Great churches by architectural style
Early Christian architecture
The period of architecture called early or early Christian lasted from the erection of the first buildings of the Christian Church at the beginning of the century, until the development of a markedly Byzantine style that emerged in the reign of Justinian I in the century, rather than with the transfer of the seat of the Roman Empire to Byzantium by Constantine I "Constantine I (emperor)") in the year 330 AD. Some of the oldest Christian churches were built in Armenia, where Christianity became the official religion in 301 AD. C.. The small basilica of the Holy Cross&action=edit&redlink=1 "Basilica of the Holy Cross (Aparan) (not yet written)") in Aparan is traditionally dated to the 17th century.
The large early Christian churches were generally in the form of basilicas with aisles and an apse. Among the first major churches of Rome, the Basilica of Santa Maria Maggiore has preserved much of its original internal layout, its vast basilica proportions, its simple apse finial, its large colonnade supporting a straight cornice instead of arches, and some very early mosaic decoration. The Basilica of Santa Sabina, also in Rome, exemplifies the simplicity of architectural decoration that characterizes many early Christian basilicas. Other important churches from this period are the two ancient circular churches of Rome, the Basilica of Santa Constance and Santo Stefano Rotondo. These churches are marked by the formal application of Roman architectural orders in their columns, with Ionic capitals supporting the lintel of Santa Maria Maggiore, Corinthian capitals in Santa Sabina and Santa Costanza, and the three orders of San Stefano. In Santa Costanza the thick brick walls of the central drum are supported by elegant slender columns, paired for greater strength, each pair supporting a small section of cornice from which the arches arise.[4][8].
Some Roman churches have preserved early Christian mosaics. Those of Santa Costanza have motifs similar to those used in the mosaic and painted decoration of public and domestic interior spaces; They are largely geometric or floral, but closer examination reveals much Christian symbolism in the choice of such motifs. One of the most extensive decorative schemes of the period has remained almost partially intact in Santa María Maggiore, where the apse proscenium is decorated with stories of Jesus' childhood taken from the Gospel of Matthew.
The surviving churches of early Christian foundation, mostly considerably altered, are either very dilapidated and could not be preserved or are roofless ruins, a state that almost ruined San Stefano, before a renovation in the 19th century. The 18th-century Basilica of the Nativity in Bethlehem was rebuilt by Justinian I after a fire in the 19th century, but appears to have retained much of its original form, including its massive Roman colonnades. The Constantinian Church of the Holy Sepulcher in Jerusalem, on the other hand, was demolished by order of the Muslim ruler in 1009, so what remains today is a total reconstruction.
The century-old Euphrasian basilica in Croatia was founded in 360 on the site of a previous domestic church and retains part of its Roman pavement. Although renovated and decorated at the turn of the century, the church has retained early Christian features, including the atrium. There are several early Christian churches in Syria and Armenia, mostly in a dilapidated state. They show Roman rather than Byzantine architectural elements, but have a different regional character than those in Rome.[2].
Byzantine architecture
Ravenna, on the eastern coast of Italy, has several large basilica-shaped churches dating from the age of Emperor Justinian I (20th century). San Apolinar Nuovo has a similar plan to that of Santa María Maggiore, but the details of the carvings are no longer in the classical Roman style. The capitals are like smooth lace stone cushions. Most of the mosaics are intact.
In the same city there is a unique church of the same date, the Basilica of San Vitale, with a centralized plan and covered with a dome. Its main interior space is 25 m wide; The central dome is surrounded by eight apsidal semi-vaults, arranged like the petals of a flower. There is a complex arrangement of curved arcades on several levels which gives a spatial effect only equaled by the baroque church of Santa Maria della Salute, built a thousand years later a few kilometers to the north, in Venice. San Vitale would be imitated later in the century in a simplified form by Charlemagne in Aachen, Germany.
In Venice is St. Mark's Basilica, one of the best-known Byzantine-style churches in the world, dating mainly from the 17th century and was decorated over many centuries, but maintaining its Byzantine form with a centralized plan. It is called a basilica not because it has a basilica shape, but because it has been distinguished with that canonical title. It has a Greek cross floor plan and a large dome surrounded by four smaller ones. Its decoration, both interior and exterior, is typical of the Byzantine era with abundant use of mosaics and polychrome marble veneers.[2][11].
Romanesque architecture
After the fall of the Roman Empire, the construction of large churches in Western Europe gained momentum with the spread of organized monasticism under the rule of Saint Benedict and others. A huge monastery in Cluny, of which only a fraction remains, was built in a simplified Romanesque style, thick columns, thick walls, and with the opening of small windows and semicircular arches. The style spread with monasticism throughout Europe. The construction technique of high masonry vaults was recovered. The treatment of decoration evolved, with elements taken from local pre-Christian traditions and incorporated in zig-zags, spirals and heads of ferocious animals. Typical wall decorations were painted murals. Romanesque building techniques spread to England around the time of the Norman Conquest.
