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Проблема «столичного» в средневизантийской церковной архитектуре Малой Азии
We can distinguish three main ways of Constantinopolitan influence on the Middle Byzantine church architecture of Asia Minor. The first and most immediate is the architecture of the Bithynian coast of the Marmara Sea, which was developed in the metropolitan tradition and quickly perceived — and sometimes, perhaps, even generated — its new fashions, however, occasionally provincializing them: there are at least six stages of such evolution, from 780s to 1160s. Close to it is the work of Constantinopolitan masters in more remote areas of Anatolia (new episcopal centres in Lycian Mastaura and Pisidian Islamköy): in the large Cathedral of Mastaura the metropolitan architects inevitably had to work together with the local builders, following, moreover, the ‘prestigious’ model of the ‘domed basilica’ in Myra.
The second, fundamentally different way is to borrow separate elements of Constantinopolitan architecture, while the whole building has a non-metropolitan appearance: the transfer by Mkhitar the Great, a confidant of John Tzimisces, of semicircular niches on the facades of his church in Mesopotamian Erkan, whence they probably came to Varzahan in Southern Pontus; the donation by the emperors Basil II and Constantine VIII of glazed tiles to Cathedral in Oshki in Tao. The pumpkin-shaped dome and other elements of ‘high style’ in St Clement in Ancyra are combined with non-Constantinopolitan ones, such as squinches and the almost complete absence of cornices; in the Lower Church of Amorium the mosaics and other ‘metropolitan’ decoration are combined with a very provincial type of the cross-domed basilica.
Finally, the third way is a provincial imitation of the metropolitan system of facade decoration: recessed blind arches, polychromic brickwork, etc. But what in Constantinople is a constructive element (pilasters, opus mixtum, brick arches), in Çeltikdere, Çanlı Kilise, Üçayak, Iconium, Side turns mostly into a pure decoration that hides a completely provincial building. The complex inscribed cross was probably borrowed from Constantinople to Cappadocia (St George in Peristremma, St Gregory in Karvala), and from there, perhaps, to Pontus and Abkhazia, but the construction of these provincial churches is deeply rooted in local architectural traditions (pillars, strong walls, stepped buttress arches, etc.).