3051080

Cyriacus of Ancona's Seven Drawings of Hagia SophiaAuthor(s): Christine SmithSource: The Art Bulletin, Vol. 69, No. 1 (Mar., 1987), pp. 16-32Published by: College Art AssociationStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3051080 .

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Cyriacus of Ancona's Seven Drawings of Hagia Sophia

Christine Smith

Seven unpublished captions in a fifteenth-century manuscript in Parma describe a series of drawings of Hagia Sophia by Cyriacus of Ancona. Although the drawings were not copied into the manuscript, their subjects can be determined from information in the captions, and some idea of what three of them looked like can be gained from related drawings in Giuliano da Sangallo's Barberini Sketchbook. What is most remarkable about the lost drawings is their character as a series of views whose sequence and subjects reproduce the physical experience of a spectator moving through the building. This essay explores the significance of what was, in the mid-fifteenth century, an unprecedented approach to the depiction of architecture. It suggests that the series' structure was drawn from Classical and Byzan- tine descriptions of buildings known to early Italian humanists and that these literary works provided the conventions within which a new desire to record visual appearance could be realized.

For Craig Hugh Smyth

The fifteenth-century antiquarian Cyriacus of Ancona went to Constantinople five times and made drawings of some of its famous sites.1 Although none of the original drawings survives, some are known from copies and captions. In particular, seven unpublished captions in a manuscript in Parma (Bibl. Palatina, Ms 1191, fols. 61v-64v) describe a series of drawings of Hagia Sophia.2 The illustrations intended to accompany these captions were never placed in the spaces left for them in the Codex Parmensis, but it is known what three of them looked like from copies by Giu- liano da Sangallo, or Giuliano's son Francesco, in the Bar- berini Codex (Codex Vat. Barb. lat. 4424, fols. 28r and 44r; Figs. 1 and 2).3 The subjects of the other four drawings can be determined from the captions in the Parmensis, permitting a reconstruction of the entire series. This series is unique in Cyriacus' work and without parallel in Early Re- naissance architectural drawings. The intent of this article is, first, to reconstruct the subjects of the missing illustrations of the Parmensis, establishing their graphic technique and accuracy as far as the evidence permits. This reconstruction then serves as the basis for an investigation of the aesthetic and epistemological significance of the series. Its structure suggests that Cyriacus' perception of Hagia So- phia as a totality of spatially sequential parts led him to

communicate his visual analysis to the reader in an innovative way. Imitating the approach of literary descriptions of architecture, he presented the building as a spectator experiences it moving through space. His transposition of words into images suggests the increasingly important role assigned to sensory, especially visual, experience, by Italian humanists in the earlier quattrocento.

The Codex Parmensis The Codex Parmensis, a compilation of selections from

Cyriacus' works written in the third person, probably dates from the third quarter of the fifteenth century.4 Nothing is known about its patron, author, or purpose; its source is either Cyriacus' Commentaria (his travel diaries), or ex- cerpts from these. The section on Hagia Sophia follows material from Cyriacus' trip to Dalmatia and Greece, and precedes a section on Roman inscriptions. Like the section on Hagia Sophia, the other two parts of the manuscript are unfinished: all the headings and captions are present, but only some of the inscriptions and none of the drawings were copied into the spaces provided for them.

The folios devoted to Hagia Sophia have no narrative text, except for a short introductory paragraph. Fols. 61r and 65r are entirely blank, perhaps to set off this portion from the surrounding material; fols. 61v, 62r-v, 63r-v, and 64r-v have short captions identifying or commenting on

I wish to express my gratitude to Alexander Kazhdan, William Loerke, Edward Bodnar S.J., Robert Van Nice, Charles Mitchell, and Salvatore Camporeale for their interest in this essay and their helpful criticism; it has been my privilege to learn from their experience and knowledge. This article is dedicated to Craig Hugh Smyth, whose guidance and example taught me the meaning of excellence. It was prepared with the support of a fellowship at the Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts, National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. 1 For Cyriacus' life and work, the best study is Bodnar. A short summary,

with emphasis on Cyriacus as antiquarian and draftsman, is found in Brown and Kleiner. 2 The Parmensis is discussed in Bodnar, 106ff. Father Bodnar first drew

my attention to the unpublished captions in this manuscript.

3Published in facsimile edition by S. Huelson, II Libro di Giuliano da

Sangallo, Leipzig, 1910. Sangallo's use of Cyriacus' drawings is most re-

cently discussed in Brown and Kleiner.

4 The dating is Bodnar's, 106.



CYRIACUS OF ANCONA'S SEVEN DRAWINGS OF HAGIA SOPHIA 17

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1 Giuliano da Sangallo, Hagia Sophia, interior west wall and exterior from the west, Vat. Barb. lat. 4424, fol. 28r (from S. Huelson, II Libro di Giuliano da Sangallo, Leipzig, 1910)

drawings that were never copied into the codex. Occupying almost full pages measuring 29.3x22cm, they would have been quite large, although not so large as the versions in the Barberini Codex, where each page measures 45.7 x 38cm.5

A paragraph introducing the series precedes the first caption on fol. 61v: "Almae Sophiae sapientiaeve sacrum in Bizantio a Iustiniano Caesare templum maximum et CIIII

porfireis serpentinis ac marmoreis columnis diversorumque nobilium et conspicuum lapidum insigne, Anthemio Tral- leo et Isidoro Milesio nobilibus architectorum principibus." (The great temple dedicated to Hagia Sophia, i.e., wisdom, in Byzantium [founded] by Caesar Justinian. Notable for 104 porphyry, serpentine, and marble columns of various noble and remarkable stones. Anthemius of Tralles and Is- idore of Miletus, noble princes among architects.)

5 In fact, however, each of the drawings on fol. 28r of the Barberini Codex occupies no more than 23 x 30cm; hence, they are almost identical in height to the lost drawings of the Parmensis, for which a clear space of

25cm is left on each page, and a maximum of 8cm wider than the lost drawings. The plan on fol. 44r, on the other hand, being a full-page drawing, is much larger than its cognate in the Parmensis.



18 THE ART BULLETIN MARCH 1987 VOLUME LXIX NUMBER 1

This short text may be compared with two others: the transcription of the same words in the Barberini Codex, and Cyriacus' prose description of Hagia Sophia preserved in Scalamonti's biography. The Barberini version (in the center of the page in Fig. 1) presents some slight variants: "in bysantio" for "imbizantio" in the Parmensis; "Antemio" for "Anthemio."6 Otherwise, it is identical. Scalamonti's text reads: "Deinde in urbe primum sacra divis ornata atque ingentia delubra, et ante alia insigne illud, et maximum a Justiniano Caesare, divae Sophiae conditum et admirabile templum ingenti testudine marmoreisque crustatis parie- tibus, et pavimento conspicuo. Nec non porphyreis ser- pentineisque magnis et innumeris sublime columnis viderat."7

At first glance, these texts do not seem close: the Par- mensis lacks references to the dome, pavement, and marble revetment. But each of these elements is mentioned in sub- sequent captions, with additional information. Both are concerned with similar kinds of data: definition of the lo- cation and status of the building, identification of its patron, and evaluation of the structure in terms of the cost, quality, and beauty of its materials. These similarities suggest that both texts are based on Cyriacus' lost Commen- taria, or at least that both were written by him.

