Russia Medieval Arts Part 3

Five naves with as many apses, twelve supports (pillars instead of Constantinopolitan columns), two ambulatories, large U-shaped tribune, ‘stepped’ elevation, thirteen domes on tambour, contrasts of space and light and a western entrance area to two towers in fact give it characteristics of absolute novelty. The masonry technique, the niche decoration and the figurative program – which Lichačev (in Russland-Seele, Kultur, Geschichte, 1996, pp. 28-29) relates to Ilarione’s sermon – are mid-Byzantine, while the iconography is enriched in the space of altar with liturgical motifs and in the scalar towers with courtly and circus motifs.Already a little later the forms changed, due to a process of simplification and reduction: the new model building, the Cathedral of the laura of the Kiev Caves, dedicated to the Assumption (1073, destroyed during the Second World War) had only three naves, six pillars and five domes, or maybe even fewer. On the one hand, the laura delle Grotte was oriented towards the monasticism of Constantinople and Mount Athos, but on the other hand it was the cradle of Russian patriotism, particularly for the cult of national saints (Glĕb and Boris, v., Olga, Antonio, Feodosij), and sometimes even came into conflict with the Greek metropolitans. In the same way in which it had transmitted up to the beginning of the century. 13 ° its typikón at approx. seventy monasteries and had installed numerous bishops and abbots, so his katholikón inaugurated a new specifically Russian line in ecclesiastical architecture. The dedication to the Assumption (in the form of the Dormition of the Virgin, Uspenie Bogomateri), which intertwined the idea of ​​nation and state ideology, still played a role in the construction of the main cathedral (Uspensky; 1475-1479) of the Kremlin with the fall of Kievan Rus’ in the 9th century 12 °, numerous principalities arose with bishops’ seats which in turn became autonomous centers of artistic production. While in the field of painting the workshops active in these centers continued to incorporate the contemporary Byzantine styles, as far as ecclesiastical architecture is concerned they broke away from it. For example, the rulers of Rus’ Vladimir-Suzdal ‘, fighting against Kiev for power in Russia, came to entrust their works to Galician masters who worked in the Romanesque style and who introduced the sack-walled masonry with double facing in stone blocks, with arched portals and columns and reliefs on the facade.The figurative program of reliefs in the church of the Intercession of the Virgin on the Nerl (1163), near Vladimir, and in the cathedral of St. Demetrius in the same city (1194-1197) derives from the message of royalty associated with the King David and the Book of Psalms (Geschichte der russischen Kunst, 1957-1959, I, p. 257ff.); elsewhere – in particular in the Cathedral of St. George by Jurjev Polski (1230-1234) – reference is made to the cult of regional saints, to the symbolism of the tree of life and the Physiologus, as well as to motifs taken from folklore. Particular forms also spread through Galicia and Volhynia, such as splayings, polystyle pillars, friezes, capitals and gargoyles, often carved in limestone, in Černihiv (v.), Smolensk and Polock, while, through Poland and Scandinavia, the same forms reached Novgorod. Especially in architectural ornamentation, influences from Crimea, the Caucasus and Asia Minor are regularly found in all regions. . Since the century 19 ° Russian historians have tried to establish a classification of the range of attested variants, distinguishing types with twelve, eight, six and four pillars, but sometimes losing sight of the real articulation of space, for example. the merging of the pillars with parts of the wall and the insertion of the tribune. The five-nave and twelve-pillar typology must be limited to the St. Sophia Cathedral in Kiev and the buildings inspired by it. The dedication of the church refers to the model of the Constantinopolitan Saint Sophia and its meaning as a ‘state’ cathedral, intended for the sovereign, the patriarch, the residents of the capital and the entire region. The church of the monastery of St. George and that of the monastery of St. Irene, also in Kiev, erected a little later on commission from Jaroslav and his wife, as well as the cathedrals of St. Sophia in Polock (1044-1046) and in Novgorod (1045-1066), document, as replicas of the great church of Kiev, the desire to equalize its prestige.

