
Centrale Firenzf, MS Mag!. Xui, 93. fol. 18r. See also Eve Boi-sook.
"The Travel of Bernardo Michelozzi and Bonsignore Bonsigiiuri in
the I.evant (1497-1498)."yoMnirt/ of the Warhurg and Courtauld Institutes
36 (1973): 173 n. 95. CiamMlotto is defined as "cloth made from goatskin [or hide]; some call it in I^tin rapripilium, and it's made wavelike. An tmtiulating cloth"; in Vocabolario degli Airad-emici delict Crusca
(Venice: CJiovanni Giacomo Hertz, 1686), 192. The term is also frequently used about silks: Achille Vitali, IM. modct a Venezici attraverso i
secoli: Uisico ragionato (Venice: Filippi, 1992), 109-11.
14. William R. Lethaby and Harold Swainson, The Church o/Sancta Sophia,
Constantinople: A Study of Byzantine Building (London: Macmitlan.

COSMrC FLOORS IN ANTIQIMTY .AND TEIK MtllDI.F Af.KS

1894). 196-97; and George P. Majeska. Russian Travelera lo Cmistanti-

549

in Pavia. flanking a central panel of a labyrinth: Adriaiio Peroni. "II

mosaico pavimentale di San Mithele Maggiore a Pavia: Materiali per
nn'edizione." Studi Mi-dirvali 18. no. 2 (1977): 718. Medalliiiiis also
floated against wixvy backgrounds in the rontemporai-y church i>f S.
Tomaso at Reggio: Trovabene, "II miisaico pavimentaie della cluesa dl
15. Mango, Art of the ByzatUine Empire, 102; and William Richard I^tliaby,
San Tomaso a Reggio Emilia." in Guidobaldi and (iuiglia Giiidohaldi,
Arcliiteclure. Mystieism ami Myth (l.ondon: Pt-rcival, 1891), 176-77.
Atti del Itt rolto'juio, liordjghera, 38;{-400. Tbe wavy tessellations on the
16. Cniistatiiinc Rhodius (931/944) lecords ihat "Procoiiiicstis has .sent
thirteenth-ccnturv' floor under the crossing at Osinio may also evttke
. . . the slabs ihat you see set in (he floor" (TzKaKwi 8e FlpoLKovTjwos TJ
waves: Claudia Bars;uiti, "11 pa\iniento inedievale del duomii di
y^i-nav <}>cpv !*; et? JTQTOV, y' 'ifrrpuxraf 01 Atflo^oot); Df.inipiiim des
Osimo," in ibid.. 445-55.
ormtres d'art ft de V{-^i$e des .Seiinls Apdlm ilf Conslantinopte: Pohtw im vm
iiimhiijueM par ('.im.stantin le Rhodin}, puhliP d'aprH k matiusnil du Mmil- 23. Xavier Barral i Altet, I^s mosiiiques de pavmu-rit ntfdih'atfs de Vrnise, Murano. Torrelh (Paris: Picard. UWi), 78. hi terms iif morpbological geAthos. cd. Emilc Lcgrand and Theodore Rcinach (Paris: E. Lt-roux,
nealogy, tbe floor at S. Zaccaria is mosaic imitating opus .\frtitf. imitat1896), 56. lines 670-71. Nikolaos Mesarites (1198/1203) comments
ing jiellaf, imitating v*-aves. A mosaic apse with the same nuitif
that "the whole lloor of the church is drawn tip in four sqtiares [tlie
uncovered in a late antiqtie villa near Forii possibly plays on the same
four arms of the church], which are separated from one another by 3
resemblance, as atiotJier apse mosaic tbere depicts marine scenes:
curved outline, and is paved with white marble"; CUanvilk" Downey,
Maria Gra/ia Maioli. "La villa teodoriciana di Meldola: Nuovi linveni"Nikolaos Mesarites: Description of the Church of the Holy Apostles
menii nitisivi." iti Guidobaldi and Guiglia Guidobaldi. Atli del 111 rolti>at (.^o II Stan tin opt e," Traiuaitiitris 0/ the Ammcan PhilmopbimI Society 47,
quid, Bordighera, 327-34.
no. 6 (1957): 890, 914.
24. Tbe pavement inscription begins; "Atria quae cemis vario formata
Hagia Eiiphemia en to Hippodromo was paved with large slabs
decore / squalida sub picto caelattir mannore tellus / longa vetustatis
probably divided by transverse strips like Hagia .Sopbia: Rtidolf Nausenio fuscaverat aetas. . . ." (llie hall you .see adorned wiih variegated
matin and Hans Bt-lting. Die Eupkrmin-Kirriw am Hiftfrndnnn ;u Istanbul
decoration, [and] below tbe painted marble is hidden tlie squalid
und ihre Fresken (Berlin: Gebruder Mann, 1966), 36-37, 46-47, and
earth, long time had obscured [ii] wiih tlie dc<re])inide <if i!d ;ige;
plan; and Guiglia Citiidnbaldi. "Note preliuiiiiari," 404-6, 407.
QnpuA insrriptiovum Latinarxim |, ('//.], 17 viils. | Berlin: De Gruyter.
17. Paul \. LIndei-wood, Tiie Kariye Pjfimi, 4 vols. (London: Pantheon
1863-1. vol. 5. pt. 1, 149). See also Andrea Cariini. "Nuta
liooks, 1967-75), vol. 1, 17-20, pi. 9; Robert G. Ousterhout, The Arrhisull
iscri/i(ine musiv~a eliana nella bitsilica di Sant"Eufemia." in (hado
tertUTf of the Kariyr Cnmii in Isinnhtit (WashiiigtOTi, D.C: Dumbarton
nfltii storiu p netl'arte (L'dine; Ani Grafiche Friulane. 1980). 351-.54.
Oaks, 1987), 39-45, 66, 137-39. figs. SO-M; Giilglia Guidobaldi,
This pa.ssage is normally interpreted to refer to a preexisting ten-a"Decorazione pavimentale," 322-24 and nn. 18-19. Hans Belting,
cotta floor, but "tellm" must refer to the earth itself,
Cyril A. Mango, and Doiila Moiiriki, The MoMtics and Fmcors of St.
Alary Pnmmakaiistos (Irthiye Cnmii) at hlanhut (Wasbingloii, D.C:
25. Sergio Tarani, Aquileia e (Wado: StorithArte-Cuttum. 3rd Pd. (Trieste:
Dumbarton Oaks. I97S), 20-21, figs. 6. 7. 9.
Lint Editoriale .-Vssociati. ]999), 330. Tbe motif is dubbed "onda subacqiiea' in f;orrado Ricci. ".^ppunii per la sioria del miisaico." liollei18. Tbe .Anonymous .Vmenian Pilgrim (1375-1434) noted ihat "the
tiiio d'ArteH, no. 9 (1914): 274. Mario Mirabella R)berti identifies
rhurrh is beautiliil, sii is the Lburch's floor; iLs name is Pantan;issa. A
otber examples in tbe early-filth-ceiitur\' baptisteiy in Saloiia. the
marble Jarel is made like ibf w;ives of the sea"; Sebastian Brock, "A
atrium of the "post-Attiia" basilica in Aquileia. and tbe nave of ibe
Medieval Aimeiiian Pilgrim s Description of Constantinople." Rn-iir
basilica of Via Madonna in Trieste, hypothesi/iiig a now-lost arrangede.\ f.ludes Armhiiennes 4 (1967): 87, 90, 95. "Facet" is not Armenian.
ment identical to that of Grado in tbe Basilica Eiiphrasiana at Pcirec:
but Maje.ska. Russian Travelfrs, 377, asstimes tbe iloor must be inMirabella Roberti, "Motivi aquileicsi nei mosaici delta val Padana." in
tended. Howevtr. "facet" may be a loan word derived from "facade."
La momi'que grfifo-rnmninf, vol. 2. Aries dti lie Co/tDt/ne hileriifilion/il pour
I'Etude df ta Mosfuque Antique, Vienne, 30 aout-A septemhre 1971, eA.
19. Charles Diehl. Marcel Le Tourneau, and Henri Saladln. /.c! T/wnunumtn
Henri Stern and Marcel Le d a y (Pads; A. et ]. Picard, 1975). 199chrfitiens lie Sabnie/tte (Paris: E. Leroiix. 1918), 3.'>-rj8, pis. 3-12. Synop200.
sis of the dating is in ERychia Kourkoutidoii-Nikolaidoii. Ailmn>f>oieltK:
The Great Cliutrh of Ihf Mother of O)d (Tbessaloniki: Institute for Balkan
26. Description of tbe piUate <if John I of lln-lin at Beirut by William of
Studies. 1989). The remodeling (ca. 620) is thought to have bei'n limOldenburg, in Joliann C. M. Uiurent, ed.. Prrripinatorfs iiiedii tievi qnaited to the superstrtKinrc. The Proconnesian slabs. 39% by 94'// in.
tuor: Burrhnrdtm df Movtr Sion, Riroltlus de Montr Cmm, Odnriius lU- h'oro
(100 by 240 cnil. were ronlined to the nave, a.s opits .(pcdfcpaving surfiitii, \Vilhrat)dus dr OMmlxn^ (l^ip/lg: J. C llinrichs Bibliopiila. 1864).
vives in the sotith aisle: W. Eugene Kleinbauer. "Remarks on tbe
167: "Pavimentum habci siibiile maniioieiim, siniulaiia aqiiam levi
Building Histon' of tbe Acheiro[X)ietos Church at Thessaloniki," in
vento agitatam. ita lit. qiii super illud inresseiit. vadare piitetur, cum
Arte.\ du Xe (hnf>rfs Intmiatiotial d'.Arehfiotoffe Ckrftienne, Thfssnhmiqiie,
tamen areiie illic depicte suinma vestigia mm irnpressedt." Fur tbe
2Ssef>tr'm/fte-4 ortohre I9H0, 2 vols. (Vatican City: Pontificio Istituto di
conceit of untr()d sands, see .Ausoniiis, Mnsfllti 1(1.53-54.
Arcbeologia Cristiana. 1984), vol. 2, 241-57, esp. 43.
27. Ironically, mosi of the floor except this area was biought to ligbt by
20. Cf. the Oratorio della Pesca at Aquileia: Fabrizio Bisconti, "Considerathe bouibiiig: Aiigein Pantoni. / j ' incenrle detla hrisilirit di Montfreix\ino
lioni iconologiche sulla decorazione musiva dei cosidetti 'oratori' di
attraverso In dorumenltizione fircheotof[ica (Moiitecassinit: Badia di MonteAqtiileia." in Atti det III rolhqitio detrAssociazione Italiana f>n- lo Studio e
cassinit. 1973), 101-37. 80-93. .See also Herbert BInth. Monte (casino
la Omseni/izione ilel Mosaiai, Hordi^hern, 6-10 dirrmlire 1993, ed. Fedein Ihe Middle Ages, 3 vols. (C:ambiidRe, Mass.: HaiA'ard Lliiiveiiiity Press,
rko Guidobaldi and Alcssaiidra Guiglia Gtiidobaldi (Bordighera: Isli1986). vol. I. 44-52. According to K. J. Conant s recotistniction of the
tiito Internazionale di Stiidi Liguri, 1996). 273-86, with bibliography.
interior (in ibid., vol. 3. fig. 27), the "sea" would bave lain between
tlie choir screen and the high altar.
21. Cblor photograph in Antonio Petrignani, IM Basitira di S. Pudentiann
in Roma sectrndo gti sravi rermtemente eseguili (\'atican City: Ponlilicio
28. Nikephoros Kallistos Xanthopoulos (ca. I256-ca. 1335) on a floor in
Isiituto di Archeologia Cristiana, 1934), 46, also figs. 26, 27. The pavetbe palace of .\ndronikos Palailogos the elder (1282-1328), Constantiment is attributed to tbe church foundation (and the campaign of
nople: Jean-Paul Ri<:hter. Quetlrri der Iryzantinisrlwn Kunstgesthiihte: AiisSiricitis. 384-99): Federico Guidobaldi, "Osservazioni sugli edifici rogrwafdle 'I'exte Uher die Kinlten, KtMer, Palaste, StdnispMude und andrte
mani in cui si insedio VErrlfsitt Vrlris." in lurle.siae Uriiis: Alii det OmBnntrv von KonstantinopH (Vienna: C. Graeser. 1897), 368, no. 9H0.
grraso Inlenmzifynale di Studi suite C.hiese di Rnma, Roma. 4-10 settemhre
Nikephoros was a close associate of Theodore Meteochites. author of
KHXi, ed. Guidobaldi and /Vlessandra Guiglia Cluidobaldi (Vatican
the "sea" in the Chora tburch: Maiy Cunningham. Jeffrey FeatherCity: Pontificio Istituto di Archeotogia Cdstiaiia. 2002). 1067-69, figs.
stone, and Sophia Georgiupoulou. "Theodore Meteothites' Poem to
17, 18.
Nikephoros K^illistos Xanthopoulos." in Okeunos: l-j,snys I-^eserited to Ihor
Snuenko on His Sixtieth Birthday l>y Hii Colleagues and Stuiients, ed. CXril
22. Arthur Kingsley Poner, "San Savino at Piacenza: L History and StrucMango et al. (Cambridge. Mass.: Ukrainian Research Institute, Harture." and "San Savino at Piacenza: IL Ornament. Conclusions," Anterivard Universily. 1983). !(H)-116.
am Joumal of Archaeology 16. no. 3 (1912): 350-67, arid no. 4 (1912):
49.5-517; and Enrichetta ('ecchi Gattolin. "1 tes.sellati romanici della
29. For loosely comparable paving at Hosios Lukas. tbe (liiircb of Sagbasilica (ti San Savino." in La b/isilira di Sun .Savino e tf oriffrii del Romamata (ca. 1105). and of the Donnition at Nicea (after 1065). .see Rafnico a Piaienza. ed. Roberto Salviiii (Modena: Artloli, 1978), 115-51.
faella Fadoli Campanati, "II pavimento di San Marco a Vene/ia e i
For iLs dating, see Francesca L. Valla, "Per la cronologia dei mosaici
siioi rapponi con I'Oriente.' in Stinia dell'iirte mimiana: I mosaici, ed.
di San Savino a Piacenza," Rotleltinn Sloriro Piacentiito 87. no. I (1992):
Renato Polacco (Venice: Marsilio, 1997). 12. A Proconnesian field
77-98. For its inscriptions, see Giordana Trovabene. "Poesia musiva
luidei' a crossing is juxtaposed with more intricate opus seitile patterns
medievale: Epigrafi didascalicbe in versi nei pavimenti a mosaico." in
in the south chiurh at Koiitsovendis (ca. 1090): Cyril A. Mango,
Atti del VII rolhx/uio deirAssoeiazionf Itatinna per lo Studio e In C-onaervaziErnest J. VV. Hawkins, and .Susan Boyd. "The Mona.stei-y of St. Chrysosone dei Mosaico, Pompei, 22-23 mano 2000, ed. Andrea Paribeni
tomos at Koutsovendis (C.yprus) and lis Wall Paintings; Part 1: De(Ravenna: F.di/ioni del Girasole. 2001). 353-66.
scription." ihiinltarion Oaks Pajins 44 (1990): (iH. Liuge I'locoTinesian
Tlie sea motif lecui's in tlie contemporary apse mosaic of S. Michele
slabs also adorned tbe crossing of the church built by Alexius Apocaunof)lf in the thurleenlh nntl Fijifrnth C^ituries (Washinfijton, D.C: Dtunbarton Oaks, 1984), 234. Some visitors evfii claimed 10 have visited
them: Dagron, (.Umstantinople imaginaitr, 282^8,'!.

