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The capitals and column shafts in the church are partly material plundered
from Constantinople and partly mediaeval imitations or creations produced
for St. Mark's.
Undoubtedly the pillaged material had to be touched up or adapted to its
location whereas most of the bases of the columns in St. Mark's are originals
created for the building. A column's shaft and capital may have been created
in different periods and places and come from different contexts. So in
uniting them in the formation of a new column, something totally new was
created.
The essential features of the layout of the columns in St. Mark's, mainly of
the 11th and 12th centuries, are a rigorous symmetry and correspondence
where the number of related pieces permit.
These features are dominant in the west arm where the marble shafts are
symmetrically distributed according to veining, in vertical or horizontal
progression. The distribution of capitals in the presbytery zone is also
regular and symmetrical, whereas with the columns it was necessary, perhaps
because of the considerable dimensions required, to set one before the
other a shaft in Proconnesio of different veining and a shaft of Docimeum
(light pavonazzetto) opposite one in Proconnesio marble.
In the choir, in front of the pillars, there are two different pairs of
capitals set in a frontal position in such a way as to create symmetry
to left and right of the axis, giving a special accent to the apse where
the capitals with richer decorations are situated, the only 11th century
ones that the church possesses. These capitals, together with those of
the side apses, immediately appear the most significant. And among these
the four set on Thessaly green columns are outstanding for their typology,
the same as that of the main capitals in St. Sophia's in Constantinople.
The capitals of the south side apse are also 11th century works from Constantinople
whereas those of the main apse and the north side apse are mediaeval copies
of the same type. So only two capitals had been plundered and copies of
the other six had to be made in order to have the same columns in all
three apses. It may be surmised that the two pillaged capitals were acquired
in Constantinople with the intention of placing them in a privileged position
in the church in Venice. Perhaps what was wanted in Venice was capitals
similar to those of the decorations of Constantinople's main church. Probably
in that period it was not possible to find more than those two in Constantinople
so it was necessary to resort to copies. The scroll capital of the apse
and the Ionic ones on the walls of the west arm find their prototypes
in the Justinian church of St. Sophia.
Regularity, alternation of the elements and symmetry also prevail in the
north and west narthexes. In the northern one the aim was to place, one
next to the other against the internal walls, only Proconnesio shafts
with the same vertical veining. As for the Ionic capitals, between each
of the two pairs of mediaeval capitals there is one dating to the 6th
century. In the west narthex, being the main narthex of the church, there
are actually several pairs of 6th century Ionic capitals set in a dense
sequence next to other pairs dating to the 12th century, again on similar
shafts of Proconnesio marble. In the west narthex the side doors with
columns in pavonazzetto are flanked by particularly precious capitals
with lion and eagle heads on facing globes, standing on late-antique shafts
of white-black breccia, a marble from Aquitaine but, as documented, used
in Constantinople in an imperial context as an especially precious stone.
In the embrasures of the side portals there are also columns with rippled
capitals. These free columns that support neither vaults nor anything
else were erected subsequently, to be precise only during the façade decoration
phase in the 12th century. Their parts, which may have come from the area
of the imperial palace in Constantinople, have the purpose of intensifying
the row of columns on the west narthex wall, analogously to the dense
column sequence of the west façade and, at the same time, obtaining development
with regard to the exterior. Without these columns the surface of the
walls between the pairs of columns would have seemed bare in comparison
with the façade. The contrast with the west wall of the narthex, completely
without columns, is thus increasingly highlighted. This contrast evidently
originated in the aim to give importance to the interior wall of the church
that is first seen by the visitor, accentuated with the addition of other
13th century columns. Entering the narthex a scene of great monumentality
opens up, based on the determining effect of the white-black breccia columns
with their precious capitals, free of any load-bearing function.
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