Lamp Handle with Dolphins 4th–5th century Byzantine A pair of dolphins use their tails to support the handle’s rectangular plaque. Their heads would have been attached to a now-lost flat hanging lamps, or polycandela, were lit by oil-filled glass vessels hung from the round holes in their designs. Paul the Silentiary in 563 described the effect of huge hanging lamps that lit the great church of Hagia Sophia in Constantinople: “Thus is everything clothed in beauty…no words are sufficient to describe the illumination in the evening: you might say that some nocturnal sun filled the maj
Lamp Handle with Dolphins 4th–5th century Byzantine A pair of dolphins use their tails to support the handle’s rectangular plaque. Their heads would have been attached to a now-lost flat hanging lamps, or polycandela, were lit by oil-filled glass vessels hung from the round holes in their designs. Paul the Silentiary in 563 described the effect of huge hanging lamps that lit the great church of Hagia Sophia in Constantinople: “Thus is everything clothed in beauty…no words are sufficient to describe the illumination in the evening: you might say that some nocturnal sun filled the majestic church with light.”. Lamp Handle with Dolphins 468604
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Photo credit: © MET/BOT / Alamy / Afripics
License: Licensed
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