3.2 Interactions Within and Across Cultures in Early European and Colonial American Art

Santa Sabina (Rome; Late Antique Europe; c. 422–432 CE; brick and stone, wooden roof). When Christianity became legal, churches adopted the Roman basilica, a long civic hall, not the pagan temple. Santa Sabina has a nave (central aisle), side aisles, rows of Corinthian columns, clerestory windows and an apse (a rounded end) where the altar stands. The plain brick outside contrasts with a light-filled interior. Its carved wooden doors include one of the earliest surviving images of the Crucifixion.

Vienna Genesis: Rebecca and Eliezer at the Well and Jacob Wrestling the Angel (Early Byzantine Europe; early sixth century CE; tempera, gold and silver on purple vellum). Vellum dyed purple, the imperial color, with text in silver, marks a luxury book. The pictures use continuous narrative: one character appears several times in a single scene. Rebecca leaves the city and then gives water to Eliezer's camels, near a reclining nymph who personifies the spring, a figure borrowed from classical art.

Hagia Sophia (Constantinople, Istanbul; Anthemius of Tralles and Isidorus of Miletus; 532–537 CE; brick and ceramic elements with stone and mosaic veneer). The emperor Justinian rebuilt it after riots destroyed the earlier church. Its architects were mathematicians and engineers. A huge dome rests on pendentives, curved triangles that turn a square base into a circle, and a ring of 40 windows at its base makes it seem to float. After the Ottoman conquest in 1453, it became a mosque. Minarets were added, and much later, in the 1800s, the huge calligraphy roundels.

Great Mosque (Córdoba, Spain; Umayyad; c. 785–786 CE; stone masonry). Abd al-Rahman I, an Umayyad prince who escaped Syria when his dynasty was overthrown, founded it. It is a hypostyle hall, a prayer space filled with columns. Many columns were reused from Roman and Visigothic buildings, and because they were short, builders stacked two tiers of arches to raise the roof. The lower arches are horseshoe-shaped, and the arches use alternating red brick and white stone. A later caliph added a mihrab (the niche showing the direction of prayer) decorated with mosaics by craftsmen sent from Byzantium. After the Christian conquest, a cathedral was built inside.

Mosque of Selim II (Edirne, Turkey; Sinan; 1568–1575; brick and stone). Sinan, the chief Ottoman architect, set a huge dome on eight piers, creating one open, light-filled space. He aimed to rival Hagia Sophia's dome. Four very tall, slender minarets frame it, and Iznik tiles decorate the interior.

David (Donatello; c. 1440–1460; bronze). The first freestanding life-size nude male statue since antiquity. David stands in contrapposto, wearing only a hat and boots, his foot on Goliath's head. He was displayed in the Medici family's palace courtyard. David, the small hero who beats a giant, was a symbol of Florence facing more powerful rivals.

Palazzo Rucellai (Florence; Leon Battista Alberti; c. 1450; stone, masonry). Alberti wrote a treatise on architecture based on ancient Roman writers. On this palace for the merchant Giovanni Rucellai, he layered flat pilasters in different classical orders on each floor, an idea taken from the Colosseum. The frieze includes the Rucellai sail emblem and Medici symbols, marking a marriage between the families.

Adam and Eve (Albrecht Dürer; 1504; engraving). Dürer, from Nuremberg, studied Italian ideas about ideal proportion and brought them north. His Adam recalls an ancient statue of Apollo. In engraving, the artist cuts lines into a metal plate with a sharp tool called a burin, inks the plate and prints it, so the image can travel widely. A sign on a branch proudly gives his name in Latin. The animals may stand for the four humors (cat, rabbit, ox and elk), which medieval medicine said ruled personality.

Angel with Arquebus, Asiel Timor Dei (Master of Calamarca, La Paz School; c. 17th century; oil on canvas). Painted in the Andes, in today's Bolivia, this angel wears the lace and rich clothing of a Spanish nobleman and handles an arquebus, an early gun, in a pose likely copied from a European military manual. Angels like this appealed to Indigenous converts, perhaps because of older Andean beliefs about powerful beings in the sky. The blend of European Christian imagery and local meaning is called syncretism.