Sunday, March 21, 2010

I like rainbow sprinkles.

Remember how I mentioned I'd compare yesterday's church to a different one.


This is the Church of the Nativity of the Mother of God at Putinki, 1649-1652. Notice the proportion the humans in the foreground provide. It is a church large in idea, not form.


The Church of the Nativity is the zenith of the "tent-like" construction technique. To explain what that means, let me compare it to yesterday's Church of the Epiphany. It, and almost any other structure with cupolas, uses the interior dome for mosaics or frescoes. Of course, there's usually a shell (I could start getting all John Ruskin and theory of architecture as to which is going to be the "true roof," but let's not) - but regardless, in that architecture there's some kind of 3-dimensionality to the domes.

What's exciting (possibly only to me. Well. To me and to The Professor) about the tent-like style is that they made the cupolas smaller and smaller and smaller until what you see in the picture above - they're not even cupolas. They're just little ice cream cones tacked on to the outside of the roof. If you enter the church, the ceiling is only about 15 feet tall at its highest. No cupola for you.

1 comment:

Kara Dugas said...

I also like rainbow sprinkles.