Visualizing Russia: Fedor Solntsev and Crafting a National Past (Russian History and Culture)

Visualizing Russia

Russian History and Culture VOLUME 4

Portrait of Fedor G. Solntsev (1801–1892), the central figure in Visualizing Russia. Courtesy of Irina Bogatskaia.

Visualizing Russia Fedor Solntsev and Crafting a National Past

Edited by

Cynthia Hyla Whittaker

LEIDEN • BOSTON 2010

On the cover: The Diamond Crown of Peter I. Worn by Peter when he reigned as co-tsar with his half-brother Ivan. As reproduced in F. G. Solntsev, Drevnosti Rossiiskago gosudarstva (Antiquities of the Russian State), Moscow, 1849–1853. This book is printed on acid-free paper. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Visualizing Russia : Fedor Solntsev and crafting a national past / edited by Cynthia Hyla Whittaker. p. cm. — (Russian history and culture ; v. 4) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-90-04-18343-8 (hardback : alk. paper) 1. Solntsev, F. G. (Fedor Grigor’evich), 1801–1892—Criticism and interpretation. 2. Nationalism and art— Russia. I. Solntsev, F. G. (Fedor Grigor’evich), 1801–1892. II. Whittaker, Cynthia H., 1941– III. Title. IV. Series. N6999.S6244V57 2010 709.2—dc22 2010011441

ISSN 1877-7791 ISBN 978 90 04 18343 8 Copyright 2010 by Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, The Netherlands. Koninklijke Brill NV incorporates the imprints Brill, Hotei Publishing, IDC Publishers, Martinus Nijhoff Publishers and VSP. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, translated, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior written permission from the publisher. Brill has made all reasonable efforts to trace all right holders to any copyrighted material used in this work. In cases where these efforts have not been successful the publisher welcomes communications from copyright holders, so that the appropriate acknowledgements can be made in future editions, and to settle other permission matters. Authorization to photocopy items for internal or personal use is granted by Koninklijke Brill NV provided that the appropriate fees are paid directly to The Copyright Clearance Center, 222 Rosewood Drive, Suite 910, Danvers, MA 01923, USA. Fees are subject to change. printed in the netherlands

To the Memory of the Slavic and Baltic Division of The New York Public Library (1898–2008), a lost glory of the city and the scholarly world

CONTENTS Acknowledgements ............................................................................. ix List of Illustrations ............................................................................. xi Romanov Rulers of Russia ................................................................ xv Contributors ........................................................................................ xvii Preface The Need to Craft a National Past ................................. xxi Marc Raeff Introduction Fedor Solntsev and Crafting the Image of a Russian National Past: The Context ............................................ Wendy Salmond and Cynthia Hyla Whittaker

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Chapter One Solntsev, Olenin, and the Development of a Russian National Aesthetic ........................................................... Richard Wortman

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Chapter Two A Revolution in Russian Design: Solntsev and the Decorative Arts ........................................................................ Anne Odom

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Chapter Three Solntsev’s Role in Preserving the Treasures of the Moscow Kremlin ................................................................ Irina Bogatskaia

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Chapter Four Solntsev and the Reform of Icon Painting ........ Marina Evtushenko Chapter Five In Solntsev’s Footsteps: Adrian Prakhov and the Representation of Kievan Rus’ ..................................................... Olenka Pevny

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Chapter Six The Material World of Kievan Rus’ as Depicted in the Historical Novels of the Nicholaevan Era ...................... 109 Irina Reyfman

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Chapter Seven Russian Ethnography and the Visual Arts in the 1840s and 1850s ....................................................................... 127 Nathaniel Knight Chapter Eight Viollet-le-Duc and Solntsev: Publishing Patrimony in France and Russia ................................................. 145 Lauren M. O’Connell Chapter Nine Echoes of Solntsev: Pugin and the Gothic Revival in England ......................................................................... 165 J. Robert Wright Select Bibliography ............................................................................. 175 Index of Subjects ................................................................................. 177

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS All of the authors in this volume owe a great debt to Edward Kasinec, who served as curator of the Slavic and Baltic Division of the New York Public Library from 1984 to its closing in 2008, and to his second-in-command, Robert H. Davis, Jr. We all looked on in awe as they brought new spirit to the division with their conviviality and energy and their constant projects, grants, exhibitions, publications, and symposia. We all gladly contributed our time to these worthwhile endeavors, recognizing that they once again made The New York Public Library a bustling center of Slavic scholarship. We regret the sudden abolishment of the division just at the time when it seemed to be thriving as it never had in its existence of over a century of serving the public. As a case in point, this book would not have been conceived without the seminal efforts of Kasinec and Davis. It was they who organized a National Endowment for Humanities Summer Instiute on visual arts in Russia and then conceived the idea of having an exhibition on Fedor Solntsev. With Wendy Salmond as curator, “Russia Imagined, 1825–1925: The Art and Impact of Fedor Solntsev” opened at The New York Public Library in the spring of 2007. At the same time, Kasinec and Davis convoked a group of scholars for a two-day symposium to assess the artist’s wide but unheralded influence. The event received funding from the Trust for Mutual Understanding and the Harriman Institute of Columbia University, then under the spirited direction of Catherine Nepomnyashchy. The essays in Visualizing Russia were first delivered at that conference in March of 2007. While the whole staff of the former Slavic and Baltic Division assisted us immeasurably in creating this book, Hee-Gwone Yoo must be singled out for his Herculean efforts in helping us choose and then photographing, digitalizing, organizing, and annotating the illustrations. The editor expresses appreciation to the Schoff Fund at the University Seminars at Columbia University for their help in publication. Material in this work was presented to the University Seminar: Slavic History and Culture. The Weissman School of Liberal Arts and Sciences of Baruch College/CUNY should also be thanked for its grant to defray the costs of including illustrations. Most of all, we would like to express our appreciation to The New York Public Library for granting us the rights gratis for the illustrations.

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS Except where noted, all illustrations are courtesy of The New York Public Library, Astor, Lenox, and Tilden Foundation, 2009 Frontispiece Portrait of Fedor G. Solntsev (Courtesy of Irina Bogatskaia) Preface The Diamond Crown of Peter I ...................................................... xxiv An Illustration from Karamzin’s History of the Russian State ................................................................................................. xxvi Introduction Cathedral of St. Sofiia in Kiev ......................................................... Chalice ................................................................................................. Title Page of Antiquities ................................................................... Image from Ballets Russes ...............................................................

8 9 12 14

Chapter One A View of the New Kremlin Palace Built in the Tou or Russian Byzantine Style ................................................................ Meeting of Kievan Prince Sviatoslav with the Byzantine Emperor John Tzimisces .............................................................. Window Frame from the Terem Palace ........................................ The Crown or Cap of Monomakh .................................................. The Scepter of Tsar Mikhail Fedorovich, the First Romanov .... The alleged Helmet of Prince Aleksandr Nevskii ........................ The Breast Plate of Tsar Aleksei Mikhailovich ............................. Gospel Cover ...................................................................................... Ceremonial Garb of Tsars ................................................................ Peasant Holiday Costumes ...............................................................

20 27 29 32 33 35 35 36 37 38

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Gold Plate Decorated with Enamel ................................................ Menu for the Coronation Banquet of Alexander III ................... Porcelain Tureen from the Konstantin Service (Private Collection) ...................................................................................... Faience Plate Made for the Iusupov Family (Hillwood Museum) ......................................................................................... Four Objects Exhibited by Ignatii Sazikov at the Great Exhibition of the Works of Industry of All Nations (Hillwood Museum) ..................................................................... Tankard of “Eastern Origin” ...........................................................

44 46 48 49

52 56

Chapter Three Helmet of Prince Iaroslav Vsevolodovich (Irina Bogatskaia) .... Items from the Hoard of Riazan (Irina Bogatskaia) ................... Icon of Our Lady of Vladimir ......................................................... Miter of Patriarch Nikon (Irina Bogatskaia) ................................ Panagiia of Metropolitan Ioasaf I ................................................... Anointment Vessel ............................................................................

64 65 67 71 71 72

Chapter Four Icon of Our Lady of the Sign .......................................................... Exterior View of St. Mark’s in Venice ...........................................

77 83

Chapter Five (All photographs in this chapter are courtesy of Olenka Pevny) West façade of the Church of St. Cyril of Alexandria ................ West façade of the Cathedral of St. Vladimir ............................... Rus’ and Russian Prelates Before a Russian Cathedral ............... Orthodox Prelates Before a Byzantine Church ........................... St. Vladimir, Church of St. Cyril .................................................... Pentecost ............................................................................................. Sts. Cyril and Athanasios of Alexandria Conversing with a Ruler .............................................................................................

87 88 95 96 101 105 107

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Chapter Six Torzhok woman at the ball .............................................................. Attire of Russian Noblemen ............................................................ Woman of New Torzhok ................................................................. Women of Torzhok in Finery ......................................................... A Maiden of Torzhok in her best Summer Attire and Headdress ....................................................................................... Attire of a Prince and Princess .......................................................

112 114 115 119 123 125

Chapter Seven A Rich Kirgiz Girl ............................................................................. Villagers of Voronezh Province ...................................................... Mongolian Woman ........................................................................... Interior of a Cabin of Tlingit Indians ............................................ A Family of the Russian Empire .....................................................

128 129 134 136 143

Chapter Eight Images of Royalty (Cornell University Library) ........................... A Different View of the Panagiia of Metropolitan Ioasaf I ....... Arquebuses .......................................................................................... The Workings of a Church Pier and Knee Pads .......................... Details of Tsar Aleksei Mikhailovich’s Throne .............................

150 157 158 160 162

Chapter Nine (All illustrations in this chapter are courtesy of Robert Wright) Contrasted Chapels ........................................................................... Contrasted Residences for the Poor ............................................... Contrasted Altar Screens .................................................................. Contrasted Royal Chapels ................................................................ Contrasted Sepulchral Monuments ................................................ Contrasted Parochial Churches ....................................................... Contrasted College Gateways ..........................................................

170 171 172 172 173 173 174

ROMANOV RULERS OF RUSSIA Muscovite Russia (Muscovy) Mikhail Fedorovich (1613–1645) Aleksei Mikhailovich (1645–1676) Fedor Alekseevich (1676–1682) Ivan Alekseevich (co-ruled with Peter, 1682–1696) Russian Empire Peter I the Great (1682–1725) Catherine I (1725–1727) Peter II (1727–1730) Anna Ioannovna (1730–1740) Ivan VI (1740–1741) Elizabeth I (1741–1761) Peter III (1761–1762) Catherine II (1762–1796) Paul I (1796–1801) Alexander I (1801–1825) Nicholas I (1825–1855) Alexander II (1855–1881) Alexander III (1881–1894) Nicholas II (1894–1917)

CONTRIBUTORS Irina A. Bogatskaia is Senior Research Assistant and Curator of the Graphics Division in the Department of Manuscript, Print, and Graphics Collections of the Moscow Kremlin State Museum of History and Culture. She is the author of numerous scholarly publications and catalogues. An authority on the work of Fedor Solntsev, she has written the first of a multi-volume scholarly catalogue, Rossiiskie drevnosti v proizvedeniiakh grafiki pervoi poloviny XIX veka, which is now in press. Marina M. Evtushenko is Junior Research Assistant in the Department of the History of Russian Culture at the State Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg. Her research focuses particularly on Solntsev’s leading role in the state-sponsored reform of icon painting in the midnineteenth century, as both a teacher in the St. Petersburg Orthodox Academy and as the artist overseeing the production of iconostases for the restored Orthodox churches of the Russian Empire’s western provinces. Nathaniel Knight is an Associate Professor of History at Seton Hall University and the chair of its history department. He has published a number of articles on the history of Russian ethnography, Russian Orientalism, nationality, and other issues related to the intellectual and cultural history of nineteenth-century Russia. Lauren O’Connell is Associate Professor of Art History at Ithaca College. Her research centers on architectural encounters between France and Russia in the nineteenth century. Her studies of the architectural impact of the French Revolution and the work of architect and theorist Viollet-le-Duc have appeared in, among others, The Art Bulletin, The Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians, and The History of Photography. Anne Odom is Curator Emerita at Hillwood Museum & Gardens. She has lectured and written extensively on Russian enamel and silver production, Fabergé, and Russian porcelain. She is most recently the

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editor with Wendy Salmond of Treasures into Tractors: The Selling of Russia’s Cultural Heritage 1918–1937 (2009). Olenka Z. Pevny is Assistant Professor of Early Christian, Byzantine and Medieval Art at the University of Richmond in Virginia. She has excavated in Khersones and is involved with the safeguarding and preservation of archaeological and medieval ecclesiastical sites in Ukraine. Her published articles analyze Russian Imperial and Soviet attitudes toward medieval monuments, the role of women as patrons of Rus’ monuments, and the cultural exchange between twelfth-century Constantinople and Kyiv. Currently she is completing a book entitled Byzantine Imagery in Medieval Kyiv: The Church of St. Cyril of Alexandria and Modern Identity Politics. Marc Raeff (1923–2008) was Boris Bakhmeteff Professor of Russian Studies Emeritus, Columbia University. He was an internationally known specialist on the cultural and administrative history of the Russian Empire in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Besides hundreds of articles, his works included Origins of the Russian Intelligentsia: The Eighteenth-century Nobility (1966), Comprendre l’ancien régime russe: Etat et société en russie impériale (1982), The WellOrdered Police State: Social and Institutional Change through Law in the Germanies and Russia, 1600–1800 (1983), and Russia Abroad: A Cultural History of the Russian Emigration, 1919–1939 (1990). Irina Reyfman is Professor of Russian Language and Literature at Columbia University. She is the author of Vasilii Trediakovsky: The Fool of the “New” Russian Literature (1991) and Ritualized Violence Russian Style: The Duel in Russian Culture and Literature (1999; 2002). Her current project proposes to examine how obligatory state service and the rigid system of ranks introduced by Peter I impacted the way Russian writers of the eighteenth and the first half of the nineteenth century viewed themselves as producers of literature. Most recently, she co-edited a Festschrift for Marina Ledkovsky, Mapping the Feminine: Russian Women and Cultural Difference (2008). Wendy Salmond is Professor of Art History at Chapman University in California. Her research explores the ways in which Russian artists and cultural traditions assimilated or confronted a broad range of ideas

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from Western Europe in the Imperial and early Soviet period. She is author of Arts and Crafts in Late Imperial Russia (1996) and Tradition in Transition: Russian Icons in the Age of the Romanovs (2004). She was guest curator in 2007 of the exhibition “Russia Imagined: The Art and Impact of Fedor Solntsev” at The New York Public Library. Cynthia Hyla Whittaker is Professor of History at Baruch College and the Graduate Center of the City University of New York; she also serves as chair of Baruch’s history department. She is the author of many articles and five books on imperial Russian political culture, most recently of Russian Monarchy: Eighteenth-century Rulers and Writers in Political Dialogue (2003). She was co-curator of the exhibition “Russia Engages the World, 1453–1825” at The New York Public Library in 2003 and editor of the book that accompanied the exhibition, published by Harvard University Press. Richard Wortman is Bryce Professor of History Emeritus, Columbia University. An internationally recognized specialist on pre-revolutionary Russia, he has taught and written on cultural history for more than forty years. His books include The Crisis of Russian Populism (1967) and The Development of a Russian Legal Consciousness (1976). His last scholarly project, the multivolume Scenarios of Power: Myth and Ceremony in Russian Monarchy (I, 1995; II, 2000), deals with the imperial government’s use of political symbols. J. Robert Wright is St. Mark’s Professor of Ecclesiastical History in New York’s General Theological Seminary, as well as President of the Anglican Society and a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society. He has published many books and articles on the history of the early church, on the Middle Ages in England, and on modern-day ecumenical movements.

PREFACE

THE NEED TO CRAFT A NATIONAL PAST Marc Raeff (1923–2008) “But the past is past; why moralize upon it? Forget it. See, yon bright sun has forgotten it all, and the blue sea, and the blue sky; these have turned over new leaves.” “Because they have no memory,” he dejectedly replied; “because they are not human.” From Herman Melville’s novella of 1856, Benito Cereno

As Melville reminds his readers, memory is indeed the basic factor in being human. In a cultural context, human beings may be defined as storytelling animals who have the need to construct a meaningful narrative. The character and dynamics of these memories of the past thus constitute an essential element in the modern history of what has come to be known as the Western world. Since about the fifteenth century or the end of the medieval era, European history has been punctuated by a series of intellectual and cultural revolutions, that is, rather sharp breaks or changes of direction in the flow of development. Whatever their specific causes, whatever their specific circumstances, characteristics, or duration, these revolutions have one trait in common: the abandonment, even willful rejection, of one set of historical values and memories that permits the triumph of a new set. But since all societies require a sense of continuity to provide security and identity and to enable the “telling of a story” about themselves, they eventually have to go back in time prior to the immediate rejected past to connect with previous strands or trends. For instance, following the ravages of the Black Death, medieval culture and its coherent systems of value and tradition went into decline: religious, social, and political conflicts became more numerous and threatening, while intellectual innovations and the discoveries of new lands and scientific explanations produced widespread anxieties and disturbing spiritual experiences. Turning away from many of the elements that had defined and provided stability in the Middle Ages, the

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cultural elites of Western Europe revived classical models in literature, the arts, and philosophy. At the same time, religious quests and questionings resulted in the Protestant Reformation, whose leaders—beginning with the forerunners John Wyclif and Jan Huss and culminating in the founders Martin Luther, Ulrich Zwingli, and John Calvin— appealed for a return to the founding texts of the Scriptures and the original moments of Christianity as well as to a greater reliance on the critical understanding of the faithful. A similar set of concerns took possession in the realms of law and philosophy. The discriminating reevaluation of customs and practices led to a revival of allegedly traditional judicial and moral values found in the historical memory of particular nations and peoples. In combination, such trends also fostered curiosity for the remote past of a society or nation—which in turn stimulated a gathering of and referring to long-ignored documentation. As a result, the first modern national histories were written, introducing a new degree of sophistication and critical assessment to the field. This complex process first took place in various Italian cities, which witnessed an aesthetic and philosophic renaissance of classical models and the appearance of the historical writings of Niccolo Machiavelli and Francesco Giucciardini. Similarly, in France the founding of the Collège de France promoted humanistic and historical studies, including the jurisprudence of Jacques Cujas and the political theory of Jean Bodin. In England, disputations about the meaning of feudal law and the term constitution arose among Thomas More, John Leland, and Charles Pratt, Earl of Camden. In middle Europe, tensions erupted between a revived Roman law and the rediscovery of Germanic customs and traditions. Of course, the rediscovery and revival of historical memories, even when bolstered by various new forms of evidence, did not guarantee objectivity or accuracy. Memory is spotty and fallible. It is easy to elaborate, invent, and imagine supposedly accurate events; and probably, all memory implies a degree of invention and imagination since telling a good story makes questionable manipulation nearly unavoidable. Need we any more proof than the publishing success of popular history, historical fiction, biography, and film or television productions with historical content? Another great and violent break in continuity came—again after lengthy gestation—in the course of the eighteenth century and ended in the cataclysmic violence of the French Revolution. Modern scientific thought and discovery along with the social and philosophical values of the Enlightenment proved the major driving forces in

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bringing about this revolutionary shift in the cultural development of both Europe and America. Along with the destructive impact of these intellectual trends on the institutional framework of the Old Regime, these same trends paved the way to new approaches—methodological, epistemological, and historiosophical—in the study of the past and in the dissemination of its findings to society at large. Several examples immediately come to mind: Giambattista Vico’s New Science of socio-historical studies and systems; the methodological innovations in historical documentation of the Bollandists of Saint-Maur; the new conceptual and disciplinary contributions of Montesquieu, Adam Smith, Edward Gibbon, and Adam Ferguson; the archaeological discoveries at Pompei; and the aesthetic sensibilities of Johann Winckelmann and Gotthold Lessing. These innovations and discoveries found rapid dissemination through the agencies of the press, local and national academies, and societies for the study and promotion of local history, as well as through improvements in education and material resources. In addition, Masonic lodges, learned societies, scientific expeditions to unexplored lands and oceans—along with the publishing ventures they sponsored—enabled the ongoing intellectual and cultural ferment, which lasted through the revolutionary and Napoleonic wars, to anchor on firm ground the worldwide transformation brought about by capitalism and the industrial revolution in the course of the nineteenth century. It is little wonder that around 1800 distant memories—whether accurate or imaginary—reappeared to bolster the trust in material progress and in the new values and claims of modern nation states. This sea change in Western sensibility proved a powerful dynamic constituent of the broad cultural mode known as romanticism, with its specific marks of historicism, emotionality, and passionate aesthetic creativity. In this instance, distant memories came to include not only those of classical antiquity but also of the Middle Ages, which had been shunted aside for the previous three centuries. At the same time, the 1800s witnessed the birth of “places of memory” (lieux de mémoire) such as museums, monuments, and national and private archives, as well as those institutions dedicated to their preservation, study, and restoration. As in other respects, England was a pioneer of modernity with the founding of the Ashmolean Museum in 1713. Denis Diderot echoed the idea with his proposal to establish in France a central museum of arts and sciences, and in 1800 Dominique Vivant Denon created the Louvre to represent “le patrimoine universel,” while François Guizot took the lead in publishing histori-

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cal sources with his Society of French History in the 1820s. Alexandre Lenoir had founded a Museum of French Monuments that lasted from 1793 to 1818, but the cataloguing, restoration, and preservation of historic monuments (in the first place, medieval ones) was made permanent during the July Monarchy and Second Empire, with Prosper Mérimée and Eugène Viollet-le-Duc playing the major roles. The Germans forged ahead in the field of documentary research and publication with Baron von Stein’s establishing the Monuments of German History in 1818, and the art historian Georg Dehio, during the Second Reich, working to regularize the listing and protection of historic sites. The activities of these personalities and institutions generated heated debate and discussion in public, thereby widening the circles of those involved in the project of uncovering a national past. The hero of this book, Fedor Solntsev (1801–1892), was both contemporary to and inspired by these precursors and models. As a Russian, he was also heir to one of those sharp cultural breaks that stimulates the search for a national past. The Romanov dynasty—which ruled Russia from 1613 to 1917— experienced its first brutal cultural shock in the middle of the seven-

The Diamond Crown of Peter I. Worn by Peter when he reigned as co-tsar with his half-brother, Ivan. As printed in F. G. Solnstev, Drevnosti Rossiiskago gosudarstva (Antiquities of the Russian State), hereafter Antiquities (Moscow, 1849–1853).

