GC The Great Mosque of Cordoba and San Vitale in Ravenna Discussion

I’m working on a history question and need guidance to help me learn.

1. one artwork from this week textbook, the Islamic world. Then, one artwork from one of the major ancient empires that pre-dated the rise of Islam, the Byzantine Empire.
2. Write one paragraph that describes and analyzes the similarities between these two works.
   1. This paragraph should describe any similarities you notice in visual aspects, such as design elements, materials, techniques, purposes, uses, meanings, and/or cultural and historical context, etc.
3. Write one paragraph that describes and analyzes the differences between these two works.
   1. This paragraph should describe any differences you notice in visual aspects, such as design elements, materials, techniques, purposes, uses, meanings, and/or cultural and historical context, etc.
4. Conclude your discussion by providing a stand-alone thesis statement that argues whether you perceive more similarities between these works or more differences between them, and how both works reflect the role of art in these different imperial contexts.

The Islamic World

The Rise and Spread of Islam

At the time of Muhammad’s birth around 570, the Arabian peninsula was peripheral to the Byzantine and Sasanian empires. The Arabs, nomadic herders and caravan merchants who worshiped many gods, resisted the Prophet’s teachings of Islam, an Arabic word meaning “submission to the one God [ Allah in Arabic].” Within a decade of Muhammad’s death in 632, however, Muslims (“those who submit”) ruled Arabia, Palestine, Syria, Iraq, and northern Egypt. From there, the new religion spread rapidly both eastward and westward ( MAP 10-1 ).

With the rise of Islam also came the birth of a compelling new worldwide tradition of art and architecture. In the Middle East and North Africa, Islamic art largely replaced Late Antique art, the last phase of Greco-Roman art. In India, the establishment of Muslim rule at Delhi in the early 13th century brought Islamic art and architecture to South Asia. In fact, perhaps the most famous building in Asia, the Taj Mahal ( FIG. 33-6 ) at Agra, is an Islamic mausoleum. At the opposite end of the then-known world, in Spain, the Arabs had overthrown the Christian kingdom of the Visigoths in 711. There, at Córdoba, Abd al-Rahman I (r. 756–788) founded a Spanish Muslim dynasty, which became the center of a brilliant court culture that profoundly influenced medieval Europe.

The jewel of the capital at Córdoba was its Great Mosque ( FIG. 10-1 ), begun in 784 and enlarged several times during the 9th and 10th centuries until it eventually became one of the largest mosques in the western Islamic world (see “ The Mosque ”). In 1236, Christians converted the shrine into a church after they captured the city from the Muslims. (The tallest part of the complex, at the center of the aerial view, is Córdoba’s cathedral.)

A visual feast greets all visitors to the Córdoba mosque. The Muslim designers employed by al-Hakam II (r. 961–976) used overlapping horseshoe-shaped arches—which became synonymous with Islamic architecture in Europe—to adorn the eastern and western gates to the complex. Double rows of arches surmount the more than 500 columns and piers in the mosque’s huge prayer hall. Even more elaborate multilobed arches on slender columns form dazzling frames for other areas of the mosque, especially in the maqsura , the hall reserved for the ruler, which at Córdoba connects the mosque to the palace. Crisscrossing ribs form intricate decorative patterns in the complex’s largest dome. Walls covered with costly marbles and mosaics rival those of the most magnificent mosques of the Islamic heartland in ancient Mesopotamia.

The Great Mosque at Córdoba typifies Islamic architecture both in its conformity to the basic principles of mosque design and in its incorporation of distinctive regional forms.

Byzantium

Church and State United

San Vitale ( FIG. 9-1 ) is the most spectacular building in Ravenna, the Byzantine Empire’s outpost in northern Italy. Begun while Ravenna was ruled by the Ostrogoths, the church was completed less than a decade after the Byzantine army captured the city. Dedicated by Bishop Maximianus in 547 in honor of Saint Vitalis, the second-century Christian martyr who died at the hands of the Romans at Ravenna, the church makes an unforgettable impression on all who have entered it and marveled at its intricate design and magnificent mosaics.

The exterior’s octagonal regularity is not readily apparent inside the centrally planned church. The design features two concentric octagons. The dome-covered inner octagon rises above the surrounding octagon to provide the interior with clerestory lighting. Eight large rectilinear piers alternate with curved, columned exedrae , pushing outward into the surrounding two-story ambulatory. A rich diversity of ever-changing perspectives greets visitors walking through the building. Arches looping over arches, curving and flattened spaces, and wall and vault shapes all seem to change constantly with the viewer’s position. Natural light, filtered through alabaster-paned windows, plays over the glittering mosaics and glowing marbles covering the building’s complex surfaces, producing a splendid effect.

San Vitale’s mosaics, like the building itself, must be regarded as one of the greatest achievements of Byzantine art. The apse and choir decorations form a unified composition, whose theme is the holy ratification of Emperor Justinian’s right to rule. In the apse vault, Christ sits on the orb of the world at the time of the Second Coming. On the choir wall to the left of the apse mosaic appears Justinian. The two are joined visually and symbolically by the imperial purple they wear and by their haloes. A dozen attendants accompany Justinian, paralleling Christ’s 12 apostles. Thus the mosaic program underscores the dual political and religious roles of the Byzantine emperor. The laws of the Church and the laws of the State, united in the laws of God, manifest themselves in the person of the emperor, whose right to rule is God-given.

Justinian’s counterpart on the opposite wall of the apse is his empress, Theodora, with her corresponding retinue. Both processions move into the apse, Justinian proceeding from left to right and Theodora from right to left, in order to take part in the Eucharist. Justinian carries the bowl containing the bread, Theodora the golden cup with the wine. Neither one ever visited Ravenna, however. Their participation in the liturgy at San Vitale is pictorial fiction. The mosaics are proxies for the absent sovereigns. Justinian is present because he was the head of the Byzantine state, and his appearance in the mosaic underscores that his authority extended over his territories in Italy.