[Congressional Record Volume 144, Number 2 (Wednesday, January 28, 1998)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Page E34]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                           ST. LOUIS BASILICA

                                 ______
                                 

                        HON. WILLIAM (BILL) CLAY

                              of missouri

                    in the house of representatives

                      Wednesday, January 28, 1998

  Mr. CLAY. Mr. Speaker, I would like to share with my colleagues the 
following article which recently appeared in the TWA Ambassador 
magazine about one of the most outstanding cathedrals in our nation, 
the Cathedral Basilica of St. Louis. This St. Louis Cathedral boasts 
the largest collection of mosaic art in the United States. I encourage 
all who visit St. Louis not to miss this magnificent edifice.

                               Piecework

       Mosaic, the most durable of all decorative techniques, is 
     an art form dating back more than 20 centuries. The Greeks 
     were the first to create large pictorial compositions, and 
     producing mosaics was a major industry during the Roman 
     Empire. No major building was complete without them, and the 
     affluent selected patterns for their homes in the way we 
     select carpets and wallpaper today.
       Mosaic reached its peak as an art form in the fifth century 
     with the Byzantines. Where the Greeks and Romans used marble 
     mosaics mostly to embellish their floors, the Byzantines used 
     small pieces of multicolored and gold-leafed glass to 
     decorate the vast, bare interior walls of their churches. The 
     virtue of mosaic was that it formed strong linear patterns 
     easily visible to a viewer 70 feet away.
       The Cathedral Basilica of Saint Louis claims title to the 
     world's largest collection of mosaic art--83,000 square feet. 
     (St. Mark's Basilica in Venice, Italy, has 72,000 square feet 
     of mosaic; Monreale Cathedral in Sicily, Italy, 68,000.) More 
     than 20 artists used 41.5 million pieces of mosaic in more 
     than 8,000 colors to adorn every arch and dome of the 
     Byzantine-style interior. The pieces--some of which are as 
     small as a baby's fingertip--combine to relate the pivotal 
     events of Christianity.
       Called ``the outstanding cathedral of the Americas'' in the 
     1960s by Pope Paul VI, the cathedral was elevated last year 
     to a basilica, a designation that recognizes a church's great 
     history, beauty and significance as a place of worship.
       The cathedral, with its 217-foot-high dome, is well-used 
     for musical performances originally composed for the great 
     cathedrals of Europe. On Jan. 20, New York's Ensemble for 
     Early Music performs the medieval play ``Herod and the 
     Innocents'' at the Cathedral Basilica of Saint Louis, Lindell 
     Boulevard at Newstead Avenue in the Central West End.

     

                          ____________________