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teenth century. Patriarch Nikon had introduced changes in the liturgy of the Russian Orthodox Church, and a significant part of the clergy and government elite, followed by about twenty to twenty-five percent of the commoners (principally peasants and lower urban classes), refused to accept the innovations. These dissenters, called Old Believers, retreated or were excluded from active participation in the life of the official church, thereby undermining its role as spiritual and moral leader. This schism, as it is usually if not quite accurately called, likewise undermined the cultural unity of Russian society on the eve of the drastic reorientation that Peter I would impose beginning roughly in 1700. The rift also facilitated the massive importation of new clergy trained in Ukraine and Belarus under strong Western intellectual influences and made it easier for Peter to carry out an institutional reorganization of the church, mainly along Protestant lines. Altogether these changes compounded the church’s sense of insecurity and cultural marginality, resulting in its stress on external ritual at the expense of spiritual creativity and leadership. The consequences were to appear clearly by the last decades of the eighteenth century. Shortly after the profound break produced by the Old Belief, Peter effectuated an even more powerful and longer lasting cultural revolution. The first emperor not only violently “opened a window to Europe”—to quote Aleksandr Pushkin—he reoriented Russia’s cultural development toward modernization or Europeanization. From this point on, Russia would take part in the historical evolution of Western civilization, in the beginning as a passive recipient and then at a growing pace as an actively creative participant. To what extent Peter’s initiatives were warranted or took root, and what they did to the national culture have been subjects of debate ever since. Russia’s subsequent accomplishments and contributions to Western civilization in every field indicates, I would think, the deliberate, successful, and all-embracing character of the Petrine revolution. At first the new orientation was imposed on the empire’s service elite, and state servants were forced to go to school in Europe, both figuratively and in many cases literally. The process of acculturation to new models took time, at least to the end of the century after Peter’s death. Unsurprisingly, but all too often quite forgotten, the first task was to modernize the language, to create a Russian vocabulary and style capable of incorporating new objects, new concepts, and new discussions—all drawn from abroad. Peter began by defining and translating foreign words in explanatory glossaries and equivalents in his legislation. In a second stage, Vasilii Trediakovskii and Mikhail

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Lomonosov provided the rules and models for an emergent modern literary language. Finally, at the turn of the century, the hotly discussed issue of whether to draw primarily on Slavonic root words or boldly innovate with foreign borrowings was settled with the triumph of the latter. Nikolai Karamzin and his circle successfully championed the “new style” in the decade-long debate with the litterateurs surrounding Admiral Aleksandr Shishkov. Pushkin’s genius sealed the victory. The debate on linguistics gave rise to an awareness of the differences existing between conditions in Russia and the West. The cultural leadership urged critical reflection on the underlying intellectual and moral values that were shaping this new Europeanized Russian identity. The process of self-discovery—what Hans Rogger has called the development of a “national consciousness”—naturally led to an examination of Russia’s historical path. The quest stimulated historical research based on textual criticism of the sources, especially of the earliest and formative periods, and led to the first modern (Soviet scholars liked to call them “scientific”) histories of Russia by Gerhard Müller, AugustLudwig Schlözer, Vasilii Tatishchev, Mikhail Shcherbatov, and Ivan Boltin. These were works of erudition of varying merit, but they served as a necessary resource for the first truly readable history that Karamzin began publishing in 1816 with imperial patronage and financial support. The appearance of the first volume of the very popular History of

An Illustration from Karamzin’s History of the Russian State. N. M. Karamzin, Istoriia gosudarstva Rossiiskago (St. Petersburg, 1818–1829).

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the Russian State (Istoriia gosudarstva Rossiiskago) began the creation of a new historical memory for a new cultural epoch in modern Russia. This prise de conscience historique was accompanied by the discovery and novel evaluation of the “moral physiognomy”—to employ a concept later popularized in the literature of the mid-nineteenth century—of the Russian people and its cultural lore, both past and contemporary. The appraisal was necessary in the eighteenth century on two grounds: first, because the schism of the Old Believers had undermined the wholeness and effectiveness of ecclesiastical guidance; second, because of the Petrine disconnection between the traditional values of the people and those of the service elites. Each of the two breaks generated a separate, though not necessarily opposed or dissonant, response; one was spiritual and of a religious nature, the other moral and social. The first involved the work of the Free Masons, most specifically the Rosicrucians, led by Nikolai Novikov. His varied didactic and philanthropic enterprises helped rekindle among the educated elites a concern for spiritual values and for enhancing moral norms in their private and public comportment, along the lines of European enlightened individualism. The second response exposed and satirized the uncritical aping of Western externals, while persevering in the uncouth—really barbaric— customs outlined in the fifteenth-century guide to behavior, the Domostroi. This attitude found expression in the dramatic works of Aleksandr Sumarokov and Denis Fonvizin, among others, as well as in the sentimentalizing portrayals of the serf peasantry by Aleksandr Radishchev and the young Karamzin. It might be noted that the government of Empress Catherine II acquiesced to both responses, albeit very cautiously, ever fearful of unleashing the type of popular violence evident in the Pugachev rebellion of the early 1770s. We thus come to the nineteenth century. The reign of Alexander I plunged the empire into the turmoil of wars with revolutionary and Napoleonic France, the high point of which turned out to be Napoleon’s ill-fated invasion of Russia and ignominious retreat in 1812. Scholars have traditionally adduced the cause for the culture of romanticism and reformism in the beginning of the nineteenth century to the outburst of patriotic, indeed nationalistic, enthusiasm in the face of the campaign of 1812 and the pursuit of Napoleon until the capture of Paris in 1814 and 1815. This is undoubtedly true, but the cultural scene in the first half of the nineteenth century may

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be approached from a somewhat different perspective and one more relevant to the subject of this book. The eighteenth century, to repeat, witnessed the elites’ assimilation and internalization of the Petrine project of transfiguring Muscovites into European Russians (or, more accurately, Russian Europeans). While largely successful, the process revealed and forced the educated elites to confront the double breach that had resulted from Peter’s innovations: the break with Russia’s earlier cultural tradition and that between the Europeanized culture of the elites and that of the mass of the people. The challenges of war reinforced the educated elites’ awareness of the need to raise the level of the peasants’ cultural and material condition, which obviously implied confronting the question of serfdom. The Pugachevshchina had thrown paralyzing fear and anxiety into the serf-owning nobility. However, they also witnessed the loyalty of the same peasantry during Napoleon’s invasion and the much better conditions of peasant life in central and western Europe. Thus, the younger generation of serf owners, many of them junior army officers, were shamed into accepting, indeed advocating, greater popular participation in the public and cultural life of the nation. Building on the earlier eighteenth-century efforts mentioned above, this attitude created the preconditions for a number of educational, philanthropic, and religious reforms that helped, however modestly, loosen the rigidities of the social system. Initiated during the first years of Alexander’s reign, reformist efforts were resumed after 1815, but this time, the generation of the active participants in the military campaigns tried to take the lead in continuing and expanding their scope. But the emperor’s early fervor had cooled, and under the influence of conservative advisors, he looked with increasing suspicion on initiatives stemming from private individuals and groups. In response, the aggressively impatient officers and would-be reformers organized secret societies in which they discussed and prepared political steps to force the government onto the path of effective institutional changes. This intellectual, cultural, and political ferment dramatically manifested itself in the Decembrist Revolt, staged on the accession of Emperor Nicholas I in mid-December of 1825.The investigation and trial of the participants and their friends made it abundantly clear to the imperial establishment that far-reaching transformations in all aspects of Russian public life had to be a priority on the government’s agenda. Contrary to hoary historiographical tradition—whether of the

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radical intelligentsia or Soviet academics—the reign of Nicholas I was not one of immobility or stagnation. In fact, it turned out to be a period of febrile preparation for the Great Reforms of his son, Alexander II. During the Nicholaevan era, liberal and reformist bureaucrats put in motion vast programs to investigate the actual conditions of the empire, whether they were economic, social, religious, ethnic, or administrative. To this end, government-led or private initiatives brought into being an array of learned societies and scientific institutions, as well as ethnological, geographical, and geological expeditions and surveys. These revealed the vast resources, human and physical, existing in the empire and even more important, their potential for exploitation and expansion. Such knowledge also threw a new light on the path and pattern of Russia’s past, the dynamics of its development, and its relationship to Western standards and models. In a way, these investigations were responding to the hope expressed by the monkchronicler Pimen in Pushkin’s Boris Godunov: “May the descendants of the Orthodox know the past fate of their native land.” Now the time was ripe for a new historical memory to tell a new story, and Fedor Solntsev would play a seminal role in that search for a national past.

INTRODUCTION

FEDOR SOLNTSEV AND CRAFTING THE IMAGE OF A RUSSIAN NATIONAL PAST: THE CONTEXT Wendy Salmond and Cynthia Hyla Whittaker Visualizing Russia in the twenty-first century is an exercise that relies on easily recalled images of the pre-revolutionary past. We conjure up gleaming gilt, vibrant colors, onion domes, icons, tsarist regalia, pointed headdresses, peasant blouses, fairy tale illustrations, the sets and costumes of the Ballets Russes. We recognize in all these images manifestations of le style russe or russkii stil’, the Russian style that has so captivated the world’s imagination since the mid-nineteenth century. But as late as 1825 the phrase, the “Russian style” meant little and seemed something of an oxymoron. This book elaborates the origins of the Russian style in the 1830s and 1840s and celebrates the seminal role that Fedor Grigorevich Solntsev (1801–1892) played in its development. Soviet art historians relegated this pioneering artist-archaeologist-ethnographer-restorer-iconographer to obscurity since the many facets of his talent expressed a deep belief in Orthodoxy and an unswerving devotion to the tsarist monarchy. The neglect continues even two decades after the fall of the Soviet Union, with only a few exceptions.1 Visualizing Russia offers a wealth of evidence to establish Solntsev’s rightful position at the forefront of the movement that crafted the image of a Russian national past.

1

For instance, an otherwise superb book makes no mention of Solnstev: Valerie A. Kivelson and Joan Neuberger, eds., Picturing Russia: Explorations in Visual Culture (New Haven, CT, 2008). Russians have naturally taken the lead in his rehabilitation: Evgenia Kirichenko, Russian Design and the Fine Arts, 1750–1917 (New York, 1991); M. M. Evtushenko, “Akademik F. G. Solntsev (1801–1892) i ego vklad v osvoenie drevnerusskogo kul’turnogo naslediia,” Ph.D. diss., Hermitage, 2007; and G. V. Aksenova, Russkii stil’: Genii Fedora Solntseva (Moscow, 2009). In the West, Anne Odom acknowledged Solntsev’s importance in “Fedor Solntsev, the Kremlin Service, and the Origins of the Russian Style,” Hillwood Studies 1 (1991), 1–4. The comprehensiveness of his achievements was first explored in an exhibition at the New York Public Library, “The Art and Impact of Fedor Solntsev,” curated by Wendy Salmond with Edward Kasinec and Robert Davis (March 2–June 16, 2007).

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The Romantic search for a national past was a European preoccupation in the early decades of the nineteenth century and nowhere more so than in Russia. The legendary date for the founding of the Russian state was 867 c.e., after which Kievan Rus’ gained stature internationally, having received its Orthodox religion and much of its culture from the Byzantine Empire. From the thirteenth to the fifteenth centuries, the Mongols imposed their rule, cutting Russians off from their former ties. Gradually, a new state arose around a new religious and political capital, Moscow. Muscovy or Muscovite Russia began to renew relations with the outside world but remained an eastern, exotic, sacerdotal realm, backward in the eyes of the West. Peter the Great chafed at Muscovy’s image and turned his back on it. Once he assumed full power in the 1690s, he aimed to re-create Russia and mold it into an equal political and cultural partner with the leading European nations. In pursuit of this goal, Peter established an empire, secularized his power, and modernized institutions with a far-reaching program to westernize the state and transform the elites into Russian Europeans. Catherine the Great continued this process, and Russia had never been nor would ever again be so much a part of the West as during her reign. Europeanization, however, resulted in nothing less than a cultural revolution that caused two deep fissures: a break with traditions that dated back to the ninth century; and a break between the westernized urban elites and a peasantry untouched by modernizing forces.2 Events at the turn of the century brought Peter’s and Catherine’s innovations into question and set off an ongoing debate between Slavophiles, who cherished the pre-Petrine past, and Westernizers, who championed the tenets of European modernity. The bloody episodes of the French Revolution along with Napoleon’s invasion of Russia tarnished the glow of Western innovations and dampened their generally uncritical acceptance by the elite. At the same time, the defeat of the French Emperor in the Patriotic War of 1812 elevated the status of the common people, or narod, by demonstrating that they could shape Russia’s destiny. Once its troops led the allied army into Paris, the nation emerged unquestionably as a great European power. But it did not have a great or even distinct native culture or history that could resonate both with elites and narod. Nikolai Karamzin had famously said: “We became citizens of the world but ceased . . . to be citizens of 2

Please consult Marc Raeff ’s Preface, “The Need to Craft a National Past.”

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Russia. The fault is Peter’s.” Karamzin began to fill the cultural gap with his History of the Russian State (1818–1829), revealing the richness of the country’s past, a past that Peter had shunted aside in favor of a generalized Western identity. The historian’s discoveries of this old, yet new, Russian world—for which he was likened to Christopher Columbus—resulted in an unprecedented sense of national uniqueness and patriotic pride. In Russia and throughout Europe, the post-Napoleonic era sparked a surge of nationalism and the flowering of romanticism, challenging the universalism and classicism of the previous century. The focus now centered on the unique population, history, and culture of each individual nation. From London to St. Petersburg, a fascination with the folk and bygone eras encouraged the new sciences of archaeology and ethnography and prompted an urgent desire to possess a documented history.3 Scientists embarked on expeditions, and the accompanying artists produced richly illustrated volumes of antiquities, costume, monuments, and ornament, which became an indispensable link to the distant past and reflected the nationalistic fervor of the times. The recent invention of chromolithography meant that, for the first time, these images could be widely disseminated in vivid color, and their publication was seen as a patriotic act of public enlightenment. The new mood of romantic nationalism found its Eden in the Middle Ages, which had long been scorned as unworthy of attention. Now, medieval revivals—as varied as the emerging nationalist movements they accompanied—sprang up across Europe along with clear political undertones. In England, Germany, France, and the United States, artists like Augustus W. N. Pugin and Eugène Emmanuel Viollet-le-Duc looked to the great cathedrals of the Middle Ages to create a Gothic Revival evoking a bygone idyll of Christian faith and social stability.4 For the artist-archaeologists of Scandinavia, Ireland, and Central and Eastern Europe, forms borrowed from Celtic, Viking, and other cultures became synonymous with independence from foreign oppression. Motifs like the Gothic pointed arch and the Celtic interlace, deployed in full knowledge of their political significance, became the emblems of a new national and visual language. 3 Please see chapter seven by Nathaniel Knight, “Russian Ethnography and the Visual Arts in the 1840s and 1850s.” 4 Please consult chapters eight and nine: “Viollet-le-Duc and Solntsev: Publishing Patrimony in France and Russia” by Lauren M. O’Connell; and “Echoes of Solntsev: Pugin and the Gothic Revival in England” by J. Robert Wright.

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Solntsev’s gifts exactly suited the spirit of the age, with its combination of patriotic nostalgia, religious sensibility, and scientific objectivity. Although he never left Russia and worked in isolation from artists abroad, like them he intuitively understood the power of ancient artifacts to shape a coherent national identity. Sifting through the multiple layers of distant history—Greek, Viking, Byzantine, Turkic, Mongol, and Slav—he wove the fragments he found into a single image of Russia that has proved remarkably enduring. Solntsev’s father, born an estate serf but working in St. Petersburg as a theatre cashier, recognized his son’s talent and enrolled him in the Imperial Academy of Arts in 1815. He graduated nine years later, having won two gold medals, one for his depiction of a peasant family, even at a time when genre painting was considered inferior to grand historical canvases. While still a student Solntsev attracted the attention of Aleksei Olenin, whose name will appear in nearly every article in this collection; he was president of the Academy of Arts and an eminent artist, archaeologist, and ethnographer with close ties to the throne.5 In Olenin’s home the young man met the leading cultural figures of the day, including Aleksandr Pushkin, Russia’s “national poet,” who also reflected the spirit of the age in creating Russia’s modern literary language and finding inspiration in Russian folk tales. Olenin’s dream was to rescue from oblivion and to document ancient Russian artifacts and monuments—meaning items dating anytime prior to 1700—and publish them for the benefit of the artistic community and the public at large. In an era prior to photography, the archaeological and ethnographic expeditions which Olenin had in mind required an accompanying and accomplished illustrator, and he found his man in Solntsev, who had been recognized early on for his powers of observation and the precision of his draftsmanship. In fact, when the professor of perspective at the Academy of Arts, Maksim Vorob’ev, paid a visit to Olenin’s study, he tried to pick up a gold plaque that fascinated him, only to discover that it was a watercolor by Solntsev.6 While the artist copied from “nature,” he lent such a vitality to the objects that they acquired more life than the original.

5

See especially chapter one by Richard Wortman, “Solntsev, Olenin, and the Development of a Russian Natonal Aesthetic.” 6 F. G. Solntsev, “Moia zhizn’ i khudozhestvenno-arkheologicheskie trudy,” Russkaia starina 15 (1876), 618.