Beneath the introductory paragraph on fol. 61v is the caption for the first drawing: "Ab externa templi et occidua parte figura a qua primum vestibulum atque ingressum habuisse videtur: cuius amplitudo per latitudinem cubitorum C et L, altitudinem 110 vero cubitorum metita est." (A figure from the exterior and western part of the temple, from which it is seen to have first had a vestibule and entrance: the dimension is 150 cubits wide and 110 or 120 cubits high.)

This text presents a number of difficulties in interpretation. First, the value that Cyriacus assigns the cubit is not precisely ascertainable. All of his measurements of Hagia Sophia are given in round figures, and hence are approx- imations; in any case, one does not know if he possessed the instruments or the knowledge to arrive at precise measurements.8 Comparison of the measurements in the captions with the dimensions of Hagia Sophia suggests that the value of Cyriacus' cubit is about 50cm.9 If one uses this as the unit of conversion, the "figura" on fol. 6v showed

an exterior view 75m wide and 55 or 60m in height. A width of 75m would be too great for the west facade

of Hagia Sophia, which actually measures 69.6m, but would correspond almost exactly to the length of the building, 74m from the eastern wall of the nave to the west wall (not including wall thickness).10 Moreover, Cyriacus uses the term "latitudinem" in this caption, whereas, when describing what can only be transverse measurements (the lengths of the nartheces) on fol. 62r-v, he uses "longitudo." Thus it might seem that the missing drawing showed Hagia Sophia from the side, were it not that the caption on fol. 61v stipulates the view as being from the west. What is more, this, the only exterior view in the series, must correspond to the drawing of the facade in the Barberini Codex, fol. 28r (Fig. 1), which is inscribed with the introductory paragraph examined above. Since the east-west extension of the church is not shown in this nonperspectival representation, the 75m measurement must refer to the width of the west facade. To explain the error in measurement, it may be suggested that Cyriacus thought of Hagia Sophia as a perfectly centralized building - as a square - and made no distinction in measurement between its length and width. Such an interpretation is supported by the caption's wording: "per latitudinem" must mean "per side." His other measurement, of 55 or 60m in height, refers to the height of the building at the central dome, actually 55.6m from the pavement (not including dome thickness).

The technique of Cyriacus' missing drawing, preserved in the Codex Barberini, is a nonperspectival rendering consonant with Alberti's recommendation for architectural depiction in De re aedificatoria.11 The choice of a nonillu- sionistic technique suggests that Cyriacus' aim, at least in this drawing, was not to capture the visual impression of the building's appearance, but to record certain facts about its form: the parts, their disposition, and their interrela- tionship. His approach, then, was informative. But how accurately did he describe the appearance of Hagia Sophia? The drawing in Sangallo's codex seems to have only an approximate relationship to the building (Figs. 1 and 3). The great dome is there, dominating the image, but it is ribbed, raised on a drum, and buttressed. The north and south buttresses have been twisted in order to face west;

6 Bodnar, 111ff., argues that the Barberini and Parmensis versions have a common, lost, source. My study confirms this view.

7 From Colucci's edition of Scalamonti's Vita Kiriaci Anconitani in Delle

antichitai picene, xv, Fermo, 1792. Bodnar and Charles Mitchell are pre- paring a new edition and translation of this work, and I thank them for permitting me to consult some of their unpublished materials. My thanks also go to Joseph O'Connor for help with the following translation of Scalamonti's text: "And then he first saw in the city shrines to the gods that were both ornamented and enormous, and above all, that extraor- dinary one built by the emperor Justinian to Holy Wisdom. This admi- rable temple had a huge dome, walls encrusted with marble, and a remarkable pavement. It was sublime, not least for its great and innumerable porphyry and serpentine columns."

8 It is worth noting that the very first sentence in Alberti's Ludi rerum mathematicarum, composed sometime before 1452, gives instructions for measuring the height of a building: "Se volete solo col vedere, sendo in

capo d'una piazza, misurare quanto sia alta quella torre quale sia a pie della piazza, fate in questo modo" (C. Grayson, ed., Leon Battista Alberti, opere volgari, im, Bari, 1973, 135). 9 I have not been able to discover the source of Cyriacus' cubit, which is longer than the ancient Roman cubit of 44.36cm, and the modern English cubit of 45.72cm. Although it is fairly close to the ancient Egyptian cubit of 52.5cm, there is no reason to suppose that he knew this unit. Cyriacus, trained as a merchant in Ancona, perhaps used local commercial units of measurement. 10 For these, and the other measurements of Hagia Sophia, I thank Robert Van Nice, with whom I discussed the Parmensis captions on more than one occasion, and who shared his knowledge of the building with me.

11 This was pointed out by W. Lotz, "The Rendering of the Interior in Architectural Drawing of the Renaissance," Studies in Italian Renaissance Architecture, Cambridge, MA, and London, 1977, 6. See L.B. Alberti, L'Architettura, ed. G. Orlandi, Milan, 1966, i.i, 99.




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flying buttresses like those of the tribunes of Florence Ca- thedral (Fig. 4) have been added to the drum. Below, the western half-dome is flanked, accurately, by two small domes, but the west window lunette has become another dome in the drawing. The copyist may have interpreted the semicircular contour of the lunette as describing a three- dimensional, rather than a two-dimensional, form. Indeed, most of these inaccuracies are probably alterations of Cy- riacus' design. Some, like the transformation of the lunette, are simple misunderstandings; the canopy on columns in front of the facade must be the fountain known to have been in the atrium, but the cypress trees near it that pilgrims admired sprout from the upper cornice of the facade in Sangallo's drawing.12 In other cases, Sangallo seems to have interpreted the original drawing in the light of buildings known to him. Thus the drum and buttresses under the main dome, similar to those of Florence Cathedral, are probably his additions. By contrast, the representation of the west facade and vestibule presents such serious diver- gences from the actual state of the building as to require another explanation.

Cyriacus illustrates a west facade with a continuous arcade of piers and arches on the lowest level; the central portion of the facade (over the central seven arches)

rises in a windowless, flat wall up to the level of the window

3 Hagia Sophia, west facade (from H. Kahler, Die Hagia So- phia, Berlin, 1967)

4 Florence Cathedral, dome 12 See, for example, the anonymous description by a Russian traveler to Constantinople of ca. 1391 in G. Majeska, Russian Travellers to Con- stantinople in the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Centuries, Washington, D.C., 1984, 138.




5 Hagia Sophia, view from northwest in 1680 (from G.J. Gre- lot, Relation nouvelle d'un voyage de Constantinople, Paris, 1680)

lunette (i.e., the full height of both the vestibule and narthex); domed, fenestrated chambers flank this section. All this differs significantly from the building seen today (Fig. 3), with its four tall buttresses and window openings. It is by no means certain what the west facade looked like in the fifteenth century. The earliest depiction of it (apart from Cyriacus') is Grelot's engraving of 1680 (Fig. 5).13 This shows the buttresses and windows, as well as a large bell- tower in the center of the facade. If these elements were already present in the fifteenth century, Cyriacus deleted them.