650

ART BULLETIN DECKMlitlk 'J(H)7 VOLUME I.XXXIX NUMBER 4

cus at Selymbda (Siliviri). ca. 1325: Semai Eyice. "Alexis Apocauque et

I'eglise byzantine de Selymbria." Byzavtion 34 (1964): 77-104; Otto
Feld, "Nocb elnmai Atexios Apokaukos und die byzantinische Kirche
von Selymbria." Byzavtion 37 (1967): 57-65; and Eyice. "Encore une
fois I'eglise d'Alexis .\pocauqtie a Selymbda," Byzantion 48 (1978):
406-16. See also Demiriz. Orgulu, 73-83, for tbe poorly recorded basilica excavated on the slopes of Yakacik in 1962-63.
30. "Vi e in niezo <il Tempio iiii gran qiiadrone di lastre di marmo finissimo, e bianchissimo; (che e chiamato anco il Mare; per esser ie vene.
che vi si scorgono, alia .similitudine a ptmto d'un'ondeggiante mare)."
Giovanni Stiiiiga, La Chiesa di San Marco; Cafiella del S(renissimo hinripe
di Venezia (Venice: Francesco Rampazetto. 1610). 19. The area measures 30 by 26 ft. (9.16 by 7.96 m) and consisLs of twelve slabs (each
averaging (iOW by I56^i in., or 153 by 398 cm). Tbe extent of maiching suggests that these slabs were not spolia but quarded fx nmiir.
Lorenzo Lazzarini. review of Mai-mi antiihi, ed. G. Borghini. Bollettirio
di Arclieoltigia 5-6 (1990): 261. The fundamental histoiy of tlie overall
door remains Giovanni Maria Urbani de Gbeltof, "II pavimento," in
La Basitica di San Marco in Vmezin: lltustmta ndtti .itniia e neU'nrte da
scrittm veneziana, ed. Camillo Boiio. 5 vols. (Venice: Ferdinando Ongania, 1888-92). vol. 2, 227-34. For a recent but unconvincing attempt to link tlie floor geometries with ibe scenes on the wails and
vaults, see Raffaele Paier, "II mistero delle sacre 'rotae' dei pavimento
della basilica di San Marco,' Studi Kcnrnwui 29 (1995): 15-49. NoTie
of these authors pays any attention to tlie man. For seductive photographs, see Andre Bruyere. Vennia, San Marco, pavimtmti (Rome: Istituto Poligrafico e Zecca dello Staio. 1993).
31. Proconnesian was used in tbe palace of Mausoleus, Halicamasstis: Vitnivius. De arrh. 2.8.10; Pliny, HNQ.'M. On quarrying and export, see
Claudia Barsanti. "1. esportazione di niarmi dal Proconneso nelle regioni pontkhe diirante il I\'-VT secnlo." tiivista detl'lstituto Naziovale
d'ArchroUigia e Storia ileirAite 12 (1989): 91-220; Nusin .Asgad. "Observations on Two Types of Quarry-liems from Proconnesus: ColumnShafts and Column-Bases." in Ancient Storm: Qiinrrying, Trade and Pntvenance, ed. Marc Waelkens et at. (Loiiv-ain: Leuven University Press,
1992), 73-80; idem. "Tbe Proconnesian Production of Architectural
Elements in Late .Antiquity. Based on Evidence from tbc Marble
Quarries." in Co7istantirio/)k and Us Hinterland ed. Cyril A. Man^o, Gilbert Dagron. and tieoffrey Greatrex (.\ldersboE, L'.K.: Vadonim,
1995), 263-88; and James (i. Haqjer. "Tbe Provisioning of Marble for
tbe Sixth-Century Churcbes of Ravenna: A Reconstructive .-Vnalysis." in
Preitum Romanum: Richard Kmuthrimtr zum 100. Geburtatag, ed. Renate
L. Colella et al. (Wie.sbaden; Dr. L. Reichert. 1997). 131-48. See also
Jean-Pierre Sodini, "Le commerce des marbres a l'epoqiie protoby/antine," in Hommes et rirhe.sses dans I'Empirc byzanlin, ed. Catherine Abadie-Reynal (Paiis: P. Uthielleux, 1989). 163-86.
32. Adsiotle. Meteorologica [Metf.) 1.34r'ff.. 3.378-15ff.; David E. Eicbholz.
"Aristotle's Theory of the Formation of Metals and Minerals," Cliissicat
Quarterly 43, nos. 3-4 (1949): 141-46; idem. "References to a Theory
of the Formation of Stones." in Ptiny: Natural History, IJIiri XXM'tXXXVIt (London: William Heinemann. 1962). x-xv; idem, Theiyfihrtistus: De Lapidibu.% (Oxford: Clarendon Piess, 1965), L">-47; and Robert
HalleuK. Le pwbl^e des mitaux dans la science antiqiw (Pai is: Societcd'Edition "Les Belles Lettres," 1974). 97-128. Adstotle's and Theopbrastus's findings were augmented by several Greek autliors. and
Roman figures like Posidonitis (ca. 135-ca. 51 BCE) and Papidus Fabianas (iate first century BCE). and more or less parroted in Pliny's
Natural History (ca. 77/79 CE).
33. Eicbholz, Thmphrastiis, 36-37. Seneca states that "in rbe eartb also
tbere are several kinds of moisture . . . which change from liquid to
stone [in terra quoque unit unwiis geneia c.omptura . . . quar in Uipideni ex
liqumv vtrrtuntiirY'; Quaestiones Naturales 3.15.23). Rabbi Josbua bar
Hanania. rabbinical Midrasb of Leviticus Rabbah 22, 27. quoted in
Tziona Grossmark, "'Sbayisb' (Marble) in Rabbinic Literature," in
MartiU Studies: Ronum Palestine and tlie Marble Tratle, ed. Moshe L. Fischer (Konstanz: L'\'K Universi tats verlag Konstanz, 1998), 281.
34. Flavitis Merobaudes, ed. and trans. Frank M. Clover (Philadelphia:
American Philosopbical Society, 1971). 11, 60, Carmi?ta 2.8 (ca. 43.5446 CE): "gemma vebit laticem. quae ftiit ante latex." Merobaudes
may refer to ibe baptism of Valentinian III in the baptistery of S.
Croce, Ravenna: Alessandro Tesd-Rasponi. "Frammenti poetici di Merobaude," Ei'lix Ravi-nna 31 (1926): 4.5-46.
35. EdcJ. Holmyard and Desmond C. Mandeville, eds., Avicennae de
Gmgel-alione et Cttnf^utivatiime Ijipidum, Being Sections of the Kitcib al-Shifa
(Paris: Paul t^eutbner, 1927). 46.
36. Fernand Dusaussay De Mely and Cbarles Emile Ruelle, Les lapidaires de
Vantiquiti'H du Moyen Age, 3 vols. (Paris: E. Leroux, 1896-1902), vol.
3, XXX iv.
37. Albertus Magnus, De mineratibus 1.1.3; and Dorotby Wyckoff. ed.. Atimtus Magnus, Book of Miverats (Oxford: Clarendon. 1967), 14-17.
38. Strabo, 5.2.6; Robert Halteux. "Fecondite des mines et sexualite des

pierres dans I'antiquiie greco-romaine," Reinie Beige c/c Phitologie et

d'Hlstoire, 1970: 20. Pliny, ///V 36.24.125, cites Papirius Fabianus as anthodty tbat marble grew in tlie quarries and also that the quarrynien
themselves asserted "that the scars on the mouniain till np of their
own accord [exemptore.\ qtuique adftmiant rompteri spontr ilia motitium utcera]," According to Restoro d'Arezzo (1282), "There are also nionntains wbicb are all white like snow, these also owe tbeir origin to water wbicb is making stone. A proof of tbis is that tbe water welling out
from the summit of tbese mountains and spi eading itself over the
slopes of the mountains becomes dissipated leaving stone bebind, and
tlius these mountains are growing continually"; Restojo d'Arezzo: La
composizione de! mondo, ed. Alberto Mfirint) (Panna: Fondazione Pietro
Bembo / Ugo Gtianda, 1997). bk. 6, chap. 8.
39. Vincent of Beauvais, Speculum naturale 5,49. ca. 1250, closely follows
Vitruvius, De arrh. 8.3.10: Stefan Schuler, Vitruv im Mittelaltfr: Die Rezeption von "De anhitecturu" von itn Antike bis in diefi-fihe Neuze.it (C-ologne: Hermann Bohlaus, 1999). 178. Hierapoiis was in seriotis decline by the tenth centuiy and was ruined and abandoned by 119(1:
Paolo Verzone, in Reallexikori zur byziintinischen Kiinst, ed. Klaus Wessel
and Marcell Restle (Stuttgart: A. Hiersemann, I963-). vol. 2, 1203-23;
and Tullia Ritti. Eonti letterarie ed efngrafichc (Rome: Bretschneider.
1985).
40. "And since no person has seen the marble quarry, cei tain people say
that the one called Porphyry is artificially made. Tbey say that during
ancient times, according to the quantity of columns required, they
made moulds and channeled water into them. Afteiwards tbey added
the desired color to tlie water, and then, they had a plant, and they
also added this plant to tbe water and the water soliditied and became marble, it is said. Nov\\ ii this weie true, one would l>e able to
find someone today to practice tliis art. since, for all the arts elalxiiTited in ancient times one can find someone to practice tbem today,
but there is nobody who knows bow to fabricate marble. Tberefore it
seems tbese are empty words. Moreover, if it applied to a single color.
one might find grounds for believing it. But since tbere exist marbles
of three or four colors, it is impossible to add one color to water and
obtain three or four colors and veining; reason cannot accept such a
thing"; addendum to the ninib-centiiry(?) (Ireek Chmnide of the Hi.\tory
of Constantinifplf from Its Beginning until the End (1491): Die altosmanischen anommj'n Chnmiken \Tmvarihi-fili-()tnuin\.
ed. Friedrith (iiese
(Breslau: Im Selbstverlage Breslau XVI, 1922), 93; my translation,
from tbe French trans, in Stefanos Yerasimos, La fondation de Constantinopte et de Sainte-Sophie dans les traditions tutqus: E^gendes d'Empire
(Istanbul: histitut Francais d'Ettides Anatoliennes d'Istanbul. 1990),
27. The poipbyry columns in question are those in Hagia Sophia.
The refuted claim resembles a garbled memory of a purple-dye factory. Tbe best-preseived in the eastern Meditenaneaii is at Dor in
Israel, where shallow rock<ut tanks can still l>e seen.
41. J o h n R. Spenter, Filarete's Treatise on Architrctuie: Being the Treatise by
Antonio di Piero Avnlino, Known as EiUirelf. 2 vols. (New Haven: Yale
University Press. 1965). vol. I. 31-32; bk. 3. fols. 17v-18r. Speaking of
tbe marbles of the Great Mosque at Dam;iscus. the writer Ibn 'Asakir
(d. 1176) remarks tbat "il is claimed tbat marble is a substance wbicb
bas been petrified; it is alleged thai the proof is in the fact that marble dissolves in fire"; qtioted in Finbarr Bany Flood, "Palaces of C m tal. Sanctuaries of Light: Windows, Jewels and Glass in Medieval Islamic Architeciure" (PbD, University of Edinbiirgb, 199!^), 213.
42. Erkiiiger Scbwarzenberg, "Colour. Light and Transparency in the
Creek World," in Medieval Mosaics: Eight, Color, Materials, ed. Eve Bors<M>k. Fiorella Gioffredi Superbi, and Giovanni Pagliarulo (Florence:
Silvana. 2000), 22.
43. "In describing the diversity of tbe coUnir flavus you have made me
understand ibese beautiful lines fi<ini the foiirtecnih book of Ennius's Annah, which before I did not in the least comprehend: Tlie
calm sea's goUim inarlite mnv they skim: Ploughed Iry the throning crafi. tlie
green seas foam [ Verrunt extemplo plaiide mare marvuire flai'o / Caeruletim,
spmnat sale confnta rate pulsum]; for 'the green seas' did not seem to
correspond with 'golden marble." But since, as you bave said, Jlavus is
a colour containing an admixture of green and white, Enniiis with
the utmost elegance called the foam of tlie green sea 'golden marble'"; Aulus Gellius, Noctes Atticae 2.26.21-23 [Ennuis, AnnaUs 38485]; Loeb ed.. trans. John C. Rolfe.
Ennius (239-ca. 169 BCE) was a Hellenophone C^labdan. A recent
commentator has tberefore aigued that "mare mannore" is simply a
Grecism following Homer's halii mannareen and signifies tmly "the
gleaming, shimmering sea"; Otto SkuLscb, The Annals of Q. Entiius
(Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1985). 543. But ii is equally reasonable lo
a.ssume tbat Ennius had tbe actual material in mind, as Aulus Gellius
thought be did. Likewise, Ptiny, HA'36.5.46. assumed tbat Homer
meant "marble" wben he used marmaros {Iliad [//.] 12.380, 16.735,
and Odyssey [Orf.] 9.499).
44. Virgil. Aeneid {Am.) 7.27: "In ktitu luctantur marmore tonsae." Vii^I
also uses the phrase "marmoreiim aequor" {Aen. 6.729) and "infiduiu