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From 1829 and until his death in 1843, Olenin trained and closely supervised Solntsev, instructing him in great detail what and how to paint. The artist-archaeologist first drew the Hoard of Riazan, recently discovered thirteenth-century artifacts of great richness. Solntsev was next given the Herculean task of depicting “ancient customs, dress, weapons, church and imperial paraphernalia, everyday goods, harness, and similar items belonging to the categories of historical, archaeological, and ethnographic information” from the sixth to the eighteenth centuries.7 To this endeavor, Solntsev would dedicate the whole of his life. Beginning in 1830 and for roughly the next twenty-five years, each summer took Solntsev to Russia’s oldest cities and monasteries located in and around Orel, Vladimir, Novgorod, Pskov, Torzhok, Vitebsk, Suzdal, Izborsk, Smolensk, Iur’ev-Polskii, and Tver to record their architecture and their fine, decorative, and applied arts. However, the majority of his work was accomplished in the cathedrals and palaces of the Moscow Kremlin.8 In particular, he began the systematic examination of objects in the Kremlin Armory, an integral part of the New Kremlin Palace and a museum filled with the relics and treasures of the Russian past, including the ancient chronicles about which Solntsev also became expert. Thousands of drawings of tsarist regalia, ecclesiastical vestments and vessels, and military dress resulted from his stays. After the death of Olenin, Emperor Nicholas I personally supervised Solntsev’s labors. From boyhood, the tsar displayed an interest in pre-Petrine Russian culture and from the early years of his reign, he worked closely with Olenin on his archaeological and ethnographic projects that would proclaim the existence of a distinctive Russian art and inspire contemporary creations in the Russian style. The tsar’s intense interest in fostering an official national culture was expressed though innumerable decrees, ranging from the protection of historic monuments and bringing the Academy of Arts under his personal purview to a requirement that women at court wear Russian dress. Nicholas had inspected and admired Solntsev’s drawings from the outset and grasped their ideological and political importance. The tsar channeled the artist’s work into projects that glorified the Russian

7

Ibid., 634. Consult chapter three by Irina Bogatskaia, “Solntsev’s Role in Preserving the Treasures of the Moscow Kremlin.” 8

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Orthodox state, thereby creating one of the first visual foundations for the doctrine of Official Nationality and establishing the canonical image of Russia as a powerful empire shaped by the ideals of “Orthodoxy, Autocracy, Nationality.” With such patronage, Solntsev was able to carry on his work systematically and with no interruption. A significant aspect of Nicholas’s concept of the state centered on what he thought were its Byzantine or “Greek” origins, dating back to Russia’s adoption of Eastern rite Christianity during the Kievan era. However, the Byzantine Empire had collapsed in 1453, overrun by the Muslim Ottomans, and Russia remained the only independent Orthodox state, leading to the claim that Moscow was the successor to Constantinople and perhaps even Rome. Closer in time, Nicholas’s grandmother, Catherine the Great, envisioned the “Greek Project,” whereby the former Byzantine empire and capital would once again become Orthodox as well as a Russian puppet state; Nicholas’s older brother was named Constantine and was taught Greek in anticipation of the event. Nicholas himself recognized the Byzantine form of government as an ideal absolute monarchy and the font of Russian national culture, seeing as alien the burgeoning democracies of the West. Thus, the tsar lavished attention on Kievan artifacts as well as on the complex of buildings within the Moscow Kremlin, which had been neglected as the symbol of Russia’s past since the Europeanizing reforms of Peter the Great. As a result, what came to be celebrated as the Russian style, in the Nicholaevan era was referred to as the RussoByzantine or simply Byzantine style, thus serving to announce Russia’s connection with a centuries-old heritage equal to any in the West. By providing palpable links to Kievan and Muscovite historic figures, dress, and events, Solntsev’s drawings affirmed the Orthodox, historical, cultural, and dynastic basis of tsarist rule. An overwhelming emphasis on the hierarchy, symbols, and rites of the Orthodox Church and the Romanov dynasty was to bind the peoples of the Russian Empire together around a single “Great Russian idea,” often expressed in the adaptable term narodnost’ (nationality or pertaining to or embodying the people). Miracle-working icons and imperial regalia reinforced Russia’s claim to succeed the Byzantine Empire. A diversity of images, ranging from the helmet believed to have belonged to Prince Aleksandr Nevskii to the gold plate of Tsar Aleksei Mikhailovich, stressed ancestral links, while reinforcing the Eastern sources of much Russian culture. A milestone in creating a modern Russian art from historic relics was Solntsev’s design for the Kremlin dinner service for

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five hundred, which in the future would function at coronations and foreign diplomatic events as an embodiment of the national character. The ornamental motifs were widely imitated.9 The cult of medieval monuments was central to the imaginings of romantic nationalism. As the sites of momentous events and valiant deeds, cathedrals, palaces, and fortresses were imbued with the ghosts of the past; they also functioned as historic shrines, stages on which rulers and people could gather to enact rituals of nationhood. In Russia, as elsewhere in Europe, it was a short step from recording the remains of ancient buildings to restoring them to their former glory. Since the late seventeenth century, the cathedrals and palaces of medieval Moscow, Kiev, and other old Slavic cities had been neglected, unsympathetically modernized, or demolished, and their ancient frescoes repainted or even plastered over. As the tsar’s trusted servant in all matters involving Russian art and archaeology, in the 1840s and 1850s Solntsev found himself a pioneer in a nascent historic preservation movement. Since the previous reign, efforts had been made to restore the entire Kremlin complex. In furthering the project, Nicholas appointed Konstantin Ton as chief architect and Solntsev as chief artist. For two years, in the late 1830s, Solntsev designed parquet, carpets, doors, stained glass, tile stoves, and window frames for Ton’s New Kremlin Palace, which was built to replace the one burned down in 1812. Basing his designs on the churches and palaces of the greater Moscow area, in 1837 Solntsev also undertook a major restoration of the royal apartments in the Kremlin’s Terem Palace, which had fallen into near ruin. Using surviving fragments as a guide, he re-created the interior decorations and furnished the rooms with period pieces, thereby defining an essential element of the Russian style in interior decoration: covering extensive surfaces solidly and lavishly with ornamental motifs and sacred figures of the type found in frescoes and icons. All of these designs became basic patterns of the Russian style. In the 1840s, the tsar dispatched Solntsev to Kiev for restoration work and the copying of antiquities. The restoration of the eleventhcentury Cathedral of St. Sofiia was part of a larger state project to

9 Please see chapter two by Anne Odom, “A Revolution in Russian Design: Solntsev and the Decorative Arts.”

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consolidate Imperial Russia’s claim to the patrimony of Kievan Rus’.10 After discovering the original Byzantine frescoes and mosaics beneath a layer of plaster, Solntsev was entrusted by Nicholas with overseeing the restoration of the interior. The artist pioneered the technique of removing subsequent restorations layer by layer, recognizing the importance of preserving the historical integrity of art and architecture. However, at this time in the history of preservation, accuracy was not necessarily the aim but rather an “inspired, creative reinterpretation” of the past as it might have been and as distilled through the poetic vision of the artist.11 In other words, like Viollet-le-Duc, Solntsev did not consider himself to be a mere copyist, but one whose imagination re-created the past. It goes without saying that future preservationists

Cathedral of St. Sofiia in Kiev. Solntsev, Antiquities.

10 For further information on restoration in Kiev, see chapter five by Olenka Pevny, “In Solntsev’s Footsteps: Adrian Prakhov and the Representation of Kievan Rus’.” 11 Kirichenko, Russian Design, 80.

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would roundly criticize both men for their “massacre” or “barbaric” treatment of antiquities.12 In the 1840s, the very busy Solntsev also began working for the Holy Synod—the group of twelve prelates, chaired by a lay over-procurator, who administered the Russian Orthodox Church. Having undergone a kind of “religious resurrection” during a trip to Novgorod in 1833, Solntsev accepted these obligations as a sacred duty. He performed a variety of tasks: repairing a wall painting at a cathedral in Novgorod, illustrating prayer books for members of the imperial family, designing communion cloths, and drawing church calendars so elaborate that some consisted of 4800 figures of saints. Solntsev’s motifs were based on his discoveries of objects found in sacristies throughout old Russia, and his designs were then widely imitated, thereby creating a kind of ecclesiastical Russian style.

Chalice. Solntsev, Antiquities. 12 See, for instance, G. I. Vzdornov, Istoriia otkrytiia izucheniia russkoi srednevekovoi zhivopisi, XIX vek (Moscow, 1986), 28–46; or Jacques Harmand, Pierrefonds, la Forteresse d’Orléans: Les Réalités (Le Puy-en-Velay, 1983), 6.

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Solntsev was equally influential in the field of icon painting at a time when the Byzantine canon was increasingly threatened by the influx of Roman Catholic elements.13 Solntsev instituted a course in icon painting and restoration at the St. Petersburg Theological Seminary that was taught from 1844 to 1867 and was imitated in seminaries throughout the empire. He was one of the few contemporary artists competent to comment on and offer reforms in this area. As a painter professionally trained at the Academy of Arts, he understood the technical details and had an appreciation for academic aesthetic norms; at the same time, as a devout Orthodox Christian, he was conversant with the canonical criteria needed to ensure that an icon was worthy of veneration; in addition, his archaeological/ethnographical work meant that he had full knowledge of the traditional composition of Russian icons. His expertise with icons also resulted in his being appointed to a commission to strengthen Orthodoxy in the southwest territories, lands absorbed into Russia after the Partitions of Poland. He designed over two hundred iconostases both for existing Orthodox churches that had fallen into disrepair and for new churches constructed for Russians who settled in the territories as part of the overall design to introduce Russianness throughout the empire. During all of Solntsev’s travels, he also worked to compile a dictionary or pictorial encyclopedia of Russian costume as part of the effort to underscore the ethnically heterogeneous nature of the Russian empire. Instigated by Olenin, the project reflected the Romantic spirit of the era that paid attention to those of humble as well as royal birth. In the Russian case, the peasant was further elevated as a source of authenticity, untouched by Europeanization. Even before Solntsev, the rich diversity of ethnic and regional dress of “the peoples of Russia” had been a subject of fascination since the reign of Empress Anna Ioannovna. Some of the most widely circulated and copied images of the empire’s ethnically diverse population date to 1777, when German historian and ethnographer Johann Gottlieb Georgi published his Description of All the Peoples Inhabiting the Russian State. As interest in ethnography and folklore increased, the regional dress of each province became as emblematic as its coat of arms.

13 On this topic, please consult chapter four by Marina Evtushenko, “Solntsev and the Reform of Icon Painting.”

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Solntsev’s portfolio of exquisite watercolor drawings, entitled Costumes of the Russian State and originally commissioned by Olenin, was never published but remains a monument to early Russia in its own right.14 On his annual travels, he took the time to depict the attire of royals, nobles, and merchants but gave special attention to traditions still practiced among the peasant population, whose lives had been least affected by the influx of Western customs in the eighteenth century.15 The embroidered costumes and crescent-shaped headdresses of peasant women and girls were particularly emphasized as the embodiment of ancient tradition. Solntsev’s mission had a particular sense of urgency, since folk traditions were already beginning to disappear from the countryside as modern means of communication spread. But Solntsev’s greatest achievement was to demonstrate that a rich native culture had existed prior to the eighteenth century, when West European customs were adopted by the Russian elite. At the time, this seemed a shocking revelation. As recently as 1836, a radical Westernizer, Petr Chaadaev, published an article contending that Russia’s past had no value whatsoever.16 Like Karamzin in history and Pushkin in folklore, Solntsev succeeded in refuting the charge by recording the material culture of early Russia in all its diversity, from palace to peasant hut. The scale of his achievement is enormous: five thousand meticulous drawings of regalia, icons, and weaponry; a series of pioneering restoration projects; watercolor portraits of the peoples of European Russia; and experiments at design in an early Russian style. Through all this work, Solntsev created a vibrant and exotic visual language in which to express a newly crafted sense of national identity among those Slavic peoples living within the Russian Empire. In Solntsev’s magnificent images, the grand imperial designs of Nicholas’s reign were given their definitive visual identity. His ability to fashion fragments of that culture—medieval manuscript illuminations, Tatar helmets, onion domes—into a new visual language makes him an enormously important figure in the history of Russian art. One

14 The New York Public Library purchased Odezhdy Russkago gosudarstva, a portfolio of 324 watercolors, in 1934, and it remains one of the library’s treasures. 15 On the literary reverberations, please see chapter six by Irina Reyfman, “The Material World of Kievan Rus’ in the Historical Novels of the Nicholaevan Era.” 16 Chaadaev’s “Philosophical Letter” was published in the journal Teleskop, as reprinted in M. O. Gerzhenzon, ed. Sochineniia i pis’ma P. Ia. Chadaaeva 1 (Moscow, 1914), 74–93.

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critic admitted: “All our contemporary Russian style is found in the drawings of Solntsev.”17 In order to spread these ideas to the rest of Europe, between 1849 and 1853 Solntsev’s drawings of the medieval artifacts in Moscow’s Kremlin cathedrals and Armory Museum were published at the tsar’s personal expense for the colossal sum of one hundred thousand rubles, in an edition of six hundred copies. Antiquities of the Russian State—a book mentioned in every one of the articles in this publication—consisted of six lavish volumes containing more than five hundred chromolithographs.18 It presents a carefully edited view of Russia, focusing

Title Page of Antiquities. Solntsev, Antiquities.

17

Quoted in T. I. Dul’kina, “Svoia natsional’naia nota v keramike,” Russkii stil’. Sobranie Gosudarstvennogo istoricheskogo muzeia (Moscow, 1998), 106. 18 The New York Public Library has a copy of this rarity, Drevnosti Rossiskago gosudarstva.

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on the power of church and crown, and was promoted abroad as the quintessential early Russian culture. With their publication in an English-language and French translation as well, these drawings would shape the perception of Russian culture up to the present. These drawings represent a monument of Russian culture and to this day have no analog. Like his counterparts in other countries, Solntsev went beyond simply recording historical fragments to show how they might form the basis for a revived national style in the decorative arts and architecture and inspire contemporary creations. In his design in the late 1840s for a dinner service to be used at the wedding of Nicholas I’s son, Grand Duke Konstantin Nikolaevich, Solntsev created the prototype for a distinctively Russian revival, using the historicist principles that dominated European design and architecture in the nineteenth century. Working in gold, silver, porcelain, and bronze, the commitment to historical accuracy required the precise transcription of each detail (for example, a helmet of the thirteenth-century Prince Aleksandr Nevskii was featured on the lid of the coffeepot). Yet the desire for a rich field of decorative and symbolic effects allowed for eclectic combinations of motifs from an array of disparate media and periods. The resulting blend was soon to be celebrated as the Russian style. Beginning at mid-century with the advent of the world expositions, demand for nationally distinctive products arose on the international market, making the teaching of a distinctively Russian style essential in the nation’s new schools of design. Exposure to the relics of bygone centuries stimulated the revival of native crafts like ceramics, enameling, filigree, and icon painting and fostered a coherent national style that would compete with West European products. It was in the world of public spectacle and fantasy that Solntsev’s early Russian style found its natural home. Continuing the visual rhetoric of Nicholas I’s reign, subsequent Russian rulers, especially Alexander III and Nicholas II, perpetuated the colorful pageantry of Moscow’s Middle Ages as a symbol of imperial power to be flaunted in the face of a less exotic Europe. For instance, the ornament and opulent jewelry of Russian court dress was “widely acknowledged to be the most beautiful of all the European courts.”19 The same sumptuous caftans, exotic headdresses, illuminated manuscripts, and gilded

19

Kirichenko, Russian Design, 53.

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onion domes found their way into the fairytale world of childhood, delighting generations of Russian children (and not only them) with images of a land that existed only in the imagination. This book concentrates almost exclusively on the Nicholaevan era, which marked the apogee of Solntsev’s creative endeavors. Once both Olenin and Nicholas died, he lost the most enthusiastic sponsors of his work as an artist-archaeologist and while he remained active to the very end of his long life, his moment of fame had passed. Nonetheless, Solntsev’s extraordinary career left an indelible mark on the image and perception of Russia in the modern era. Wherever visual information on Russia is needed, Antiquities of the Russian State remains the canonical source, at home and abroad. His staggering achievement in the scholarly documentation and preservation of historic artifacts, monuments, and costume rescued much of Russia’s patrimony from oblivion. But perhaps Solntsev’s most enduring legacy was the visual and imaginative framework he created for the many-layered notion of Russia. The window he opened onto Russia’s medieval past became, by the end of the empire, the stage on which the idea of Russia was performed for an admiring world. In the lush sets and costumes of the famous Ballets Russes, we once again glimpse a Russian past as first visualized by Solntsev a century before.

Image from the Ballets Russes. Promotional Tour for Ballets Russes (Diaghilev), American Tour, 1915–1916.

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The essays in Visualizing Russia elaborate particular aspects of Solntsev’s life and legacy. Marc Raeff ’s preface—one of the last pieces this great historian wrote before his untimely death—describes the need for national memory and presents a grand sweep of European and Russian history that demonstrates the distant and proximate forces shaping Solntsev’s Weltanschauung. Richard Wortman’s essay interweaves Nicholas I’s desire for cultural and historical “parity with European monarchies” with Olenin’s goal of fusing “the heritage of classical art with the motifs of Russia’s own national traditions.” As a result objects of antiquity were invested with “sacral status,” and Solntsev acquired the patronage and guidance he needed to compile his masterpiece, Antiquities of the Russian State. Wortman makes the point that the “dominant role of the monarchy in shaping the historicist aesthetic” distinguishes Solntsev’s work from his European counterparts. By contrast, Lauren M. O’Connell finds so many parallels of training, motivation, and work between Solntsev and Viollet-le-Duc that she sees them as dramatizing “the broadly cross-cultural nature of the nineteenth-century turn toward the medieval past” as well as the “will to use the printed image as a vehicle for shaping and promoting distinctive national identities.” J. Robert Wright’s article adds Pugin as a counterpart to Solntsev and Viollet-le-Duc, with the Englishman championing a Gothic Revival in his own architectural writings and projects. Four essays demonstrate Solntsev’s enormous achievements in specific areas of art. Anne Odom focuses on the revolution he launched in design, introducing “a new, distinctively Russian, vocabulary of ornament” that had an impact in every area of the decorative arts. She demonstrates that the Russian style appeared just at the moment when world fairs became popular showcases for national art and thus insured exposure worldwide. Irina Bogatskaia details the work done on historic preservation during the first quarter of the nineteenth century and Solntsev’s monumental role in publicizing, preserving, and restoring the antiquities and buildings of the Kremlin. Basing her work largely on Solntsev’s unpublished diary, Marina Evtushenko discusses the artist’s central importance in resurrecting the old traditions of icon painting, which led to a veritable “renaissance” in this most venerated of Russian arts. Olenka Pevny recounts Solntsev’s enormous influence in restoration work by comparing his techniques with those of Adrian Prakhov, who “followed in his footsteps” by completing two monumental commissions in Kiev, under the sponsorship of Alexander III,

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restoring the twelfth-century Church of St Cyril of Alexandria and decorating the newly-built Cathedral of St. Vladimir. Two other essays deepen our understanding of the Nicholaevan era and the intellectual climate surrounding Solntsev. Nathaniel Knight provides a vivid description of the development of ethnography in Russia, its strains and its struggles, and in particular the debate over the use of visual materials, whether they be the Solntsev variety or the brand new medium of photography. Irina Reyfman recounts the “obsession with history” evident in Russian prose of the Nicholaevan era, with writers turning out a slew of novels that take place in Kievan or Muscovite Russia and that betray varying degrees of knowledge or ignorance about the very material objects Soltsev was so busy drawing. Visualizing Russia explores a grand Romantic project to help a nation retrieve its past after a century of having ignored its existence. For Russians, Solntsev’s historic work unveiled nearly one thousand years of lost art, wonder, splendor, and memories. These now found their place in crafting a national past and demonstrated the enormous power of visual images in bringing that past to life for a broad audience.

