San Vitale’s Beauty as Seen Through the Eyes of Plotinus
Table of Contents
- Introduction
- God as the divine source of all things
- Plotinus and the ideal of beauty as a problem of metaphysics
- The metaphysical connection and entering into the sanctuary of San Vitale.
- The mosaic is beautiful because its flat
- Conclusion
- References
SummaryArchitectural beauty is a concept that is continually changing and entirely subjective. It is dependent upon who is doing the evaluating and the criteria with which they are basing their evaluation. Usually, the structure's ultimate function weighs in heavily in the determination of its beauty.Churches function as houses of God, and therefore have, up until recently, been held to higher standards of beauty than other structures. I say until recently because most of the newly erected houses of worship look like warehouses. Rather than depicting a spiritual connection with the divine through architectural beauty, their intention is to be as bare as possible on the outside in order to convey the message that it is what's inside (the fellowship of its congregation and sincerity of their devotion and faith in the concept of a plane of existence beyond our material world) that counts.
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