COSMIC FLOORS IN .

remia inpellere mannor" to mean "rnwing through ihe faithless

waves" Ideorfpcs 1.254)a paraphrase of Ennius {see n. 43 atKive).
See also Aen. 7.718: "qiiam miilii I.ibyco volvuntiii- iiiarmore flucius"
(as many as the waves ihal (hiini ihe Libyan sea) and 10.208: "spumant v-dda marmorc vei-so' (ihe waves foam as the sea is upturned).
Sei-vius globes the latter two quolations "marmore man" ("marble =
sea"); Sen-ii Grammatiri (jui jenmtur in Veigilii C^rmina Commeniarii, ed.
Cieorg Tliilo and Hermann Hagen, 3 vols, (l^ip^ig: B. G. Teubner,
1881), vol. 2, 188, 41-4. See also Lucretius 2.7(i-767: "ut mare, cum
magni commoriint aequora venti / vertitiir in canos candenli marmore niicius" (like the sea, when greai winds have stirred up the surface, turns into hoary waves wiih a white sheen). Lucretins compounds ihe metaphor by exploiting another sea word, "aequor," that
refers equally to the polished surface of marble and a placid sea.
45. Ovid, Trktia ex Panto (Tr.) 3.10.47-48: "inclusaeque gelu stabunt in
inarmore puppes / nee potent rigidas lindere remus aqii;us." The Flavian poet Valerius Flacrus probably had this passage in mind when he
alluded to the frozen surface of the sea by speaking of "slaying hinds
on the marble surface of mid-ocean \in medio tTuncantem mcirinore
centos]": Argonautica 6.5(18. See also Ltican 9.349; Catullus 63.88. The
usage persists in medieval poetry: s.v. "marmor," Novum C.lossarium
Mediae iMinitatis: Ab Anno DCCC ust/ue ad Annum MCC (Hafnia:
Munksg-aard, 11)57-). Of these glossary examples, "nigosi investigabiles niarmoris venis iam let siilcantes," in the ninth-tenth-century
Vita S. WillibaUli episcopi Eichstetensh deserves special mention.
46. Julian, Misopngfn .34IB. Late antique poets continued to match mar
and marmor. Avienus, Periegesis seu Descriptio Chhis Terrarum 5fi, 137,
\m. 187, 206, 230, 245. 429. 492, 552, 635, 709, 714, 751, 775, 82H.
1310.
47. For the identi6cation of the Bocca della Verita and ihe significance of
Oceanus, .see Fabio Barry. "The "Mouth of Truth' and ihc F<)rum
Boarium," forthcoming.
48. A\itus, De transitu Maris Rulni, 5.592-93: "Ma< hina. pendentis siruxit
quam scaena liqiioris, / Frenatas celso suspenderai aere lymphas."
See also Prudentius, Cathe-merina (Cath.) 5.67-68. Avittis (ca. 450-ca.
518/.'i26) Ixrarne bisltop of Vienne in 494. The earty-fifth-century
Heptateuch of Cyptiaiius Gallus actually uses "Marmor Rubnim"
(Exod. 434). Tlie "Red Sea" sarcophagus (Museo Civico di Brescia,
MR .^8.'i2). possibly of Milanese manufacture, became ihe frontal of
the high altar of S. Afra (now S. Angela Merici), Brescia. The scene in
the other register is probably Moses striking the rock.
49. Tibulhis, 2.4..3(), 3.8.19; Horace, (kimtina 1.35.32; Propertius, L14.12
(as the breeding ground of coral): Seneca. Oedipus 120, Hnrules Oetiirm 660, Tliyestes 373; Petionius, Satyrifon. fragment 31. See also
Jacques Andre. Etude sur le.s tennes de coulfurs dans In Icmgtte latine
(Paris: C. Klincksierk, 1949), 359.
.10, StiUius, .VfViw 4.2.28 ("giaucae certatuia Doridi saxa"), 2.2.92 ("gaudens Ihictus spcctare Carysios"). Statius also indicates Carystian witb
"the veined stone the same color as the sea [romolor alto vencs man]";
Sih. 1.2.149-50. See al.so Pliny. W.V37.17.66. on tbe best emeralds:
"their merit lies in their color which is clear without being weak, but
limpid and rich, resembling, wherever it is transparent, the transparency of tbe sea [dos eorum est in colore liquido nee dilutu, verum ex umidci
ping^ti quaquepirripiiitur imitante tralucidum mttria]." The prevalent perception that the sea was green also explains a garbled notion of Isidore; "Ihe Greek word 'marble' is called after its greenness [marm/r
senno graecus est a viriditate vocatus]"; Isidoi'us, Etymologiae 16.5.].
51, .Siiiiius. Silv. 1.5.19: "undo.sa Carystos." Tbe quariy actually took its
name from ihe river {Car>-stos) that ran by the quariy.
52. Rita Paris, ed,. Via Af>fiia: La Villa dei Quintili (Milan: Electa. 2000),
76-79. For ihe quarries, see .-\nna Lamhraki, "I^ Cipolin de la
Kaiysiie: Conuibutlou a I'etude des marbres de la Grece exploites aux
cpoques romaine et paleochretienne," Rnnie Archhilogiqw I (1980):
31-62; and Doris Vanhove et al., Roman Mcirble Qu/irries in Southern
Euboea and the Associated Road SystimK (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1995).
53, .Aicha Ben Abed Ben Kliader, Thuburho Majits: Les mosaiques dans le
quartietouest (Tunis: Institut National d'.Arcbeologie et d'.\rt, 1987).
61-91. esp. 70, pi. xxvii. For ihe Winter Baths (199 CE). see idem el
al., Thubuiho Maim: I^,s momiques tie la rf'gion des grands thermes (Ttmis:
Institut National d'Archeologie ct d'Art, 1985), 72-73, pis. xxvii, xxx,
xxxil, See also the frigidcirium of tlie public baths at Maktar.
54. A. E. Popham and Philip Pouncey. Italian !}rawing\ in the Depaiiment of
hints and Draxmngs in the British Mmeum: The Fourieenth and Fifteenth
Cnituries, 2 vols. (London: Trtistees of the British Museum, 1950). vol.
1. 103. 64, vol. 2, pi. (:i,i; and jane Martineau. Andrea Mante^ia (London: Roy-a! .Vademy of Arts, 1992). 463-64 (cat. tio. 152). Another
copy is in the Galleria degli UtH/i, Florence: Giovanni ;\gosti and Annamaria I'etrioli Tofani, IMsegni del linascimento in Vcitpadana (Florence: L. S. Olscliki, 2001), 134-38 n. 17. Mantegna's design for the
figure was copied from a gutter spotii on the facade of S. Marco,

AND THF. MIDDLE AGES

Venice: Michael Hirsr. "Review of the Mantegna Kxhibiiion, Royal

Academy, ixjndoTi," Burlington Magazine 134, no. 1071 (Jtine 1992):
320, figs. 43, 44. The trough is ba.sed on antique Oceanus sarcojihagi;
Andreas Rumpf, Die Meeruvsen auf cten antiken Sarkoj)lmgieliejs (Berlin;
G. Giote, 1939). 11-19, pis. 8, K), 11. 13. 15. It remains to add tbat in
the baptistery of S, Marc(). Matitegna could also have obsened a tomb
in Carystian marble, thai of the Doge Giov-.inni Soran/o (1312-28),
for which see Debra Pincu.i, The I'omhs o( the Doges of Venice (Cambridge: Cambridge I'niversity Press, 2000), 88-104. See also the tomb
of Melchior Trevisan, ca. 1.500. iti the Frari, Venice, with prominent
panels of wavy veined ttiarbte. According to tbe epigiaph. Trevisan.
the rapitano geneiale dri men, died as "commander over tlic three seas."
and tritons stippon ihe disk with the lion ul Sairic Mark at the top of
the tomb: L'rsula Mebler, Au/erstanden in Stein: Vrnezianische (.Wahmdln
lies sphten Qtuittmcento (Cologne: Bohlau. 2001), 103. 19-23.
Rosemary' Barrow, Lau<rence Alma-I'adrma (l.ondi.in: Phaidoii, 2001),
177, fig. 75. Foi Alma-Tadetna"s faux-marblcs. see Patricia .\. But/.
"Marble for Inscriptions: Facsimile Representation in the Paintings of
Sii' Uiwrence .Alma-Tadema," in Interdisciplinary Studies on Ancient
Stone: Proceedings of the Sixth International Conference of ASMOSA. Venice,
June 15-IH, 2IHK), ed. l.oren/o La//ariiii (Padua; Bottega d'Erasmo,
2002), 531-36. Alma-Tadema clad otie of his studios wiih Carystian
slabs. Carystian is also used to repiesent the Mediterranean Sea in ttie
large marble maps that Antonio MurHw erected on the retaining wall
of the basilica of Maxentius, facing onto tbe Via dell'ImpiTo (Via dei
Fori Imperiali) in the 1930s.
55. The earliest relerenci.- known lo me is Procopiiis. /Jc urdi/irii', 1.10.19;
"most of them |the pa\ing slabs in (he palace of jtistinian] are white
in color, yet the white is not plain, but is sei ofl with wa\T lines (f
blue which mingle with the white" (AenKoc 6e ruii' irAciiii'iui' TO eiSo<;.
ov AiTOi' ^ctToi, tiKK' imoKVfiaivei Kixtrctvy^ iml>yfypa^l^JLil'Ol'
^ieTa^;Cptu^ian). Patil the Silentiaiy (Desrriptio S. Siifihitu-et ambonii
153-.')4) also commends the "Bospoiiis stone" curb of the amho in Hagia Sophia that "gleams while but on whose white skin a blue vein
winds a scattered path" (AevKcV 8' aTrcurrpccTnovcri. KOI ei u-nopiibeaai
KfktvQoi'i / {TKi&vaTi apyivbfirri irepi xp'fi' Kixtt'eif ((lAet/'): Paul also
say's (Descriptiii S. Sophi.ae6M-ft1), "covering the entire llo(jr the hill
of Proconnesus gladly oflers its back lo ihe life-giving Queen [Hagia
Sophia]. .Xnd (he glow of the Bospoius shimmers gently, black witli
an admixture ol wbiie" ([liiv ReTreSov iTToimrairu ]1fHiK(ii'i'T}iriii,o
KoAwi'T) / ufTTravitDt; imefliiKe ^ipK6t I'lSroi' ai'atrirxi- / T}pena Hi
</)pitriroiwa SiTTpTTe B

