About the Artist – Who Was Şevket Dağ?
Şevket Dağ (1876–1944) was one of the pioneering painters in Turkish art history, especially known for his interior and architectural depictions. He studied at the Sanayi-i Nefise Mektebi under Osman Hamdi Bey and later worked for many years as a teacher and museum professional. Witnessing the cultural transformation of the early Republican period, the artist conveyed the spirit of the transition from the Ottoman Empire to the Republic through figurative compositions and architectural detail with particular aesthetic sensitivity.
His artistic approach can be described especially as figurative academicism influenced by Impressionism. The relationship between space and light, the monumental yet softened representation of interiors, and the positioning of figures within silence are among the characteristic elements of his pictorial language. During the first half of the twentieth century, Hagia Sophia, mosques, tombs, inns, and historic interiors were among the subjects he painted most frequently.
Work: Morning Call to Prayer in Hagia Sophia
Artist: Şevket Dağ (1876–1944)
Date: 1928
Technique: Oil on canvas
Subject: Worshipping figures inside Hagia Sophia in the morning hours, surrounded by vertical columns and an atmosphere of silence and spirituality created by soft morning light
Artistic Context: Figurative Impressionism / Classical Architectural Representation
Collection: İRHM (Istanbul Painting and Sculpture Museum) Collection
Location: Istanbul, Türkiye
Şevket Dağ, Morning Call to Prayer in Hagia Sophia, 1928. Oil on canvas. In the interior of Hagia Sophia, several figures are dispersed among columns and vaults in worship during the early morning hours. The light is not direct; it filters across the stone surfaces with an indirect softness. The figures are not positioned at the center of the painting but integrated into the internal rhythm of the architecture as elements of silence.
Source: İRHM Collection.
Hagia Sophia as a Space of Memory
Hagia Sophia is far more than an architectural structure. Having served as a bearer of different faiths, empires, and modes of representation across both Byzantine and Ottoman periods, it has also entered modern Turkish art not merely as a monument but as a field of memory. Şevket Dağ’s 1928 painting Morning Call to Prayer in Hagia Sophia approaches this multilayered space not simply as an architectural magnitude but as a pictorial equivalent of spiritual silence, inner calm, and cultural continuity.
There is no dramatic event, movement, or ritual at the center of the painting. Instead, a few figures are scattered through the interior of Hagia Sophia among architectural surfaces wrapped in morning light. These figures are not the focal point of the painting; they are elements of silence integrated into the spirit of the space. Şevket Dağ presents Hagia Sophia not as the stage for an event but as the bearer of a continuously existing inner spirituality.
In this painting, Hagia Sophia is not a site of recollection but a lived field of silence. It is an architectural narrative in which the layers of yesterday and today remain intertwined. This narrative is neither objective like historical writing nor nostalgic like Romantic longing. Instead, it is constructed on an aesthetic plane in which light merges with stone and prayer meets architecture.
The Construction of the Composition – Column, Light, and Layered Depth
Although Morning Call to Prayer in Hagia Sophia follows the principles of classical perspective, the layered visual depth created through Şevket Dağ’s accomplished spatial language transforms the two-dimensional surface into a plane where time and space intersect. The massive columns dominating the vertical structure of the composition do not merely indicate architectural reality; they function like structural spines that organize the painting’s vertical order and place the figures along particular axes. The enormous columns in the foreground especially form a visual threshold between the viewer and the interior. This threshold produces the perception not of a scene observed from outside but of an atmosphere experienced from within.
The morning light filtering between the columns is the second constructive element of the composition. The light does not come from a direct source; rather, it spreads through the interior as an indirect brightness reflected from stone walls, domes, and windows. This light is not dramatic, but it is spiritual. It leaves soft shadows around the figures, defines the volume of the architecture, and simultaneously wraps it within an envelope of silence. Şevket Dağ’s use of light here does not merely make objects visible; it also creates a spiritual intensity in which time seems to begin gently dissolving with the arrival of morning.
The layered structure of the interior, formed by interlocking columns and arcades, constantly directs the gaze deeper into the space. The arches in the background, vaults illuminated by semi-transparent light, screened galleries, and wall surfaces divided by illumination all construct architecture as both material and symbolic depth. Hagia Sophia is not merely a structure; it becomes a narrative field in which time is experienced from within.
The positioning of the figures within these layers is equally deliberate. Several people worship or sit quietly in the early morning. Although the figures appear almost lost within the architecture, they actually form the internal axes that determine the rhythm of the painting. The vast interior spaces are scaled by the figures positioned between the columns, allowing the space to become at once monumental and accessible, sacred and human.
In this respect, Şevket Dağ’s composition clearly reveals both his deep respect for classical Turkish architecture and his identity as a painter who aesthetically reconstructs the space. Light, column, and figure together construct not only the physical architecture of the interior but also its mental and spiritual architecture.
Worship, Figure, and Silence – Spiritual Concentration in the Painting
In Şevket Dağ’s Morning Call to Prayer in Hagia Sophia, the figures are not the dramatic center of the composition; they appear instead as quiet elements harmonized with the internal rhythm of the space. They neither look toward the viewer nor call for action. In this sense, they do not establish a conventional “figurative narrative.” Instead, the figure here is not a subject but the bearer of prayer, the material of silence. Despite the vastness of the interior, no sound is heard; there is only an inner intensity created by the coexistence of light, stone, and worship.