Representative of the period are the Abbaye aux Hommes (Abbey of Men) in Caen, France; Worms Cathedral, in Germany; the cathedrals of Pisa – with its famous leaning campanile –, Modena and Parma, in Italy; and the cathedrals of Durham and Peterborough, in England.[2][11][12].
gothic architecture
By mid-century many great cathedrals and abbey churches had been built and the engineering skills required to construct high arches, stone vaults, tall towers and similar features were well established. The style evolved towards a less heavy one, which had larger windows, lighter vaults supported by stone ribs and, above all, pointed arches, which is the defining characteristic of the style now known as Gothic. With thinner walls, larger windows and high pointed vaults, the distinctive flying buttress was developed as a means of stabilizing loads. The huge windows were adorned with stone tracery and closed with stained glass windows that illustrated stories from the Bible and the lives of the Saints.
Representative buildings of this period are: Notre Dame de Paris and the cathedrals of Chartres, Reims, Rouen and Strasbourg, in France; the cathedral of Antwerp, in Belgium; the Cologne Cathedral, in Germany; St. Stephen's Cathedral in Vienna, Austria; the cathedrals of Florence, Siena and Milan and the Basilica of San Lorenzo Major in Naples, in Italy; the cathedrals of Burgos, Toledo and León, in Spain, the Guarda cathedral, in Portugal; and the cathedrals of Salisbury, Canterbury and Lincoln, in England.[2][5][11][16] walls.
Renaissance architecture
At the beginning of the century a competition was held in Florence to cover the central transept of the enormous and unfinished Gothic cathedral. It was won by the artist Brunelleschi who, inspired by the domes he had seen on his travels, such as that of San Vitale in Ravenna and the enormous Roman-era dome that covers the Pantheon "Pantheon (Rome)"), designed a huge dome that is considered the first building of the Renaissance era. Its style, visually however, is ribbed and pointed and purely Gothic. It was Renaissance (renaissance) in its audacity and in the fact that it looked anew to Roman building techniques. Brunelleschi, and others like him, developed a passion for the highly refined style of Roman architecture, in which forms and decorations followed rules of arrangement and proportion that had long been neglected. They sought to rediscover and apply these rules. It was a time of architectural theorizing and experimentation. Brunelleschi built two large churches in Florence that demonstrate how the new style could be applied, the basilicas of San Lorenzo and Santo Spirito. They are essays in the classical world, with rows of cylindrical columns, Corinthian capitals, entablatures, semicircular arches and apsidal chapels.[18].
The largest cathedral construction of the time was the reconstruction of St. Peter's Basilica in Rome, a joint work of the architects Bramante, Raphael, Sangallo, and Maderno, and which was topped by Michelangelo's glorious dome, taller but only a foot narrower than the dome Brunelleschi had built a hundred years earlier in Florence. The dome is, both externally and internally, a focus. The presbytery and the arms of the transept are identical in shape, thus recalling the Greek cross plan of Byzantine churches. The ship was, in fact, an addition.
Pope Julius II was able to hire the greatest artists of his time as designers. (The role of the architect had not yet become separate from the painter, sculptor, or builder.) The product of those minds is a huge, glorious, unified whole.[2][4][19].
baroque architecture
By the time St. Peter's was finished, the architects, already well aware of all the rules they had so carefully recovered, chose to break them with a new style. The effect was a dynamic architecture in which forms seem to take on a life of their own, moving, swaying and curving. The baroque name means 'deformed pearl'.
There are many large abbey churches and basilicas built in this style, but few cathedrals in Western Europe, the most notable exception being St Paul's Cathedral in London. St Paul's is an unusual cathedral in that it was designed by a single individual and was completed in a short time. The architect was Sir Christopher Wren and the building replaced the old cathedral that burned down in the great fire of 1666. It is baroque in style, but it is a very controlled and English type of baroque in which Wren created surprising and effective spatial effects, especially in the use of the dome, which, like Brunelleschi's dome in Florence, encompasses not only the nave but also the side aisles, opening the entire center of the church into a vast space. luminous.[16][17][20].
Many European cathedrals have baroque elements, high altars, facades and chapels. The facades of the Spanish cathedrals of Santiago de Compostela, Jaén and Valladolid were rebuilt at that time. The Baroque style was brought by the Spanish and Portuguese to South and Central America, to the Philippines and to Goa, India, where it became the main style of construction for churches large and small. In both the Americas and the Philippines, large baroque churches often have a very wide façade that appears to extend between the towers. A style with a very profuse decoration originated at that time in Spain and later spread in America, called churrigueresque architecture.