56. Tbe Sea of Marmora is an inland circular sea of about eigbt leagues
across, and they call it Mainiora because frotu it came all the marble
for Con.stjuitinople. both lor the walls ;is well as for the city"; Pero Tafur. Traveh and Adventures H3'>-I4'i9. trans. Malcolm Lett.s (t.ondon;
Roudedge, 1926). 114. "MamiOra" (classical name: Proponiis) is also
spelled "MarmAnt" and "MaLmara." .\ndreas Kuel/ei has kindly provided me the earliest suiTivhig references to ilns toponym: Patrick
Gautier Dalche. C^irte marine et pvrtulan an Xlle siirle: Le "Liber de existencia Hivriarum et forma muris nostii Meditertanei" tl\te, circa l2<Kt)
(Rome; cole Franfaise de Rome, 1995): Edmond Faral, ed., Villehardouin: IM rimqufte de Constantimifile. 2 vols. (Paris: "Les Belles Lettres,"
1939), vol. 2. 292 (ca. 1212 CE).
57. This cosmography was still championed by Cosmas Indicopleustes in
the sixth centtiry. Ernst Kiuinger, "Studies on Late Antique and Farly
By^^antine Floor Mosaics. I: Mosaics al Nikopolis," Dumbarton Oaks Papers 6 (1951): 102-3: Henry Maguire. "The Mantle of the Earth." Illinois Classical Studies 12 (1987): 221-28; and idem. Earth and Ocean: The
Terrestrial World in Early Byzantine Art (University Park: Pennsylvania
State University Press, 1987), 21.
58. The sixtb-centuiT hynniist on the cathedral of Ede.ssa remarks thai it
was "an admirable thing that in it.s smallness it should resemble the
greai world, not in si/e btit in type, watere smround it as the sea Isurrounds tbe earth]." For Mango and McVey this simply means that the
caihedr.ll stood Ix'tween two lakes, and that the river Skinos ran
around it: Mango, .\rt of tlie Byzantine Empire. 5H; and Kathleen E.
McVey, "The Domed Church as Miciocosm; Liter.uy Roots of an Architectural Symlx>l," Dumfmrton Oaks Papers 37 (1983): 98-99. But Andrew Palmer suggests that water channels were cut around the church
"a.s pai t of a conscious mimesis of the created world,'" atid this seems
confirmed by the fact that when a baptistery' was built elsewhere in
Edessa toward the end of tbe seventh century, it bad "w-aier-t hannels
like those . . . made in the Old Church": Palmer and l.ynu Rodley,
"The Inatig\iraiion Atitheni of Hagia Sophia in Edessa; .^ New Edition
and Tnuislation with Historical and .\rcliitectural Notes and a Comparison with a Contetnporaiy Constantino))[^liian Koiuakion," Byzantine and Creek Studies 12 (1988): 127. 134. Talmttdic scholars had also
remarked that the couri of the Tetiiple in Jcnisaletti snr()unded tbe
Temple "just as the sea suriounds the world": Raphael Patai, Man and
'Temple in Ancient fmiish Myth and Ritual (I.ondon: Thomas Nelson and
Sons, 1947). 107-8.

652 ART BULLETIN DECKMBER 2007 VOLUMF- LXXXIX NUMBER 4

59. For example, the basilica of Thyrsos at Tegea (,\rcadia, late fifth century); church at Khalde (Lebanon, ca. 450-500); SS. Cosmas and
Damian at Gerasa (Jarash, Jordan, 533); the basilica at Heraclea
Lynkestis (Bitola. fonner Ytigoslav Republic of Macedonia, late fifthearly sixth centur)'): Maguire, Earth and Ocean, 24-26. 33-40. Other
examples include tbe basilica at Hadjeb-el-Amun near Kairouan (Jordan, sixth cenltiiy), and St. Stephen ai Umm al-Rasas Mayfa'ah (in
antiqtiity. Kastron Mefaa, Jordan, ca. 760), where the stream represents the Nile: Michele Piccirillo and Eugenio .-Mliata, Umm al-Rasas,
Mnyfa'ah I: CUi scavi del complesso di Santo Stejano (Jerusalem: Studium
Biblicum Franciscum, 1994), 141fT. In tbe narthex of the Large Basilica ai Heraclea Lynkestis. the border is in the process of transition
from a naturally descriptive band to a geometric interlace motif. The
long central panel is filled with trees and cavotting animals, bordered
by hexagonal panels witli various fisb and waterfowl interlinked by a
concentric swastika meander; G. C. Tomasevic. "Mosaiqties paleochretiennes recettitnent decouvertes a Heraclea Lynkestis," in Stem and
Le Glay, IM mosaique grPro-romaine II. 385-99. For textiles that repeal
the image, see Maguire, "Mantle of the Earth." 221-28.
a. the transept floor in the basilica of Doimietios (ca. .'J25-.5O) at
Nikopolis (see below). For a Western example, see the mosaic floor
(late twelfth-early tliirteenth century) of the chaticel of S. .Salvatore.
Turin, where various roundels are enclosed by an orbital Ocean: Pietro Toesca, "Vicende di un'antica chlesa di Torino." Bollettino d'Arte
4, no. 1 (1910); 1-16; and .Vthur Kingsley Porter, Lombard Architecture,
3 vols. (New Haven: Yale University Press; London: Oxford University
Press, 1915),voL3, 442.

and Irmgard Emstmeier-Hirmer, Die Shulpturen. vm. Moissac: Gestnlt

und Funktion romanisther Bauplastik (Munich: Hirtner, 1996), 172-73.
In a snmmary of an unptiblished paper Andre Grabar retnarked on
the dilTusioii of "la mer de glace" in W'estern medieval frescoes: Grabar. "La mer celeste dans I'iconographic carolitigienne et romane,"
Bulletin dtt la SociHf Nationale des Antiquaires de France, 1957: 98-100. In
some eastern cases, like tbe frescoes (1191) in the cburch of St.
George at Kurbinovo (former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia).
God's tiiandorla is shown as fish-infested for the same reasons; Lydie
Hadermann-Misgiiich, "Les eaux vives de t'Ascension dans le contexle
visionnaire des theophanies de Kurbinovo," ByzarUion 38 (1968): 381-

83,
67. -Ajidre Grabar, "La 'sedia di S. Marco" a Venise," Cahiers Archhilogiques
7 (1954): 19-34: and Patricia Fortini Brown, Venire Cr" Antiquity: The
Venetian Sense of the Past (New Haven: Yale Univei-sity Press. 1996). 41.
Legend beld tbat Emperor Heracllus (r. 610-4!) had donated this
artifact, of Syrian or Egyptian origin, to the cathedral of Grado in recognition of Saint Marks role in founding the patriarchate there. It is
worth adding that the pendentives of S. Marco's dome above ihe
"mare" contain personifications of the fotir rivers of paradiseGyon,
Euphrates. Phison, and Tigristhat stand below the Evangelists and
are shown emptying their amphorae toward dieir feet (and so ihe
floor): Otto Demus, Tlie Mosaics of San Marco in Venice. w\. I, The Eleventh and Tioelfth Centuries. 2 vols. (Chicago; University of Chicago
Press, 1984), vol. 1 (text). 194-95, vol. 2 (plates), figs. 234, 327-29,
68. Otto Demus, The Mosaics of San Marco in Venice. \'ol. 2, The Thirteenth
Century, 2 vols. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1984), vol. 2
(plates), figs. 107-11. The sea as depicted in some Byzantine manuscripts often resembles Proconnesian marble, as in, for example, the
Colossus of Rhodes and. Mausoleum of Halicamassus in the eleventb-centur\' Homilies of Saint Gregory, Jenisaletn Cod. Taphou 14. fol. 3Uv,
for which, see Paul Huber, Heilige Beige: Sinai. Athos, Golgot/i; Ikonen,
Freshen, Miniaturen (Zurich: Benziger. 1982), 223. fig. 196.
Erkinger Schwarzenberg, "Cristallo," in Vitrum: Vetrofra arte e scienza
nel mondo romano. ed. Marco Beretta and Giovanni Di Pasquale (Florence: Giunti, 2004), 61-70. Tbe Byzantines even inscribed verses to
this effect on rock-crystal ornaments, such as the poem by Manuel
Philes (ca. 127.5-ca. 1345) on a rock<rystal relief of ('hrist, "This
stone is w^ter, not really stone; / He who freezes flowing water into
ice / Also freezes this into the nature of stone / l^st ihe rock melt
and flow away"; trans. Alice-Mary Talbot, "Epigrams in C^ontext: Metrical Inscriptions on Art and Architecture of the Palaiologan Era."
Dutnlmrton Oaks Papers 53 (1999): 88; and Cannina 86 in E. Miller,
Manuelis Philcie Carmina, ex roelicibus Etcuricilm-sis, I-hrentinis, Parisinis et
Vaticanis, 2 vols. (Paris: Typographeum Itiipeiiale, 1855-57). vol. 1.
38.

60. Maximus Confessor. Patrilogia Creca (,PG), vol. 91. col. 672; .Ajidre Grabar, "Le lemoinage d'une bymne syriaque sur Tarchitecture de la catbedrale d'Edesse au Vie siecle et sur la symbolique de I'edifice cbretien," Cahiers Arcliiologiques 2 (1947): 57; and Maguire. liarth and
Ocean. 26. See also Mauro Delia Valle, "La cartografia bizantina, le sue
fonti classicbe e il suo rapporto con le arti figurative," in Arte profana e
arte scura a Bisanzio. ed. Antonio Iacobini and Enrico Zanini (Rome:
69.
Argos. 1995). 339-60.
61. All biblical quotations are from the Kingjames Version. Tbe Judaic
tradition held that the Earth rose on four pillars above the oceans, its
overarching \"ault supporting another sea of rain and snow, above
which God sat enthroned and transcendent. Muslim commentators
even saw tbe tlirone as the first body that God produced, and water
the second, but anticipating the creation proper: "It is He Who created the heavens and tlie eartli in six days and His throne was upoti
the water" (Qur^an 11:7-9. derived from Psalms 29:10), trans. Thomas
J. O'Shaugnessy, SJ, "Cold's Throne and the Biblical Symbolism of tlie
Qur'an," Nunwn 20 (1973); 212.
62. In tnid-sixth-ceiUtiry Alexandria, the Nestorian Cosmas Indicopleustes
defended tbe biblical cosmology and Antiocbene theology against tbe
70.
Monopbysite John Pliiloponos, who advocaied the Ptolemaic cosmology and by extensioti the Alexandrian tradition: Wanda Wolska-Conus. La topographie chrHienne de Cosmas Indicopleiates: Thhjtogie et sciences
au \7e si^cU (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France. 1962), 147-92.
Costnas used Revelation and the Psaltns to anathematize the Ptolemaic system, quoting. "Wlio layeth the beams of his upper chambers
in tbe waters" (Ps. 104.3) atid "the waters that are above the firmament" (Ps. 148:4); 7.275. 296-97; J. W. McCrindle, ed.. The Christian
Topography of Cosmas, an Egyptian Monk (London; Hakluyi Society,
1897), 265. 298-99, pi. 3.
63. Consensus holds that the manuscript is Parisian, ca. 1250. For further
examples, ."iee Pamela Z. Blum. "The Cryptic Creation ('ycle in Ms.
Jtmiusxi," C^sta 15, nos. i-2 (1976): 211-26.
64. OocXatTcrct \xt\ivt] otio'ia KfrnrraWw ("mare \itreutn simile crysiallo"),
dahaauav iiaAti^J' ^e/it^ii.ei'Tii' -rrvpl ("mare vitreum mistuni igne").
Even when Moses had seen God on Sinai "there was tinder His feel as
it were a paved work of sapphire stone" (Exod. 24;10).
65. Peter Grossmann, .V. Michfle in Africisco zu Ravenna: Baugeschichtliche
Vntersurhungm (Mainz: Philipp von Zabern, 1973); Friedrich W.
Deichmann. Ravenna: Haupt>tadt des ^mtantiken Abendlandes, 5 vols.
(Wiesbaden: Franz Steiner, 1969-89), vol. 1. 220-25. fig. 211, vol. 2,
pt. 2, 35-46, esp. 40-43; and Arne Eflenberger, Dtis Mosaik aus der
Kirche San Michele in Africisco zu Ravenna. 2nd ed. (Berlin; Evangeliscbe Verlagsanstalt. 1989). esp. 60-64 and n. 114. The mosaic
(545) was transferred to Berlin in 1850, but not installed in the KaiserfriedrichsmuseutTi (now tbe Bode) until 1904. Although it was
butchered by the restorations of Giovanni Moro, tbe sea is already
clearly recorded in a watercolor of 1843: Irene Andreescti-Treadgold,
"Tbe Wall Mosaics of San Michele in Africisco, Ravenna Rediscovered." in 37. Corxo di cultura sull'arte ravennate e Inzantina: Seininario intemazionaU- di studi sul tema "I. 'Italia meridionale fra Goti e Longobardi, "
Ravenna. 30 mano~4 aprile I99<) (Ravenna; Edizioni del Girasole.
1990). I3-.57.
66. Meyer Scbapiro. The Romanesque Sculpture o/Momac (New York;
George Bra/ilier, 1985), 78-79; and Thorsten Droste, Alben Hirmer,

Nicholaos Mesarites {Ekphrcisis 37.4) describes tbe shimmer of the glistening marbles in the Apostoleion by using tbe word huf^otes (wetness): Downey. "Nikolaos Mesarites," 890, 914. Nikctas Magister says
that "the glitter of the marble" revetment in tbe chtirch of the Virgin
Katapiloiane on Paros "exhibited sucb liquid refulgence as to surpass
tbe brilliance of pearls"; Vita S. TlieortiUae I^slnae, chap. 3, ASS Nov.
rv, 226; trans. Mango, Art of the Byzantine Empire, 104. Already Poseidippos (ca. 225-200 BCE) celebrates "a stone that if wettened, [l<ioks
as thotighl its entire mass is surrounded by light, a mangel of" illusion"
{\i^

fj / \

' A

); Posidippo di Pella: Epigramtni (P.Mil.Vogl.