CHAPTER ONE

SOLNTSEV, OLENIN, AND THE DEVELOPMENT OF A RUSSIAN NATIONAL AESTHETIC Richard Wortman During the reign of Nicholas I, the idea of nationality (narodnost’) represented far more than an ideological justification for conservative rule. Nicholas also sought to present the monarchy as an embodiment of Russian culture, to discover and foster an indigenous artistic tradition that would elevate his rule. Just as he brought the political police and the work of codification under his personal purview in his chancellery, the emperor watched over and directed artistic creativity. His decree of February 9, 1829, announced that the Imperial Academy of Arts would now come under his “special most gracious patronage” (osoboe vsemilostiveishee svoe pokrovitel’stvo). The Academy was removed from the Ministry of Education and placed under the authority of the Ministry of the Court, whose head reported directly to Nicholas.1 Two of Nicholas’s servitors—Aleksei Olenin (1763–1843) and Fedor Solntsev (1801–1892)—played seminal roles in the process of creating a national aesthetic. Olenin, a wealthy and eminent noble official, was an accomplished artist, archaeologist, and ethnographer.2 Solntsev was a serf born on the estate of Olenin’s friend and distant relative, Aleksei Musin-Pushkin. The count, recognizing the young peasant’s talent, allowed him to study at the Academy of Arts. Solntsev proved a virtuoso draftsman and watercolorist, and Olenin made him his protégé.3

1 The first Minister of the Court was Petr Volkonskii, a cousin of Aleksei Olenin: Imperatorskaia Sanktpeterburgskaia akademiia khudozhestv, 1764–1914: Kratkii istoricheskii ocherk (St. Petersburg, 1914), 38; Mary Stuart, Aristocrat-Librarian in Service to the Tsar: Aleksei Nikolaevich Olenin and the Imperial Public Library (Boulder, CO, 1986), 137. 2 See the two excellent biographies of Olenin: V. Faibisovich, Aleksei Nikolaevich Olenin: Opyt nauchnoi biografii (St. Petersburg, 2006), and Stuart, Olenin. 3 In his memoir, Solntsev wrote that his father was “a peasant on the estate (pomeshchichii krest’ianin) of Count Musin-Pushkin, who, however, never considered him a serf ”: F. G. Solntsev, “Moia zhizn’ i khudozhestvenno-arkheologicheskie trudy,”

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For Nicholas, the Byzantine Empire came to represent the supreme example of absolute monarchy and Byzantine art and architecture the true source of Russia’s artistic and architectural heritage, as evidenced both in the Kievan and Muscovite epochs. As a twenty-one-year-old grand duke, he revealed his concern for early Russian church architecture when he visited Patriarch Nikon’s New Jerusalem Monastery near Moscow and encouraged plans for the restoration of the mid-seventeenth-century buildings. Three years later, in 1820, the artist, Maksim Vorob’ev, was dispatched to Constantinople and the Holy Land to gather intelligence on the Ottoman Empire. Olenin, as Director of the Academy of Arts, suggested that he also paint watercolors of Byzantine churches, and they were exhibited at the Academy from 1823 to 1827. Nicholas viewed them approvingly and even visited Vorob’ev in his studio.4 Once tsar, Nicholas hoped to promote a national style of architecture by constructing copies of early Russian churches that incorporated Byzantine principles. Early Russian churches, however, came in many shapes and sizes, and Nicholas lacked a clear idea of which was most representative. At the outset of his reign, he directed the architect Vasilii Stasov to design examples for the site of the Church of the Tithe in Kiev and for the Russian colony in Potsdam, but they did not meet the emperor’s unspoken requirements.5 In 1827 the emperor began seeking plans for the Church of St. Catherine in St. Petersburg and a new project for Christ the Redeemer Cathedral in Moscow, which the architect, Aleksandr Vitberg, had designed in the neoclassical style for Alexander I. Nicholas asked for a building that “would attest to compatriots as well as to foreigners the zeal of Russians for the Orthodox faith.” But the projects he received, nonetheless, followed neoclassical prototypes. Solntsev recalled the tsar’s angry exclamation: “They all

Russkaia starina 16 (1876), 110. But most accounts suggest that his father nonetheless had the status of a serf: Richard Stites, Serfdom, Society and the Arts in Imperial Russia: The Pleasure and the Power (New Haven, CT, 2005), 290–291, 293. 4 Nicholas included him in his suite to paint landscapes and battle scenes during the Russo-Turkish War of 1828. On Olenin’s role in Vorob’ev’s assignment as a spy in these areas, and the detailed instructions he gave him, see Stuart, Olenin, 105–106. Also see: P. N. Petrov, “M. N. Vorob’ev i ego shkola,” Vestnik iziashchnykh iskusstv 6 (1888), 297–303; and E. A. Borisova, Russkaia arkhitektura vtoroi poloviny XIX vek (Moscow, 1979), 95. 5 E. I. Kirichenko, Russkii stil’ (Moscow, 1997), 92; Karl Friedrich Schinkel: Führer zu seinen Bauten 1 (Munich, 2006), 120–21; V. I. Piliavskii, Stasov-arkhitektor (Leningrad, 1963), 209–210; Elena Simanovskaia, Russkii aktsent garnizonnogo goroda (Potsdam, 2005), 44–47.

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want to build in the Roman style. In Moscow we have many splendid buildings completed to the Russian taste.”6 Nicholas had a vague sense, but not a clear idea, of “Russian taste,” and his architects could not fathom his intent. Although he was considerably more certain in his views than most Russian rulers, he needed guidance in this sphere. He sought an official of high standing, knowledgeable in the arts, but also with insight into the tsar’s inclinations and deft in his manner of discourse, who could “divine the imperial will.”7 The official who had such talents and who shared the tsar’s predilections for a national art was Olenin. By the time the twenty-nine-year-old Nicholas ascended the throne, Olenin was a sixty-two-year-old eminent and venerable figure among the cultural and political elite of St. Petersburg. He had served since 1808 as Acting State Secretary to Alexander I as well as Director of the Imperial Public Library, and in 1817 he became Director of the Academy of Arts. Under Nicholas, Olenin continued to serve in both directorships, at the same time being appointed a member of the State Council.8 Olenin was known as an expert in the artifacts of early Russia and sought to revive their memory in order to introduce them into current art and architecture. He also shared Nicholas’s vague belief that indigenous styles could be fused with classical and Western forms to create an eclectic art that was at once both native and part of a universal artistic heritage. Unhappy with the plans submitted for the Church of St. Catherine, Nicholas turned to Olenin for advice. Olenin recommended a young architect, Konstantin Ton, whose earlier work had been entirely in the spirit of neoclassicism. Ton, too, was bewildered by the tsar’s instructions. Divining the tsar’s vague intentions, Olenin directed Ton to sketches executed by his own protégés, Solntsev and the architect Nikolai Efimov.9 These served as guides for the plans Ton

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Borisova, Russkaia arkhitektura, 100–101, 127; Solntsev, “Moia zhizn’,” 16:278. Mikhail Dolbilov has described the practice of “divining the imperial will” (ugadyvat’ vysochaishuiu voliu), which all the tsar’s ministers and advisors endeavored to master in the nineteenth century. “Divining the imperial will” could also involve subtle manipulation, planting ideas in the tsar’s mind while making him believe they were his own: M. D. Dolbilov, “Rozhednie imperatorskikh reshenii: Monarkh, sovetnik i ‘vysochaishaia volia’ v Rossii XIX v.” Istoricheskie zapiski 9 (2006), 5–48. 8 Faibisovich, Olenin, chaps. 2 and 3; Stuart, Olenin, 12–17 and chap. 3. 9 Ton had graduated from the academy in 1815. His early projects had won Olenin’s admiration, and he had recommended him for a stipend to travel abroad and study in Italy. He was well known for his project to restore the imperial palace on the Palatine Hill in Rome: V. G. Lisovskii, “Natsional’nyi stil” v arkhitekture Rossii (Moscow, 2000), 70–71. 7

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drafted for the St. Catherine project, and he submitted them to the tsar in 1830. Nicholas was pleased, and the church became the exemplar of the “Ton style,” which in 1841 would be decreed as the official model for Russian church architecture. The “Ton style” combined neoclassical structural elements with the Russian-Byzantine design exemplified in the five-cupola structure of the two Assumption cathedrals in Vladimir and Moscow. Ton’s Christ the Redeemer Cathedral and New Kremlin Palace, both begun in the 1830s, unveiled the features of a new eclectic, neo-Byzantine style. The cathedral’s proportions and arcades as well as its cupolas were typically neoclassical; it was the exterior’s design that asserted its Russian character. The New Kremlin Palace also followed the principles of neoclassical design and proportions. The interlace embellishments around its windows lent a national touch. The juxtaposition of Western and

A View of the New Kremlin Palace Built in the Ton or Russian Byzantine Style. A. F. Vel’tman, Opisanie novago imperatorskago dvortsa v Kremlie Moskovskom (Description of the New Imperial Palace in the Moscow Kremlin), Moscow, 1851.

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Russian styles evoked the desired sense of connection Nicholas sought between the westernized monarchy and Russia’s distinctive past.10 The fusion of the heritage of classical art with the motifs of Russia’s own national traditions had been Olenin’s lifelong goal. He had grown up as an admirer and exponent of the classical tradition. The “Greek Project” of Catherine the Great and Grigorii Potemkin had shaped the tastes of the imperial court during his formative years.11 A ward of the President of the Academy of Sciences, Princess Ekaterina Dashkova, and a pupil in the Page Corps, Olenin numbered among the elite, and as such he was dispatched to Dresden, ostensibly to study artillery. There he could also view the renowned collections of Renaissance and Baroque art in the Zwinger Palace and the Green Vault and read the works of such eighteenth-century German scholars as Johann Winckelmann. When he returned, he propounded the ideas of the “father of art history” so much that he became known as “the Russian Winckelmann.”12 In the first decade of the nineteenth century, Olenin sought to establish a historical link between indigenous Russian art and the art of Greece and Rome. The discovery of early Russian artifacts in the Crimea in the last decades of the eighteenth century provided evidence of direct contacts between ancient Greece and early Russian towns. Olenin soon became engaged in the publication and analysis of these findings.13 At the same time, German scholars had been extending Winckelman’s concept of the range of ancient art to include

10 See Richard S. Wortman, Scenarios of Power: Myth and Ceremony in Russian Monarchy 1 (Princeton, 1995), 381–387. 11 Faibisovich links his views with Catherine the Great’s “Greek Project,” her plans to create a Greek empire allied with Russia, which she promoted during Olenin’s formative years at the end of the eighteenth century: Faibisovich, Olenin, 241–246; Stuart, Olenin, 5–6. 12 Stuart, Olenin, 8–9. He also frequented the salon of the Russian ambassador, A. M. Belosel’skii, an art and music lover who befriended Voltaire, Beaumarchais, and Marmontel and authored works on poetry and music: Faibisovich, Olenin, 32–43. 13 The Tmutorokan Stone, discovered in 1792 by Musin-Pushkin, bore an inscription from the year 1036 indicating the proximity of the Russian town of Tmutorokan to “territories of the Greeks.” In 1806 Olenin published “A Letter to Count A. I. Musin-Pushkin,” which confirmed Musin-Pushkin’s conclusions with the use of sophisticated comparative materials from chronicles and artifacts such as coins and helmets as well as the “Lay of the Host of Igor,” which had also been discovered by Musin-Pushkin: Faibisovich, Olenin, 246–249; Stuart, Olenin, 18–19.

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monuments and everyday objects unearthed during archaeological excavations.14 Olenin followed their example, seeking and collecting objects that could reveal details about the culture and mores of past times in addition to their artistic achievements and, as Director of the Academy of Arts, introducing courses in archaeology and ethnography. He developed a special passion for ancient “beautiful and manly weapons,” as well as coats of armor and helmets, which he collected in large numbers and recorded in skillful drawings. In 1807, when Alexander I appointed Olenin to serve in the Kremlin Armory, he began a lifelong study of the objects assembled in the building. He and the artists he supervised produced illustrations that publicized these articles as artistic symbols of Russia’s past, its national memorabilia (dostopamiatnosti).15 Olenin then singled out early Russian helmets as objects of antiquity that could lend a distinctly Russian character to neoclassical works, both artistic and literary. He convinced painters and sculptors to depict Russian helmets in the classical imperial manner, creating what his biographer Victor Faibisovich described as “a Russian imperial style.” He persuaded the painter Orest Kiprenskii to include the helmet of Prince Mikhail Temkin-Rostovskii, a sixteenth-century boiar, in his painting of 1805, “Dmitrii Donskoi on the field of Kulikovo.” The helmet, once again based on a sketch of Olenin, also appeared in Ivan Ivanov’s illustration for the frontispiece of the first edition in 1821 of Aleksandr Pushkin’s “Ruslan and Ludmilla.”16 A newly discovered helmet thought to belong to Aleksandr Nevskii brought the exploits of the Vladimir-Novgorod prince into the post1812 patriotic discourse and became a favorite of illustrators later in the nineteenth century. With Olenin’s encouragement the sculptor Ivan Martos included the helmet in his monument to Kuzma Minin and Prince Dmitrii Pozharskii on Red Square, begun in 1804 but completed only in 1818. The two heroes of the Time of Troubles strike grandiloquent classical poses in tunics modified with Russian details.17

14 Suzanne L. Marchand, Down From Olympus: Archaeology and Philhellenism in Germany, 1750–1970 (Princeton, NJ, 1996), 10–11, 40–53. 15 Faibisovich, Olenin, 258–259. 16 Ibid., 270–273. 17 Ibid., 339–342; Janet Kennedy, “The Neoclassical Ideal in Russian Sculpture,” in Theofanis George Stavrou, ed., Art and Culture in Nineteenth-Century Russia (Bloomington, IN, 1983), 203.

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The Nevskii helmet is to be found under Pozharskii’s right arm, visible only from the rear. The helmet, though, was not Nevskii’s after all; it was later identified as a work produced in 1621 for Mikhail Fedorovich, the first Romanov tsar.18 Olenin’s efforts expressed a rising historicist sensibility among the educated public to artifacts from Russia’s past. In an article of 1820 about the Kremlin Armory, the artist and travel writer Pavel Svin’in wrote: A Russian cannot view the treasures of the Kremlin Armory only with a feeling of astonishment about something fine and valuable. . . . Each thing also reaffirms the unwavering glory and might of his Fatherland. Each piece of armor may have been stained with the blood of those close to him!19

For Nicholas, such objects demonstrated Russia’s parity with European monarchies, which were enshrining their own medieval traditions. In 1843, when he and Filaret of Moscow examined the recently discovered frescoes in Kiev’s Sofiia Cathedral, the metropolitan voiced doubt about the wisdom of exhibiting the frescoes, since they showed evidence of the practice of current Old Believer rituals in Kievan Russia. Nicholas retorted, “You love ancient times (starina), and I love them too. In Europe now the tiniest ancient thing is cherished . . . Nonsense. Do not contradict me.”20 Antiquities now assumed a sacral status defined as national and hallowed with the term starina, a word uttered reverentially. Difficult to translate, it signifies olden times or olden things that hearkened back to early Russia and therefore were to be regarded as authentic and eternal signs of Russia’s distinctiveness. The same high valuation of the old began to affect the consciousness of the leading clergy who envisioned “the resurrection of ancient religious life.” Antiquities were identified as virtual relics; the authenticity of an item as something ancient was sufficient to make it representative of “the spiritual

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Gosudarstvennaia oruzheinaia palata (Moscow, 1988), 162–163. P. P. Svin’in, “Oruzheinaia palata,” Otechestvennye zapiski (1822), 1 (I thank Elena Vyshlenkova for this reference); Faibisovich, Olenin, 344–345. 20 Solntsev, “Moia zhizn’,” 16:290. 19

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experience of Russia.”21 The next step was to discover these objects and make them known in Russia and Europe. Solntsev came to Olenin’s attention as an outstanding student and twice laureate of the Academy’s gold medal. If Olenin excelled in exercising authority effectively to realize cultural goals, Solntsev excelled in obedience to his patron and did so with a flair that impressed both the mentor and the tsar. After Olenin’s death, Nicholas took Solntsev under his direct patronage and announced that all future assignments would come from himself “as imperial commands” (vysochaishie poveleniia).22 Solntsev’s first major assignment came in 1829; he was to depict the Hoard of Riazan, gold and bejeweled items of princely provenance that had been unearthed in the town seven years earlier. Next, in 1830 a petition of Olenin prompted a supreme command of Nicholas to dispatch Solntsev to the Kremlin Armory in Moscow in order to “depict our ancient (starinnye) customs, dress, weapons, church and imperial paraphernalia, everyday goods, harness, and similar items belonging to the categories of historical, archaeological, and ethnographic information.”23 The command went on to specify: “Everything that is worthy of attention and that constitutes historical material or an object of archaeological interest for scholars and artists shall be described in all detail and published.”24 Only six weeks into his assignment, Solntsev provided Olenin with nine drawings, several of them watercolors. Olenin was delighted. He wrote to Solntsev of his “great pleasure” in seeing “this new example of your diligence and especially of your art in the faithful and at the same time pleasant depiction of objects that are in essence so dry but at the same time so interesting and useful for the historian, the archaeologist, and most important, for the artist.”25 Solntsev then undertook numerous trips to early Russian historical sites such as Vladimir,

21 A. L. Batalov, “Istorizm v tserkovnom soznanie serediny XIX v.” in Pamiatniki arkhtektury v dorevoliutsionnoi Rossii: Ocherki istorii arkhtekturnoi restavratsii (Moscow, 2002), 148–149. 22 Solntsev wrote of Olenin’s “fatherly concern”—watching over his work, giving him instruction and treating him as a member of his family: Solntsev, “Moia zhizn’,” 16:311, 286. 23 Ibid., 634; Stuart, Olenin, 107. 24 A. N. Olenin, Arkheologicheskiia trudy 1 (St. Petersburg, 1881), xxvii–xxviii. 25 Solntsev, “Moia zhizn’,” 15:635.

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Iur’ev-Pol’skii, Riazan, and Novgorod, though his major efforts still took place at the Kremlin in Moscow. He completed nearly five thousand drawings and watercolors, what Gerold Vzdornov described as “a kind of encyclopedia of Russian medieval and national life in its concrete monuments.”26 But Olenin had more in mind than an encyclopedia. He envisioned a vast project that would use these artifacts to begin an ethnographical study that would integrate a Russian national aesthetic into the classical heritage. He began to outline his plans in a small volume published in 1832, as the first part of a multi-volume work meant to prepare a “course of history, archaeology, and ethnography,” for students at the Academy of Arts.27 The volume, the only one published, covered the period “from the time of the Trojans and Russians until the Tatar invasion.” It was devoted principally to descriptions of the clothing of the period and meant as a guide for Professor Petr Basin, who was preparing to paint a scene from 989 of St. Vladimir and the baptism of Rus’. Olenin asserted that “as an enlightened artist” Basin should “present the principal figures in authentic ancient Russian costume” and commit himself to diligent and precise study of its historical origins.28 Dress, like weapons, represented a sign of a people’s culture for Olenin. He believed that pagan Russians wore scant attire and adorned their skin with tattoos, similar to the savages of the Americas or the Pacific islands; but with the advent of Norman princes and the conversion to Christianity, Russians adopted items of dress from the Normans and their Byzantine allies. He observed that in all eras, peoples tend to adopt the customs, rites, and fashion of the peoples “dominating by force of arms, trade, and enlightenment.” To illustrate the extent of the change after the conversion, he referred to a miniature in the Izbornik (Anthology) of 1073, which showed Prince Sviatoslav Iaroslavovich, his family, and entourage in Byzantine robes and headdress.29

26 G. I. Vzdornov, Istoriia otkrytiia i izucheniia russkoi srednevekovoi zhivopisi: XIX vek (Moscow, 1986), 29. 27 [A.N. Olenin], Opyt ob odezhde, oruzhii, nravakh i obychaiakh i stepeni prosveshchenii slovian ot vremeni Troian i russkikh do nashestviia tatar; Period pervyi: Pis’ma k G. Akademiku v dolzhnosti Professora Basinu (St. Petersburg, 1832). 28 Ibid., 2. 29 Ibid., 3–4, 13–19, 71. In the text, Olenin referred to a volume of accompanying illustrations, which I have not been able to locate.

