_The Style of Sinan’s Domed Structures

Among the great domed buildings of the world must be included a group of Ottoman mosques dating from between the sixteenth and the eighteenth century, whose classical physiognomies have all ultimately to be credited to a single man, Koca Sinan, the chief archi-tect of the Ottoman Empire for half a century (1538-88). Although Sinan’s life and a number of his buildings have been written about many times,’regret-tably no adequate comprehensive presentation of his architecture is available in any language. 2 Such being the case, one can hardly be surprised that his work remains largely unappreciated and that his style, although synonymous with the classical age of Ottoman architecture, is almost totally ignored in general his-tories of art.