That Cyriacus eliminated later additions to the facade from his drawing is suggested by his words "habuisse videtur" - "it is seen to have had" - in the caption on fol. 61v of the Parmensis. Rather than recording the facade as it existed, he intended to reconstruct its original appearance on the basis of the extant evidence. Since the drawing ap- peared beneath the introductory paragraph naming Justi- nian as the patron and Anthemius of Tralles and Isidore of Miletus as architects, it may be that it purported to rep-

resent the sixth-century facade. It has not been possible, even for modern scholars, to reconstruct the Justinianic facade with any certainty. Cyriacus' effort, compared with Strube's recent attempt (Fig. 6),14 shows that he deleted some features that were original, such as the windows; and in- troduced other features, the portico and domed chambers, that were not. But before dismissing Cyriacus' reconstruction as fanciful, another piece of evidence should be considered, the plan of Hagia Sophia on fol. 44 of the Barberini Codex (Fig. 2), which, although never previously associ- ated with Cyriacus, corresponds to his elevation of the facade. According to the plan, the arcade of piers on the lowest level of the facade is free-standing in front of the vestibule. A total of nine arched openings span the facade in the plan, of which seven belong to the main facade block, as in the elevation drawing, and two give access to the vestibule. The elevation shows fourteen arches, four of which give on to the domed chambers. These chambers cannot be part of the vestibule or narthex, since Cyriacus does not mention them in the captions that accompany drawings of these parts, nor are they represented on his plan. However, Grelot's plan of 1680 (Fig. 8) shows that, at least by then, the easternmost portion of the north and south atrium wings had been enclosed, and that one passed through them in entering the vestibule. These rooms extended some 18m to the west of the facade, up to the level of the original Theodosian portico, as shown in Schneider's excavation plan (Fig. 7).js If Cyriacus' domed chambers are, as I think they must be, these rooms in front of the facade, then his arcade of piers runs on top of the Theodosian column bases.

Two problems remain to be solved: the disparate number of arched openings in the plan and elevation, and the ab- sence of the domed chambers from the plan. Cyriacus did not have an unobstructed view of the whole west facade, although this is what his drawing shows, since the atrium wings enclosed it at north and south. Strube's reconstruction shows that the main facade block had the width of seven window bays, comparable to Cyriacus' seven arches in both plan and elevation. The width of the atrium wings was equal to an additional window bay, bringing the total number of facade bays to nine, as in Cyriacus' plan. Elim- inating the atrium from his elevation, Cyriacus had to complete the building at north and south, which he did by ex- tending his portico on each side. The disparity between plan and elevation arose from the need to provide a sat- isfying visual reconstruction of the facade. In Sangallo's codex, the plan runs off the bottom of the page; the north and south walls end abruptly at the edge of the sheet, and the piers are just above it. It may be suggested that their true distance from the facade has been shortened because of lack of space and that the chambers were not depicted

13 G.J. Grelot, Relation nouvelle d'un voyage de Constantinople, Paris, 1680.

14 C. Strube, Die westliche Eingangsseite der Kirchen von Konstantinopel in justinianischer Zeit, Weisbaden, 1973.

15 A.M. Schneider, "Die Grabung im Westhof der Sophienkirche zu Istan- bul," Istanbuler Forschungen, xii, Berlin, 1941. I thank Robert Van Nice for directing me to this publication.




6 Hagia Sophia, reconstruction of west facade as in 563 (from C. Strube, Die Westliche Eingangsseite der Kirchen von Konstantinopel in justinianischer Zeit, Weisbaden, 1973)

for the same reason. In sum, it can be said that Cyriacus' attempt to recon-

struct the Justinianic facade of Hagia Sophia assumed that the rooms in the corners of the atrium were original features, whose westward extension marked the plane of the original facade. Whether his idea arose from observation of remains of the Theodosian portico in this position cannot be known. Eliminating the windows, buttresses, bell- tower, and atrium, which he judged to be later additions, Cyriacus redesigned the west faCade.16 His attempt to re- store its original appearance, excising the corruptions and additions inflicted by time and reconstituting it in its original purity, is analogous to the handling of literary texts by contemporary humanists." Valla, in particular, speaks of the need to reconstruct texts in their original forms:18 his philology and Cyriacus' archaeology have similar aims.

The caption on the next page (fol. 62r) of the Parmensis reads: "Pronaon pentapilon Bizantiani maximi dive So- phiae sapientiaeve delubri nobile. Longitudo cubitorum XC, latitudo X, altitudo p.XX." (The noble five-doored vestibule of the greatest Byzantine temple of divine Sophia, or wisdom. Length 90 cubits, breadth 10, height 20 p.)

Here the copyist must have written XC for CX, since the measurements of 60m long (actually nearer to 61m) and 5m wide (in reality 4.6m to the face of the pilaster) are close when the Roman numerals are reversed. Given the actual height of the vestibule, ca. 8m, if Cyriacus' measurement is correct, then the value of "p" is 40cm.19

The third caption (fol. 62v) states: "Propylea templi IX portarum diversorumque conspicuum lapidum et aurea testudine insigne. Longitudo cubitorum XC, latitudo XV, altitudo cubitorum XXV." (The narthex [literally, monumen-

16 His portico has some archaeological justification. Strube, observing that the present west-wall masonry has a skeleton of piers and arches later filled in by walls, doorways, and windows, suggested that it was an open portico of arches and piers in Justinianic times (as in n. 14, 33).

17 E.H. Gombrich, "From the Revival of Letters to the Reform of the Arts:

Niccol6 Niccoli and Filippo Brunelleschi," Essays in the History of Art Presented to Rudolf Wittkower, London, 1967, 71-82. Another example of such archaeological reconstruction may be Filarete's representation of Hadrian's tomb on the doors of St. Peter's which, according to Saxl, was based on a drawing by Cyriacus (F. Saxl, "The Classical Inscription in Renaissance Art and Politics," Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld In- stitutes, iv, 1940-41, 19-46). 18 S.I.Camporeale, Lorenzo Valla, umanisimo e teologia, Florence, 1972, Pt. III. 19 This is considerably greater than the Roman pes (29.57cm) or the By-

zantine nokl (31.23cm), and a bit shorter than the Byzantine ngQTOo or

nafu4 of 46.8cm. Cyriacus used "p" as a unit elsewhere: in measuring the Parthenon, for the Temple of Hadrian at Cyzicus, for the Olympeion. See Bodnar, 52; B. Ashmole, "Cyriac of Ancona and the Temple of Hadrian at Cyzicus," Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, xix, 1956, 179 and 186; E. Bodnar, S.J., and C. Mitchell, eds., Cyriacus of Ancona's

Journeys in the Propontis and the Northern Aegean, 1444-45, Philadel-

phia, 1976, 28; E. Reisch, "Die Zeichnungen des Cyriacus im Codex Bar- berini des Giuliano da Sangallo," Mitteilungen des Kaiserlichen Deutschen

Archaeologischen Instituts, Athenische Abteilung, xiv, 1889, 221-22. Reisch thought that Cyriacus measured the Olympeion in Roman palmi of 22.3cm, although his measurements would, in that case, have been incorrect. If accurate, he used a value of about 30cm for "p" (similar to the old Roman pes). But since "p" must be equal to about 40cm at Hagia Sophia, either its value was not constant in Cyriacus' work, or the ab- breviation denotes different words, e.g., pes, palmi, noic or

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7 Hagia Sophia, excavated area, in front of west facade (from A.M. Schneider, Die Grabung im Westhof der Sophienkirche in Istanbul, Berlin, 1941)

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tal entrance] of the temple, of nine doorways and diverse, noteworthy stones and remarkable for its golden ceiling. Length 90 cubits, breadth 15, height 25 cubits.)