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A manuscript version of Olenin’s volume, inscribed with the date 1834, contains illustrations by Solntsev of pre-Christian Russian princes outfitted as savage warriors and eleventh-century princes and their families in Norman, west Slavic, and Byzantine attire. Olenin concluded that the examples of dress he had found in illustrations of a seventeenth-century khronograph—a history derived from Byzantne sources that placed Russia in a world context—revealed the emergence of a distinctive national style of dress. He asserted that “the clothing of Russian princes, boiars, and boiar wives of the sixteenth century” showed that “the use of epanchi (long and highly decorated mantles and furs with hanging sleeves, otkladnye ruki) became general and a genuine national dress.”30 He did not indicate the sources of these items nor their relationship to the earlier Byzantine models. The set of exercises that Olenin drafted in 1835 to test Solntsev’s skills for promotion to the rank of academician in the Academy of Arts reflected the director’s determination to find and make known examples of a national art that was linked to classical antiquity. The requirements demanded an execution in both classical and indigenous styles. In addition to Russian antiquities, armaments, and “especially ancient clothing,” Solntsev was to draw classical statues of “Venus Triumphant” and “Weeping Faun,” works that had been unearthed on the Belosel’skii-Belozerskii estate. The assignment called for the rendering of all these diverse objects and particularly ancient Russian dress in a single painting. “In order to combine ancient Greek art with our own ancient Russian in a single picture,” Solntsev wrote, “I decided to paint a watercolor depicting the meeting of Prince Sviatoslav Igorevich (964–972) with the Greek emperor, John I Tzimisces (969–976).”31 Olenin not only dictated the exercises, but also influenced the composition of the painting.32 “He helped me with advice and directions, assisting me in any way he could,” Solntsev recalled. The watercolor that resulted was a visual expression of his belief in the Byzantine roots of monarchical authority in Russia and his theory that clothing and weapons represented concrete expressions of national identity. Soln-

30 Olenin, “Opyt o russkikh odezhdakh i obychaiakh c IX po XVIII stoletiie; Odezhda russkikh, svetskaia i voennaia. Ch. II, Odezhda Svetskaia,” Biblioteka Oruzheinoi palaty, Inv. No. Gr-4441/1–26, 47591 kp. I thank Irina Bogatskaia for recommending this manuscript to me. 31 Solntsev, “Moia zhizn’,” 16:269–271. 32 Ibid., 271.

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Meeting of Kievan Prince Sviatoslav with the Byzantine Emperor John Tzimisces. Watercolor, 1836, reproduced courtesy of The State Russian Museum, St. Petersburg.

tsev places the haughty emperor and the half-naked prince in the same frame and thus juxtaposes and associates them. The emperor is on horseback in equestrian pose. He wears a crown and shoulder piece and brandishes a scepter. His face, firm and determined, expresses his authority and resolve. The presumably fierce Prince Sviatolav, in simple pagan dress, looks back submissively, chastened by this display of authority. One of the emperor’s servitors and a Russian hoist the sail together. The image attached to the lower edge of the proscenium frame, foreshadows the future of Rus’. A copy of the title page of the Izbornik of 1073 shows Prince Sviatoslav Iaroslavich, Sviatoslav Igorevich’s great grandson, with his retinue, displaying Byzantine type robes, thus demonstrating the adoption of Christian imperial culture by the Kievan dynasty. The elaborate frame acts as a proscenium enclosing not a dramatic scene but an assemblage of actors with their armaments and dress that identifies them with particular periods and their artistic styles. The embellishments on the frame include Russian and Greek articles of attire, weapons, and saddles discovered in previous decades that attest to the diverse traditions of Russia’s past. Shoulder crosses hang above

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the top, making it clear that this is a view of the past from a current Christian perspective. The frame is decorated with Scythian and Greek arms some of them unearthed during recent excavations. The figures of Venus and the faun stand as if on guard at the sides, symbolizing Russia’s reception of the classical heritage. Solntsev’s watercolor won him an appointment to the academy. It also introduced the idiom that identified his most important works—a composite of images and motifs drawn from artifacts that associated them metonymically as an expression of a national artistic tradition. Solntsev was not a creative artist; his talent was to reproduce objects exactly, as though a photographer, and to do so with a measure of enhancement of color and design that made them as Olenin observed, “pleasant” to the eye.33 Solntsev applied his techniques in three projects that were intended to advance Nicholas’s efforts to make the Moscow Kremlin a principal symbol of Russia’s national past: the renovation of the Terem Palace in 1837; the Kremlin Table Service, commissioned also in 1837; and the floors and carpets of the New Kremlin Palace in 1838. The first and most important project was his work on the renovation of the seventeenth-century Terem Palace. The wall paintings demanded a creative adaptation of old themes since the originals had not survived. Employing motifs from various artifacts, Solntsev tried to capture the spirit of the originals. He produced this spirit by montage, by bringing together objects of varied provenance and character to associate them with a national historical theme. He borrowed motifs from different sources: decorations from the surviving window frames of the palace; copies of icons; illustrations of regalia, weapons, and other artifacts; and images of lions and imperial eagles. All of these covered the red walls which were brightened with gilded interlace and floral designs. Solntsev patterned the dress of the saints he depicted on tiled ovens, early Russian furniture, colorful miniatures in old manuscripts, and carvings on wooden churches and peasant huts. Solntsev covered the entirety of the walls with designs, an effect that the art historian Evgeniia Kirichenko called “kovrovost’,” a carpet-like figuration she traces to Byzantine influences. The vaults and religious paintings of the palace gave the impression of early Russian church

33 Ibid. 111: As a child Solntsev had difficulty in school with reading and arithmetic, while he displayed an astounding ability to draw objects with great verisimilitude.

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Window Frame from the Terem Palace. Solntsev, Antiquities.

interiors, a merging of ecclesiastical and political symbols.34 His work evoked what a contemporary critic described as “a poetic mood of the soul, a hypothetical effort to convey [the distinctive features of the building] not only with archaeological exactitude but with the exalted feeling that moved the architect at the moment of creation and gave it the imprint of true beauty and creativity.”35 Nicholas inspected the work and was delighted. That same year, in 1837, he commissioned Solntsev to design the Kremlin dinner service, which became a mainstay of banquets celebrating important events in Moscow, such as coronations and the tercentenary of 1913. As Anne Odom has shown, Solntsev used many items from the Kremlin

34 Kirichenko, Russkii stil’, 120, 136–138; Solntsev, “Moia zhizn’,” 16:272–274, 279–280. 35 Kirichenko, Russkii stil’, 137.

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Armory as prototypes for the decoration of the service. The rims of the dishes were embellished with interlacing floral patterns from wood and stone carvings, and motifs were drawn from metal utensils, embroidery, illuminated manuscripts, and gospel covers. On the dessert plates, floral themes cover the surface and surround the Russian imperial eagle, producing the effect of kovrovost’. One thousand of these dessert plates were produced for the service, which was completed only in 1847. Nicholas was also pleased with Solntsev’s sketches for the parquet floors and carpets of Ton’s New Kremlin Palace.36 The inclination to use art to bring together the diverse—to make mutually exclusive items complementary in the name of nation—culminated in the great compendium of Solntsev’s drawings and watercolors, the Antiquities of the Russian State. Olenin and Nicholas had intended such a publication as early as 1830, but other projects and technical obstacles caused delays. In 1841 Olenin submitted a proposal for a publication with broad ethnographical and historical parameters, supplemented with extensive scholarly commentaries. Its title indicated that it was meant “for artists,” suggesting that it would also provide models for them to follow in developing a national artistic idiom.37 Olenin’s vision of a national artistic summa with a scholarly apparatus was not to be realized. He died in 1843, and Nicholas appointed a committee under his own supervision to direct the project, which he supported with a grant of approximately one hundred thousand rubles. The six volumes of Solntsev’s illustrations appeared between 1849 and 1853 in an edition of six hundred copies in both Russian and English. Owing to the emperor’s generosity, they were produced with the latest techniques of chromolithography. The introduction noted that the committee had abandoned Olenin’s plans for “scholarly investigations” and “a purely ethnographic compilation of the antiquities of Slavonic tribes in contact with other peoples.” Its members also wanted to publish the illustrations without Solntsev’s signature

36 Anne Odom: Russian Imperial Porcelain at Hillwood (Washington, D.C., 1999), 57–61; and “Fedor Solntsev, the Kremlin Service, and the Origins of the Russian Style,” Hillwood Studies 1 (1991), 1–2. Kirichenko, Russkii stil’, 138–139. 37 The purpose was “to make known, in all their detail and idiosyncratic aspect our ancient mores, customs, rites, ecclesiastical, military and peasant dress, dwellings and buildings, the level of knowledge of enlightenment, technology, arts, trades, and various objects in our society”: Olenin, Trudy 1:xxviii; Stuart, Olenin, 108; Solntsev, “Moia Zhizn’,” 16:280–281.

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and not to acknowledge his authorship, but Nicholas ruled otherwise.38 The emphasis of the Antiquities shifted to ethnographic materials that glorified the ruling house as the incarnation of the national past. The compendium provided proof that due to the efforts of the monarchy Russia, like other European countries, could boast artifacts revealing a native artistic tradition. The change is indicated by the title—Antiquities of the Russian State Published by Imperial Command of Sovereign Emperor Nicholas I. The introduction traced the achievements of Catherine the Great in initiating archaeological expeditions and Alexander I in discovering the treasures from the pre-Petrine Great Treasury Chancellery (Prikaz bol’shoi kazny) and creating a repository of antiquities in the Kremlin. It stressed that antiquities had been left to deteriorate across Russia and that “the time of the preservation of monuments began with the accession and the all-embracing solicitude of the reigning Tsar and Emperor Nicholas I.”39 Just as the codification and the publication of The Complete Collection of Laws, published by imperial command during the previous decade, brought together and made known laws issued by the Russian monarchy and thus defined a national legal tradition, the Antiquities assembled the artistic works of Russia’s past to make known an artistic heritage for the dynasty.40 The illustrations are divided by category—religious objects, regalia, weapons, portraits and clothing, artistic versions of household implements, and examples of early Russian architecture—with brief commentaries on the individual items.41 The dominating presence throughout is the dynasty and its predecessors. The commentaries invoke legend to set the antiquities in a narrative of dynastic continuity that linked the tsars of Moscow with their Kievan ancestors and the emperors of Byzantium. The members of the committee, Mikhail

38 Drevnosti Rossiiskago gosudarstva (Moscow, 1849), part 3. (There are separate paginations for several introductory sections of the book); Stuart, Olenin, 108–109. 39 Drevnosti, part 2. 40 See my article, “The Fundamental State Laws of 1832 as Symbolic Act,” in F. B. Uspenskii, ed. Miscellanea Slavica: Sbornik statei k 70-letiiu Borisa Andreevicha Uspenskogo (Moscow, 2008), 398–408, and Tatiana Borisova, “The Russian National Legal Tradition: Svod versus Ulozhenie in Nineteenth-century Russia,” Review of Central and Eastern European Law 33 (2008), 295–341. 41 The first volume includes religious objects—icons, pectoral crosses, vestments of the clergy, and chrism dishes; the second is devoted to regalia and articles figuring in the sacralization of the tsar; the third to weapons, armor, carriages and saddles; the fourth to portraits and clothing; the fifth to household items such as cups, wine bowls, and flasks; and the sixth to old Russian architecture.

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Zagoskin, Ivan Snegirev, and Aleksandr Vel’tman, who supervised the work and wrote several of the commentaries, were adepts of Official Nationality and known authorities on early Russian history and archaeology. The Antiquities restored the Muscovite royal insignia to the dynastic narrative by including numerous renderings of “the regalia of Monomakh”—the Crown or Cap of Monomakh, the orb, and the scepter—which Peter the Great had replaced at his coronation of Catherine I in 1724. Eight of the watercolors show variants of the Cap of Monomakh, which, according to sixteenth-century legend, had been received by Prince Vladimir Monomakh (1113–1125) from his grandfather, Emperor Constantine Monomakh (1042–1055), who had obviously died long before the reign of his grandson. The original Crown of Monomakh is thought to be of fourteenth-century and possibly Tatar origin.42 The commentary tried to prove the substance of the legend

The Crown or Cap of Monomakh. Solntsev, Antiquities. 42

On the eastern origin of the cap, see G. F. Valeeva-Suleimanova, “Korony russkikh tsarei—pamiatniki tatarskoi kul’tury,” in Catherine Evtuhov, Boris Gasparov, Alexander Ospovat, Mark Von Hagen, eds., Kazan, Moscow, St. Petersburg: Multiple Faces of Empire (Moscow, 1997), 40–52.

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by contending that Saint Vladimir received a golden “cap” after his conversion to Christianity from the Byzantine emperor and that Constantine Monomakh had indeed made a gift of regalia to the Russian princes.43 After the election of Tsar Mikhail Fedorovich in 1613, new “grand regalia” (bol’shoi nariad) displayed symbolic lineage to the defunct dynasty of Riurik, which had begun with the “invitation to the Varangians,” or Normans, in 862, and ended with the death of Tsarevich Dmitrii in 1598. The Antiquities included pictures of Mikhail’s orb and scepter, which were fashioned by European craftsmen in the style of the Baroque “treasury art” exhibited in European palaces during the seventeenth century. However, the authors of the commentary did not

The Scepter of Tsar Mikhail Fedorovich, the First Romanov. Solntsev, Antiquities.

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Drevnosti 2:viii–ix.

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know this and explained the items as “Greek work” and “a valuable memento of the tenth century.” In 1627 European craftsmen working in the Kremlin produced a Baroque version of the original Cap of Monomakh.44 In illustrating the “Grand Regalia of Tsar Mikhail,” Solntsev’s art accentuates the decorative richness of the individual objects, creating an aesthetic unity out of artifacts of diverse character and historical origin. His watercolors highlight the intricate design and vivid color of the individual antiquities, revealing each to be an object of art, and also furthering Olenin’s goal to provide a guide for future artists. Solntsev’s depiction of the original Crown of Monomakh reveals the intricate floral designs covering the entire gold surface. He includes black and white insets that make clear the intricacy of the decoration. The watercolor captures the gold of the conical form, the brightness of the emeralds and the rubies adorning the sides, and the shades of the pearls at the points of the cross. The illustration of the scepter provides three views, one in black and white to articulate the design. The artist devotes three separate plates to the orb, a frontal view, copies of the four triangular pictures on the Hebrew kings, and details from the top and the base. The Antiquities also provide numerous illustrations of weapons, particularly helmets, that belonged to Russian princes and tsars. Four illustrations are devoted to views of “the helmet of Aleksandr Nevskii.”45 Two views show the gold engraving of imperial crowns on the surface, the gems, and the enamel figure of the Archangel Michael on the nose piece. The cuirass in the rear, which follows west European examples, is covered with etched interlace of vegetal designs around a figure of Hercules subduing the Hydra of Lernaea.46 The breastplate of Tsar Aleksei Mikhailovich, called “mirror” (zertsalo) armor, is made up of shining polished steel with alternating sheets imprinted with gold. Solntsev also provides separate renderings of the details, as he does with this leather bow case and quiver, decorated with enameled gold and gems.

44

Gosudarstvennaia oruzheinaia palata, 347–349; Drevnosti 2:34, 51. Faibisovich, Olenin, 296. The commentary refers to the mention of the helmet in a seventeenth-century listing, but links it to Georgian kings; it characterizes the attribution to Nevskii as a “tradition”: Drevnosti 3:7. 46 Drevnosti 3:7; Gosudarstvennaia oruzheinaia palata, 162–163. 45

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The alleged Helmet of Prince Aleksandr Nevskii. Solntsev, Antiquities.

The Breast Plate of Tsar Aleksei Mikhailovich. Solntsev, Antiquities.

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Solntsev pays the same close attention to the lavish embellishment of the household and religious belongings of members of the ruling family. An inkwell of Tsar Mikhail and a gospel cover of Natalia Naryshkina, the mother of Peter the Great, are striking examples. The inkwell is studded with great emeralds and rubies and pearls, which are rendered from different views. The gospel cover glistens with diamonds, rubies, and emeralds, interspersed with images of God the Almighty, the Mother of God, John the Baptist, and four of the apostles. “The entire surface of the front cover is so lavishly studded with gems that it seems they merge into a single mass,” the commentary reads.47

Gospel Cover. Solntsev, Antiquities. 47

Drevnosti 1:118–119.

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Solntsev gave a particularly vivid rendering of an onyx chrism dish, a vessel that contains the sacramental oil for anointment in Eastern Orthodox services. The gold enameled handle in the form of a snake curled in a circle is a symbol of wisdom and health according to the commentary, which cited a legend that it belonged to Augustus Caesar, “whom [Russian rulers] considered an ancestor of Riurik.” It emphasized, however, that the name Augustus Caesar was often assumed by Byzantine emperors as well. The commentary also repeated a legend that the dish was among the items that the Emperor Alexis Komnen sent to Prince Vladimir Monomakh in 1113.48 Olenin had argued that the sixteenth century marked the appearance of a Russian national dress, and the garments of tsars, boiars, and peasants make up the fourth volume of the compendium. There are four illustrations of the attire of tsars and tsaritsas of the seventeenth century, and eight of boiars, several showing the robes and long loose sleeves that Olenin had singled out as peculiarly Russian. Twelve of

Ceremonial Garb of Tsars. Solntsev, Antiquities. 48

Ibid., 69–70.

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the watercolors depict peasants in folk dress from Torzhok, Tver, and Riazan. These of course were not antiquities, but by appearing in the collection were marked as national and authentic and also associated with the monarchy and state. The dense and ornate design of the attire shown in the Antiquities establishes a connection between diverse social classes as well as between distant historical periods. The luxurious clothing of the tsars and boiars shares the decorative richness of the holiday costumes of peasant women. Both groups are placed within elaborate interlacing frames reproducing motifs from ancient manuscripts. They appear in a single artistic space of nationality, overcoming the social distance imposed by the Western dress adopted and imposed by Peter the Great. On the other hand the scene of Torzhok peasants presents

Peasant Holiday Costumes. Solntsev, Antiquities.

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them in everyday dress before their hut, a church with a tent roof in the background. These are also surrounded by interlacing decorative motifs. The exuberant, lush colors recall the decorative vegetation Valerie Kivelson has discerned in early Russian cartography, which derived from folk embroideries, carvings, and icons.49 If the Antiquities demonstrated the ties of nineteenth-century monarchy with a Muscovite past, the aesthetic idiom devised by Solntsev brought together everything from a jewel studded imperial crown to peasant folk costumes in a visual statement of “Russianness”—a symbol uniting state, monarchy, and people. Associating the diverse objects was a style of dense, lush, decoration, and what William Craft Brumfield has called “Muscovite ornamentalism.”50 The model here remained the surviving window frames of Aleksei Mikhailovich’s Terem Palace, four of which were reproduced in the Antiquities. The Russian style promoted by Nicholas I typified the pattern of borrowing by Russian monarchs, their appropriation of a dominant intellectual and artistic mode from the West to enhance their own political and cultural standing. The national aesthetic complemented but hardly supplanted neoclassicism as an artistic expression of the monarchy. In St. Petersburg, Nicholas favored neoclassicism, as attested by the rows of stately governmental buildings that went up during his reign. He continued to commission table services in other styles, for instance the Etruscan service he ordered for the empress’s Roman Pavilion at Peterhof. His imperial scenario, in this respect, as in others, was highly eclectic. The Antiquities and other works of Solntsev focused primarily on Moscow and enhanced Nicholas’s credentials as the successor to the Romanov tsars of the seventeenth century and their predecessors in ancient Rus’. St. Petersburg and Peterhof, on the other hand, showed him as heir to the classical traditions of Rome. Olenin’s aspiration to unite classical and native traditions had its perhaps unforeseen outcome in Nicholas I’s presentation of the Russian monarchy as the paradigm of eastern as well as western Roman imperial heritages. Solntsev’s art was a Russian expression of a European-wide movement of historicism in art. The distinctive feature of Russian historicism was the prominent role of the monarchy in shaping its subject 49

Valerie Kivelson, Cartographies of Tsardom: The Land and Its Meanings in Seventeenth-Century Russia (Ithaca, NY, 2006), 116. 50 William Craft Brumfield, A History of Russian Architecture (Cambridge, UK, 1993), 149–150.

