Prayers in stone

Fülszöveg

;I
"I have always felt that an exploration of the wonders of any city is best begun in its churches," Alexander Liberman writes. His fascination with places of worship began when he was a small boy in Moscow, just after the Russian Revolution, and for the rest of his life he sought out religious sites when he traveled, photographing them and meditating in them.
The book begins with a visit to Carnac, in Brittany, where an ancient culture erected three thousand huge stones in mysterious alignments. "Perhaps nothing that follows," Liberman writes, "has moved me more than the inexplicable majesty of these testaments to human yearning." Liberman ends with Matisse's Chapel of the Rosary in Vence, in southern France. Other sites in the book include the great temple complex at Paestum, south of Naples; the Parthenon in Athens; the Pantheon in Rome; the monastery of Hosios Loukas, near Delphi; and the cathedral of Santa Maria dell'Assunta on Torcello, in the Venetian lagoon, with its... Tovább

Fülszöveg

;I
"I have always felt that an exploration of the wonders of any city is best begun in its churches," Alexander Liberman writes. His fascination with places of worship began when he was a small boy in Moscow, just after the Russian Revolution, and for the rest of his life he sought out religious sites when he traveled, photographing them and meditating in them.
The book begins with a visit to Carnac, in Brittany, where an ancient culture erected three thousand huge stones in mysterious alignments. "Perhaps nothing that follows," Liberman writes, "has moved me more than the inexplicable majesty of these testaments to human yearning." Liberman ends with Matisse's Chapel of the Rosary in Vence, in southern France. Other sites in the book include the great temple complex at Paestum, south of Naples; the Parthenon in Athens; the Pantheon in Rome; the monastery of Hosios Loukas, near Delphi; and the cathedral of Santa Maria dell'Assunta on Torcello, in the Venetian lagoon, with its Byzantine mosaics. Liberman is a discriminating worshiper. He finds St. Mark's Basilica in Venice somewhat overpowering in its grandeur, and prefers to commune with the Almighty at Chartres, in the extraordinary blue light from the cathedral's magnificent stained-glass windows. Another cathedral, Notre Dame in Paris, inspires him with its plain architecture and magnificent flying buttresses. St. Peter's in Rome, on the other hand, is unsurpassed in conveying the power of the Church Triumphant. Liberman travels to Assisi, where he is captivated by the unspoiled, unadorned meadow behind the basilica of St. Francis, like "a giant carpet to receive in honor the animals beloved of the saint." At the Duomo in Orvieto he notes that the bronze figures on the façade are "as modern as any work by any sculptor in my time." And in Florence, at the Medici Chapel, he admires Michelangelo's sculpture on the tombs of the Medici princes: "No one else in the world has managed to endow marble with such an awesome quality."
"In making this book," Liberman writes, "I have not tried to convey the precise difference among the buildings I have photographed, as one would in a serious architectural documentary. Nor have I attempted to cover the worid: there are many extraordinary buildings that I have never seen. I have sought, rather, simply to capture some of the power of those that I have encountered in my travels These works are by their nature the very greatest of civilization's achievements." Vissza