This drawing was of the narthex (Fig. 9). Once again CX should be read for XC; the width given of 7.5m is just a bit shorter than the actual 8.2m between the outer faces of the piers, and the height, 12.5m, is just under the actual 13.2m. Perhaps Cyriacus' measurements were imprecise, but it should be remembered that he gives them in round figures and that the value here assigned to his cubit is only an approximation.

The fourth inscription (fol. 63r) is not a caption, but a literary fragment: "Opus inimitabile2& tempus minatur des- truere. Prohibetur autem nostram per curam. Sed, o rex excelse, aperi nobis domum quam tempus non tangit." (Time threatens to destroy the inimitable work. This we prevent through our efforts. But, o most-high king, open to us a mansion which time does not touch.)

This is Cyriacus' Latin version of an inscription once in the north tympanum of Hagia Sophia:21 "'"Eyov &c ?irTov XQ6vo(

T••lAoEv ) A'oEov

l rQyTETal rETTQPy d6th cpgQOVT6do(C J~A• CvotIov oTcov, 9va4 Ih"pLorE, 6Nov XQ6vo( oinx cyyiJF." Al- though it might seem to.follow that the missing drawing showed a view of the north wall of the nave, where the inscription was located, or even a longitudinal section of the building, in the Barberini Codex (Fig. 1) this inscription accompanies a view of the west entrance wall. Of the many inscriptions in Hagia Sophia, Cyriacus chose the one that

20 "In imitabile" in Cod. Parmensis; "imitabile" in Cod. Barb.




9 Hagia Sophia, vestibule (courtesy Dumbarton Oaks Center for Byzantine Studies)

aptly expressed his own concerns as an antiquarian, and he heightened its relevance by changing the tense from past to present in his translation. The theme of time as destroyer of the works of man is a frequent one in Italian humanist literature, while the contrast between the transience of man's works and the permanence of God's is, after Au- gustine, a commonplace in Christian thought.22 The caption may serve to state Cyriacus' two main interests in Hagia Sophia: it is a great monument of the past that had escaped destruction, and it is the cathedral church of Con- stantinople. If the caption referred to the whole building, it is more likely to have accompanied a general view of the interior than a drawing of the north or west walls. As such, it would most probably have been of the interior looking east towards the apse (Fig. 10), a view, moreover, not shown in any of the other drawings. But this possibility can only be considered by assuming that the drawing was a perspectival rendering; otherwise the nave wall, being per- pendicular to the apse, would have had to be omitted, as it is in the drawing of the west wall. The possibilities, then, are two: the accompanying drawing either showed a longitudinal section, or view, of the north-wall elevation of Hagia Sophia; or it was a general, perspective view of the interior looking towards the apse. Because I think that the drawing on fol. 64r showed a longitudinal section, I incline towards the latter solution.

Caption five (fol. 63v) reads: "Ad alta templi ab interiori parte deambulatoria, quae catacumina vocitant,23 in medio primariae partis pavimento." (Towards the high ambula- tories, called catacumina, from the interior of the temple

in the middle of the pavement of the most important part.) This drawing, showing the galleries

(xanrXolPva24) seen

from the center of the pavement under the main dome, is almost certainly to be identified with the drawing in the Barberini Codex of the west wall of the nave (Figs. 1 and 11).

How accurate is it? In this nonperspectival representation, the piers to the east and west of the exedrae have been flattened against a single plane, enabling Cyriacus to show the passages running through them from north to south. The proportions of the various stages of the elevation are incorrect: the height of the lowest level is exaggerated, while the gallery level and window lunette have been com- pressed. The number and spacing of the tympanum colon- nettes is wrong; the narrow skirting at the base of the wall has become an elaborate socle; the plinths under the column bases have been made round instead of square. Yet in other respects, this is quite a painstaking depiction of the western third of the interior. Not only the marble revetment but also its general pattern are shown. The drawing con- veys information about surface textures and materials as well as about the disposition of forms. It is, perhaps, San- gallo who interprets the porphyry discs in the spandrels as Brunelleschian roundels, who believes the capitals to have been Corinthian, and who, introducing twisted columns in the exedra galleries and west lunette, misread "porfireis serpentinis ac marmoreis columnis" as "twisted porphyry and marble columns," thinking of the late Gothic forms of Flor- ence Cathedral.

This drawing omits the large image of Christ over the western portal, and fails to distinguish from others the famous bronze-covered column of the northwest exedra, which was said to heal the sick.25 This shows that Cyriacus' interest was not that of a pious pilgrim but that of an architectural recorder. Depicting Hagia Sophia without its icon and wonder-working column, he focuses his attention on the architecture.

Caption six (fol. 64r) refers only indirectly to its drawing: "Pavimentum media testudine templi DC marmoreis ex- politis tabulis insigne et suacte [sc.suapte] natura." (The pavement [beneath] the temple's central dome [literally, ceiling]: noteworthy for its dressed marble slabs and its singular character).

There are, indeed, as Robert Van Nice has calculated, six hundred marble pieces in the pavement beneath the main dome, but, as Figure 12 shows, these can hardly have been the subject of Cyriacus' drawing. This caption very probably accompanied the groundplan reproduced on fol. 44r of the Barberini Codex (Fig. 2). The drawing, separated from the other Hagia Sophia drawings in the Codex, has

21 On the inscription, see G. Mercati, "Sulle iscrizioni de Santa Sofia," Bessarione, xxxvIII, 1922, 200-18, esp. 206-11, connecting it with the res- toration of the church under Basil II, 990-95. More recently, C. Mango, Materials for the Study of the Mosaics of Hagia Sophia at Istanbul, Wash- ington, D.C., 1962, 63-66, ascribed it to repairs under Basil I in the late 9th century. 22 Examples in the descriptions of Rome gathered in R. Valentini and G.

Zucchetti, Codice topografico della citta~ di Roma, 4 vols., Rome, 1953. 23 "Ci" is a correction of "ca" in Cod. Parmensis. 24 Although in the 5th- and 6th-century sources, galleries are called yuv-

alKWovLTl, from the end of the 7th century they are referred to as ra- -rrXoisva. See Strube (as in n. 14), 90 and 92. 25 For evidence of the icon and miracle-working column, see Majeska (as in n. 12), 210-15.