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matter as an elaboration of the mythology and ideology of the state. The works of Solntsev epitomized the eclectic spirit of Official Nationality: an absolute monarchy purporting to enjoy the love of the people and reflect the idea of nationality, while it maintained the tastes and manner of European royalty. The monarch initiated the project of creating a national esthetic and ensured that the dynasty appeared as the principal subject of its art. The dominant role of the monarchy in shaping the historicist esthetic distinguishes the work of Solntsev from such European counterparts as Augustus W. N. Pugin and Eugène Emmanuel Viollet-le-Duc, who took their own initiative to discover native artistic traditions in medieval objects of art that would express the spirit of a nation as a whole. The editor of Russian Antiquity, Mikhail Semevskii, in a tribute to Solntsev wrote that his works “awakened Russian artists’ feeling of national self-consciousness and respect for models bequeathed to us by our forefathers.”51 Solntsev’s resplendent array of intricate and dense multicolored designs gained broad appeal as an expression of a distinctively Russian aesthetic, which later provided the basis for the emergence of the Russian style (le style russe). Only in the last decades of the century under the influence of Slavophile and other doctrines did the monarchy begin to escape its earlier ideological and artistic eclecticism and purport to be one spiritually and even ethnically with the Russian people. But that is another story. In Nicholas’s reign, adherents of Shellingian philosophy regarded Solntsev’s works as expressions of the “national spirit” they were seeking. One of their number was Mikhail Pogodin, the principal historian of Official Nationality. While witnessing the pageant celebrating the opening of the New Kremlin Palace in 1849, Pogodin marveled at the Russian costumes, several of them designed by Solntsev. “Our travelers,” he wrote, “were captivated only when the Russian spirit was realized before their eyes, when they saw the way our pretty Russian girls and our fine fellows (molodtsy) were dressed. They appeared before us in their grandfathers’ kaftans—staid boiars, majestic boiarins. What delight, what splendor, what variety, what beauty, what poetry!”52

51

The article in Russkaia starina is cited in G. V. Aksenova, “Fedor Solntsev—sozdatel’ arkheologicheskoi zhivopisi,” Slovo: Pravoslavyni obrazovatel’nyi portal, www .portal-slovo.ru/rus/history/84/55/. 52 Nikolai Barsukov, Zhizn’ i trudy Pogodina (St. Petersburg, 1896) 10: 209.

CHAPTER TWO

A REVOLUTION IN RUSSIAN DESIGN: SOLNTSEV AND THE DECORATIVE ARTS Anne Odom The publication of Fedor Solntsev’s monumental six-volume set of drawings, Antiquities of the Russian State between 1849 and 1853 marks a turning point in the history of Russian design. Aleksei Olenin, Solntsev’s patron and the tsar’s artistic mentor, originally conceived the project, and Nicholas I gladly provided the funding since he presciently envisioned the work as a way to inject his concept of nationality into the arts. In fact, this publication—together with Solntsev’s drawings for services made at the Imperial Porcelain Factory—launched a new, distinctively Russian, vocabulary of ornament. The result was the Russian style. Initially called the Russo-Byzantine style and later in the early twentieth century the neo-Russian style, the new mode had an impact in all media—silver, bronze, porcelain, glass, furniture, interiors, book design, and a whole range of graphics.1 So influential was Solntsev’s work and so pervasive did this type of ornament become, that the art and music critic, Vladimir Stasov, could write in 1898: “All our contemporary Russian style is found in the drawings of Solntsev.”2 As a style defining Russian identity, the fashion was especially successful for exported decorative wares, particularly those made by silversmiths, bronze manufacturers, and porcelain factories for exhibition at international expositions, the major forums for transmitting the latest designs in the second half of the nineteenth century.3 At these fairs the Russian style ultimately shared many similar romantic 1 Evgeniia I. Kirichenko has written most extensively on the Russian style: Russkii stil’ (Moscow, 1997) and in English, Evgenia Kirichenko, Russian Design and the Fine Arts 1750–1917 (New York, 1991). 2 Quoted in T. I. Dul’kina, “Svoia natsional’naia nota v keramike,” Russkii stil’: Sobranie Gosudarstvennogo istoricheskogo muzeia (Moscow, 1998), 106. 3 On the Russian style and the international exhibitions, see: Anne Odom, “The Russian Style for Export,” in The Magazine Antiques 163 (March 2003), 102–107; and Karen Kettering, “Decoration and Disconnection: The Russkii stil’ and Russian Decorative Arts at Nineteenth-Century American World’s Fairs,” in Rosalind P. Blakesley

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nationalistic characteristics found in the objects exhibited by Ireland, Norway, Czechoslovakia, and Hungary.4 National styles took on political overtones in all these smaller countries as they became symbolic of the political independence to which each of them aspired. Although Russia was an enormous independent empire, it had been in the thrall of Western culture for a century and a half. Probably because of the degree of success in Westernizing, critics always considered indigenous efforts derivative, especially in art and architecture. For Nicholas I, the study of Russian artifacts and culture satisfied his political program with its focus on the native strengths of Russian society and culture. With the tsar’s commissions for Solntsev in the decorative arts and the use made of these models by the silversmith, Ignatii Sazikov, and other bronze manufacturers the designs soon proliferated across the country and for the rest of the century. The ideas leading to a reassessment of Russia’s artistic future began percolating early in the century. The litterateur and historian, Nikolai Karamzin, after traveling to Europe, had written: “It is necessary to inculcate in Russians a consciousness of their own value; it is necessary to show them that their past is capable of furnishing subjects of inspiration for the artist, of encouraging works of art, of making hearts palpitate.”5 His views were surely shared by his friend Olenin, who became director of the Academy of Arts in 1817. A classicist, the director believed that the drawing of antiquities was fundamental to the study of art, and he hoped to add a course in Russian ancient artifacts to the program at his institution. Another subject of great interest to Olenin was the exact portrayal of arms and armor in historic paintings and sculpture.6 He himself had a personal collection, and this subject figured prominently in his instructions to Solntsev for copying Russia’s treasures. In the 1820s Olenin had begun planning a massive encyclopedia of all manner of Russian artifacts, especially costume, design, and arms

and Susan Reid, eds., Russian Art and the West: A Century of Dialogue in Painting, Architecture, and the Decorative Arts (DeKalb, IL, 2007), 61–85. 4 Paul Greenhalgh, “The Style and the Age,” in Greenhalgh, ed., Art Nouveau 1890– 1914 (London, 2000), 29–31. 5 Quoted in Edward C. Thaden, Conservative Nationalism in Nineteenth-Century Russia (Seattle, WA, 1964), 5. 6 Viktor Faibisovich discusses this subject in “Trofei russkogo ampira: Oruzhie srednevekovoi Rusi v pamiatnikakh aleksandrovskogo klassitsizma,” Nashe nasledie 61 (2002), 40–53. I would like to thank Wendy Salmond for alerting me to this article.

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and armor, judging this endeavor a huge resource for artists. He had worked with an assistant, Aleksandr Ermolaev, on the project, but he died in 1828. Olenin searched for a successor, and his discovery of Solntsev spawned a relationship that would last until Olenin’s death in 1843.7 Beginning in 1830 the mentor sent his protégé to Moscow and other old cities in Russia to execute drawings of “our ancient customs, dress, weapons, church and imperial paraphernalia, everyday goods, harness, and similar items belonging to the categories of historical, archaeological, and ethnographic information.”8 Supported by Nicholas I, to whom Olenin had sent some of Solntsev’s drawings, the artist spent 1836 and 1837 in Moscow copying objects in the Kremlin Armory, providing drawings for the restoration of the murals in the old Terem Palace, and executing designs for parquet floors, chandeliers, and other fixtures for the New Kremlin Palace.9 At the same time he produced designs for a Kremlin porcelain service intended for use in the new royal residence. Solntsev’s drawings of objects in the holdings of the Kremlin Armory became the essential reference for future designers, especially in the decorative arts. Volume five of the Antiquities is focused entirely on the luxury wares of the early tsars, which were almost exclusively works of gold and silver, decorated with enamel and/or gemstones. Ironically, Solntsev first reworked these prototypes in designs for porcelain, that is, decoration for a very different medium. In 1837 Nicholas I commissioned a service for five hundred persons to be used in the New Kremlin Palace. The emperor’s instructions to the Imperial Porcelain Factory were that the service should be in the “old Russian taste.”10 It remains the best known of all Solntsev’s designs for decorative objects.

7 M. M. Evtushenko, “Fedor Grigor’evich Solntsev. Novye dannye k tvorcheskoi biografii khudozhnika,” in Russkoe iskusstvo v Ermitazhe. Sbornik statei (St. Petersburg, 2003), 242. See also Mary Stuart, Aristocrat-Librarian in Service to the Tsar: Aleksei Nikolaevich Olenin and the Imperial Public Library (Boulder, CO, 1986), 105–108. 8 F. G. Solntsev, “Moia zhizn’ i khudozhestvenno-arkheologicheskie trudy,” Russkaia starina 15 (1876), 634. 9 For projects Solntsev worked on in the Great Kremlin Palace, consult Igor Sychev, Russian Bronze (Moscow, 2003), and G. A. Markova, Bolshoi Kremlevskii dvorets arkhitektura Tona (Moscow, 1994), 54. 10 Rossiiskii Gosudarstvennyi istoricheskii arkhiv, hereafter, RGIA, (Russian State Historical Archive), fond 468, opis 10, delo 821, 1937, list 4. For more on the background

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The Kremlin Service can be divided into two parts: the “gold” service included the plates for appetizers (zakuski), hot dishes, and desserts; the “white” service was for soup.11 Solntsev had copied designs for two parts of the “gold” service from actual objects in the Kremlin Armory. For the dessert plates, he used the decoration of a gold and enamel plate made in the armory workshops in 1667 for Tsar Aleksei Mikhailovich. Two Greek artists from Constantinople, Leontii

Gold Plate Decorated with Enamel. Solntsev, Antiquities. of the Kremlin Service, see Odom, “Fedor Solntsev, the Kremlin Service and the Origins of the Russian Style,” in The Post, Hillwood Studies 1 (1991), 1–4. 11 This designation between “gold” and “white” services must have been one used at the Kremlin Palace, where the service was located until 1939. The terms are not found in the factory record: RGIA, f. 468, op. 10, d. 821, l. 837. Nor are they terms Baron Nikolai von Wolff uses in his history of the factory: von Wolff, et al., Imperatorskii farforovyi zavod 1744–1904 (St. Petersburg, 1906), 197–199. Irina Gorbatova, Curator of Porcelain in the Kremlin Armory does use these terms: “Kremlevskii serviz F. G. Solntseva” in Russkii farfor: 250 let istorii (Moscow, 1995), 25.

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Konstantinov and Ivan Iur’ev, created the original plate, executed in champlevé enamel on gold, with an intertwined floral pattern around the rim; small red rosettes in gold medallions surround a double-headed eagle in the center.12 On the original plate the inscription around the eagle reads: “Tsar Sovereign and Grand Duke Aleksei Mikhailovich Autocrat of All Great and Little Russia”; the Kremlin Service reads simply: “Nikolai Emperor and Autocrat of All Russia.” According to Baron Nikolai von Wolff, who oversaw the authoritative history of the Imperial Porcelain Factory, an identical set was made for the Shah of Persia with only an appropriate change of inscription.13 In ornamenting the other plates and serving dishes in the gold service, Solntsev replicated the design fashioned by a Greek goldsmith on the interior of a seventeenth-century basin, which was part of a washing set made for Natalia Kirillovna, Tsar Aleksei’s second wife. The decoration consists of green stylized palm leaves fanning out from a central floral interlace ornament. These porcelain plates are extremely rich in decoration and with all the gilding, give the impression of gold and enamel wares. Although derived from two different cultures, the two parts of the service are united by the same color combinations of gold, green, terracotta, and blue. Floral leaf and vine ornament was common to Persian and Turkish articles and was widely copied in the sixteenth- and seventeenth-century gold plate made in the armory workshops. Around the rims of the plates of the white service, Solntsev employed the same terracotta, green, and blue colors in an interlace design that creates a stylized form of the Crown of Monomakh. The pattern is broken by the double-headed eagle in black. Wolff frowned on the appropriateness of using decoration intended for metalwork on porcelain.14 The ornament on the white service, however, might be considered more creative on Solntsev’s part. For the gold service he essentially copied already existing objects, or in the case of the washbasin, its ornament, whereas the decoration on the white service required Solntsev to create original designs. In general, von Wolff did not consider this service a success, complaining that Solntsev had no feel for porcelain, although he deemed 12

For the original plate, see M. B. Martynova, Moskovskaia emal’ XV–XVII vekov. Katalog 96 (Moscow, 2002). 13 Von Wolff, Zavod, 201. 14 Ibid., 199, 216.

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it a positive step that the decoration and some of the forms broke with the style of traditional dinner services. By 1906 when von Wolff wrote, it should be noted, the Russian style had fallen out of fashion among Russia’s cultural elite, and it is difficult to know to what degree his views merely reflected their attitudes. The whole service was used at formal banquets in the Kremlin Palace and at all coronations from that of Alexander II. Additions were made in 1913 for the celebration of the tercentenary of the dynasty, by which time it was known as the “rich Moscow service” and was perceived as archetypally Russian.15 The decoration, harking back to

Menu for the Coronation Banquet of Alexander III (27 May 1883). Viktor Vasnetsov, Banquet Menus from Czarist Russia (St. Petersburg, 1875–1906). 15

RGIA, f. 503, op. 2, d. 483, l. 21, 23. A description of the use of the Kremlin Service, (Bogatyi Moskovskii serviz) for the coronation of Alexander III, is found in the Kamerfur’erskii zhurnal’ located in RGIA, f. 516, op. 1 (206/2703), d. 29, 1883, l. 141 and 142. The porcelain was used in the Faceted Hall itself and not in the many other dining places in the Kremlin Palace.

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the seventeenth-century Romanovs, provided a fitting reminder to the diner of Russia’s past and of the dynasty’s legitimacy, with the porcelain on the banquet table furthering the messages of what Richard S. Wortman has called a “scenario of power.”16 Nicholas I believed that all his children should be launched socially in style. To that end he built grand palaces and supplied his sons with elaborate services of porcelain, glass and silver, and his daughters with luxurious dowries. In 1847 the tsar commissioned Solntsev to design another banquet service on the occasion of the marriage of his second son Grand Duke Konstantin to Aleksandra, daughter of Joseph, Duke of Saxe-Altenburg.17 Although the service is very similar to the “white” part of the Kremlin Service, all the pieces are easily identified by the initials VKKN—Velikii Kniaz’ (prince or grand duke) Konstantin Nikolaevich—rendered in Old Slavonic lettering. The tableware was designed to coordinate with the décor in the Marble Palace, which the architect Aleksandr Briullov, brother of the artist Karl Briullov, had recently redone in preparation for the grand duke’s marriage, and some rooms reflected the new Russian style. Designed for one hundred people, the service consisted of plates for dinner and dessert, items in colorless glass, and two tea sets, one in silver and the other in porcelain for breakfast, with its own distinctive decoration. Brick-red and green strapwork ornament the rims of plates, edges of bowls, and the sides of cups and flat shell-shaped dishes, usually called charki. Although interlace or strapwork designs were widely used both in Byzantine and European design, it was increasingly viewed as characteristically Russian. Similar brick-red and green interlace ornament would be widely used by the St. Petersburg porcelain firm of the Brothers Kornilov, particularly for their works in the Russian style intended for export abroad. The firm exhibited at the Centennial Exhibition in Philadelphia in 1876 and eventually made this type of ornament so popular in the United States that the American firm Taylor & Knowles copied one of the interlace patterns on china that was mostly used by hotels.18 16

Richard S. Wortman, Scenarios of Power: Myth and Ceremony in Russian Monarchy from Peter the Great to the Abdication of Nicholas II (Princeton, 2006). 17 For more on this service, consult Irina Popova, “Paradnyi farforovyi serviz dlia reformatora russkogo flota,” Russkii antikvar: Almanakh dlia liubitelei iskusstva i starina 1 (2002), 49–55. See also RGIA, f. 468, op. 10, d. 594, 1. 847. 18 See Odom, “Russkii stil’,” 106 for one plate with these colors and strapwork, and for others T. V. Kudriavtseva, T. N. Nosovich, and I. R. Bagdasarova, Farfor Brat’ev Kornilovykh (St. Petersburg, 2003), 126.

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A distinguishing feature of the Konstantin Service is the use of the forms of old Russian silver drinking vessels, like the charka, both in the small cups and in a flat form similar to a porringer, which was intended for eating oysters. For the finials on the lids of tureens and coffee pots, Solntsev employed the helmet of Mikhail Fedorovich, the first Romanov tsar. The original, possibly the work of a late sixteenthcentury Greek craftsman, was decorated in 1621 by Nikita Davydov in the Kremlin Armory. Because the helmet was believed in the nineteenth century to have belonged to the famed thirteenth-century warrior, Aleksandr Nevskii, it was considered a symbol of Russian military glory.19 Solntsev also designed a centerpiece of thirty-six sculptural pieces for the Konstantin Service. Solntsev’s designs remained influential for the rest of the century. For instance, in the 1890s, models from the Kremlin Service were copied by the Iusupov family for a set of faience plates made for their Moscow residence, which had been built in 1555 as the hunting lodge for

Porcelain Tureen from the Konstantin Service. Manufactured by the Imperial Porcelain Factory in St. Petersburg, 1847–1848. Private Collection.

19 Apparently Aleksei Olenin believed throughout his life that this was the helmet of Nevskii: Faibisovich, “Trofei russkogo ampira,” 47.

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Ivan IV and was known as the Falconry Palace.20 The plates are in the exact same style as the gold and enamel plate of Tsar Aleksei Mikhailovich and the dessert plates of the Kremlin Service. In place of the black double-headed eagle in the center stands the rampant lion of the Iusupov coat-of-arms. Around the lion is the inscription: “1892 the Moscow House of the Princes Iusupov in the Ogorodnaia [sloboda],” that is, the old name for the region of Moscow in which the palace was located. Between 1892 and 1895 the interiors of the palace were

Faience Plate Made for the Iusupov Family (1892). Hillwood Estate, Museum, & Gardens. 20 A. Dunin, “Sokol’nichii dvorets Groznogo v Moskve,” Stolitsa i usad’ba 16–17 (1914), 17–20.