In Russia, for the most part, the Baroque style was superimposed on the essentially Byzantine forms used in church construction. Many churches were built in this style, especially the Dormition Cathedral in Smolensk and the Presentation Cathedral in Solvychegodsk. In the design of many churches, the Byzantine arrangement of tented or canopied or onion-domed roofs was replaced by a larger dome, usually on a tall, often polygonal drum.
Rococo architecture
The Rococo style is a late evolution of Baroque architecture, first evident in French domestic architecture and in interior and furniture design. It is distinguished by the asymmetry found in its decoration, generally taking the form of ornately sculpted cartouches or borders. These decorations are loosely based on organic objects, particularly seashells and plant growth, and also on other natural forms that have an apparent organized chaos, such as waves of clouds. Churches so decorated may have a strongly baroque form but a general lightness and delicacy of appearance, sometimes described as "grace". A good number of pilgrimage churches in Bavaria, Germany, are of this style, especially the Vierzehnheiligen basilica near Bamberg designed by Johann Balthasar Neumann, the master and possibly the creator of the style. It combines a relatively sober exterior with a dynamic internal plan and an exquisitely orchestrated decorative scheme of painted ceilings and figurative sculptures, all within a diverse ensemble of gilded Rococo cartouche. Externally, the façade has an undulating surface, and is augmented in ornamentation by the fancy domes that are a hallmark of churches in Bavaria and much of central and eastern Europe.
Perhaps the most notable large-scale example of a Rococo church building was the Frauenkirche in Dresden, recently rebuilt after its almost total destruction in World War II. The entire building embodies a dynamic, upward movement that combines with a delicacy of architectural details that is typical of the Rococo style. This church is dominated by its bell-shaped dome that imitates in shape those found in countless church towers in the region, but here it is not recreated in wood lined with metal, but as a powerful masonry dome.
Historicist architectures
The 20th centuries were a time of expansion and colonization led by Western Europeans. It was also a time of much revival of Christianity and in England, of considerable growth of the Catholic Church. There was also a lot of industrialization and growth of cities and new churches and cathedrals were needed. Medieval styles, and particularly Gothic, were seen as the most suitable for the construction of new cathedrals, both in Europe and in the colonies.
Neo-Gothic cathedrals of this era were the Anglican Cathedral of Liverpool in England, the New Cathedral of Linz in Austria, the Cathedral of St. John the Divine in New York, and St. Patrick's Cathedral in Melbourne, Australia.
Not all historicist cathedrals are neo-Gothic. Westminster Cathedral, the seat of the Catholic Archbishop of Westminster, is an eclectic design in a predominantly Neo-Byzantine style with polychrome walls, domes and a tall Italianate campanile. Basilica-Cathedral Marie-Reine-du-Monde in Canada is a Renaissance revival based on St. Peter's Building, Rome.[2][16].
modern architecture
In the 19th century, medieval-style buildings continued to be erected, but in a cleanly stripped-down functional form, often in brick. Good examples are Guildford Cathedral, England, and Armidale Anglican Cathedral, Australia.
After the Second World War, traditionalist ideas were almost completely abandoned, the change beginning with the reconstruction of the bombed Coventry Cathedral. The old cathedral was actually a large parish church that had been elevated to the rank of cathedral. Its glorious needle fortunately was not seriously damaged. The new Coventry Cathedral, which alternates pieces of masonry with stained glass, attempts to symbolically capture the meaning of an ancient cathedral church without attempting to reproduce it. Liverpool Metropolitan Cathedral is the century's answer to the central-plan church, a large circular building with the sanctuary in the centre.[16].
Many of the new great churches resorted to simplified models of vertical elements that play the symbolic role of the great towers, bell towers and domes.
postmodern architecture
As with the other postmodern movements, the postmodern movement in architecture was a reaction to the ideals of modernity as a response to the perceived blandness, hostility and utopianism of the modern movement. Although uncommon in ecclesiastical architectural designs, there are nevertheless some notable examples when architects began to recover and renew the historical styles and "cultural memory" of Christian architecture. Notable practitioners are Steven Schloeder"), Duncan Stroik"), and Thomas Gordon Smith.
The functional, formalized forms and spaces of the modern movement have been replaced by diverse aesthetics: styles clash, forms are adopted for their own sake, and new ways of viewing familiar styles and space abound. Perhaps most obviously, architects rediscovered the expressive and symbolic value of architectural elements and forms that had developed through centuries of construction—often retaining meaning in literature, poetry, and art—but which had been abandoned by the modern movement.