A woman in the foreground sits alone inside a small wooden enclosure. With a white covering over her head and light-colored clothing, she appears so calm that she nearly disappears into the rest of the composition. This figure represents not an event but a moment. In the first light of morning, within the silence of Hagia Sophia, she may be waiting in prayer or contemplation after the call to prayer. Her silence spreads throughout the entire painting, and her posture draws the viewer into the same atmosphere of stillness.
Several more figures appear dispersed throughout the background and side areas: one crouches on the ground, another moves lightly while standing, and a few others occupy more distant layers of the architecture in silence. There is no communication among these figures. This absence is not disconnection but a state of inward attention. As in individual contemplation within a place of worship, each person turns inward, yet this inwardness produces a collective spatial experience. Thus, the silence of the figures becomes a visual language that articulates the spirituality of the architecture.
This inward intensity is deepened further by the relationship established with light. The light does not fall directly upon the figures, but it forms a halo of brightness around them. Especially along the walls in the background and beneath the vaults, morning light illuminates both the stone surfaces and the surrounding space of the figures. This is not merely physical; it becomes an implication of spiritual illumination. It is as though the light comes not to the architecture but to the silence surrounding the figures.
In Şevket Dağ’s painting, worship is represented not merely as a religious act but as a field of concentration in which the body joins with space, space with light, and light with silence. This mode of representation removes the figure from the position of narrative subject and transforms it into a bearer of the emotional atmosphere of the space. In this way, worship ceases to be merely the representation of ritual and becomes directly a pictorial state of tranquility and inward silence.
Şevket Dağ’s Perspective – Silent Aesthetics in a Historic Space
Architecture in Şevket Dağ’s art is never merely decoration. He is a painter who reveals historical layers across architectural surfaces, the age of stone through the play of light, and temporal atmospheres through the placement of figures. Morning Call to Prayer in Hagia Sophia is a powerful example of this approach. Here, architecture is not merely an aesthetic form but the bearer of cultural and spiritual content. The artist’s interest in Hagia Sophia derives not only from its aesthetic unity but also from its historical tensions between East and West, past and present, monumentality and everyday life.
Beginning his painting practice as a student of Osman Hamdi Bey, Şevket Dağ developed a balance between an Impressionist understanding of light and academic figurative discipline. In his paintings, colors are soft, transitions hazy, and light is not direct but fractured and dispersed. When working with historical buildings, this aesthetic choice creates a visual distance of respect. The interior of Hagia Sophia is represented through the same sensibility: while walls, columns, arches, and light are transferred to the pictorial plane, they carry not merely architecture but also temporal depth.
The artist’s perspective remains faithful to reality yet is constructed at a level the eye can comfortably follow. This viewpoint keeps the viewer inside the space rather than outside it. The enormous columns, upper galleries, and dome of Hagia Sophia do not overwhelm the viewer. Instead, they become part of a space that can be contemplated in tranquility. This reflects Şevket Dağ’s approach to the historical structure: Hagia Sophia is not a monument but a place marked by lived experience. His perspective is not dramatic; it is a form of looking that bears witness to silence.
There is no dramatic narrative in the artist’s placement of figures, reflecting his desire to reconstruct historical spaces within timelessness and everyday silence. The figures do not explain Hagia Sophia; they exist within it. They worship, sit, wait, or simply remain. Yet in these states, they do not produce narrative. Şevket Dağ thus establishes a visual language in which the silence of architecture and the silence of the figure merge.
This aesthetic language also carries, in the late 1920s, an effort to record traces of the past through an aesthetics of cultural memory while the Republic was constructing a new national imagination. A structure such as Hagia Sophia is simultaneously an imperial legacy, a religious space, and a site of cultural memory. Şevket Dağ approaches this multilayered structure not ideologically but through a form of representation grounded in silence.
Conclusion – Memory Passing Through Light and the Space of Representation
Şevket Dağ’s Morning Call to Prayer in Hagia Sophia does more than depict an interior; it also constructs the aesthetic framework of temporal and cultural memory. Here, Hagia Sophia ceases to be merely a historical structure and becomes a space that speaks through silence. The withdrawn presence of the figures, the magnificence of the architecture wrapped in silence, and the reflections of morning light moving across stone surfaces transform the painting from a visual narrative into an experience of time.
The building is both a bearer of aesthetic continuity between Islam and Byzantium and, within Şevket Dağ’s pictorial language, a platform that enables transitions between past and present, tradition and modernity, narrative and silence. The artist’s synthesis of Impressionism and classical figurative academicism reaches one of its most mature expressions here. Light does not strike directly; it seeps. The figures do not speak; they wait. The space becomes the silent bearer of all these elements.
The singular luminous moment immediately following the call to prayer in Hagia Sophia’s morning silence permeates every part of the painting. This light is not dramatic; it is a light painted through feeling. It suggests more than it displays; it spreads rather than shines. And the figures shaped within this light enter the painting not merely as bodies engaged in worship but as silent subjects witnessing time.
Şevket Dağ’s gaze does not construct a historical narrative, nor does it carry nostalgia for the past. His gaze is an effort to express cultural continuity through aesthetic silence. The state of worship of the figures, the stone structure of the space, the soft lines of light, and the stillness spread across the entire painting position him in Turkish art history not merely as a painter who depicted architecture but as an artist who represented space intellectually and spiritually.
In this sense, Morning Call to Prayer in Hagia Sophia is both a painting and a monument. It is a field of representation in which visual memory, cultural continuity, and spiritual tranquility meet on the same surface. And this representation is memory itself, filtering through light.
