Зодчество Древней Руси

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Wood was then so widely used as a raw material that without it both household utensils and the artistic life of Russia would have been almost unthinkable. Wooden architecture went through an extensive process of development, and it also influenced the style of construction in stone. Although time has not spared many beautiful wooden buildings, we can still trace the basic stages in its evolution. Not only churches have survived to this day, but also peasant houses, mills, bridges and barns, which astonish us by the skill and intricacy of the methods employed in their construction. Among the earliest religious buildings in wood are the square frame churches whose style obviously goes back to the pre Christian era. They are based on a square frame and covered with a very simple steep, pointed roof. These buildings are very similar to the ordinary peasant huts. The oldest of them are: the tiny 14th-century Church of St. Lazarus of Murom, trans ferred from the Murom Monastery to Kizhi; the I 5th-century Cathedral of the Assumption from the village of Borodava; which now stands just outside the walls of the Belozersk Monastery of St. Kirill; and finally the huge Church of the Saviour, standing on raised piles, now transferred to the Kostroma Monastery of St. lpaty. No less interesting are the remaining examples of tent archi tecture, so called because the roof is built in the shape of a tent. They are represented in this book by illustrations of compara tively late buildings, the Church of the Assumption from the town of Kondopog and a cathedral of the same name from the town of Kem. Equally attractive are the churches with several tiers and with a number of cupolas. The collection of buildings on the island of Kizhi on Lake Onega is a supreme example of centuries of talented building by local craftsmen. Next to the Church of the Intercession with its nine-cupola towers the imposing Church of the Transfiguration, forming a pyramid at the top with its twenty three cupolas. This is the most imposing of the Russian wooden churches, and was built in the 18th century, just at the time when Russian architecture was entering a completely new phase. Kizhi and its collection of wooden architecture has become one of the most popular outdoor museums, and many fascinating specimens of wooden architecture have been transferred here. The growing interest in early Russian art is closely connected with the discoveries made by Soviet scholars. Hundreds of build ings constructed in wood, brick or stone, by local craftsmen seem to have been brought back to life. Experts have now explained many aspects of the art which were previously obscure, and defined the various different characteristics of the schools of art and architecture which through the centuries have enriched Russian culture with their individual contributions. Many of the artistic and technical methods of the master-craftsmen working within these schools have now ceased to be a subject of speculation. The architectural principles which preoccupied many generations of Russians have become much clearer to us.

THE NORTH-WEST OF EUROPEAN RUSSIA, WHICH includes the Arkhangelsk and Vologda regions and the Karelian Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic, forms a huge natural park in which great cultural treasures are preserved. In the past these areas were isolated from the main stream of economic development, and therefore, preserved their own way of life and cultural traditions longer. In addition to such towns as Kargopol, Belozersk and Sol vychegodsk. the monasteries also exerted a considerable cultural influence on Northern Russia from the 14th to 17th centuries. Their establishment involved a large amount of building, in which the greatest architects and painters often took part. Here icon painting flourished, many chronicles were written, and books were copied and illuminated. Many monasteries served as powerful fortresses which helped to strengthen Russia's defences against foreign invasion. The Belozersk Monastery of St. Kirill, founded in the 14th cen tury, is one of the largest and most valuable pieces of architecture. It is si tuat ed at a strategic point on the waterways linking Moscow with the North. In the 15th century a comprehensive network of defences and of religious and secular buildings was begun, planned so as to blend harmoniously with the surrounding countryside. The first monumental buildings were started in the 15th century under a Rostov builder, Prokhor. The nearby Ferapont Monastery was equally renowned as a religious and cultural centre. Its main buildings are very similar in character to those of the Belozersk Monastery of St. Kirill, and those of the early Moscow period. The monastery's I 5th-century Cathedral of the Nativity is renowned for its frescoes painted at the turn of the 15th century by the famous Moscow painter Dionysius. They are outstanding for their brilliant colours and the exuberant and triumphant spirit in which they are executed. In the second half of the 16th century, the Solovetski Monastery, built on the Solovetski Islands in the White Sea, gained consider ably in importance due to the opening-up of the trade route to this sea. Here in the 16th-century ramshackle wooden dwellings in the Far North of the country were replaced by an impregnable fortress built out of enormous boulders by the skilled master Trifon; its walls guarded a vast ensemble of monastery buildings. It was in the North, with its magnificent tradition of building in wood and its immense forests, that wooden architecture sur vived and continued to develop longer than in any other area. More examples of wooden architecture have survived here than in any part of Russia.

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