A standard bit of church art, this time from Pisa. Unsurprisingly the people from the Middle Ages had a realistic idea of death. Lots of churches had bones in their art and tombs.
St Peter's - so hard to photograph
St Paul's, London the copy
After the Great Fire in 1666, the old Cathedral of St Pauls had been totally destroyed. Sir Christopher Wren saw his chance to rebuild London and the Cathedral. He travelled on a grand tour of Europe to visit the cathedrals that he intended St Pauls to look like. He intended to make it beautiful and huge and with a large dome on top. All churches before this in England had been built with spires, not domes. Wren wanted to defy God's gravity to build a dome such as Santa Maria del Fiore in Florence that was built by Filippo Brunelleschi and St Peters, the Pope's church designed by Michelangelo Buonorotti (that famous guy -ed). He also visited the Medici Private Chapel in Florence, which we didn't get to see unfortunately, and studied the architecture there. It was also designed by Michelangelo. This chapel is all white and pure to look at, unlike the public churches which are all richly decorated. He also visited the ancient Roman building the Pantheon, which was built 1200 years before the Renaissance architects rediscovered the Roman secret of unsupported domes.
Florence
Florence
A vaulted ceiling with the decorated ceiling
I thought the Pantheon was huge, it is still the largest unreinforced concrete dome in the world (For pictures see ancient Roma post)
It holds Raphael's tomb. The feeling of standing under the 9m wide hole at the top is wondrous.
St Pauls was the first domed Cathedral in Europe that I visited. Mum got me to sing "Feed the Bird's" outside. St Pauls was extrelemy huge and richly decorated. We were not allowed to take photos in the inside. We climbed up the dome and saw London from very high up.
I found the dome of Florence's cathedral, Santa Maria del Fiore (Saint Mary of the flower) to be incredible and sublime. We had a really good tour guide for the cathedral.
St Peters was extremely beautiful and I wasn't used to it compared to what I was used to-our gothic cathedral in Christchurch. The whole thing was full of rich decoration, the ceiling on the vaulting, the statues the huge works of art. When you looked closely they were made of graded mosaics. The best thing was the Pieter. This is Michelangelo's statue of Mary and the dead Jesus. Ot was quite small compared to the other massive statues there, but it was very famous and valuable. (It had a polish and delicacy that all the others lacked-ed) It is the only work of Michelango that bears his signature.
By Henry
The medieval churches were amazing. We saw some earlier churches which are heavily built and quite dark as the windows must be small. They are hard to photograph.
The cathedrals of that time were built with buttresses. This allows the walls to be thin with the columns holding up stone arches up to 50m above the ground. Then tracery or stone patterns with glass between can fill up the spaces and let lots of light in. Henry sung in some and the sound is like a giant bathroom. We tried to imagine what it must be like with low wooden houses all around and then a huge church towering and being seen from miles around. -ed
Duomo on the florence skyline Duomo means House (dome) so it is a house of God
Ruins in England
There were lots of ruins in England as Henry the VIII had decided to set up himself as the king of the church as well as of the country and the people. This was mostly because he wanted to divorce his wife and the Pope wouldn't let him. The Pope wanted all the power in England of the church. Henry didn't like this either. Henry the VIII decided to break with the Catholic Church and call himself the leader of the Church of England. He then dissolved the abbeys and got all the religious leaders to swear he was God's representative in England. Obviously this is a euphemism as there was huge destruction and lots of killings. There had been a move against the church for a while as Protestants in Germany, Holland and England thought that the Catholic Church was a bit too keen on images and golden things and not on being simple and godly. Tintern Abbey was one such monastery, only the skeleton remains and this was amazing. All religious art from England, as all art up until then was mostly religious was lost then too. -ed and Henry
Flaran Abbey had a flash art gallery and some neat children's activiities. The boys made excellent portraits.
Notre Dame in Paris was a gothic cathedral built before the Rennaisnace. It had massive flying buttresses to hold up the arched open walls inside. (Lots of famous people were buried there in flash tombs -George). Victor Hugo wrote a book called "The Hunchback of Notre Dame) to try to save the church which had nearly fallen down 100 or so years ago. Now there are queues to see it. There was a man dressed as a hunch back who snuck up and took mum's hand instead of mine and he gave mum a huge fright when she turned round and saw him instead of me. He was crouched very low so she didn't notice for a while. I felt weird! by George
Bury St Edmonds
The Magna Carta was first discussed here. The first laws that stopped the king having absolute power. At first we thought that the huge abbey, had been wrecked by Henry VIII, like many others. But in fact the town’s people had grown tired of the excesses of the abbey, the leader or Abbot and the taxes that the monks wanted from the people. They drove the Abbot out and killed him and pulled some of the abbey down. However this wasn't the end of it as we thought, somehow it must have dissolved itself over time, perhaps the construction methods were a bit too crumbly. Now it is a pile of stones in the pattern of a great cathedral, with all the buildings round it. It is a park but some of the outer walls remain and one large gate was rebuilt not long after it was destroyed. -ed
seen it at last
ReplyDelete