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completely redecorated by the architect and designer Nikolai Sultanov, who took great pains to finish the dining room in the style of seventeenth-century tsars.21 Feliks and Zinaida Iusupov were following in a tradition begun by Konstantin Nikolaevich in the Marble Palace in the 1840s and continued by Grand Duke Vladimir Aleksandrovich, who built a Russian style dining room in his palace on the Neva Embankment in the 1870s. With its Slavic historical references, this palace was an appropriate place for the Iusupovs to entertain during the coronation of Nicholas II in 1896. Besides his drawings for porcelain, Solntsev also created designs for metalwork. For Konstantin Nikolaevich, the artist conceived a massive silver gilt tea and coffee service to be produced by the Sazikov firm. It included a large tray, a samovar, a Turkish coffee pot, tea pots, a cake dish, and other pieces.22 There were no traditional Russian forms in this service, like the charka, and the decoration is a mix of neo-rococo gadrooning and scrolls together with interlace handles. Sazikov also provided a silver toilet service for Konstantin’s wife.23 Pavel Sazikov founded the firm in Moscow at the end of the eighteenth century. In 1837 he was succeeded by his son Ignatii, who in 1842 opened a branch in St. Petersburg. It was soon one of the finest in Russia.24 The silversmith was sufficiently well-known that the Police Gazette credited him with the original idea of using the Russian style for the grand duke’s service.25 In 1849 a correspondent for The Northern Bee was equally enthusiastic: The St. Petersburg public was full of admiration for Mr. Sazikov’s candelabras, equal in quality to those produced in London, and his toilet

21 Consult “Restavratsiia doma kniazei Iusupovykh v Moskve,” Zodchii 22 (1893). Two articles discuss Sultanov and the designs for the restoration of the Iusupov Palace: “Nikolai Sultanov. Dizain 100 let nazad,” in D. I. Zhurnal Moskovskogo muzeia sovremennogo iskusstva 1 (2007), 43–49; and Iu. R. Salvel’eva, “N. B. Sultanov—Arkhitektor Iusupovykh,” Russkaia usad’ba 9 (2003). I would like to thank Nadezhda Berezhnaia, Curator of Porcelain at Arkhangel’skoe, the former Iusupov estate outside Moscow, for providing me with this article. 22 “Russian Art,” Sotheby’s New York, April 21, 2005, lot 18. 23 RGIA, f. 468, op.10, d. 594, l. 38. It is unclear whether Solntsev designed the services for her. 24 Vyacheslav Mukhin has written on the Sazikov firm: “The St. Petersburg Branch of the Sazikov Firm and Russian Silverware of the 19th and Early 20th Centuries,” in Mukhin, ed., The Fabulous Epoch of Fabergé: St. Petersburg-Paris-Moscow (Moscow, 1992), 43–51. 25 Politseiskii vedemosti is cited in N. A. Belozerskaia, “Fedor Grigor’evich Solntsev, professor, arkheologicheski zhivopisi,” Russkaia starina 54 (1887), 732.

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accessories in the new Russian Style, based on ancient designs and forms of jewelry in the Kremlin’s Palace of Facets. Mr. Sazikov has resurrected and firmly established in Russia the art of Benvenuto Cellini.26

Solntsev finally refuted this claim with an article in the Bee saying that the idea for a service in the Russian taste had come from the grand duke himself. He said that Sazikov was an excellent silversmith, but that he had had to conform to Solntsev’s drawings.27 The beginning of Sazikov’s relationship with Solntsev remains unclear. They may have become acquainted in Moscow in 1836, when Sazikov was commissioned to gild the silver icon covers (oklady) on the iconostasis of the Upper Savior Church, located on the second floor of the Terem Palace, at the very time when Solntsev was involved with its restoration.28 It is clear, however, that he must have had access to Solntsev’s drawings before the appearance of the Antiquities. In fact, it was noted in The Northern Bee that drawings by Solntsev were regularly requested by the English Store (owned by Nichols & Plinke, and later called by their names) and by other silversmiths as well. A wider audience awaited the Russian style. The great nineteenthcentury forums—where nations would display everything from mining riches and agricultural equipment to the latest styles in porcelain, silver, and bronzes—were the international fairs beginning with the Great Exhibition of the Works of All Nations (usually known as the Crystal Palace Exhibition) in London in 1851. In many ways these fairs replaced the ceremonies surrounding royal weddings, coronations, and diplomatic receptions of the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Now, however, the audience was not limited to royalty and the aristocracy but included everyone. As the historian Peter Gay points out, the bourgeoisie had replaced these elites as the new patrons of the arts, and they were the ones to attend these fairs.29 It was a mark of Sazikov’s prestige in St. Petersburg, surely fueled by commissions

26 The article in Severnaia pchela is quoted by Larissa Zavadskaya in “Gold and Silver in St. Petersburg 1830–1850,” in Géza von Habsburg, ed., Fabergé: Imperial Craftsman and His World (London, 2000), 51. 27 Belozerskaia, “Solntsev,” 732. 28 M. Pavlovich, “K voprosu o restavratsii dvortsovykh tserkvei Moskovskogo Kremlia v 1812–1850-kh gg.,” in S. L. Malafeeva, Tsarskie i imperatorskie dvortsy. Staraia Moskva (Moscow, 1997), 55–61. 29 Peter Gay, Modernism: The Lure of Heresy: From Baudelaire to Brecht and Beyond (New York, 2008), 19–20.

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from the imperial family, that he was among those selected to send works to the exposition. In London, Sazikov exhibited twenty-nine objects, most in the Russian style.30 Eleven of them were illustrated in the official catalogue.31 They included various traditional drinking vessels like the bratina and

Four Objects Exhibited by Ignatii Sazikov at the Great Exhibition of the Works of Industry of All Nations in London, 1851. The set includes a tall silver gilt cup, now at the Hillwood Museum. 30 For a list of the objects Sazikov sent: Katalog rossiiskim proizvedeniiam otpravlennym 1851 goda na Londonskuiu vystavku (St. Petersburg,1851), 77. 31 Official Descriptive and Illustrated Catalogue: Great Exhibition of the Works of Industry of All Nations, 1851 3: Foreign States (London, 1851), between pp. 1382– 1384, no. 209 and between pp. 1384–1385, nos. 190, 194, 197, and 206.

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endova, one used for drinking and the other for pouring wine; many were decorated with the neo-Byzantine interlace ornament first revived by Solntsev from illustrated manuscripts. Another item, a tall lidded cup—now at the Hillwood Museum in Washington DC—has an interlace pattern circling the cup, and the polished spheres shine like gemstones. These objects received high praise. One reviewer wrote: The Russian contributions to the Crystal Palace evince a large amount of costly splendour combined with quaint and characteristic design, showing much fancy in the Art-manufacturers who have been engaged in their fabrication. . . . There is a very free and fanciful taste prevalent in these articles, which gives to them a strong individuality of character.32

In St. Petersburg, acclaim followed Sazikov’s London success. Russian Newsletter on the Art noted that “until now, all silver works made in Russia imitated foreign models; in the works of Mr. Sazikov, the ideas, drawings, models, and their execution arise from the intellect and labor of the Russian.”33 Sazikov received the highest praise for a candelabrum, two meters in height. For this prize-winning entry in London, Petr Klodt modeled the horse and Ivan Vitali fashioned the models for the wounded figure of Dmitrii Donskoi resting under a fir tree with his warriors after the Battle of Kulikovo.34 The sculptors consulted Solntsev to insure the accuracy of the details especially of the helmet and armor worn by Donskoi, but they still erred by two centuries. The helmet and armor on the fourteenth-century heroic figure Donskoi was of a type used in the sixteenth or seventeenth century. An earlier commission seems to have inspired Sazikov to produce this candelabrum, which in turn was connected to Nicholas’s lifelong passion for knights. In 1816 on a visit to England, he met Sir Walter Scott and was a great fan of his novels. Although he did not participate in it, his wife, Aleksandra Fedorovna, was honored with a famous mock medieval tournament on her birthday in Potsdam in 1827, and the emperor would later take part in a cavalcade at Tsarskoe Selo in 1842,

32 The Crystal Palace Exhibition: Illustrated Catalogue, London 1851. An Unabridged Republication of the Art Journal Special Issue (New York, 1970), 266–267. 33 The Russkii khudozhestvenyi listok is quoted in Mukhin, “Sazikov firm,” 46. 34 Ibid., 44. For the illustration from the official catalogue, see The Crystal Palace Exhibition, pl. 194.

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celebrated in the painting by Horace Vernet.35 For Nicholas the Ruirik princes and bogatyrs were Russia’s equivalent to Scott’s heroes. When he made a state visit to England in 1844, the tsar took the opportunity to visit London silversmiths and ordered a service from R. and S. Garrard for fifty people. Known as the London Service, it included seven sculptural groups, one of which was an English medieval knight with his huntsman. Nicholas commissioned Sazikov to produce additions to this service, including another heroic figure to create an ensemble for the centerpiece.36 In both the Garrard sculpture and in Sazikov’s addition, the silver is chased and tooled to bring out the pattern of the fabric of their clothing and the blankets thrown over the horses. This foreshadows the trompe l’oeil damask napkins folded over woven baskets that received such attention when Sazikov exhibited them at the Centennial Exhibition in Philadelphia in 1876.37 The passion for knights as well as Solntsev’s influence were also represented at the Crystal Palace exposition by a large bronze candelabrum fashioned at the firm of Stange and Werfel (or Verfel’) of St. Petersburg, for which Stange received a medal.38 Around the base of the candelabrum—composed of four arms linked to the central column by interlace decoration—stand four knights, dressed in chain mail and armor, wearing helmets, and each holding a weapon. It is thought that Solntsev was likely to have been consulted on the armor of the knights, which again was inappropriate to the period.

35 For the tournament in Potsdam, see T. A. Ilatorskaia and V. A. PakhomovaGëres, Volshebstvo beloi rozy: Istoriia odnogo prazdnika (St. Petersburg, 2000). On Vernet’s painting of The Carousel at Tsarskoe Selo (1843), see Zoia Belyakova, Grand Duchess Maria Nikolayevna and her Palace in St. Petersburg (St. Petersburg, 1994), 65. 36 M. N. Lopato, Iuveliery starogo Peterburga (St. Petersburg, 2006), 132–133. For the knight in the centerpiece, consult James Christen Steward, ed., The Collections of the Romanovs: European Art from the State Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg (London, 2003), 176. For the additional sculpture of a knight by Sazikov, see Tat’iana Muntian, Faberzhe. Velikie iuveliry Rossii. Sokrovishcha Oruzhennoi palaty (Moscow, 2000), 154–155. 37 Charles L. Venable, Silver in America, 1840–1940: A Century of Splendor (New York, 1944), 168. 38 The firm is listed in the catalogue as “Shtange and Verfel,” but Werfel dealt mostly in hardstones and probably made malachite bases for some of Stange’s figures. Stange, himself, seems to have done all the bronze work. H. R. Levinson and L. N. Goncharova, Russkaia khudozhestvennaia bronza: Dekorativno-prikladnaia skulptura XIX v. (Moscow, 1958), 16. For the illustration of the candelabrum in the official catalogue, see The Crystal Palace Exhibition, pl. 199.

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In another metalwork series, Solntsev produced designs for seven gilded bronze caskets for the preservation of ancient documents going back to the time of Ivan IV.39 These were cast in the bronze factory of Feliks Chopen in 1857 and 1858. The Chopen factory produced most of the imperial and church commissions for the Great Kremlin Palace, St. Isaac’s Cathedral, and the Winter Palace. Each casket is slightly different, but all are united by their interlace ornament. One bearing low relief decorations of military trophies is set with a silver sculpted panel of clergy presenting the crown to the tsar attended by two young men. The decoration appears dry and heavy, but this weightiness was perhaps appropriate for caskets intended for the preservation of valuable documents. During the 1850s the Russian style began to spread rapidly through the decorative arts. Sazikov, again under Solntsev’s influence, won another gold medal at the Paris Exhibition of Art and Industry in 1855. Among his entries were Persian or Turkish influenced pitchers, ewers, and a punch bowl on a tray with small cups.40 All of these objects are decorated with elaborate strapwork ornament. A tankard features a procession of knights in high relief circling the body of the vessel. One other known Sazikov copy from the Antiquities is a filigree and enameled tankard made in 1867. The original, according to Solntsev, was of “eastern” origin; it is architectural in shape with columned arches breaking up the space in the bottom half of the tankard. The lid is crenellated in tiers like a crown with a monkey for the knob at the top, and the handle is in the shape of a snake with the mouth at the top and the tail coiled at the bottom. The known Sazikov tankards copying this model are almost identical except for the knobs on the lids, which appear to be replacements.41

39 Four of these, now in the State Historical Museum in Moscow, are illustrated in Dul’kina, Russkii stil’, cat. nos. 521–524. The other three are now in the Kremlin Armory. 40 For examples, see George Wallis, The Exhibition of Art-Industry in Paris 1855: The Illustrated Catalogue of the Universal Exhibition, published with the Art Journal (London, 1855), 156. 41 For one Sazikov tankard, see “Fine Gold Boxes, Objets de vertu, Portrait Miniatures. Fabergé and Russian works of art,” Sotheby’s Parke-Bernet, Geneva, November 11, 1981, lot 426. In 2005 the Kremlin Armory purchased another in this style; see the weekly newspaper, Rossiia (19–25 May, 2005), 11.

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Tankard of “Eastern Origin.” Solntsev, Antiquities.

The firm of Pavel Ovchinnikov, founded in 1853, is often cited together with Sazikov as the most famous in nineteenth-century Russia. No other silversmith explored and adapted the creativity of early Russian silver work and enamel with the assiduity of Ovchinnikov. His firm, together with that of Ivan Khlebnikov, regularly exhibited objects in the Russian style to great acclaim right to the end of the century. The Ovchinnikov firm made any number of similar tankards in the 1890s, when his sons inherited the factory.42 They were frequently 42

Sazikov died in 1868, and the firm passed into the hands of his sons, the last of whom died in 1879. Although sources vary, it seems that what remained of the firm passed to Khlebnikov. Pavel Ovchinnikov died in 1888, and his firm was taken over by his sons.

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given to visiting dignitaries, for instance, Grand Duke Georgii Aleksandrovich presented one to William (Buffalo Bill) Cody after meeting him at his “Wild West” show in Paris in 1889.43 Here, as in the case of the Turkish washbasin, a foreign object had been adapted but by the late nineteenth century was viewed as quintessentially Russian. While the Russian style was enormously successful and popular in the work of private factory owners like Sazikov, Ovchinnikov, Khlebnikov, and the porcelain factory of the Brothers Kornilov, it was never fully embraced by the Imperial Porcelain Factory. Its entries and those of some other factories and firms in 1851 or later seldom reflected the Russian style. The Demidov works from Nizhnii Tagil in the Urals, for example, sent a massive set of malachite doors as well as about five vases.44 Other than the Russianness of malachite, there was nothing of the Russian style about the vases or doors. The Imperial Porcelain Factory tended to send objects already in existence. Initially it had wanted to send more vases, but given time constraints and shipping costs, its display was limited to two vases, two painted plaques, and a table top painted with Brazilian flowers.45 These pieces were all execcuted by the best artists, and they were all large (another requirement for attention at the international exhibitions). The factory did receive a medal, but so did every other porcelain factory. The jurors reserved their highest award for the Sèvres Manufactory in France. In the 1862 exhibition in London, the factory again sent vases, one with the Gottfried Kneller portrait of John Locke. After the exhibition, Alexander II presented it to the South Kensington Museum, now the Victoria and Albert. The vase is a traditional neoclassical form, long produced by the factory, with molded and gilded acanthus leaves around the bottom bowl, usually an Old Master painting in a panel on the front, and gilded interlace ornament around the shoulders, the neck, and on the back. This bit of strapwork was the factory’s bow to the current popular style in Russia and according to von Wolff was used especially for international expositions.46 The sheer eclecticism

43 See “The Russian Sale,” Bonham’s, London, November 28, 2008. For more tankards, consult Odom, Russian Enamels: From Kievan Rus’ to Fabergé (London, 1996), 120–123. 44 Jonathon Meyer, Great Exhibitions—London—New York—Paris—Philadelphia (Woodbridge, Suffolk, 2006), 21. 45 Katalog, 80. 46 Von Wolff, Zavod, 252. For the John Locke vase and one at Hillwood Museum with a painting of The Herring Seller by Gerard Dou on the front and similar interlace

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of the styles decorating the vase spoke to the artistic confusions of the second half of the nineteenth century. Rather than create entirely new works in the Russian style, the factory merely put together existing vase parts and added strapwork ornament on the back. The factory also sent a tea set with portraits of the Romanovs on each piece. Interlace ornament decorates the lids and the handles on the cups, and the knobs of the lids are in the form of imperial crowns. Although this tea set was destroyed in a shipwreck on the way home, a set still survives at the Hermitage, and one can only presume that it is the same.47 The reuse of old porcelain parts exemplified the stagnation at the factory especially when compared with the contributions of other countries and demonstrated the need for reform. However, because of lack of money after the Crimean War and lack of interest on the part of Alexander II, few changes were made at the factory. In addition to actual objects inspired by Solntsev’s drawings, Antiquities spawned other publications: the grand illustrated volumes produced by Ivan Snegirev, Monuments of Ancient Art in Russia; Viktor Butovskii’s History of Russian Manuscript Ornament of the X–XVI Centuries; and Vladimir Stasov’s volumes on manuscript decoration and folk designs. Other volumes were devoted to architectural studies. These works provided unlimited sources for designers of the late nineteenth century. These compendia of buildings, objects, costume, and ornament were similar to those produced in Western Europe by Augustus W. N. Pugin and Owen Jones in England, and Auguste Racinet in France. All were trying to re-examine what they thought was their traditional ornament and to refashion it for their contemporaries. Christopher Dresser, a follower of Jones, advised his students “to study the past, not as a copyist but to gain knowledge and seek out truths and broad principles.”48 The artist should not reproduce ornament in the spirit of another age as Solntsev did. Even as a copyist, however, Solntsev’s drawings suited the romantic nationalism of Nicholas I’s political

ornament on the back, see Odom and Liana Paredes Arend, A Taste for Splendor: Imperial Russian and French Teasures at Hillwood (Alexandria, VA, 1998), 278–279. At least one part of the Hillwood vase was fired nine years before it was painted. 47 On the tea set, consult Kudriavtseva, Russkii imperatorskii farfor (St. Petersburg, 2003), 177. 48 Carol A. Hrvol, Owen Jones: Design, Ornament, Architecture, and Theory in an Age of Transition (New York, 2006), 241.

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agenda. The tsar called Solntsev “my old executor (ispolnitel’),”49 implying that he did exactly what he was told without omissions or additions. These, in fact, were Olenin’s very instructions to his protégé when he sent him off to copy works of art; and this was Solntsev’s strength. The Russian style, spirited by Solntsev, brought Russian decorative art to the attention of Europeans for the first time. But it also left the Russians in a dilemma, one that persisted for the rest of the empire. The Russian style was greeted at international exhibitions as exotic, eastern, fanciful, or quaint; anything Western in inspiration was considered imitative and ignored. Europeans envied the richness of Russia’s artistic traditions, but these traditions did not make Russians Europeans. They were always listed at the back, so to speak, with the Persians, the Turks, and the Egyptians. For all its color, charm, and energy, the Russian style was finally reactionary. Nicholas I, Alexander III, and Nicholas II all favored it for political purposes, as a reminder of Russia’s superior traditional values, not of its needs in the modern industrialized world. Westerners have always responded favorably to Russia’s Slavic styles, from Sazikov’s and Ovchinnikov’s metalwork to Kornilov’s porcelain to the Ballets Russes. It was only with the rise of the Russian avant garde, whose origins were buried in later developments of the Russian style, that Russia was recognized as an equal with Europe in the field of art. Solntsev, by stimulating artists and designers to examine ancient works through his illustrations or in reality, and by providing a model for future design books, laid the groundwork that was essential to the future success of modern Russian art.

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Evtushenko, “Solntsev,” 247.