According to topschoolsintheusa.com, the functions of a state and metropolitan cathedral are also suited to other architectural types, such as, for example, the one with three naves with eight or six pillars with numerous domes (Desjatinnaja of Kiev, 989-986; Transfiguration of Christ in Chernihiv, 1033-1041; Assumption Cathedral in Vladimir, 1158 / 1160-1185 / 1189; Assumption Cathedral in the Moscow Kremlin, 1475-1479). The six-pillar typology has five, three or one-domed variants in some court or bishopric churches (St. Nicholas in Novgorod, 1113-1136; Assumption Cathedral in Vladimir-Volynskij, ca. 1160; church of S. Michael the Archangel in Smolensk, 1191-1194; Nativity of the Virgin in Suzdal ‘, 1222-1225), in the cenobitic monasteries and in the court monasteries with the function of katholikón (cathedral in the laura of the Kiev Caves; Church of the Savior in the Berestovo Monastery, Kiev, 1113-1125; Cathedral of the Birth of the Virgin in the monastery of St. Anthony in Novgorod, 1117-1119; St. George’s Cathedral in the monastery of the same name in Novgorod, 1119; Cathedral of the Savior and St. Eufrosina in the monastery of the same name in Polock, 1150; Cathedral of the Assumption in the Olive Tree Monastery in Černihiv, mid-century. 12 °; St. John’s Cathedral in the monastery of the same name in Pskov, 1240).With the progressive disintegration of the Russian state, both in the princely courts and in the monasteries, the typology of the domed church on four pillars was established, increasingly used with parochial, baptismal, and also as a private church (Cathedral of the Transfiguration in Pskov, 1156; church of the Annunciation near Arkaz, in Novgorod, 1179; church of St. George in Staraja Ladoga, sec. 12 °; church of the Intercession of the Virgin on the Nerl, near Vladimir; St. Demetrius Cathedral in Vladimir; church of St. George in Jurjev Polskij; Cathedral of the Assumption in Zvenigorod, ca. 1405; Trinity Cathedral and St. Sergius in the monastery of the same name in Zagorsk, 1422-1423; Cathedral of the Savior in the monastery of St. Andronicus in Moscow, 1422-1423).In addition to the state cathedrals and the bishop’s churches, the main churches of a city and a monastery, even when they were not episcopal churches and were relatively modest in size: the size of a parish was already sufficient to deserve this definition. For simple parish churches, suffragan churches and private chapels used the definition of cerkov or chram instead. In the free city of Novgorod, after the insurrection against Kiev, other clients came into play, namely the merchant and craft guilds, the autonomous city administrations and the parish communities: the last court church of the princes, that of the Savior on the Neredica (1198), domed on four pillars, it was defined only cerkov, precisely by virtue of the civic-bourgeois awareness that the citizens of Novgorod had of themselves. so-called two-support scheme, in which the eastern pillars of the central dome are not free in space, but are fused with the internal edges of the apses. A separate western narthex was frequently given up, or it was replaced by a small three-sided entrance hall (Cathedral of the Nativity of the Virgin in Suzdal ‘; Paraskeva-Pyatnica church in Novgorod, early 13th century) and particular attention it was lent to the roof area. Two specifically Russian variants are repeated in both the six-pillar and four-pillar typology: one conceives the architectural body as a square or cube and ends it with a ‘wave’ roof above semicircular gables, the whose profile follows that of the barrel vaults, but which are also inserted with a decorative function on parts of the side walls (Cathedral of Sts. Boris and Glěb in Černihiv, 1120-1123; Cathedral of the Transfiguration of Christ in Pereslvl Zaleskij, 1152-1157). L’ another variant extends the architectural body upwards (tower type) and ends with a three-lobed roof. The semicircular tympanums that coincide with the barrel vaults of the arms of the cross are flanked by quarter circles, the ridge of which is at the height of the imposing line of the tympanums, while the corner rooms are covered by half barrel vaults. A separate plinth is inserted between the dome drum and the supporting arches (Cathedral of the Savior and St. Euphrosina in Polock; Church of St. Michael the Archangel Svirskaja in Smolensk; Paraskeva-Pyatnica Church in Černihiv). In early Muscovite ecclesiastical architecture, the use of a pyramid made up of gables with a keeled arch and blind gables emerging from the plinth and drum of the dome spread out (cathedral of Assumed in Zvenigorod, ca. 1405). In Novgorod, in the second half of the century. 14 °, the three-lobed roof is replaced by the sloping roof above barrel vaults (church of the Transfiguration, 1374). 11 °, before the Tatar period a linear sense of forms dominated, with the prevalence of a tendency towards the addition of spaces. Despite the subordination to the dome at the intersection and the intersection in the cross vault, the spatial forms testify to a certain independence: the intersection, transept arms, apses and corner rooms have their own roofs, usually vaulted., often with wall functions; similarly, covered space cells sometimes line up next to each other another along the perimeter of the building.

Russia Medieval Arts 3

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