Hagia Sophia's Treasures

A fascinating story, from Turkey:

ANKARA, Turkey – Restoration workers have uncovered a well-preserved, long-hidden mosaic face of an angel at the former Byzantine cathedral of Haghia Sophia in Istanbul, an official said Friday.

The seraphim figure — one of two located on the side of a dome — had been covered up along with the building's other Christian mosaics shortly after Constantinople — the former name for Istanbul — fell to the Ottomans in 1453 and the cathedral was turned into a mosque.

Here's more on the history of the mosaic and the last person to have seen it.

According to the Hürriyet newspaper, the last person to see the image of the celestial being, known as a seraph, is believed to have been the Swiss architect Gaspar Fossati, who led the church’s reconstruction under the reign of Sultan Abdulmajid (1839-1861).

Restorers recently removed the metal mask and six or seven layers of paint to uncover a mosaic believed to date to the ninth or fourteenth centuries. To their astonishment, the mosaic, located on the structure supporting the dome, was very well-preserved.

In the middle of the nineteenth century, Sultan Abdulmajid commissioned Gaspar Fossati and his brother with the restoration of the Hagia Sophia. The two Swiss architects removed the paint and cement layers from the mosaics, thus uncovering the images and restored them. They were later covered in paint again and were, until recently, only known from the album made by Fossati.