VIll 309), ed. Guido Bastianitii et al. (Milan: Led, 2001), 37. 122-23.
On Hagia Sopbia. Michael tbe Deacon .says. "How iLs countenance
flashes forth like liquid through gold wbicb is everywhere. . . . " "the
brightness of the gold almost makes the gold appear to drip down;
for by its refulgence making waves to arise, as it were, in eyes tbat are
moist, it canses their moisture to appear in tbe gold which is seen,
and it seems to be flowing in a molten stream"; trans. Matigo and
Parker, "Twelftb-Centur)' Description." 235, 237. John Gage has perceived this commonality as based in an aestbetic of "gentle but ceaseless movement" that unites shifting floor and resdess mosaics: John
Gage, Coltrur and Culture: Practice and Meaning from Antiquity to Abstraelicin (London: Thatnes and Htidson. 1993), 57.
71. John Geometres, in PG 106. col. 943; John A. Cramer, ed.. Anecdota
grieca e rodd. mciniLsrriptis Bibliothecae Regicie Parisiensis. 4 vols. (OxJbrd: Ty-

pograpbeum .\cadeinicum. 1841). vol. 4. 306: kiHuyv Si Toimof T]

SiayTjc AeioTTj^ / aAAij 5OK^ OaKatrira Kviiarwi' avev / ais ei'
ynAT|i'T| Uvv KaTtirropecriJ.ii'-r}. / avyi} 6e Toirnov wtorcuv Kal
AeuKOTTjs / Kai OTJ^WV atTTpavroiKra xpoia-i 7epTT0Tq<;. / u); O I Q
pcTBpHc eKTKet(fT)<; xioi'oi? / Xafi-nphv. StfiSes. ai^o^-r]7i 7rw? peov. /

w<; irpbt; OaXacrtjav a\\T}f /x^dAAei xctTtD, / nfft c^a JTW rri A poutrn'
kv TrnWij) Aiflow. The Slottdios columns are actually Thessalian tiiarble
(veide antieo). but Paul the Silentiary calls even this marble "fresh
green as the sea." John Geometres must describe an earlier (Proconnesian?) floor, as the present opus jcrtfTc vei^sion seems to date frotn
the twelfth century.

COSMIC FLOORS IN ANTIQUITY AN1> TIIK MIIHH K .AGES

72. Paul [he Si!enli:iry. Descr. S. .Sophiae2Sm.. 549-50. 617fr., read flowerhLiiikcd sircams and "whcatfiplds and sheltering woods, playful flocks
(f sherp and giiarlcd olive trees, spreading vines" iti ihe nave revftliient and ihe n.i^e culiimns as a giove; Procupius, A/. 1.1.59(1'.. saw
"a meadow in lull hloom," Such perceptions are common to other
fkf)kTfisfii\ Latin and (Ireck. '["his theme is treated ai length in Fabio
Barry, "Hagia St)phia and By/antiuni," chap. 4 of "Painting in Stone:
The Symbolism of Colored Marbles."
73. (llaiidian, Arnlwhf^ii Priltiliva 9.7.'i3: F.i? KpixTTaWof evdov vSwp

81.
82.
83.

aKt]patrioi.a irai'aioKof etKoi'w Kwr^iov, / ovpavbi/ ayKas ej^oi^a

74. Samuel han-Naghidh. in S. M. Habtrrmann, Knl .shirty Rnhbi Sht-mu'et
hmi-Sii^hidh (Tel Aviv, 1947), vol. I, see. 3, 41, quoted in Frederick P.
Bargehuhi, "Tlic .\lhambi-a Palace in the Eleverilh Ck-ntun," /rmiwj/ of
llif Wtirliurf; and Cmrlauld lustUutfs 19 (]95fi): 2! 1-12 and n. 60. Tbese
were als<i materials of paradise: "a tiver flowed from Edt-ii to waier
ibe garden . . . 1>ede1liiini [crystal] and onyx stone arc found there"
(Ceil. 2:ll)-li?). Sonif alabasters were also compared to water, like
ibat from Hierapolis on ibf amho of Hagia Sophia (which Paul the
Silentiarv' exlolsl: Mango, .^rt of tlif Byzanlinf Empirf, 92. For the latter
alabaster, see Maiihias Bruno, ".Viabasier Quarries near HierapoHs
(Turkey)." in L'i//arini, Inlnrli.viplinnry Sititlips <iii Aiuifnl Stone, 19-24,
75. Jt)b .'^8;8: "Ei^pa^a fi* (^aXatrtrav TriiAai?, OTe e^wt^tao'crei' IK KoiAia;
^TjTfXK rtiniii; ^K-nnpfvoiiki-j] ("quis conciusit osiiis mare, qiiando
eriimpebat quasi de vulva proceclens"). Cf. Job 9:8, 37:10, 37:18: God
"alone spreadetb out the heavens, and !reiid( th upon the waves of the
sea," "by the brcaib of (k)d frosi is given: and the breadth of ibe waters is siraigbiened." bui also ihe "sky which is strong, and a.s a molten looking gla.ss." Job is generally considered a lexi of Hellenistic
dale.
76. Job 38:30: "H Kara^aivn. nurirep vSwp peov, TTpcronrov otre^tn^ TU
CTTTTj^ti' ("III sitniiiiudinem lapidis aquae durantur, ei superficies
abyssi consiringiiur").
77. Cosma.s liidicopleustes, 7.290-91, explains that "the heavens being on
[ire shall be dissolved, and tbe elements shall melt with fen'ent heat
but [we look for] new beaven.s and tlie new earth" (Heb. 6.20; I Pet.
3.12), meaning "tbat witb a great noist*, as in tbe twinkling of an eye,
all tile elemenis being on fire as in a furnace and being thu.s purified,
undergo ihe change for tbe better," tram, McCriiidle, ('.brhtinn Topogmphy of Cosma.s, L*S7-H9. Tbe ciysialliiie transformation appears also in
Thomas Aquinas, Summa thfobi^ra, 91:;i-4, based on Isaiah 30:26.
78. The while floor in S. .\kakios, buill by Consiaiitine and restored by
Jiisiinian, gave the impres.sion "ibat tbe whole chiircb is coaled witii
snow": Procopius, .\eii. 1.4.23. Leo the Wise (886-911^) says ibai ihe
cbiircb of the Kiuileiis monastery was "paved wiih while slabs [fbiming] a continuous transhueni [surfact-]. uninterrupted by any other
colour"; t.eo, VI Seniimi 2H. trans. Mango, Art of the Byziinlinr Empitr.
202. I bave been imable 10 read ihe original text in Hieromonacbos
Akakios, ed., Ij^irilos lou Sofikou pnnf^uiikni hffii (Athens: Nicliolaos
RotLsopoulos, 1868), 245ff. Robert de Clari say's of the Pharos (Chapel
(880) in the Boukoleon Palace ilial "ibe chapel's pavemeni was of a
while marble so sinooih and clear thai it seemed lo be of cryMal [Et li
pavemrnts de la ihii/u'lli' estoit d'un litanr mmitrf si lisae ft si cUrr qu'il sftnliiiiil i/ii'il fiLSt df iriMtril]': Itohni dv Clnri: The (Jmijunt of Constantinopli;
ed. and trans. Kdgar H. McNeal (Toronto: University of Toronto
Piess, 1997), 103. A flo()r "in reciangular slabs ofwbiie marble witb
black framing" was discovered in ibc excavation of "Basilica A" ai
Baya/tt, Istanbul, in 1946 and immediately destroyed along wiib the
entire complex: Ne/ih Firatii, "Decoiiverte de irois eglises bpantines a
Istanbul," Cnhieii Arrhf-ologitfuea 4 (1951): 167, fig. 1; and Ernesl Mamboury, "Les fouilles byzantines a Istanbul," Byzanlion 27 (1951); 43537.
79. 1 Kings 7:23; EzckicI 47:1-12. The appeal to Solomon's "brazen sea"
is noted in O o r g Scheja, "Hagia Sophia und Templum Salamonis,"
hliinhitlry Milli'ilitngi-ti 12 (1962): .'il. Tbe Nairatin (19) claims thaljusliniati origitially wanted to slieaihe the nave Huor in silver and call.s
the door below ihe altar, which did receive ibis sbcatbing, a "sea"
(KaAairtra): Dagron, Constnnlinopk imafpnnirr, 205, 243 n. 142. C.onsianiine Porphyrogenitos calls ibe altar a "litile sea" (flaAocrtrtSLoi').
The Nairalio ahi} claims that Ju.siinian tnade a fountain in imitation of
.Solomon's in the airium.

84.

85.

553

zantinische Zntschri/i 46 (1953): 402-4. Lethaby, in U'tbaby and Swainson, SaHcta Sofihia, 191-92. argues thai the atrium was a "paradise"
wiib flowing streams.
Grossmark, "'Shayish' (Marble)." 274-83. esp. 277-78. Mosl of tlie
following Talmudic references were cited there.
7'A/' Ita/ryloTiian Tnlmud. irans. and ed. Isidore Epsieiii and Maurice
Simon (London: Soncino Press, 1948), Sukbib 5!b, Baba Bathra 4a.
Epstein and Simon, Babyloniav Talmud. Hagigah 14b: Jacob Neuxner,
Thf Tosrfta: Tramlated from thr Hi-liritu (.Allania: S(b<ilars Press, 1999),
Hagigah 2. 2-4; Ralicl Elior, ed., Hi'khalol'/.utiirh(Jerusalem: l'nivei-sitall ba-'Ivrii, 1982). 31. In anolber version, a rabbi wains his listeners
not to confuse the alabaster pavemeni before l.od's ihrone wilh water: Hermann Strack and Paul Billerbeck, Kommcnltir uim Witm Tr^tawent aus Tahnxtd und Midritsch, 3 vols, (Munich: Oskar Beck, 1922-28),
vol. X 798-99 on Revelation 4:6.
Ciershtim G. Scbolem, Major Trrnds in Jnvish Mystirism (Jerusalem:
Scbocken. 1941), .''>2-53. This passage is from ibe IIMialoth genre, so
called because ibese tests coniain descri])iions of ibc seven bcavenly
palaces (llfkha/oih) ihrougb whicb ilic \isionaiT pa,s,ses to reach ihe
vision of the thr<)ni' of giory. Myriam Ro'.eii-.'Xyalon cites this pa.ssage
lo argue tliai the Proconnesian cladding within the Domr of the Rock
was mean) to provide a suitable ambience for the Throne of (iod.
which ai the end of lime will come to rest on the rock: Rosen-Ayaloii,
Thf Early hl/iniic Monumriit'i oj al-Hornm alShnrif: An konogritphic Study
(Jerusalem: Hebrew University, 1989). 55.
Kamil Sayrafi Hasan, ed., Al-Walid i/m Uhayd Huhturi: Ihwan nl-BuhXuri
(Cairo: Dar al-Ma^arif bi-Misr, 1978). no. 641, coiipteis 20-2:i; trans.
Julie ScfHi-Meisami, "The Palace-t^oniplex as Flmblem: Some Samarran Qasidas," in .-t Medinml Islamic City lii-fonsidered: An Intrrdisri/ilinary
.Apfiniarh to Samarrn, ed. Cbase F. Robinson (Oxford: Oxford University Press. 2001), 73, quoted in Marcus Milwrigln, "'Wave.s of the Sea':
Responses 10 Marble in Written Soiitces (9th-l3ih (Vniun)," in Ihe
lionogiafihy of IsUxmic Art and /Srihiterlurr: Sliidri-K in Hiinour of liolmt
Hillenhrmul, ed. Bernard O'KiUie (Edinbnrgh: Edinburgh I'nivcrsiiy
Pre^s, 2003), 211-22.
See also the Winter Winds on the altar of Priapus in ihe flyfrnrrolomarhia, for which "this consummate ariisi bad caiefuily chosen a marble that, beside its whiteness, was veined wilh black (in ihe appropiiaie places) su<h its 10 depict the dark, ligbtless in<i iloiidy sky wiib iis
falling hail [H/nni:\tantf artifui: rkcto .solfrlrmrnlr rl maniumi havea. (he
oUra Iti tandidfria aua na veiiato (al rrqiiisilo Imo) df ni(!;ro. tui rxpri'iurre fl
teni^vso aerv ilhim.ino. C7 rifhnloso rum catlrnti'grandifw]"; Giovaiuii
Poz/i and L.ucia A. C'iapponi. eds., Hypmrotomafhia I'oliphili. 2 vols.
(Padua: Antenore. 1964), vol. 2, 188.

