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The Development of Medieval Church Architecture in the Vologda Region of the Russian North

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 April 2016

William Craft Brumfield
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Extract

‘North’ in Russia is a broad concept. For the purposes of this article, the term will refer to the Vologda region, an area north-east of Moscow with a cultural and historical coherence created by geography and its strategic position as Muscovy’s gateway to the north and east. Inhabited by Finnic tribes before the arrival of the first Slavic explorers and traders, it served as a retreat and place of spiritual solace for the avatars of Muscovite monasticism during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. At the same time the wealth of the region’s forests and lakes, as well as its position astride trading routes north to the White Sea, west to the Baltic and east to Siberia, led to the creation of towns that supported developments in the arts and architecture.

Type
Research Article
Information
Architectural History , Volume 40 , 1997 , pp. 64 - 80
Copyright
Copyright © Society of Architectural Historians of Great Britain 1997

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References

Notes

1 For a discussion of the seventeenth-century churches of Yaroslavl, see Brumfield, William C., ‘Photographic Documentation of Seventeenth-Century Architectural Monuments in Yaroslavl’, Visual Resources, 11 (1995), 2:135-65CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

2 Biographical information on St Kirill and other monastic leaders of the Belozersk region mentioned in this text is contained in Prepodobnyi Kirill, Ferapont i Martinian Belozerskie (St Petersburg: ‘Glagol’, 1993), pp. 4-167.

3 The primary church of Russian monasteries usually carries the same dedication as the monastery itself. Furthermore, this church is designated as sobor, which is commonly translated into English as ‘cathedral’, although such usage does not always correspond to the western understanding of the term as the seat of a bishopric. In Russian, sobor can refer to a bishop’s church (in which case it is sometimes formally referred to as kafedral’nyi sobor), but in the monastic context this would not apply. One recent translation of a contemporary Russian study of medieval church architecture uses the term katholikon as a translation of sobor when referring to the main church of a Russian monastery. See Rappoport, Pavel A., Building the Churches of Kievan Russia (Aldershot, 1995), p. 53 Google Scholar. This usage, however, only replaces one foreign term with another, and I have retained the single translation of sobor as ‘cathedral’ in order to distinguish the main monastery church.

4 On Italian influence in late fifteenth- and early sixteenth-century Muscovite architecture, see Brumfield, William Craft, A History of Russian Architecture (Cambridge, 1993), pp. 92–106 Google Scholar.

5 Ibid., pp. 85-86.

6 In addition to modifications to the upper part of the structure, two smaller churches were attached to the north and east walls of the cathedral in the sixteenth century. For a sketch of Sergei Podiapolskii’s reconstruction of the original appearance of the Dormition Cathedral, see Kochetkov, I. A., Lelekova, O. V., Pod’iapol’skii, S. S., Kirillo-Belozerskii monastyr’ (Leningrad: ‘Khudozhnik RSFSR’, 1979), p. 40 Google Scholar. Pod’iapol’skii’s model for the reconstruction is contained in Kochetkov, I. A., Lelekova, O. V., Pod’iapol’skii, S. S., Kirillo-Belozerskii i Ferapontov monastyri: arkhitekturnye pamiatniki (Moscow: ‘Teza’, 1994)Google Scholar, unnumbered plate. A more general discussion of the architecture and art of the Dormition Cathedral is Bocharov, G. and Vygolov, V., Vologda. Kirillov. Ferapontovo. Belozersk (Moscow: ‘Iskusstvo’, 1979), pp. 202-29Google Scholar.

7 The first known masonry structure in the north was the Cathedral of the Transfiguration of the Saviour at Spaso-Kamennyi Monastery, located on a small island in Kubenskoe Lake. Built of brick in 1478-81, the church was barbarously destroyed during the Soviet period. An analysis of its structures is contained in Pod’iapol’skii, S. S., ‘Arkhitekturnye pamiatniki Spaso-Kamennogo monastyria (XV–XVI vv.)’, Drevnerusskoe iskusstvo. Khudozhestvennaia kil’tura Moskvy iprilezhashchikh k nei kniazhestv. XIV–XVI vv. (Moscow: ‘Nauka’, 1970), pp. 437-57Google Scholar. See also Bocharov and Vygolov, Vologda. Kirillov. Ferapontovo. Belozersk, pp. 151-58.

8 St Ferapont (Therapontos) was born Fedor Poskochin, another of Moscow’s prominent noble families. The most extensive published history of the Ferapontov Monastery as a religious institution is Brilliantov, Ivan, Ferapontov Belozerskii Monastyr’ (St Petersburg: Tip. A. P. Lopukhina, 1899)Google Scholar, reprinted with an afterword by Gerold Vzdornov (Moscow: Progress, 1994).

9 A survey of the architectural monuments of the Mozhaisk-Luzhetskii Monastery (whose cathedral, like that of the earlier Ferapontov Monastery, was dedicated to the Nativity of Virgin) is contained in Pod’iapol’skaia, E. N. (ed.), Pamiatniki arkhitektury Moskovskoi oblasti (Moscow: ‘Iskusstvo’, 1975), vol. 2, pp. 11–14 Google Scholar.