10 Hagia Sophia, interior looking east (courtesy Dumbarton Oaks)

never been thought to derive from the same Cyriacan source, probably because it seems to have been added by Giuliano's son Francesco at a later date.26 Its date and authorship are not relevant to the question of its derivation: Giuliano could have drawn the plan on a separate sheet from which his son later copied it into the codex. The fact that the drawing, like the exterior view on fol. 28, shows the free-standing portico in front of the facade, a portico of Cyriacus' invention, proves that the plan, too, is by Cyriacus.

Other considerations support this attribution. The plan was almost surely made before 1453, since access to the shrine was restricted after the Turkish conquest. Moreover, it shows a series of subsidiary rooms behind the apse, most of which are now destroyed, but which are described in pilgrims' accounts of pre-1453 (Figs. 2 and 13). We know from these that there was an oratory behind the apse where the stone was kept on which Christ sat while conversing with the Samaritan woman; the church of St. Nicholas was also there, as were a miraculous icon of Christ and a mi-

11 Hagia Sophia, interior looking west (courtesy Dumbarton Oaks)

raculous well.27 Relics of the True Cross and the body of the patriarch Arsenius were either in or behind the apse. The plan, then, shows the "St. Nicholas passage": a series of holy places east of the apse, communicating both with the church and the street behind it. These rooms lost their functions after 1453, and so must have been recorded before that date.

Caption seven (fol. 64v) is difficult to interpret, as it does not specify what its measurements refer to: "A summo tes- tudinis culmine ad pavimentum cubitorum C, latitudo p. LX, diametrum p. IIII." (From the very top of the dome to the pavement 100 cubits, breadth 60 p, diameter 4 p.)

This drawing apparently showed the interior elevation from the apex of the dome to the pavement, a distance, says Cyriacus, of 50m (actually 55.6m). That much is clear. But what of the other measurements? If "p" equals about 40 cm, then he illustrated something 24cm wide, with a diameter of 1.6m. The closest candidate is the distance between the piers of the nave elevation, which is 21.6m from pilaster to pilaster, and the diameter of the columns of the nave arcade, approximately 1.1m. The caption probably accompanied a drawing showing the nave arcade and dome, on which these measurements were noted. Whether this was a view of the north or south elevation, or a longitudinal section as in Figure 14, cannot be securely determined, although, since it included the full height of the

26 Bodnar, 202, omits it from his table of Cyriacan drawings in Sangallo's Codex; Huelson (as in n. 3) is silent about its source. Brown and Kleiner

argue that Francesco contributed less to the Codex than has been sup- posed; they do not include this drawing in works attributed to him. Only P. Sanpaolesi, in La chiesa di S. Sofia a Constantinopoli (Rome, 1978, 99, n. 1), realized that the plan, exterior, and interior view should be seen

as a unified group. However, he discussed neither its authorship nor source. 27 See Majeska (as in n. 12), 220-26, and C. Mango, The Brazen House, Copenhagen, 1959, 60-72. Cyriacus' plan shows the holy well in the upper right-hand corner, surrounded by a staircase, as in the pilgrims' descriptions.




12 Hagia Sophia, pavement under central dome (from Kahler)

building from pavement to dome, the latter seems more likely.

Thus, the subjects of Cyriacus' seven drawings of Hagia Sophia were:

(1) A non-perspectival representation of the exterior, seen from the west (Barberini Codex, fol. 28r);

(2) A view of the interior of the vestibule (missing); (3) A view of the interior of the narthex (missing); (4) A general view of the interior, perhaps in perspec-

tive, showing the side walls of the nave and focusing upon the apse (missing);

(5) The west wall of the nave in a nonperspectival elevation (Barberini Codex, fol. 28r);

(6) A ground plan (Barberini Codex, fol. 44r); (7) A longitudinal section of the building (missing).

The Date and Purpose of the Drawings Cyriacus visited Constantinople in 1418, 1427, 1431,

1444, and 1446-47.28 However, he could have translated the Greek inscription that appears (in his Latin translation) on fol. 63r of the Parmensis only during one of the later visits, since he began to study Greek in 1427.29 Of course, the

translation could have been made for him, but who would have selected this inscription from the many that were in the building? It was carefully chosen for its special interest to Cyriacus, and not because it was an outstanding feature of the portion of the building depicted by the drawing. Moreover, the inscription was located high up in the north tympanum and would most probably have caught Cyria- cus' attention in the course of a systematic examination of all the inscriptions in the building. Either a bilingual By- zantine escorted Cyriacus on his lengthy project, or he was able to read the inscriptions for himself. It seems probable, then, that Cyriacus chose and translated the text. The structure of his series of drawings also suggests that Cyriacus knew Greek when he made them, as will be seen.

A date for the drawings in the 1440's would be appro- priate, even if 1431 cannot be entirely ruled out. For by then Cyriacus would have profited from two experiences that helped him to understand the structure of Hagia So- phia and suggested how to represent it graphically. The first of these, a tour of the dome of Florence Cathedral with Brunelleschi as his guide in 1433 or 1439, must have heightened his sensitivity to the problems of large-scale vaulting and thus, also, his admiration for the achievement of Hagia Sophia.30 The second experience was his encounter with Alberti's Della pittura, or its slightly earlier Latin counter- part, De pictura: this may have occurred in Florence in 1439, when both men attended the Ferrara-Florence coun- cil. If the drawing on fol. 63r was, as I have suggested, a perspective view of the interior of Hagia Sophia, it may have employed the Albertian system of one-point perspective.

One of the most distinctive and innovative features of Cyriacus' drawings is their assumption that the architect requires multiple representations of a building, conveying different sorts of information: the plan shows the extension of the masses and the distance between them, whereas the elevations are presented in both perspectival and nonperspectival views. This corresponds to Alberti's recommendation in De re aedificatoria, Book ii, chapter 1:

There is this difference between the drawing of the painter and that of the architect: the former tries to make objects stand out in relief on his panel by means of shading and the foreshortening of lines and angles; the latter, instead, avoiding shading, represents relief by means of the plan, and shows in other drawings the form and extension of each wall plane and side using real angles and unfore- shortened lines, for he does not wish his work to be judged on the basis of illusory appearances, but evalu- ated on the basis of certain and verifiable dimensions.

Of course, Alberti's preference for the nonperspectival

28 For Cyriacus' travels, see Bodnar. However, almost nothing is known of his activities in Constantinople. 29 Ibid., 22, and R. Weiss, The Renaissance Discovery of Classical An- tiquity, Oxford, 1969, 138.

30 The tour is recorded in Scalamonti (as in n. 7), XCL: "Quae inter ad coelum alta testudine attollentem vidit maximam illam et insigne beatae Reparatae Virginis aedem; quod mirificum opus philippo ductam te no- bilissimo architecto omni ex parte prospexit." I thank Father Bodnar for drawing my attention to this passage.




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representation in architectural drawing was not new, but rather articulated existing practice.31 Hence, Cyriacus' possible inclusion of a perspectival view rather than his omis- sion of perspective in other drawings is surprising. Not the technique of the drawings, then, but their systematic cov- erage of the monument in plan and elevation is innovative. It will be shown that Cyriacus' approach, as well perhaps as Alberti's, owed much to literary descriptions of architecture. Thus I would not like to insist on a direct relation between Cyriacus' drawings of Hagia Sophia and Alberti's formulations in De re aedificatoria, composed during the

1440's. Both are instances of a new conception of the task of architectural drawing: they were produced by men in contact with each other and with similar interests; they were probably executed at about the same time.

