A professional architect, Setrak Taner Isnar has just published a massive volume titled Lost Sacred Geometries: Resurrecting the Architectural Language of Medieval Armenian Churches, which includes the beautiful photography of Hrair Hawk Khatcherian. Edited by Lenore Hietkamp, the 424-page book is published by Firefly Books (Buffalo, NY/Richmond Hill, Canada).
The following is an excerpt from the book’s preface, written by Patrick Donabédian, professor emeritus of Armenian Studies and History of Art at Aix-Marseille University and researcher at Laboratoire d’archéologie médiévale et moderne en Méditerranée, in Aix-en-Provence, France. He is the co-author of Armenian Art (Abrams, 1989), and the author of L’age d’or de l’architecture arménienne VIIe siècle (Éditions Parenthéses, 2008) and over a hundred articles on the subject area.
As with the pyramids of Egypt and the Romanesque and Gothic cathedrals, we guess, by contemplating their creations, that the builders of the medieval sanctuaries of Armenia were above all designer-conceptors who applied certain rules common to the whole country and permanent throughout the centuries. We have a diffuse, instinctive awareness that a geometric logic presides not only over the design of each of these churches, but also over the ensembles that they constitute in the case of the many monasteries that cover/covered this country and characterize it.
Not knowing exactly what this common and permanent logic is made of, we attribute it to tradition, dogmas, and the constant use throughout the centuries of the same materials and techniques, specific to this country. However, the study of history has taught us that, heir to a succession of ancient cultural strata, Armenia was linked, at the beginning of our era, to both the Romano-Mediterranean world and the Iranian world. We understand that the great creations of early Christianity in Jerusalem, Rome, and Constantinople, as well as in Asia Minor and Syria, must naturally have left their imprints on the architecture of Armenia. We also note, from the outset, a great kinship between Armenian and Georgian religious architecture. We then see, over the centuries, how Armenian art has greatly evolved, in particular by enriching itself with numerous contacts with neighboring and even distant cultures.
At the same time, it is obvious that, with the very early adoption of Christianity and the need to defend its identity, Armenia developed a language of its own, which it has preserved until the Modern times inclusive. We also see that, in Armenia, built works are distinguished by certain specificities related to natural contingencies: a) the ground is regularly shaken by strong earthquakes that certainly require the builders to prevent their destructive effects; b) a technique adapted to this situation has been developed, the construction with mortar filling poured between two facings; c) the main building material is stone, in most cases, a porous volcanic stone that is quite easy to cut and that adheres well to mortar. We deduce that it is for these reasons that, throughout the centuries, the Armenian edifices of worship have reduced dimensions and pure lines that transform them into crystalline volumes. Throughout the centuries, the simple and recognizable silhouette of these buildings is mainly the result of the combination of the dome pointing to the sky and the cross or radiance in the center of which the dome raises its pyramid, cone or umbrella.