86. Ibn Sasra Muhammnd ibn. Muhmiimad: A ('hrmtirk nfDamiivu.-, IJSf1397: The Uniqiw Bodleian Library Manu.snifil of al-Durrith til-miuli'ah fi
at-tlawUih al-Zahiriyali (iMud (>r. MS 112). ed. William M. Biinner, 2
vols. (Betkeley: University of California Press, 1963), vol. 1, 160;
qiRiled in FinbaiT B. Flood, The (ireat Mosque of liamasrus: Sludie.i on
thf MakinfTi of an Umayyad Visual Culture (l^iden: Brill, 2001), 07 n.
46.
87. Grossmark, "'Shayisb' (Marble)," 278; Eli Yassif, Sifmnt Ren Sira hi-Yevu
haJHtiayim: Mahadnruh bikirrtil ii-/irhe mehka [The Tales ol Ben Sira in
ihe Middle .-Vges] (lerusalem: Hotsaal sefarim al sbem V. L. Magnes,
ha-IJniversitah ha-Ivrii, 1982), 50-56; and the Ma'tue Malkah Sheha by
Saadya ben Yosef (1702), quoted in Lon H. Silberman, "The Quetn
of Sheba in Judaic Tradition," in Snlomori lif Slifhu. ed. James B. PHlcbard (New York: Phaidon, 1974), 70-71. Tbe slory is echoed in ihe
Qur^an, Sxira 27:44-46 ("sbe tbougbt ii a pool and uncovered her
legs. [Solomon] said, 'li is a palace paved witb ghuss'"). The seventhcentuiT Arabic travelogue The City nf Bin\s describes a palace hall
"made of gleaming niarble inlaid witb precions stones, so thai the
spectator gol the impression the floor was streaming waier, and whoever walked upon it slipped. Bui tbe etiiir lold the sheik to slrew
something on the floor, so they could cross it"; Mia liene Gerhardt,
The All of Stoiy-Tellinf;: A l.iteraiy Study of 'Thr Thomund and (hif
Nil^hl.s'' (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1963), 48-49. I am indebted to T/iona
Grossmark for supplying these additional references.
88. See \'alerie Gonzalez, [j- pi^g^e de Salomon: La fietis/^f lU i'nrt dam U Coran (Paris: .-Mbin Michel, 2002). esp. 2fi, 30-48. For the afterlife of
Solomon's "ci-ystal palace," see R<seniarie Haag Blelier, "The Inierpretaiion of the Glass DreamExprissionist Atchiteclure and ibe Histoiy of the Ci"ysial Metaphor," jimnial oj Ihe Society oj Arrhiteitiiral HLstoriam 50, no. I (1981): 20-43.

80. More difficult to locate and interpret is the "sea' he made "on tbe
right side of ihe Guuaikitis . . . in which waier collected to ibe depth
of one span, and a gangway for the priests lo walk over the pool": L)i89. Green glass paving liles were recovered in one of ibe public rooms of
egtsis narratio. in Mango, Arl oftlu- Hyzanline i'.mpiri', 101; see redactions
the Islamic Palace B at Raqqiia-R;iliqna, in Syria: Harvey Weiss, ed.,
of tbis passage in Vitii, Enilhlung. Sucb immersion pools, and tbeir
El)tii to l)ama.\ctis: Art and Archiij-ol/i)^ of .A'lcinil Syria; .^n l.xhihitlon from
Judaic aud Classical precedents, are analyzed in Demetrios I. Pallas,
l.lir Dirfctiiratr-Cienrral of A nil quit ir\ and ,Musfiim.\. Sytian Aiiih lielnihliihii^ Thala.ua ton l-^klesidn: Sumlwli' ns irti isUrrimi ton CJmstianikmt bomou
(Washington, D.C: Smiibsonian lustiUition, 1985), 517, cal. no. 262.
kai ten morf/kologUin tfs leilotir^tis (Aibens: Inslitul Frantais d'Aibenes,
A plan is in Nassib Saliby, "Rapport preliminaire sur la deuxicme
1932), esp. 39-40. 146-56. Cf. Paul Lemerle, review of Pallas in Bycampagne de touilles a Raqqua (Automne 1952)," f^s Annates At-

654

ART BULLETIN DF.CEMBFR 2nO7 VOLUME LXXXIX NLMBER 4

chiologiques cle Syrie: Hnnie d'Archiologie et d'Hhtoire Syrifnius 4 (1954):

205-12. Eor the iiilluence of Solomon's ciyslal palace on Islamic palaces, see Flood, "Palaces of Crystal," 184-242.
90. Poem written by Baiidri de Bourgueil (1045/46-1130), archbishop of
Dol, to Adele, comtesse de Blois: "it was completely covered by a
glassy surface: tbt- surface itself was called 'the glassy sea,' and it.s material was as clear as if noi clearer than glass; lesi the hostile feet of
visitors crush it, it was supported by tnarble set below. The work was
girdled by a fluid and green color, thai you wo\tld think it the work
of the sea in movement. Tbis work look ihe name and the form of
the ocean [ Tota fuit nitrea tecta superfine: / ipsa superfiries vitreum mttre
mnnen hahehcU, / liirida mciteriea luddiorqtw vitro; / hanc ne proMeret pes
invidus ingredientum, / sustpntnhalur mamiore uipposito. Cingehcitur opiLt
Jluido viriditjue colore, / ut mnris e.ssft opm i/uod Jluitcirr pule.'.. / Hoc opus
Oceani nomev fimnamijue ^clmlY; Cam. 134.72835); lirmdri de liourguril: Poi'mfs, ed. [eati-Yves Tillietie, 2 vois. (Pads: Les Belles Letires,
1998), vol. 2, 23; and Xavier Barral i .Aliei, "Poesie ei iconographie:
Un pavemeni du Xlle siecle decril par Baiidri de Bourgiieil." Dtiml/uiton Oaks J'afim'II (1987): 42. The Ihrone toom that William of Oldenburg witnessed in iJie afotementioned Crusader palace in Beinit
(see n. 26 above) was probably anotiier materializaiion of this idea.
91. Digntii; Akritu: The GroUaffrrata and Escorial Versions, ed. Elizabeth M.
Jeffreys (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 204-5.
92. Luxorius (480/490-ca. 534), Carmina 90.3-6: "Hie sine nube solum;
nix iuncta et sparsa putatur. / Dum steterint, credas mergere posse
pedes." Nubis means eitber "cloud" or "blemish" (Pliny, W,V 37.10.28,
describes flawed crystal as "macuEosa nube"). The poem is addressed
to King Hilderic (r. 523-30). See Morris Rosenblum, Luxoriiis: A Latin
Poet among the Vandah (New York: ("olumbia University Press, 1961),
164-65. 250-.51.

gold-elfenbein-Bildes," in AU-Olympia: Untnsuchun^n

und .^usgrabungen
zur Cexchiihtf des attested! Heili^ums von Olymjiici und dn liUerrn grirrhischeii Kunst, ed. Wilhelm Dorpfeld, 2 vols. (Berlin: E. S. Miiiler und
Sohn, 1935), vol. 1, 226-47, vol. 2, pis. 18-22, plans 18-21. The .section and plan are taken from Ernsl Curtius et al., Olympia: Die Krgebnisse der von dern Deutschen. Reich veranstalteten Ausgrahung, im Aujtrage
des KSniglich preuaischen Ministers der geistlichen, unterri(hts- und medianal-Angelegenhrilen, 5 vols. (Berlin: A. Asher, 1890), TafeUnlder., vol. 1
(1892), pis. 9, 11.
99. "Tutlo il pavimento dil spatio dilla mediana area dil consepto dilla
cavea dil theatro, silicato il vidi di una soUda et integra petra obsidiana di extrenia nigritia et di duritudine indomabile, lersa et lanio
illusire che io abstracto sopra di quella nei primo ponere dil mio dexiro pede, in qnello insianie in abysso inconsideramente . . . veramente
moribondo dubitai precipiiare. . . . Nella quale petra chiaro vedevasc
el perfectamente cemivasi, quale in placido el fUisiro maie la lynipiludine dil profundo caelo, ei similmenle lutee le cose quivi in gyro
existenie refleciavano niolto piii di mundissimo speculo, ei cusi la
soprasiante," Pozzi and Ciappoui, Hypnerotomachia PoUphili, vol. I,
346-47.
100. Kiite Spence, "Red, While and Black: Colour in Building Stone in Ancient Egypl," Ccimhridge Archaeological journal 9. no. I (1999): 115; and
James K. Hoffmeier, "The Use of Basalt in Floors of Old Kingdom
INTamid Temples," Journal of tlw Amtriran Research Crtitrr in ligyf". 30
(i993): 117-23.
101. Richard Wilson, interview. Guardian, April 4, 2003. Tbe work, 20:50,
was first installed ai Malt's Gallery, London, 1987; reinstalled in ihe
Saaichi Gallery, Si. John's Wood (1991), and again in ihe Saauhi (iallery, South Bank (2003): Michael Archer, Simon Morrissey, and Harry
Stocks, Richard mison (London: Merrell, 2001), 40-47.

93. Pausanias 5.11.10 (174-75 CE). The curb is actually Pentelic marble.

102. Lethaby, Architecture, 179.

94. Olive oil can act as an air but not a bumidity barrier. The stone's
black color is irrelevant. Tesis ai San Jose Slate University (1989) disclaimed the passive-conductor issue: William M. Gaugler and Patrick
Hamiti, "Possible Effects of Open Pools of Oil and Water on Cbryselephantine Statues," Amrrican Jmimal of Archcieology 9^, no. 2 (1989):
251. It is also unclear why ihe oil would have lo drain onto the (din
floor raiber iban inio the statue's pedestal. Recent commentalors
have recognized that the oily floor would have acted as a mirror:
Charles H. Morgan, "Pheidias and Olympia," Heiperia 21 (1952): 31618; J. W. Graham, "Acropolis and Parthenos: New Models in ihe Royal
Ontario Museum," in Parlhenos and Parihenon. ed. G. T. W. Hooker
(Oxford: Clarendon Press. 1963), 80-81;Jobii Boardman, "Waier in
the Parthenon?" Cymnasium 74 (1967): .509; and Kenneth D. S. I^patin, ('.hryseU^)han(ine Statuary in the Ancient Mediterranean World (Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 2001), 79, 85-86, and n. 239. Pansanias similarly explains that ibe waier pool frontitig the chryselephantine statue
of Athena in ibe Parthenon funciioned as a humidifier because "the
Acropolis, owing to its great height, is over-dry." Again, ibis reflecting
pool presumably increased the impact or illumitialion of the sliitue.
The pools of Olympia and Athens seem almost gendered, with different properties for "dark-browed" Zeus and "gniy-eyed" Athena.

103. A!t the Hgural imagerN' that we now see (or know from ()ld descrii>
lions) was noi added uuiil the niuih ceuiuty: .Alessatidra Guiglia
(iuidobaldi, "1 mosaici aniconici di S. Sofia di Costaniinopoli nell'eta
di Giusliniano," in La mosaicjuegrl-co-romaine VII: Tunis. 3-7 ortolne,
1994; \7le Collof/ue International pour I'Etude de la Mosaique Antique, ed.
Mongi Ennaifer and Alain Rcbourg (Tunis: Inslitut National du Patrimoine, 1999), 691702. If the giant cberubim in the dome pendcnlives are Juslinianic, they must stress tbe cburch's Solomonic identity
(see I Kings 6:27).