Similarities between Cyriacus' introductory text on fol. 61v of the Parmensis and his description of Hagia Sophia preserved by Scalamonti, for which an early date is likely,32 need not imply chronological proximity; Cyriacus might have reworked the description in his Commentaria for the series of captions. Bernard Ashmole's suggestion that the model of the Barberini Codex drawings was, perhaps, a

31 This has been shown most recently by F. Toker, "Gothic Architecture by Remote Control: An Illustrated Building Contract of 1340," Art Bul- letin, LXVII, 1985, 67-95.

32 In Scalamonti's Vita, the description is part of his account of Cyriacus' early travels and therefore seems to record his first visit to Constantinople.




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manuscript prepared by Cyriacus for his friend Giovanni Delphin around 1446,33 might have bearing on the model of the Parmensis, if these do, indeed, have a common model. In this case, the Parmensis would provide a more complete idea of Giuliano's source, suggesting that the architect ignored the serial character of the set and reduced it to a plan, exterior view, and interior elevation.34 What was most innovative about the drawings was excluded by Giuliano.

It may be concluded, tentatively, that the Cyriacan source of the Parmensis was created between 1444 and 1447. Some of the captions may be Cyriacus' reworkings of his description of Hagia Sophia in the Commentaria, but new material, such as the Latin version of the Greek inscription, was also added. If Cyriacus translated the inscription as part of the same project for which he made the drawings, then the drawings, too, must date to the late 1440's. It is, in any case, difficult to think that he could have made them before his encounters with Brunelleschi, and with Alberti's ideas, in the 1430's.

The Significance of the Drawings Cyriacus' seven drawings of Hagia Sophia, unique even

in his own work because they form a series, display a new conception of architectural drawing. This approach rejects the premise that a building requires logical definition, either through the selective presentation of its significant elements or through formal or numerical abstraction. Instead, it af- firms a belief in the value of knowledge obtained through sensory experience. Whereas, in earlier architectural drawing, buildings were subjected to a logical analysis that fragmented their wholeness and expressed their character in the language of arithmetic or geometry,35 Cyriacus' drawings assume that, since what we can know about a building is our experience of it, visual and verbal analogues for this experience must serve to express it. Cyriacus' epistemology has much in common with that of other Italian humanists, and particularly with the thought of Lorenzo Valla, in the second quarter of the fifteenth century.36

Cyriacus' concern with the concrete and individual, rather than the abstract and universal, has other parallels in Early Renaissance culture. Most obviously, the importance that he accords the observation of nature was shared by both scientists and painters, and is a central theme of Alberti's De pictura. Yet Cyriacus' drawings are neither sketches from life nor scientific illustration. Although they

33 B. Ashmole,"Cyriac of Ancona," Proceedings of the British Academy, XLv, 1959, 25-41. For alternative views about Sangallo's model, see Reisch (as in n. 19), 220, and Brown and Kleiner, 326, n. 29.

34 Huelson's view that Sangallo's model had only two drawings of Hagia Sophia, that is, that Sangallo copied all the drawings in his model, is incorrect since the model possessed a third drawing - the plan - also copied by Sangallo, and may have had the whole series if, as I suggest, Sangallo separated the inscription "opus imitabile" from its drawing and attached it to another.

35 The fundamental study of the principles of medieval architectural drawing is still R. Krautheimer, "Introduction to an 'Iconography of Medieval Architecture"' (1942), reprinted in Studies in Early Christian, Medieval

and Renaissance Art, New York and London, 1969, 115-51. Also see Krautheimer's contribution to R. Salomon, Opicinis de Canistris (1936), Leichtenstein, 1969. Also useful is P. Lampl, "Schemes of Architectural

Representation in Early Medieval Art," Marsyas, ix, 1961, 6-13; and F. Bucher, Architector: Lodge and Model Books of Medieval Architects, New York, n.d., i.

36 This approach to epistemology is discussed particularly in E. Garin, "La crisi del pensiero medievale," in Medioevo e Rinascimento (1953), Bari, 1984, 13-39; and developed in reference to Valla by S.I. Camporeale in Lorenzo Valla tra Medioevo e Rinascimento, Pistoia, 1977. Also relevant is C. Trinkaus' discussion of Cusanus' De beryllo in "Humanism and Greek Sophism: Protagoras in the Renaissance," The Scope of Re- naissance Humanism, Ann Arbor, 1983, 179.




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15 Cristoforo Buondelmonti, map of Constantinople ca. 1420, Cod. Vat. urbinate 277a (from G. Gerola, Studi bizantini e Neoellenici, III, 1931)

depend on direct observation, they display an intellectually imposed order in their choice of subjects and in their sequence. Rather than signaling the liberation of architectural drawing from convention, they show how new conventions are adopted for new purposes.37

The logical structure of the series emerges through an analysis of its parts. Hagia Sophia is conceived of as a unified structure enclosing diverse spatial units: thus the first view, of the whole (fol. 61v), attempts to study the exterior forms in relation to the interior spaces. Given the subject, this was an extraordinarily complex task, and Cyriacus was hard put to define the relation correctly at every point. However, he refused to reduce the exterior to a simple geometric form, like his contemporary Cristoforo Buondel- monti (Fig. 15),38 insisting instead that the character of the exterior was determined by its relation to the interior, and that the whole was composed of separate parts.

The next two drawings (fol. 62r-v) address the problem of what sort of units make up the whole. Instead of se- lecting the most significant, or the most impressive, part for representation, Cyriacus chooses the first spaces en- countered by the spectator approaching the building (in fact, the least important or impressive parts): the vestibule and narthex. His criteria for determining the buildings' di- visions, then, are purely architectural; and the order of his exposition is governed by the movement of the spectator through space, that is, by the order of the experience itself.

The view of the interior (fol. 63r) also shows a whole, which is analyzed into its various aspects and parts in the remaining drawings (fols. 63v, 64r-v). Details of the interior elevation and its surface treatment are seen in the west wall drawing; the disposition of the masses in space and system of supports are shown in the plan; and the most famous single feature of the building, the dome, appears in the final culminating view.

Cyriacus produced a graphic record of Hagia Sophia as a whole composed of related parts. The reader experienced his drawings in the same visual order in which he would have experienced the building itself, proceeding from the exterior to the interior and from the whole to the parts. Sensory experience has become a tool for creating order, relegating number to short captions accompanying the drawings. One would like to know how faithfully San- gallo's versions reproduce Cyriacus' original drawings, and what his personal style was like. However, since not a single architectural drawing exists that is surely by him, ver- ification is not possible. Moreover, those in the Codex Hamilton that might be by his hand show no interior views, as did six of the seven Parmensis drawings, and are therefore hardly comparable.39 But whether the drawings were well executed, or even by his hand, is incidental to their significance as a series of sequential views of the building. The subjects alone, which can be deduced from the captions, show that Cyriacus' viewpoint was not fixed and ideal, but moveable and relative. Experience, for him, had multiple facets even when the subject was single. The accuracy of his measurements and of the drawings, insofar as they are reflected in Sangallo's versions, demonstrates an intention to create a series of graphic analogues for the physical reality of the building and, at least in one case, to reconstruct its original appearance. These considerations suggest that the series embodied new ideas about what information should be conveyed by architectural drawings.

