The Cosmati Fashion
I always enjoy taking groups around the Haghia Sophia in Istanbul. There is the marvellous building itself, so magnificent that Justinian is supposed to have exclaimed, when he entered the finished structure for the first time, "Glory to God! Solomon, I have surpassed thee!" There is the racy tale of the Empress Zoe to be told up in the gallery where her mosaic portrait stands beside the much altered one of her husband(s). There is a plain plaque in the floor, usually ignored by unguided tourists, that marks the last resting place of Enrico Dandolo, one of the slipperiest characters ever to cause trouble in the Middle East.
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| The place where the throne stood during coronations in Haghia Sophia. |
Yet amid all these wonders there is one that again is almost ignored by tourists, yet which speaks more eloquently of vanished glory than anything else. Set into the floor of the nave, somewhat off-centre in order to accommodate the placing of the altar and who knows what other items, now vanished, of church furniture, there is a series of multi-coloured stone circles which marks the spot where once the royal throne stood during the coronation ceremony.
At what point in the history of the great church of Constantinople the floor was so marked, we do not know. It is unlikely that Justinian, the great autocrat, would have given a thought to provision for future coronations - he was too busy fighting to keep the crown on his own head! It is possible, I suppose, that it was a fairly late addition to the church, in which case it is interesting to speculate on the relationship between this and the floors of many of the churches in Rome.
In 1071 the abbey church at Monte Cassino was built, partly through the patronage of the Norman conquerors of the south. The workmen and architects employed on the work came from the local area, which had, until recently, been under the control of the Byzantine Empire. It is likely, therefore, that Greek influences were responsible for the wonderful floor of the church which consists of roundels of different coloured marbles, set in bands of intricate patterns formed also of coloured marbles and other stones.
Certainly this is the earliest example we have in Italy of a style of decoration that was to flourish particularly between 1375 and 1425. There were several families of craftsmen who specialised in this work and one of them, the Cosmati, gave its name to the style, which is known as Cosmati Work or Cosmatesque Work. There are, in Rome, seven churches and two chapels which have complete Cosmati floors and fifteen others where only part of the original flooring remains. In addition the same decoration of coloured marble pieces arranged in geometrical shapes is applied to walls, pillars and ceilings.
Now you may well be wondering why a website devoted to Middle Eastern archaeology - focussing particularly on the period before Christ - should be carrying an article on architectural styles of the medieval period. There is a reason, gentle reader, so please read on.
Where, we may ask, did the Cosmati and their colleagues get all these coloured marbles? Did they open up the quarries of Greece or send expeditions out into the Egyptian desert?
The answer is no. They looted the ruins of ancient Rome!
In a previous article we have described the excavations going on in Egypt at Mons Porphyrites and Mons Claudianus, where quarrymen lived in considerable style when they weren't extracting the valuable coloured stone from the nearby mountains. That from Mons Porphyites was particularly sought after because of its royal purple colour. Pliny, who wrote widely about the natural world, talks of the various sources of "marble", which can be a little confusing for the uninitiated, for in Roman times the term "marble" was applied to any stone which can be polished.
White marble - the genuine stuff - came from the Greek islands of Paros, Naxos and Thassos, from Mount Pentelicon near Athens (which is still being quarried!) and from Afyon in Turkey. The most valuable coloured stones came from Egypt, Tunisia, Greece and even from Italy itself. Huge ships built especially for the stone trade - the navis lapidariae - transported the stone to Italy and the many wrecks (including some in the Fiumicino Canal) have provided rich pickings to Italian museums.
The trade in coloured stone began late in the first century AD and reached its height during the second century. By the third century it had begun to decline - the unsettled times as rival emperors fought for the throne were not conducive to trade in luxury goods - and ended in the fourth century with the downfall of strong central government.
The quantities of stone involved are quite staggering. When archaeologists at the end of the 19th century cleared the Aventine, they found a site where small ships had unloaded blocks of stone brought up from the warehouses at Ostia. Still lying ready for the mason and the sculptor were 1,200 blocks of marble! One can only imagine the amount of stone that must have passed through here in the busy days if this was the amount left lying because no one could afford it!
Most of this stone went for building work - coloured columns with contrasting bases and capitals were a favourite - but some was also used by sculptors. A particularly vivid example of this is the statue of Matidia Aura which once stood in the theatre at Sessa Aurunca, some 28 miles to the north of Naples. The goddess' head and arms are carved out of white marble but her off-the-shoulder wind-blown dress, its draperies pressed revealingly against her thighs, is made of a deep purplish gray marble!
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| Workmen prepare to restore the mediaeval Cosmati work in Westminster Abbey. |
To the Cosmati family, these coloured columns were a gift from the gods: no one wanted them as columns any more, so they were taken to the workshop and sliced up rather like you might slice up a banana on your breakfast cereal. These roundels formed the basis of the decoration, but even tiny fragments of stone found a place in decoration, for as everyone knows, when you stack circles against one another, there are always gaps in between. The gaps were filled with geometric shapes that in some way prefigured the later discoveries of mathematicians.
For example, one favourite element is the triangle made up of smaller triangles, which in turn are made up of still smaller triangles. Today this is known as the Sierpinski Triangle which, in its three dimensional form, has the curious property of infinte surface area and zero volume!
So admired was the Cosmati work that craftsmen who could do it were in great demand all over Europe. The Normans in Sicily made use of their skills in the churches and cathedrals they were building and even Henry III of England summoned workmen from Italy to decorate the Chapel of St Edward the Confessor in Westminster Abbey.
Fortunately for the survival of Rome's monuments, the craze only lasted for 50 years. Today we can see Cosmati work in various places and enjoy its vivid use of colour and shape - but spare a thought for the ancient workmen who carved and carried those columns for the glory of the gods of Rome, never dreaming that one day they would be cut up and used to decorate the places of worship of the despised Christians.