95. Strabo, 8.3.30. The stalue, at aboui 42 feet (13 m), w:is seven times
lifesize.
96. The floor of the Litpis Niger is "palombino" limestone from Tolfa;
Mario Foniaseri et a!., "Lapis Niger' aud Oiher Black Limestones
Used in .Antiquily," in The Study oj Marbk and Other Stones Used in Antiijuity., ed. Yannis Maniatis, Norman Hcrir, and Yannis Basiakos (London: Archetype Books, I99.'i), 235-42. It is thought to date from either Caesar's or Sulla's time and wa.s surrounded by a marble barrier.
It is not clear whether the black stone indicated thai the site was nffa.s
(not lawful) or sepulchral (for example, ibe totub of Romulus): Filippo Coareiti, // foro Romano: Frriodo n^iubldirnno e augusteo (Rome:
Quasar, 1985), 195-98.
97. Mnesicles bad used the same slone as thai used for ihe Temple of
Zeus (Eleusinian marble) in tbe Propylaeon on ihe Acropolis, for an
internal dado that makes up Ibe difTerence between the level of the
Acropolis proper and tbe external ramp, so tJiat crossing tbis space is
visually like wading througb a pool. Lucy T. Shoe's hypothesis that
ilie dark stone step within the Propylaeon was a "warning sign," to
prevent visitors daz/led by sunlight from tripping up, is as improbable
as it is much repeated: Shoe, "Dark Stone in Greek Aicbilecture," Hesperia, Supplevient 8 (Commrm<yrative Studie.s in Honor of Theodore Ij^slie
Shear)8 (1949): 341-52.
98. The lemple was begun about 470 BCE, the shell complete by 457.
Tbe original door bad lo be removed lo make way for the shallow
pool. Tbe oil surface was probably nearly Mush wilh the surrounding
while curb, which was cut to give the illusion of underlying the columns. The barrier ran across Ihe cclla between the second pair of columns. An exacting sui"vey is in Fred Forbat. "Der Fussbodcn im Inneren des Zeus Tempels und seine Veninderungen bei Aufstellung des

104. The floor is even labeled 0 , \ J \ A 1 S A ("Sea"): I'. Lux, "Die AposlelKircbe in Madaba," Zeitschrijt des DeuLscheti Palastina-Vmeins 84 (1968):
106-29, pis. 14-35; Michele Piccirillo and Eugcnio .A.iliala, Madaba: Le
chiese e i mo.Kaici (Cinisello Balsamo; Edizioni Paoline, 1989), 96-107:
and Micbele Picciiillo, Patricia Maynor Bikai, and Tbomas A. Dailey,
The Mosciics of/a-rdan (Amman: ,\merican Center of Oriental Research.
1993), 106-7,'Hgs. 78-95. In the middle of ibe (loor of ihe cburcb
of Bishop Sergius (lale sixtb cenUii-y) at Umm al-Ra.sas, Jordan, ibere
is instead a marine animal labeled ABYSSt)2 (".Abyss"): Basema
Hamarneb, "I mosaici del complesso di S. Stefano: Proposta di lettura," in Picciriilo and Alliata, t'mm al-Ruias, 231-40; and Edoardo
Gaulier di Confiengo, "La catecbesi figurata del mosaici della chiesa
del vescovo Sergio ad Umm al-Rasas di Giordania," Studium Biblicum
Franciscanum 50 (2000): 430-31.
105. In fulfillment of Job 9.8: "Wbo ireadelb upon ibe waves of ibe sea."
Cf. ihe inscription in the oraiory of Trasaric in Gaul (Venantius Eortunaliis, Carmina 2.13.3-4): "This is the hall of Peter wbo locks the
beavens witb a key and under whose steps the sea siood firm as a
stone {Haec est auta Petri cueUis qui clave catenat / suhstitit et fieUigtis quo
giadiente lapis]"; Venance Fortunat: Pohiies (Tome I, Livres l-f\'), ed. Marc
Reydellet, 2 vols. (Paris: Les Belles Leitres, 1994), 69. Ai line 10 Venantius writes ihat ibe church "melts the shadows of ihe world and
giasps ibe siai^s [tenehrcu muudi liquit et astra terift]."
106. Ode fi. Tone 3, oikos 1, ortbros on Sunday morning: "Enveloped by
ihe bottomless ilepihs of my sins, I sense my life ebbing away. O Master, lift np Your liand and stretch it over to me; save me as Yttu once
saved Peter. O You who walk upon ihe waves." Ode 6, Tone 3, oikoi 1
and 3, orthros on Tuesday morning: "I am drowning in ihe depib of
sin. The sea of life is passing over me. But as Jonah came forth frotn
ibe wbale, so bring me up from the abyss of the pa.isions and save me,
O Lord. . . . " "I am tossed on a storm of passions: bui as You once ordered the waves to be calm of old and saved Your holy Disciples, ()
Christ Jesus, so extend Your hand lo uie :uid s;ur me." Sec also Ode 6,
Tone 6, orthros on Sunday morning; all in I'he Crecit Octocchos, 4 vols.
(Boston: Sophia Press, 1999), vol, 1, 23-24, 230-31, vol. 3, 192-93.
Tbese prayers date between the ninth and twelfth centuries.
107. Trnttatits rtedifi cation is ft constmrtionis Er.clmaesanct.ijoh.amm
Evangelhtae df liavfiuiafi. in Anonymi MeilioUinrnsi.s Lilielltt.\ lU situ dvitatis Mediolani: / > advcntu liamalie Apo\toU ft de vitis pHcirinn potitifirum Mediolanensium, ed. Alessandro Colombo and (Giuseppe Colombo (Bologtia: N.
Zanichelli, 1942), 567-72: "iubet Augusia ubiquc naufragii sui prae-

COSMIC FLOORS IN ANTIQUITY ANI) THF. MinDI.K ACE.S

lUH.

109.

110.

111.

112.

113.
114.

115.

555

!)enuri fomiam ut qtiodanimodo tola op^-Hs fades reginae peritula

is made from great circles and flowei> of serpentine and porphyiT
loquLTCltir. l';iviniiiitmii imdusimi imdiquc mare, quod, quasi vciuis
and from a cerlain black sione (hat shines like a minor 11/ salrgato f
agiiatum, prott-Hosar (crnpcstatis Rcril im;iginciii." On S. Ciiuvaiini
fatti) a tondi gtiindi e puri di seTfimtini, por/idi, el tie una certa pivdu negra
Evangclisla. set' Dcii liiniuin. llaveiinti, vol. 2, pi. I. 93-124, wiih cnniluiente como eifnrhio\": /nonw Maunind: Itineraire d'Antilii's ft (.onstnntip;ir;ilivc [cxts al 107-24. Ntosaics 011 tlic prosceniiiiTi arrh showed
nople, I3H, ed. Leon Dore/ (Paris: E. tx.-roux. 1901), 244.
(iaila I'Uiririia in her siorni-losscfl galley (nn ihr "iiiaie vitieum." prc1 lfi. Giovanni Meschineilo, l.a Chiesa l>urale di S. Marco colle notizif del sun
siiiniilily a mosair sea. bnl siill an odd rlioirt' of word.s). and inscripinnahamento, 2 vols. (Venice. I75;^54). vol. 2, 35: "a bella pos(a cosi
linns recorded llie ex-vom dediratinn. The lloor may have resembled
fabbricalo, per imitare I'onda del mare, e significari' il tXuninin che
that at Grado. although iliis iiimh<eiitur)' chronicler might also be
la Serenissima Repubblica conser\av"d sopra di es.so." One irod ihe
describing a later, Proconnesian replacement. No (races are now visifloor "withoin remorse, but not wiihoui a very odd sensaiion, when
ble.
you find tbe grotind undulated beneath (hem, (o repiesen( ihe waves
Scf also Psalms 65:5. 7: "O Clod of our salvalioii: who an tJie confiof the sea, and perpeiuaie marine i<ieas, which prevail in eveiytbing
dence ot all the ends of the eai th. and of (hem that are afar off upon
at Venice." Hesier t.ynch Pio//i, Obsematiiins and liiflections Made in tlur
the sea . . . which stilleth the noise of the seas, the noise of their
Course of a Jimmry tlmmgh Erance, Italy, and (Germany, 2 vols. (lxtndon:
waves."
A. Strahan and T. Cadell, 1789), vol. 1, I.'i2. John Rtiskin approved
Alfaniis of Salerno, De .situ, construclione ac renovatione coenobil Casirwnsis
this pas.sage in his Journal on November 24, 1851: The Works of John
(Cann. 32), lines 150-54. in I'atrologia Eatina {PE), vol. 147, col.
litiskin, ed. Edward T. ('00k and Alexander I). O. Wedderburn, '^^)
12S7(;: "Hie alahastra nilere lapis / porphyrciis viridisque facit / his
vols. (London: George Allen, 1904-12). vol. 10. 464. The idea is rePrnconissa paviia simul / sic sibi niarmora conveniuni / u( lahnr hie
pealed in Theophile Gautier, Italia (Paris: V. Ix-coii, 1852), 12.^.
mare sit \itreum "; Anselmo txntini and Faustino Avagliano. eds., /
117. Street lectured to the Architectural Photographic Association (Februcarrni di Alfiitio I ardvescmm di Salerno (Monlecassint): Badia cli Monteary 15. 18.")9), and Ruskin. Woriis, vol. 16, 464, applauded his idea Ihat
cassinu. H)74). 171). Lines 188-89 claim, "Jiistinian's church [Hagia
the floor had Ijeen ptir|K)sely laid in undulations. For Ruskin s pan in
Sophia] WfHild [irrler to trade places wiih you [Atria lustiniana \ilum /
the reslonition debate (ihough no meniioii ol the floor), see John
hunc sibi diligerent satius]'
I'nrati, liuskin and St. Mark's (I.ondon: Thames and Hudson. I9H4),
Oikos 7: 'AIT' apj^ffi 'yeyoTOS TO orepedi^ia TQV VHOTSV ev fiiT<t)
191-210; andjohn Pemble, Venice liedisciwered (Oxiord: Clarendon
etrayi} . .. Kai eiraiw QUTOU iryfta (Jjixrtq <w<;>e iwn 7ru7TeiTai...
Press, 1995), 148-53. Arthur E. Sireet, Memoir of (.eorg,' Edmund .Street,
aAA' finOWa TO fj.ei(oi>a Kai TrpoSfjAws imepBoiifiatna'
li.A. IH24--!fiNI (London: John Murray, 1S8H), 248-54. (;. F.. Sireei
published a column in ibe Times, reaffirming his titidulating-IUior iheyap evdoKia HfoV TeHtfieAiioTai'<>wios rijq <fte(n?>
on. This was contested by a ceriain Mr. Fowler, who olwer^ed (hat (he
Cireek lexi in Consiantiiie A. Tiypanis, EourWen Early Byzantine Canlloor had simply stibsided. In 1886 the quesiion of ilie paving resurtiia (Vienna: Bohlau. 19(i8), 141-47 (no. 12): amended according (o
faced wben (he secretary of the Society Un (he Piiitectioti of Ancient
Palmer ;uid Rodley, "Inauguraiion Aniliem." \?n ai n. 22, 140-44; see
Buildings once more protested its restoration.
also Andrew Palmer, "The Inauguraiion An(hem of Hagia Sophia
Again," Hyzanthie rind Modem Greek Studies 14 (1990): 247-48. This an118. Pavement of St. Mark's, Vmire. in Patricia Hills, cd.. John .Singer Snrgmt
them is frequenily atlributcd to Romanos Melodios, ihe master of ihe
(New^'ork: Harry N. Abrams. 1986). 68. fig. 43. The painiing is norgenre, slill living in 555. Conlemporary Synian exegesis proposed the
mally dated to 1898, but Richard Orm<md {Comfdete Paintings, vol. 4,
same model qtiite forcefully: for example, Narsai (late fifth-early sixth
Eigiiin and Enndsca/u-s IH74-IHH2 [New Haven: ^'ale I'niversiiy Press,
century), "The Clreaior consimcied a great building for humankind /
for the Paul Meltoti Centre lor Studies in British .Art. 2006], 357, no.
And He placed its foundaiions on liquid water which He made solid /
812) redates ihe painting to alxiin 1880-82. My ihank.s lo Ted IJalHe stretched over it a roof of liquid water / and above it He piled up
/iell for bringing this painiing and tbe following passage lo niv attenthe water as in a reservoir"; trans. MtVey. "Dotiied Churtli as Microtion: -What I remember chiefly is the siraigbtening out ol thai dark
and rtigged old pavementthose deep undulations of priiTiiiive tnocosm," 114-15,
saic in which ihe Ibnd spectator was thought to perceive ati intended
PauKs fkphra.w of Hagia Sophia was likely given ar Kpiphany (jantiary
resemblanie 10 (he w-aves of the <icean. Wliether intended or noi the
ti) .")(i3. ihat ol tbe atnlio some days later. (Ibrist's bapiism in the [orimage was an image the more in a treastue-house of images; bul from
dau was comnit'iiioraled on the same day: Mary Wiiiiby. "The Occaa considerable portion of the church il has now disappeared"; Henry
sion of Paul the Sileniiary's Ekphrasis of S. Sophia." CMssical Qiiarteily
James, Italian Hours (London: W. Heinemann, 1909), 9.
35, no. I (1985): 217 and n. 18. December 31. b&l. has also been suggested: Ruth Macrides and Paul Magdalino, "The .Architecture of Ek119. Cieotge Kdmimd Siret-i, lirick and Marlde in llw Middle Ages: Xotei of
phrasis: Constniction atid Context of Paul the Sileiuiary's Poem on
Tours iv thf North of Italy (London: John MuiTay, 185.'>), 159-60.
Haghia Sophia," liyzantive and Modem (-reek Studies 12 (1988): fi3-67.
120. Winefride de t.'Hopital. West-minstn Cathedral and Its Arrhitert, 2 vols.
Although the lemma specifies thai the descriptive section of the ora(London: Hulchinson, 1919), vol. I. l26-'29. In (lit- event. lieniley's
tion (and the later ekphrasis on the amho) were given in ihe patriarch1901 design was considered too frigid for noriliern climes and a parate, (his include<l chambei^s in tbe upper stories of Hagia Sophia:
(|uel flour went down instead. Bentley's design would also have cosi
Robin Cormack and Ernest J. W. Hawkins, "The Mosaics of Si. Sophia
I8,()(H). The tnatbles may bave already been (tideied and. if so, may
at Isianbnl: The Rooms above the Southwest Vestibule and Ramp."
have ended up in Surrey House, Norwich (1901-4): Patrick Rogers,
Ihiinharton (),ik% I'afms M (1977): 199-202. Paul Friediander also arWestmiiister CMhedral: Emm Darkness to Eight (London: Kturis and Oates.
gued ihai ihe audience nuist have Ix-en located within ihc chiucb:
2003), 7-9. Bentley and his ma.';()n Williarti Brindley applied the term
Friedland<'r, /()A/mci nov Crua und I'aulus Silevtaiius: Kunstlieschrerhung
"Cipollino" 10 Proconnesian and Caiystian alike. (ITI ihe cathedral's
fustinianhchn '/At (Leipzig: George Teubner, 1912), 109-10.
marbles, see Rogers, 43-76.
Robert LamberHm. Homifr the 'Eheologian: NeopUUonist Allegorical Reatling
121. Joseph Lemaire, "Sytiibolisme de la mer, du naviie, du pecheur ei de
and the (Winoth af the Epic Tradition (Berkeley: Llniversiiy of California
la peche chei^ Chromace d'Aquilc-e,' in .Aquileia e I'Altn Adiiatico
Press, 1986), 78-8'2. 144-232.
(Udine: Arti Grafiche FHuiane, 1972). 141-52, esp. 114. Chromatitis
('arnpbcll Bonner, "Desired Haven," Haniaiil Theohgiial RnJieiv'M, no.
became a priest ai Aquileia in .387/388 CE and died in 4OtV4O7. S<-e
I (1911): 49-67: and Sebasiian Brock, "Tbe Scribe Reaches Haialso Lois Drewer, "Fisherman and Fish Pond: From ihe Sea of Sin 10
boiu," ill Itasphorit\: Kssays in Honour of Cyril Mango, ed. Stephanos Efthe Living Waters," An liullrtin 63. no. 4 (1981): .'>33-47. Sireet knew
thvmiadis. Claudia Rapp. and Dimitris Tsougaimkis (Amsierdatn: Adolf
of Galia Placidia's stormy floi>r, as be qnittes the passage in his teller
M. Hakkert. 199.^0. 195-202.
to ihe Times.
Pan! the Silentiaiy. Desn: S. Sophiae 92l~$S.
122. 1-ethaby, Architecture. I(T8-83; and Leihabv an<l Swainson. Sinutn
Oikos 9: NoTjTois'; (^Mj
Sofjhia, 79-80. I.,ethaby cotild noi see ihe lloor of Hagia .Sophia but
biLsed his observaiions on the floor in the g-alleiy over ibe narihex.
S' fv
t-VKri row en; TO vekayo^
Bentley spent five months in Italy (1894-95). evolving his design
irXoi'tuixet'om; rfj.; a/j-opruc;. The expression "sea of troubles"
based on the "lialo-By/atitine" style of ibe sixth centuiy. He did not
{Ehalassa [or pelagos] kakon) exists also in classical Greek: Aeschylus,
reach Onsiantinople because of an outbreak of cholera Itiu retheliaii 7'i8: and I'enai 433.
marked Ihat "San Vitale. Ravenna, and Lethaby's Book told tne all I
Joseph vf>n Hannner-Purgstall. C.onstantinopolis und diilitispiiros. iirtlich
wanted."
und gesfhichtlich Ueschriehen. 2 vols. (Vienna: Anton Strauss. 1822). I
lake it on Le(haby's word that Hanitnei-Purgs(all quoted Psendo-Codi123. J. Holder, "Architecture, Mysticism, and Myth and lis Inlluence." in VV^ Ii.
nns. l.ethabv claims tha( Street was inspired by Von Hammer, alIjttliaby IN57-I'^3I: Architecture. De.sign and Education, ed. Sylvia B;ickeibough I have Iwen unable to fuid (he exact passage. In 1934 Hagia
meyer and Theresa (ironberg (London: Lund Hiunphries, 1984), 56S<iphia became a naiinnal museum. ;U which poiiU the carpeting
63: and Godfrey Rtil>ens, Willifim liichnrd Utlialn: His Life and Wi>rk,
came up. See the nineteenih<entuiy photographs of the interior in
IS57~I93} (London: Archiu'citiral Press, 1986), 80-97. A less sympaHortmann. Die Hagia Sophia in hiaiiliul, 222. 234-35. Tbe invisibility of
thetic acconiu is in David Watkin, The liisf uf Architectural History (LonHagia Sophia's floor explains Jerome Maurand s claim that "the floor
don: Architectural Press, 1980), 87-93. In the 1975 reprini of Archilec-

