"Following preliminary observations on Byzantine church architecture and its defining characteristics, Ousterhout examines the textual sources, yielding a new understanding of the identities and the respective roles of patrons, bureaucrats, and masons in the building process. Narrowing his focus to the masons, or master builders, he clarifies both their theoretical and their very practical concerns in architectural design, suggesting that the master builders relied on geometry and memory, rather than blueprints, to guide their work. The study focuses on churches built in the area of Constantinople between the ninth and fifteenth centuries, but it also refers back to earlier works such as Hagia Sophia, and it tracks Byzantine masons as far afield as Russia, the Balkans, and Jerusalem.
來源: Google Book