Visions of Heaven: The Dome in European Architecture Hardcover – November 11, 2005

I don't have much to add to the earlier reviews except to say that if you like kaleidoscopes, mandalas or snowflakes, you will probably love this book. It is full of images of 6-fold and 8-fold symmetry and even one each of 3-fold and 5-fold. The pictures can be viewed as realistic depictions of parts of buildings or as abstractions, pleasurable purely for the pattern. There is something in the human brain that loves this sort of thing, and if you want to indulge that something and just wallow in beauty, get this book. Wow!

a nice gift book

Gorgeous photographs!

breathtaking

a remarkable series of photographs. what we see when we look up towards heaven in cathedrals and mosques of europe.

Gorgeous Photography! Spectacular Domes! Its Heaven indeed! Excellent Book!!!

Honestly I never really considered what a book on images of famous domes would be like, this is definitly a nitch book, but it is spectacular. This images are crisp and because all the photos are taken from the same distance you can really appreciate the differences in the domes..most are just simply breathtaking. It seems every turn of the page, gives you a more spectacular image. Granted some are more ornate than others, but all of the domes have their own character and beauty. Amazing book on an interesting subject, pick it up, you won't be able to put it down.

Some long ago inventer discovered that if you place carefully shapped rocks just so they will remain in place as an arch, dramatically reducing the amount of stone you need to hold up a bridge, an aquaduct, or the entrance to a castle. It probably wasn't too much later that someone recogniced that a bunch of arches next to each other would yield an arched ceiling to a room. My guess is that it then took a very long time for someone to recognize that if you made a series of arches in a circle you could make a domed room. But as soon as one was built, I suspect that a priest of some kind looked up and immediately saw that a minature version of the sky had been created, and that an artist could transform this sky into a 'Vision of Heaven.'This book shows what decoration has been applied to the insides of domed buildings from about the second century to the twentieth. It is an absolutely spectacular set of photographs of how artists have brought the heavens down to earth.