656

ART Blil.LETlN CEt:F.MBER 2007 VOI.UMF. l.XXXIX NLIMBF.R 4

ture, Myttkism and Myth (New York: George Brazilter, 1975), 273-80.
Riiben.s compiled an introductory biblio^aphy of l-ethaby'.s principal
sources, including ;i handftil used for the chapter "Floors as Seas." On
Lethaby and Hagia Sophia, see al.so Nelson, Hn^n Stifjhia, 112-19.

124.

125.

126.

127.

128. Arthur H. S. Mcgaw. "Notes on Recent Work of the Byzantine Institute in Istanbul," Dumbarton Otih Papers 17 (1965): 337. The Pantokrator floor was not tmcovered until 1954; Paul .\. l'ndei-wood. "Notes
on the Work <if the By/.antine Itisiitiitt- in Istanbul: 1954." Dumbarton
Oaks Papers 9-10 (19.56): 299-300. On Nikopolis, see Kitzingcr, "MoW. S. George's drawings of Hagios Demetrios were discovered and
saics at Nikopolis," 84-108, with earlier bibliography. Schuliz had
discussed in Robin ("oniiack. "Thf Mosaic Decoration of S. Demeprobably also noticed the publication of the monochrome mosaic
trios, Thessalnniki: A Re-exa mi nation in the Lighl of the Drawings of
W. S. George," Annual of llw Brili.'.li Srbool (it Albrm t)4 (1969): 17-.52;
floor (late twelfth or eariy thirteenth ceniury) of the chancel of S.
and idem, 77n" Church of Saint Demftrior. llw WaUn-roUniTs and Drawings
Salvatore. Turin, excavated in 1909, on which v-.irioiis roundels arc
ofW. S. Ciforge (Thessaloniki: Demos Thessalonikcs, 1985).
enclosed by an orbital Ocean: Toesca. "Vicende," 1-16; and Porter,
Lombard Ardiitecture, vol. 3, 442. Note also that Kingsiey Porter's 1912
Schiili/ w-as a member of the British Archaeological School in Athens
article on the floor al S. Savino. Piacenza ("San Savino," pt. 2. 503-4},
from 1888 to 1891. He collaborated with Ernest A. Gardner on Excacites Saint Ambrose's Hexameron lo sec in the floor's "ocean and its
vations at Megaliypolis. 1890-1891 (London: Macmillan, 1892); with
finny iniiabitiints . . . a complete image of the Churcli of God and of
Sidney H. Bamsley on The Monaslrry ofSriint Luke of Slim, in Fhoris,
human life."
and the DepemUtnt Moniistery of Saint Nicolas in the FieUh, near Sknpmi. in
Btjeotia (London: Macmillan, 1901); wrote "Byzantine Art" In the Archi129. 'ilK^avhv TT^pii^avjov avipijov ei-fla SeSopKa? / yoCCtxv pLkoaov
tfcturnl Review (1897); antl edited The Churrh of the Natwity at Bethlehem
e;foi/Ta (Toilxfi^ (Kitzinger, "Mo.saics al Nikopoiis." 84-108). Sec Ma(London; B. T. Batsford, 1910). Schultz and B.trnsley's photographic
guire, EartJi and Oiran, 21; and idem, "Mantle of the Earth," 221-28.
plates went missing after World War II but were fortuiUitisly redi.scov130. Cyril Mango, Michael Vickers, and E. D. Francis, "The Palace of Lauered through e-mail correspondence between myself and Dr. Paul
siis at Constantinople and Its Collection of Ancient Statties." Journal of
Taylor of (he Warburg Institute (2003), in whose pholographic arthf Histtny of Collertions 4. no. I (1992): 89-98. Their identification of
chive the plates had remained unnoticed for fifty yeai^s.
the palace of l^usos is overturned by Sarah Otibcrti Bassctt, "'Extt-lRobert S. Weir, IV. R. Lcthaln: A Paper Read hefore the Art W/irkm' Guild
Icnl Offerings': The l,atisos Collection in Constantinople." Art Hull-tin
22 April 1932 (London; Printed ai ilie Central School of Ait. 1938),
82, no. 1 (2000); 6-25. Ii is tinknown whether l.atisos made any at11. quoted in Ckidfrey Rubens, intr<iduction to Arrhiterture, \975. xiv.
tempt to reprodtice the black pool.
Lelhaby thanked Schultz in the acknowledgments of Architertum My.sticism and Myth for supplying him with a sketch of the floor of the Flor131. James D. Breckcnridgc, The Numismatic Ironof/raphy of Jiv>tinian II (68^ence Baptistery.
695. 705-711 A.D.) (New York: American Ninnismaiic Society. 195"J),
57-59; Mango et al.. "Palace of Latisns," 95; l^patin, Ckiyseliiphantine
The first chapel was built in 1H93 for ihe third Marqiifss of Riitt- in
Statuary, 137: Michael Vickers, "Phidias' Oiympia Zeus and Its Forthe grotinds of his town housf. Sl. [obn's Lodge, Regents Park, Lontima," in Ivory in (.Weeee and the Eastern Mediterranean Jrnm the Himize Age
don, but destroyed in 1939. The Clhapel of St. ^\ndrew, Wesiiniiister
to the Hell/^iistir Period, ed. J. Lesley Fitton (London; British Miisetini.
Cathedral, was buili in K)10-L5 ai the expense of the fourth marqtiess: L"H6pltal. Westminster Cathfdral., vol. 1, 163-67; David Ottewiil,
1992), 217-16; and Thomas F. Malhcws, The CUtsh of Codv. A Rrinterfnr"Robert Weir Schuliz (1860-19.51); .An Arts and Crafts Architect," Artation of Early Christian Art (Prlnteton: Priricfton University Press,
chitedural Hist/ny 22 (1979): 92, 93; and Gavin Stamp. Holmi Weir
1993), 108-9.
Sthultz, Architect, and His Winit for the Marquesses of Bute: An K^say

(Rothessay, [sic of Btite: Mount Stuart. 1981). 19-20, 60-63. See the
commemorative issue oi Architectural AssocJatioti Journal. 7^ (Juno
1957). The floor symbolism w-as reported in Btiiltier. December 10,
1915. 422-23; and William Curtis Green, "Recent Decorations at the
Roman Catholic Cathedral Westminster." Archilertuial Review 40. no.
236 (1916); 7-12. Builder \v\c\\.\AeA :t watercolor plan of tlie Westminster pavement, republished in Backemeyer and Cironberg. W. R.
iMhafry, 83, cat. no. 9.''>. A floor plan is in Building News, December 1.
1915, 615. Most reviews of the work were highly favorable, but ihe
reviewer for the 7Vww.? compared entering the chapel to being in a
bathroom and "up to the neck in cold water."

132. The variotis meanings imputed to the moniirtu-nt are snmmarizfd in

Nicholas Capa.sso, "Vietnam Veterans' Memorial Washington. D.C.,
Designer: Maya Lin, Architects of Record; The ("oopcr-I.ccky Partnership," in The Critical Edge: Controversy in Recent American Architecture, ed.
Tod Marder (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1985), 189-202; and
Charles L. Griswold. "The Vietnam Veterans Memorial and the Washington Mall; Philosophical Thoughts on Political Iconography," in Ari
and the Public Spliere, cd. William J. T. Mitchell (Chicago; University of
Chicago Press, 1986), 79-112. On the Lincoln Memorial, sec Christopher A. Thomas, Tlie IMiohi Metnorial and Its Architect. Henry Bruon
(1866-1924), 2 vols. (Ann Arbor: UMi, 1991).