10 For examples of fifteenth-century Pskov church architecture and decorative brickwork, see Brumfield, History, pp. 74-79.

11 There are two detailed accounts of the construction and subsequent modification to the early monuments at the Ferapontov Monastery: Sarab’ianov, V. D., ‘Istorila arkhitekturnykh i khudozhestvennykh pamiatnikov Ferapontova monastyria’, Ferapontovskii sbornik: Vypusk vtoroii (Moscow: VNIIR, 1988), pp. 9–98 Google Scholar; and Serebriakova, M. S., ‘Pamiatniki arkhitektury Ferapontova monastyria po arkhivnym dokumentam XVII-XX vekov’, Kirillov: Istoriko-kraevedcheskii al’manakh, 1 (1994), pp. 187–213 Google Scholar.

12 For an analysis of the frescos by Dionisii and their relation to the structure of the Nativity Cathedral, see Lazarev, V. N., Drevnerusskie mozaiki i freski XI-XV vv. (Moscow: ‘Iskusstvo’, 1973), pp. 76–79 Google Scholar, with pls 431-56; and Serebriakova, Marina (director of the Ferapontov museum), ‘Gimn Bogoroditse’, Pamiatniki otechestva, 30 (1993), 3–4:109-17Google Scholar.

13 A survey of twentieth-century efforts to preserve, and restore, the original frescos and iconostases of the earliest churches of the St Kirill and St Ferapont Monasteries (with primary emphasis on the Dormition Cathedral of the St Kirill Belozerskii Monastery) is contained in Lelekova, Pol’ga, ‘Prikosnovenie k podlinniku’, Pamiatniki otechestva, 30 (1993), 3–4:75-80Google Scholar.

14 An account of the complexities of shifting eparchal boundaries in the medieval north is presented in Kamkin, A. V., Pravoslavnaia tserkov’ na severe Rossii (Vologda: VGPI, 1992), pp. 93–100 Google Scholar.

15 The development of the refectory church — an institution peculiar to Russian monasticism — occurred in the sixteenth century and culminated in the seventeenth. See Vygolov, V. P., Arkhhektury Moskovskoi Rusi serediny XV veka (Moscow: ‘Nauka’, 1988), pp. 122-24Google Scholar; and Brumfield, History, pp. 131-32. On the type of early refectory church represented at the St Kirill (Dormition) Monastery, see Kochetkov et al., Kirillo-BelozerskU i Ferapontov monastyri, pp. 24-26.

16 So important was the matter of direct male succession to the stability of the throne, that the couple visited a number of monasteries, most of which benefited from donations for the construction of votive churches, particularly after the birth of a son, Ivan IV, in 1530.

17 A sketch of Pod’iapol’skii’s reconstruction of the original appearance of the Archangel Church is contained in Kochetkov et al., Kirillo-Belozerskii monastyr’, p. 41.

18 Further comments on the influence of the Italian (or friazhskii) style in the Archangel Church are contained in Kochetkov et al., Kirillo-Belozerskii i Ferapontov monastyri, pp. 26-27.

19 Concerning attributions to Grigorii Borisov, see Pod’iapol’skii, Arkhitekturnye pamiatniki Spaso-Kamennogo monastyria’, pp. 450-56; and Kochetkov et al., Kirillo-Belozerskii i Ferapontov monastyri, pp. 27-28.

20 Material on the dates and construction history of the Annunciation Church at Ferapontov Monastery is contained in Serebriakova, ‘Pamiatniki arkhitektury Ferapontova monastyria’, p. 194; and Sarab’ianov, V. D., ‘Istorila arkhitekturnykh i khudozhestvennykh pamiatnikov Ferapontova monastyria’, Ferapontovskii sbomik: Vypusk tretii (Moscow: VNIIR, 1991), pp. 37–39 Google Scholar. Sarab”ianov shares Pod’iapol’skii’s probable attribution of this structure to Grigorii Borisov. See Pod’iapol’skii, ‘Arkhitekturnye pamiatniki Spaso-Kamennogo monastyria’, pp. 450-56.

21 On the relation between the structure of the Annunciation Church and the development of sixteenth-century tower churches, see Sarab’ianov, , ‘Istoriia’ (1991), pp. 41–42 Google Scholar. For examples of the latter, see Brumfield, History, pp. 114-33.

22 On the Spas-Prilutskii Monastery, see Bocharov and Vygolov, Vologda. Kirillov. Ferapontovo. Belozersk, pp. 127-51; and Vzdornov, Gerol’d, Vologda (Leningrad: ‘Avrora’, 1978), pp. 110-20Google Scholar. The second part of its name derives from the monastery’s location near a bend (luka) in the Vologda River.

23 An analysis of the history and architecture of the Vologda St Sophia Cathedral is contained in Bocharov and Vygolov, Vologda. Kirillov. Ferapontovo. Belozersk, pp. 26-38; and Lukomskii, G. K., Vologda v ee starine (St Petersburg: Sirius, 1914), pp. 59–72 Google Scholar.

24 On the construction dates of the Annunciation Cathedral, see Bocharov, G. and V. Vygolov, , Sol’vychegodsk. Velikii Ustiug. Tot’ma (Moscow: ‘Iskusstvo’, 1983), pp. 24–27 Google Scholar.