To what category of architectural representation does this series belong? They are more formally ordered than travel sketches, more ambitious than souvenirs of a visit to a famous site. Yet, Cyriacus was not an architect, and these

37 I do not share Scheller's view that the new role accorded to direct observation in 15th-century Italy brought about the decline of the reliance on conventions (R.W. Scheller, A Survey of Medieval Model Books, Haarlem, 1963, 33). 38 G. Gerola, "Le vedute di Costantinopoli di Cristoforo Buondelmonti,"

Studi bizantini e neoellenici, III, 1931, 246-79.

39 The problem of Cyriacus' drawing style is most recently discussed in Brown and Kleiner, esp. 326-29. For bibliography on the question of whether the drawings in MS Hamilton 254 are by Cyriacus, see idem, 326, n. 31.




drawings serve neither to record ideas for future use, nor to aid in construction. They are unlike model book illustration (Fig. 16), which tends to reproduce selected frag- ments of a model without reference to the original whole, and without relation to the drawings that precede and follow. It might, however, be argued that Sangallo's presentation of Cyriacus' drawings is like that of a model book, since he shows no regard for their original sequence, nor for their character as a series.

Perhaps Cyriacus' drawings are closer to the pictorial tra- dition known as building portraiture, although such "portraits" are usually parts of finished, monumental works of art rather than independent architectural drawings.40 Ex- amples of this type of representation perhaps known to Cyriacus include the Temple of Minerva in the Saint Francis cycle at Assisi, Florence Cathedral in the Spanish Chapel at Sta. Maria Novella in Florence (Fig. 17), and Siena Ca- thedral in Ambrogio Lorenzetti's "Good Government" fresco in the Palazzo Pubblico in Siena. All of these provide single views of the exterior and therefore cannot affirm, as Cyriacus' series of views does, the importance of the spectator's movement through space in the understanding of architectural form. Moreover, these represent the whole, but do not analyze the relation between the whole and its parts. Similar observations may be made about other fifteenth-century representations of Hagia Sophia, such as Buondelmonti's, or Mantegna's version of the building in his Agony in the Garden in Tours.41 If model books ana- lytically dismember the prototype, building portraits, on the other hand, seek to crystallize the whole in a single view. But whether the subject is represented for its future utility or for its topographical significance, no interest is displayed in the prototype for itself. The same could be said for other kinds of architectural representations - floor plans, elevations, and so forth (Fig. 18) - which may vary in their accuracy (and be more accurate than Cyriacus' drawings) and in their purpose, without, however, approaching Cyriacus' concern with the primacy of sensory experience for the understanding of architectural form.

There is no reason to suppose that these drawings illustrated a verbal description of Hagia Sophia. The passage referred to above from Cyriacus' Commentaria preserved by Scalamonti is too summary to justify illustration by seven drawings, and its character is devoid of concern with spatial experience. Moreover, the captions on fol. 64r-v are not extracts from a literary text but notations originally made on drawings. Therefore, the drawings constituted a visual description of the church that was not only independent of, but in substitution for, a verbal account.

Cyriacus' series of Hagia Sophia seems to be without pre-

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cedent, and without parallel, within the categories of architectural drawing before 1450.42 Yet his approach to his subjects, as revealed in the series' structure, rests on epistemological assumptions that are not new. Similar records of architectural monuments are, if not abundant, at least numerous, in literary descriptions. I do not refer to the kind of objective, often factual, description found in such topographical works as Pausanias' Description of Greece; nor to the equally objective descriptions in Vitruvius' technical treatise; but to those intentionally subjective descriptions that aim to recreate, through words, the experience of something seen and felt:

"xpQo•oaTL A O6yo ngIQL?7y?7la-

T'x6g Wc pac•LV Ivayg• XCal 6n'ttpZyLV ycov T d'7AolIEvov."43 "I am trying to set my entire house before your eyes,"

40 See the bibliography in C. Cable, Pictorial Representation of Archi- tectural Structures: A Bibliography of Articles, Vance Bibliographies no. A 491, n.p., n.d. 41 M. Vickers, "Mantegna and Constantinople," Burlington Magazine, cxxxx, 1976, 680-87, esp. 686 and fig. 17. 42 Useful for the history of Renaissance architectural drawing, in addition to the works already cited, is J. Ackerman, "Architectural Practice in the

Italian Renaissance," Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians, xIII, 1954, 3-11.

43 From Hermogenes, Progymnasmata, ed. M. Rabe, Rhetores graeci, vi, Leipzig, 1913, 22. Also see the comments on architectural description in J. Schlosser and C. Magnino, La letteratura artistica, Florence, 1937, 11- 12, and observations on the importance of subjectivity in Renaissance aesthetic theory in H. Muhlmann, Aesthetische Theorie der Renaissance. L.B. Alberti, Bonn, 1981.




wrote Pliny to his friend Domitius Apollinaris (Letters V.vi.44). His unusually extended descriptions of his villas in Tuscany and at Laurentum may well have been known to Cyriacus.44 The latter text begins with the approach from Rome, with the condition of the road and the views to be seen. Having arrived at the villa, the reader is led into the entrance hall ("unpretentious but not without dignity," II.xvii.4), through the courtyard to the "cheerful inner hall" (II.xvii.5) and dining-room. Now he explores the left wing of the house with its bedrooms, gymnasium, and library; then the right wing made up of bedrooms, bathrooms, oil- ing room, and swimming pool. The order of description mirrors the movement of the visitor through space, as in Cyriacus' drawings of Hagia Sophia and, again like the drawings, architectural form is interpreted as a sequence of spatial parts. The specific character of each part is depicted through descriptive words. Was Cyriacus able to ex- trapolate from this, or another, literary text, its structural principles, substituting drawings for words? Recognizing that the epistemological assumptions of Classical description were consonant with his own approach, was he able to apply these to a new subject, a church, for whose style no Classical text could prepare him?

If he had so deeply absorbed the principles of literary description, one would expect to find evidence of this elsewhere in his work. Instead, although Cyriacus made large numbers of drawings,45 of which the subjects of at least thirty are known,46 he seems never to have made more than one general view or elevation of the same building. Only the series of Hagia Sophia, then, may have been influenced by a literary model. Perhaps Cyriacus was guided, instead, by a Byzantine description of Hagia Sophia in which the classical approach to architectural description was preserved.

Hagia Sophia was the subject of many ekphraseis between the sixth and the fifteenth centuries, most of them in Greek.47 Is there among these an example whose structure corresponds to that of Cyriacus' series of drawings? Such a verbal analogue would have to proceed in order from the exterior, through the nartheces to the interior, and culminate with a description of the dome. And it would have to display a concern for the relationship between the whole and its parts. One such possibility is the twelfth- century description of Hagia Sophia by Michael, protec- dicus of the church of Thessalonica and later deacon of Hagia Sophia, maistar tan rhatoran and oikoumenikos di- daskalos.48 Although, says Michael, the significance of the structure can only be grasped through spiritual vision, its size and design and precious materials can be admired

17 Andrea da Firenze, The Church Triumphant. Florence, Sta. Maria Novella, Spanish Chapel (photo: Anderson)

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44 Pliny, Letters and Panegyricus, transl. B. Radice, Cambridge and Lon- don, 1964, Letters II.17 and v.6.

