(15-06-2017, 05:54 AM)Koen Gh. wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view....
JKP: how common are large, almost completely globe-like domes on relatively narrow towers? This is most obvious in the rightmost tower on the central rosette, but all six towers suffer from this to some extent. They are not cupolas, half-globes. Instead, they are completely globular.
In atleast one Arab writer, the word for "domes", qubbat, is used to denote the planets...
Not common at all in the 15th century, onion domes were only just starting to catch on later in the century. It has to do with technology. The rounded domes, like the end of a thumb, were not uncommon, especially in W. Moorish and SE Islamic areas, but figuring out how to incurve the bottom of the dome was a technical achievement and setting them on long narrow towers was not common for onion domes until later.
Still, one can see precedents in the eastern world with regular (non-onion) domes on towers around Constantinople, and in parts of the SW Mediterranean, and these styles caught on and clustered along the Eastern European corridor where Christianity spread north through the Orthodox church, especially in the 16th and 17th centuries.
Because these domes were not common until the 16th century, it's difficult to determine whether the VMS rosette domes are architectural (inspired by early examples of Islamic domes), or whether they were inspired by smaller items (urns, spice jars, blown glass, etc.) that can more easily be shaped like onions.