Descripción

Aus der Bibliothek von Prof. Wolfgang Haase, langj�igem Herausgeber der ANRW und des International Journal of the Classical Tradition (IJCT) / From the library of Prof. Wolfgang Haase, long-time editor of ANRW and the International Journal of the Classical Tradition (IJCT). - altersgem�sehr guter Zustand / very good condition for age - long considered the finest example of the last flowering of Byzantine art, the Kariye Djami, before its conversion into a mosque after the Turkish conquest of Constantinople, was called the Church of the Monastery of the Chora. Although scholars had known its early fourteenth-century treasures of mosaic art while they were in deplorable state and only dimly visible, it was not until 1948, shortly after the mosque had been secularized, that the Byzantine Institute of the United States, with the sanction and friendly assistance of the Turkish Department of Antiquities and the Commission for the Preservation of Ancient Monuments, began the exacting work of cleaning and restoring. For the last nine years of this work the director has been Paul A. Underwood, Professor of Byzantine Architecture and Archaeology, Harvard University - Dumbarton Oaks. -- The mosaics and frescoes of the Kariye Djami have been described by the Byzantine scholar Alexander Van Millingen as �a remarkable revival in the history of Byzantine art. They are characterized by comparative freedom from tradition, by closer approximation to reality and nature, by a charm and a sympathetic quality, and by a scheme of color that indicate the coming of a new age and spirit.� -- From its inception, this publication was planned as a comprehensive, thoroughly illustrated study of the representational arts in the Kariye Djami. It has taken form as a four-volume work, of which the first three volumes, now published in Bollingen Series, present a complete corpus of factual, explanatory, and illustrative materials on the mosaics and frescoes. These three volumes, which can stand alone, form the basis for all future studies of the art of the Kariye Djami and of Palaeologan art in general. The fourth volume, Studies in the Art of the Kariye Djami, a series of contributions by seven authors placing the monument and its art in a broader cultural and art-historical setting, is in preparation for later publication.