45 For example, Cyriacus spent forty days making drawings of the monuments in Rome in 1424. See Ashmole (as in n. 33), 36. 46 See the Table in Bodnar, 202.

47 Bibliography in E. Fenster, Laudes Constantinopolitanae, Munich, 1968.

48 Published in C. Mango and J. Parker, "A Twelfth Century Description of St. Sophia," Dumbarton Oaks Papers, xiv, 1960, 233-45.




through the faculty of sight; each feature may be examined for itself and in relation to others, so that admiration is brought together from all sides (lines 13-22). Proposing, then, to arrive at an appreciation of the whole through an examination of the parts, Michael begins with the approach to the church through the Augustaeon and atrium; arriving at the vestibule, he admires its doors, vaults, and marble revetment (lines 27-28), the same features mentioned by Cyriacus. Moving on into the main body of the church, he describes the visual impact of the whole interior space, whose height turns one's head, stopping the eyes at its apex (lines 79-92). Next he analyzes the mural boundary - the piers, galleries, and exedrae - from the pavement up to the vaults; lingering over the geometric order of the vaulting system as a whole, he explores its symbolic significance (lines 100-155). Returning once again to pavement level, Michael describes the color and pattern of the marbles, the form of the synthronon, and the liturgical furnishings at the east end of the church. Here the description breaks off.

Michael was more interested than Cyriacus in the liturgical, theological, and symbolic aspects of Hagia So- phia, yet he describes the architectural setting as it is experienced by the spectator moving from west to east, raising and lowering his eyes, now absorbing the impact of the whole, now focusing on individual parts. In these ways the text parallels Cyriacus' series of drawings.

Michael thought that words could adequately describe physical experience, although he admitted that a complete verbalization of the subject would make rather a long speech (lines 22-23). Not so Manuel Chrysoloras who, three centuries later, declared that speech was altogether inad- equate to transmit sensations of beauty received through the eyes: "oi•TE yaQ nEQi aTroJ ~ErTLV alov TL T0o ngaypaTroS EinEv.''49

This is not a conventional protest of the author's inadequacy for the demands of his subject: not the writer's skill, but the means themselves fall short. Chrysoloras insists on the absolute primacy of concrete reality for the act of understanding. This theme is developed throughout his "Comparison of Old and New Rome": for example, he begins his description by saying that the curiosity he felt about Rome when he knew it only from what he had been told has turned to wonder and admiration, now that the city is before his eyes (col. 24B). For Chrysoloras, verbal description is a translation and schematization of sensory experience in which some essential portion of reality is lost: much the same could be said of Cyriacus' series of drawings.

Like those, and Michael's ekphrasis, Chrysoloras' description of Hagia Sophia begins in the atrium and proceeds through the nartheces into the church, while at the same time directing the spectator's attention from the whole to its constituent parts. This formal structure itself becomes

the vehicle for a further confession of inadequacy: if words are unable to describe even the smallest part of this won- derful structure, what can be said about the design as a whole? (col. 49A-B). Not the author's words, but words themselves, fail to embody the experience: "T( TOvuVV Vv TL

nTEQgi TrO Ai)Lcov al TO0 oX?7/aTro? . .. . yoL." I consider it likely that Cyriacus used Chrysoloras' text

as the basis for his drawings because of their similarities in structure and approach, and since the work could have been known to the antiquarian.50 Furthermore, the difference in approach to Hagia Sophia in Cyriacus' early verbal description (in Scalamonti) and his later drawings might well be explained by his ignorance of Greek ekphrasis in the former and his ability to read in that language when he conceived the latter. Chrysoloras' repeated assertion that words were not a satisfactory vehicle for description could have suggested to Cyriacus that a series of drawings might be more informative. But proving this relation is not nec- essary to my argument, since Chrysoloras' mode of architectural description was common to both Latin and Greek writers, and several of the latter applied it to Hagia Sophia. Michael's description has already been mentioned; one might also consider Evagrius' sixth-century ekphrasis which, following a reverse order within the same structural organization, begins with the dome, proceeds downwards through the galleries up to the nave, and then out to the nartheces and portico (Hist. Eccles. Iv.31).

Whether one, or all, of these accounts lies behind Cy- riacus' drawings, his serial arrangement adopted the structure, and the epistemological premises, of literary description to the task of architectural depiction. His multiple, sequential views, supplemented by less mimetic representations like the ground plan, recorded the spectator's physical experience of the building. This reevaluation of the role of sensory experience in the acquisition of knowledge is part of a larger Renaissance trend that includes scientific experiment and the new naturalism in painting. Existing conventions of architectural representation, which defined buildings through a single image, or fragmented them into their useful or significant parts, could not satisfy Cyriacus' requirements, nor, as Chrysoloras pointed out, could words transmit visual perceptions. A new method for conveying the complexity and immediacy of vision had to be devised. Alberti's comments in De re aedificatoria address this problem, as do Cyriacus' own drawings of Hagia Sophia. The antiquarian's efforts to provide factual information about famous monuments had led him before to enrich his own observations with those of ancient authors.51 But in approaching Hagia Sophia, he was guided less by the content than by the structure and epistemological attitude of literary models, just as, by analogy, he was less interested in the religious content of the building than in its architectural

49 j. P. Migne, Patrologiae cursus completus . . . series graeca, Turnholt, 1857-66, CLVI, cols. 23-54, esp. 48 D (German transl. in E. Ivanka, Europa im XV Jahrhundert von Byzantinern Gesehen, Graz., n.d., 109-41).

50 By 1412, Guarino da Verona was distributing copies of the work to his friends (Guarino, Epistolario, 1.7). Since, as Father Bodner reminds me,

Chrysoloras' son-in-law, Filelfo, was a good friend of Cyriacus', it seems likely he would have seen a copy.

51 P. Lehman and K. Lehmann, Samothracian Reflections. Aspects of the Revival of the Antique, Princeton, 1973, chap. i.



form. By arranging his drawings according to the spectator's experience of the building, an order suggested by ek-

phratic models, he affirmed that all we know of truth is what we understand of our sensory experience.

A specialist in Italian medieval and Renaissance architecture, Christine Smith has published articles in Gesta, An- tichita viva, and the Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians. For her study of the dome of Pisa Cathedral, she received the annual Founder's Award (1984) from the Society for Architectural Historians for the best article by a younger scholar published in its Journal. [Georgetown University, Charles Augustus Strong Center, via Vecchia Fiesolana 26, Fiesole, Italy]

Bibliography Bodnar, E.W., Cyriacus of Ancona and Athens, Brussels, 1960.

Brown, B., and D. Kleiner, "Giuliano da Sangallo's Drawings after Ciriaco d'Ancona: Transformations of Greek and Roman Antiquities in Athens," Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians, XLII, 1983, 321-35.



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