Dmitry Karelin The Adoption of Late Roman Architectural Principles that Reflect Political Concepts by Early Christian Architecture.

Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: http://dx.doi.org/10.18688/aa166-1-8
Title The Adoption of Late Roman Architectural Principles that Reflect Political Concepts by Early Christian Architecture.
Author email dmitry.a.karelin@gmail.com
About author Karelin, Dmitry Alexeevich — Ph. D., associate professor. Moscow Institute of Architecture (State Academy) (MARCHI), Rozhdestvenka Str., 11/4–1–4, 107031 Moscow, Russian Federation.
In the section Art of the Ancient World DOI10.18688/aa166-1-8
Year 2016 Volume 6 Pages 84–97
Type of article RAR Index UDK 72.032 Index BBK 85.11
Abstract

The paper is devoted to several architectural principles and building types, which were typical for Late Roman architecture, reflected Roman political concepts and in uenced early Christian architecture. A. Grabar proved that many motifs of Late Roman art, which were inspired by the culture of ancient Near East, influenced the early Christian iconography. However, now the architectural theory mainly rests on the ideas of R. Krautheimer and J. Ward-Perkins that early Christian architecture practically had no links with Late Roman pagan buildings. Nevertheless, it seems that these links could occur in architecture too. It is necessary to take a look at three main points. The first one is the usage of halls with apsidal ends, which were typical both for pagan and for Christian architecture in the 3th–4th centuries and for luxurious palaces and villas of Late Roman nobles. The present tendency could be linked with new religious and political concepts of tetrarchy. In turn, they were probably founded on the ideas of ancient Near Eastern kingship and corresponded with new hierarchical organization of ruling class mainly consisted of former military officers. Secondly, it is important to examine such architectural element as tetrastyle. It had a wide usage during the rst tetrarchy and associated with the idea of concordia — harmony between four co-rulers. Thirdly, the origin of Christian ciborium as an architectural element is of peculiar interest. Thanks to the wide numismatic evidence, it is known that the baldachin rests on four supports and is covered by a at roof. A cylindrical vault, or a cupola, was one of the attributes of God or divine ruler representation. This motif could have come to Roman culture from the architecture of ancient Egypt and ancient Near East. The examination of these motifs, which exercised in uence upon some peculiarities of the early Christian architecture with the authoritative and religious concepts, which they expressed, could be very fruitful and important for the theory of architecture.
Keywords
Reference Dmitry Karelin. The Adoption of Late Roman Architectural Principles that Reflect Political Concepts by Early Christian Architecture.. Actual Problems of Theory and History of Art: Collection of articles. Vol. 6. Eds: Anna V. Zakharova, Svetlana V. Maltseva, Ekaterina Yu. Stanyukovich-Denisova. St. Petersburg, NP-Print Publ., 2016, pp. 84–97. ISSN 2312-2129. http://dx.doi.org/10.18688/aa166-1-8
Publication Article language russian
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