Anthemius of Tralles

Assembled from 10 blocks · 2 evidence · 5 related

1. Story
2. A mathematician and mechanician from Tralles in Asia Minor who, with Isidore of Miletus, designed Hagia Sophia for Justinian I from 532. Contemporary sources describe both men in terms of geometry and mechanics rather than of building craft - Procopius calls Anthemius a mechanikos - and the design reads accordingly: the pendentive solution and the longitudinal half-domes are geometric answers to a stated problem rather than developments of an existing building type. Anthemius also wrote on conic sections and on burning mirrors, and mathematical works attributed to him survive in fragments. He died before the first dome fell in 558; the rebuilding was directed by Isidore's nephew, Isidore the Younger. That the architects of the most structurally ambitious building of late antiquity were geometers rather than masons is one of the more revealing facts about how it came to exist.
3. Knowledge
4. Anthemius of Tralles
5. Connections
6. Hagia Sophia, Constantinople / Istanbul
7. Justinian commissions Hagia Sophia from two geometers
8. Evidence
9. Near-contemporary description of Hagia Sophia and of its designers Anthemius of Tralles and Isidore of Miletus, and the principal ancient literary source for the building. It is a panegyric written for Justinian and should be read as such, not as a construction record. V55 verification basis: the text was not read in this session and no specific passage is quoted here.
10. Collected structural and historical studies of Hagia Sophia, covering the pendentive system, the 558 dome collapse and the steeper 562 rebuilding, and the building's subsequent structural history. V55 verification basis: real and standard, not consulted in this session.