CHAPTER THREE

SOLNTSEV’S ROLE IN PRESERVING THE TREASURES OF THE MOSCOW KREMLIN Irina Bogatskaia Among the many thousands of items preserved in the Moscow Kremlin, the collection of graphic art entitled Antiquities of the Russian State perhaps best personifies the history of the pre-Petrine era. These watercolor and India ink drawings—plus a small number of prints and some articles of Asian or European origin—seemingly illustrate every aspect of Russian culture from the eleventh to the eighteenth centuries. While many artists participated in this work, no one devoted as much of his labor to the project as Fedor Solntsev, a graduate of the Imperial Academy of Arts. Compiled in the first half of the nineteenth century, the collection reflects that era’s interest in the scholarly analysis of ancient cultural monuments or landmark memorabilia (pamiatniki). In 1804 under the auspices of Moscow University, the Moscow Society of Russian History and Antiquities was created with the purpose of assembling, studying, and publishing such artifacts of ancient times (starina) as coins, medals, and chronicles. While the Napoleonic wars stalled the work of the historical society, the victory over Napoleon stimulated its activity. Its members included many luminaries of the scholarly world including the litterateur and historian, Nikolai Karamzin; the learned Maecenas, Count Aleksei Musin-Pushkin; Konstantin Kalaidovich, the prolific antiquary; and Aleksei Malinovskii, author of many works on Russian antiquities. In the same spirit, in 1806 Alexander I issued an imperial decree to establish Russia’s first national museum for antiquities, which would center historical and cultural treasures in the Kremlin Armory. Scholars at this time also turned their attention to ancient literary texts. Beginning in 1817 Pavel Stroev, a member of the historical society, with sponsorship from the noted antiquary Count Nikolai Rumiantsev, headed archaeographical expeditions for finding and collecting ancient documents. Stroev also led the Archaeographical Expedition of the Academy of Sciences (1829–1832), and later an Archaeographical

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Commission was established to publish these materials as well as others related to the history of pre-Petrine Russia. These developments in historical scholarship prompted the birth of a new sphere of art, artistic archaeology. At this time, archaeology was broadly conceived to include not just the study but also the drawing or recording ( fiksatsiia) of national treasures of antiquity. Since photography did not yet exist, the representation of antiquities was possible only through pictorial means. Thus, in 1809–1810 the archaeologist Konstantin Borozdin organized an expedition that included an antiquary, Aleksandr Ermolaev, as well as an artist and archeograph. Their task was to try to find “various memorabilia that could serve to fill and decorate the Kremlin Armory.”1 Connected directly with the repair work being done in the Moscow Kremlin, the expedition was supervised by Petr Valuev, the head of the renovation project who in 1806 had championed the idea of a national museum, as well as by Aleksei Olenin, at the time an assistant to the director of the Imperial Public Library but also an honorary member of the Kremlin Armory and the person to whom Borozdin directed his letters describing the expedition.2 Alexander I directly financed the enterprise, whose official goal, Valuev announced, was “to discover national monuments that would signify in deep antiquity the greatness and power of Russia.” The Borozdin Expedition visited a series of old cities in the north and south of Russia and put together four albums of sketches and drawings.3 The participants rendered plans of cities, architectural sites, ecclesiastical objects, and items of ethnographic interest such as native costumes. Valuev presented the findings to the tsar, and a decision was made to publish them, but the war against Napoleon interfered with this project as well as plans for similar expeditions. Nonetheless, the idea of artistic archaeology—located at the intersection of artistic creativity and historiography—was timely, and its appearance organically flowed from the problems facing artists

1 “Imennye ukazy (6 March 1809),” Rossiiskii Gosudarstvennyi arkhiv drevnykh aktov (Russian State Archive of Ancient Acts), fond 1239, opis’ 3, chast’ 2, delo 5745, list 2. 2 Otdel rukopisei Rossiiskoi natsional’noi biblioteki, hereafter OR RNB (Manuscript Division of the Russian National Library), f. 487: “Sobranie Mikhailovskogo,” n. 394; “Puteshestvie po Rossii v 1809 gody”; “Pis’ma K. M. Borozdina (1809)”. 3 OR RNB, f. 550. Also, Osnovnoe sobranie rukopisnoi knigi Otdela rukopisei Rossiiskoi natsional’noi biblioteka (The Primary Collection of Manuscript Books of the Manuscript Division of the Russian National Library), hereafter OSRK, f. IV, n. 204, 1–4 (1809).

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attempting to explore history. In this epoch, the study of national antiquities acquired a deliberate character and for all practical purposes became an affair of state, receiving support from Alexander I. Similarly, his successor Nicholas I, in the first year of his reign signed a decree “On Conveying Information About the Remnants of Ancient City Buildings and Forbidding Their Destruction.”4 The decree encouraged the discovery and recording of the monuments of early Russian architecture from the Kievan and Muscovite epochs. The task required a systematic effort, which Olenin, the director of the Imperial Academy of Arts since 1817, was prepared to offer. As a first step, in 1826 Nikolai Efimov, an academy graduate with instructions from Olenin, measured the remains of the foundation of the oldest house of worship in Russia, the Church of the Tithe in Kiev.5 Then he executed drawings of the architectural monuments of Moscow and its environs, as well as those of Novgorod the Great. The tsar actively supported these endeavors with monies from His Majesty’s Own Chancellery. Olenin, a man with broad scholarly range, also became interested in the history of early Russian arms, in particular the helmet. Recent findings whetted his fascination. One helmet had been discovered in 1808 not far from Iur’ev-Polskii, the site of a battle fought in 1216 among Russian princes on the Lipits River; it was thought to belong to Prince Iaroslav Vsevolodovich of Suzdal, father of the famed warrior, Prince Aleksandr Nevskii.6 In 1810 another helmet had been given to the Kremlin Armory from the collection of Musin-Pushkin and mistakenly believed to be that worn by Prince Iurii Vsevolodovich of Vladimir, who had been killed in 1237 in a battle against the Tatars on the Sit River. Olenin also studied a rare Manchurian helmet with Sanskrit inscriptions, dating from the early seventeenth century; it and other armory treasures were even lent out for his investigation. Olenin determined to make detailed descriptions of historical objects, such as these helmets, and record or illustrate them with precision. At first, 4 “O dostavlenii svedenii ob ostatkakh drevnikh zdanii v gorodakh i vospreshchenii razrushat’ onye” (31 December 1826),” Polnoe sobranie zakonov Rossiiskoi imperii 1 (St. Petersburg, 1830), n. 794:1573–1574. 5 These measurements and drawings are located in: Otdel rukopisnykh, pechatnykh i graficheskikh fondov Museev Moskovskogo Kremlia, hereafter ORPGF (Division of Archives of Manuscripts, and Printed and Graphic Works of the Musems of the Moscow Kremlin), inventar’ gr. 2903–2907 and 2696–2701; and OR RNB, f. 550, OSRK, f. IV, n. 309 (1826) and f. 40, “Arkhitekturnye materialy, n. 246 (1828). 6 “Istorichesoe issledovanie o Lipitskoi bitve i shleme Iaroslava Vsevolodovicha,” ORPGF, f. 1, ed. khr. 68–71 (1808–1830). A similar manuscript, dated 1811, can be found in Institut istorii material’noi kul’tury Rossiiskoi Akademii nauk.

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Helmet of Prince Iaroslav Vsevolodovich. Crafted by A. L. Shustov and located in the Moscow Kremlin. Courtesy of Irina Bogatskaia.

this was done by separate artists in the director’s circle or by his assistants, among them Ermolaev. Olenin then had the idea of collecting drawings of Russian antiquities and publishing them soon afterward; to accomplish this task he made a brilliant choice in selecting Solntsev. Solntsev became the leading and unsurpassed proponent of artistic archaeology in the 1830s and 1840s and left the most prominent mark. He had traversed a long road, his talent turning this simple peasant into a famous artist, academician, icon painter, restorer, designer, and a first-rate expert on early Russian art. Of the fifteen hundred drawings and printed works held in Kremlin museums under the rubric “antiquities,” he authored roughly fourteen hundred, the largest contribution by a single person in the entire graphics collection. The artist’s memoirs recalled his first foray into artistic archaeology.7 In 1829 Olenin commissioned Solntsev to do a composition, “The Battle of Lipits,” on which the director had done a historical study based on the aforementioned discovery of a helmet. The lithograph with the repre-

7 F. G. Solntsev, “Moia zhizn’ i khudozhestvenno-arkheologicheskie trudy,” Russkaia starina 15 (1876), 109–128, 311–322, 617–644; 16 (1876), 147–160, 263–302.

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sentation of the battle scene is preserved; it combines elements from the painting on the same theme of Aleksandr Briullov and Aleksandr Zauerveid together with stationary figures of early Russian warriors, whose armament Solntsev and his assistant modeled after objects found in the armory. The lithograph was intended as the title page for the proposed publication of the Antiquities and featured Olenin’s monogram, “AO.” The titles were given both in Russian and French, reflecting the director’s intentions of familiarizing as wide a circle as possible with these artifacts.8 Also in 1829 Olenin commissioned Solntsev to depict the Hoard of Riazan, gold and other precious princely objects that had been discovered near the town seven years earlier; the items also included remnants of shirts of mail and a pointed helmet adorned with the image of Michael the Archangel, long honored as the head of Christ’s heavenly army and the patron of Russian princes. The Hermitage had lent some of these twelfth-century treasures to Olenin to study, and they remained with him until 1831.9 Solntsev’s drawings and engravings were to accompany his mentor’s text, The Russian Antiquities of

Items from the Hoard of Riazan. Drawn by Solntsev and located in the Moscow Kremlin. Courtesy of Irina Bogatskaia. 8 9

The lithograph is located in ORPGF, inv. gr. 4109. OR RNB, f. 542 (Arkhiv Oleninykh), n. 576 (1831).

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Riazan.10 So realistic were the renditions that when the artist Maksim Vorob’ev came to visit, he attempted to move a medallion, only to discover that it was the drawing and not the actual object.11 This incident demonstrates the high mastery of Solntsev’s work and the unusual validity of the transposed images, a skill in which he would have no equal. Once recorded, the objects were placed in the Kremlin Armory, where to this day they occupy a central place in the exposition of ancient Russian arms and precious gold and silver items. In 1830 Solntsev began a series of regular artistic excursions around the country, with Moscow usually being his starting point. Nicholas financed these journeys so that they would “depict our ancient customs, dress, weapons, church and imperial paraphernalia, everyday goods, harness, and similar items belonging to the categories of historical, archaeological, and ethnographic information.”12 Olenin played an active role in Solntsev’s travels, assuring the patronage of such figures as Metropolitan Filaret of Moscow and Prince Nikolai Iusupov, the current official in command of the renovations in the Kremlin. Olenin also set the agenda. One of the first commissions in Moscow, for instance, was to make drawings of Russian antique armament found in the Kremlin Armory in order to have models for sculptures with a military theme intended for the Heraldic Hall (Gerbovyi zal ) in the Winter Palace as well as bas-reliefs for the Alexander Column on Palace Square.13 One of the first results of these travels was Solntsev’s work on an album of watercolors to accompany the second part of a work by Olenin, dated 1834, on laic dress, the full title of which was “An Essay on Russian Attire and Customs from the Ninth to the Eighteenth Centuries. Russian Ecclesiastical, Laic, and Military Attire.”14 The twentyfive watercolors preceded the handwritten introductory text, which was really a synopsis of the well-known work of Olenin, “An Essay on the Attire, Armaments, Morals, and Customs, and Level of Enlighten-

10 A. N. Olenin, Riazanskie russkie drevnosti, ili izvestiia o starinnykh i bogatykh russkikh velikokniazheskikh, ili tsarskikh ubranstvakh, naidennykh v 1822 g. bliz c. St. Riazan’ (St. Petersburg, 1831). 11 Solntsev, “Moia zhizn’,” 15:618–619. 12 Ibid., 634. 13 N. A. Iakovlev, “O pervonachal’nom etape raboty F. G. Solntseva nad Drevnostiami Rossiiskago gosudarstva,” unpublished conference paper delivered on April 25, 2002 in the Iaroslav Oblast. 14 The album can be found in ORPGF, inv. gr. 4441.

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ment of the Slavs from the Time of the Trojans and the Russians to the Invasion of the Tatars.”15 The watercolors included studies of objects drawn from Solntsev’s work in the Moscow Kremlin, including the clothing of the tsars and their regalia and thrones. Generally, while in Moscow, Solntsev directed his attention principally to the Kremlin, the center of the Russian state from about the fourteenth century. He also did some drawings of the manuscripts and military and ecclesiastical objects of the Trinity and Resurrection monasteries in the vicinity of Moscow, but it was the Kremlin with its armory, churches, monasteries, and sacristies that had long held his central interest as an artist. Working in the churches of the Kremlin, the artist depicted the interiors with their iconostases, vestibules, gates, and chandeliers as well as the numerous objects found in the sacristies, making it possible to study them as they were in the nineteenth century, without later alterations or losses. One of the icons he portrayed, for instance, was of Our Lady of Vladimir, one of the most sacred objects in the Cathedral of the Assumption.16 The icon was depicted in an icon

Icon of Our Lady of Vladimir. Solntsev, Antiquities. 15 Olenin, Opyt ob odezhde, oruzhii, nravakh i obychaiakh i stepeni prosveshcheniia slavian ot vremeni Traiana i russkikh do nashestviia tatar (Moscow, 1832). 16 The icon is now located in the Tret’iakov Gallery in Moscow.

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case along with two gold icon covers (oklady) from different periods: one dates to the fifteenth century, the time of Metropolitan Fotii, and the other from the seventeenth century, the time of Patriarch Nikon.17 Solntsev also illustrated the icon in the Annunciation Cathedral of Our Lady of the Don at the personal request of Nicholas I.18 This famous work of Feofan Grek was in an icon cover and mounted in a picture frame that dated from the turn of the seventeenth to the eighteenth centuries.19 Solntsev made thirteen drawings of the subject, including one with the cover and frame, one without the cover, the back of the icon with the inscription “Assumption of the Mother of God,” and in India ink depictions of the Old Testament figures found on the frame.20 In the same spirit, Solntsev painted the treasures of the Kremlin Armory, and these drawings came to constitute a unique graphic gallery of the antiquities of the Russian rulers, including ancient tsarist regalia, royal objects of everyday life, costumes, arms, harness, and carriages. Another objective of this project was to publish the drawings in order to make them available to the public. A member of the Moscow historical society, Ivan Snegirev—with the patronage of the city’s governor-general, Prince Dmitrii Golitsyn—oversaw the publication of forty of Solntsev’s drawings from 1842 to 1845 under the title Monuments of Muscovite Antiquities.21 They included renderings of the plans and facades of the Kremlin cathedrals, the Bell Tower of Ivan the Great, the Chudova Monastery, the House of Facets, the Terem and Patriarch palaces, and various towers. A lithographical firm in Paris published the images, which were engraved in Russia by the artists Egor Skotnikov and Aleksandr Afanas’ev. Solntsev’s talent in the field of artistic archaeology became apparent in the 1830s, and he continued this work until the end of his life; his travels around Russia, though, ceased in 1853. Until Olenin’s death ten years earlier, he closely supervised his subordinate, giving him detailed instructions about where to go and what to see, stressing

17

The drawing is located in ORPGF, inv. gr. 3876. Solntsev, “Moia zhizn’,” 16:277. 19 The icon is now located in the Tret’iakov Gallery, but the picture frame is located in the Moscow Kremlin Museum. 20 These drawings can be found in ORPGF, inv. gr. 3880–3882 and 3867–3875. 21 Ivan Snegirev, Pamiatniki Moskovskoi drevnosti s prisovokupleniem ocherka monumental’noi istorii Moskvy i drevnikh vidov i planov drevnei stolitsy (Moscow, 1842–1845). 18

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monuments of old Russian architecture and objects relating to religion and everyday life. The drawings were always sent first to Olenin; he then brought them to the attention of Nicholas I, who thought very highly of Solntsev’s work. Olenin also urged the artist to be highly critical of prior attributions: “I am obliged to tell you, as a precaution, that you should put little trust in the names given to various objects in the armory. Especially be careful of statements attesting to the ownership of an object by some famous magnate, prince, tsar. . . .”22 Solntsev took this warning to heart and tried to rely only on evidence found in manuscripts: “This demanded a great deal of work, a great deal of searching, and using documents to painstakingly research the history of those objects that had been discovered.”23 To the artist’s credit, he correctly identified many objects in the detailed annotations that accompanied all his drawings, but he could not escape the mistakes of his era in dating antiquities. For instance, the orb of Mikhail Fedorovich, the first Romanov tsar was made in Western Europe in about 1600, and his helmet was possibly the work of a late sixteeenthcentury Iranian craftsman but decorated in 1621 by Nikita Davydov in the armory. Yet both were identified as belonging to the twelfthcentury Grand Prince Vladimir Monomakh or to the thirteenthcentury prince of Novgorod, Aleksandr Nevskii. A distinctive feature of Solntsev’s drawings is the painstaking detail, scrupulous accuracy, and really archaeological authenticity of the objects illustrated. Often, they were depicted from various angles, with details of the decorations added on in India ink and with a caption or signature in ornamental ligatured script. As a rule, the artist drew objects in full size, but for additional accuracy, he always included a scale. On the other hand, because of his education at the Academy of Arts, his varied artistic skills, and his unique talent for dealing with antiquities, Solntsev proved to be not only a superb water colorist and an expert in the techniques involved in icon and fresco painting but also proficient in the art of the miniature. He leaned toward the medieval style of miniature in the way he used many layers of paint, various mixtures, metallic pigments, glues, and opaque white. These techniques helped the artist to find a special way of opening up an image and lending it maximum authenticity in the transfer to the pictorial world.

22 23

Solntsev, “Moia zhizn’,” 15:636. Solntsev, “Moia zhizn’,” 16:296.

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Solntsev’s enormous efforts resulted in the publication of Antiquities of the Russian State from 1849 to 1853 with five hundred of his drawings redone into chromolithography; unfortunately, Olenin, who died in 1843, did not live to see the enterprise to fruition. He had conceived of these volumes of illustrations just after he sent the artist on his first travels around Russia and expressed his vision in his correspondence, a passage quoted in Antiquities: The main aim in putting together Antiquities of the Russian State . . . will be to research most accurately the customs, manners, or dress of the Russian people from the sixth to the eighteenth centuries since the birth of Christ especially for artists . . . . This collection will include very precise drawings that depict authentic views of the attire, arms, primitive dwellings, churches, buildings, belongings, in a word, all objects which can constitute ethnographic descriptions of Slavic tribes and especially of the Russian people.24

The printed volumes did indeed enable the treasures of Russian antiquity, the majority of which came from the Moscow Kremlin, to become more accessible as objects of study. As time went on, Solntsev’s creations acquired a unique value since some of the treasures were partially or totally lost, and the drawings bear the only witness to their existence and magnificence. Even during the artist’s lifetime, a scholar commented that “thanks to him many important historical objects were preserved, if not in the originals which are now lost, at least in faithful copies.”25 A few examples will suffice to indicate Solntsev’s important contribution. In 1918, for instance, items were robbed from the Patriarch’s vestry, including six stunning miters embellished with gold, precious stones, and pearls; four of them had belonged to the famed seventeenth-century patriarch, Nikon.26 The thieves also stole the panagia, or image worn around the neck by Orthodox bishops, of Patriarch Ioasaf I. This treasure dated from the second half of the sixteenth century and featured an image of Our Lady of the Sign engraved on agate, mounted in gold, and decorated with filigree, precious stones, pearls, and a splendid depiction of the Crucifixion.27 Another missing item—this one from the sacristy of the Kremlin’s Cathedral of the Assumption—is the tsar’s anointment

24

Drevnosti Rossiiskago gosudarstva (Moscow, 1849), II. N. P. Sobko, “F. G. Solntsev i ego khudozhestvenno-arkheologicheskaia deia-tel’ nost’,” Vestnik iziashchnykh iskusstv iskusstv 1, pt. 3 (1883), 471. 26 The drawings may be found in ORPGF, inv. gr. 4334–4339. 27 The drawing is located in ORPGF, inv. gr. 4330. 25

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Miter of Patriarch Nikon. By Solntsev and located in the Moscow Kremlin. Courtesy of Irina Bogatskaia.

Panagiia of Metropolitan Ioasaf I. Solntsev, Antiquities.

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vessel, which had been in use for centuries during wedding and coronation ceremonies; it was crafted from jasper or onyx and decorated with enamel and precious stones. The vessel was last used in the triumphal coronation of Nicholas II in 1896.28 Also lost was the seventeenth-century reliquary that used to house the Nail of the Lord; it had a golden cupola-like lid and featured engravings, enamels, precious stones, and Georgian script.29 In addition, as is known, treasures were sold or removed from the country in the 1920s, including gold, silver, and crystal objects as well as regalia like the Georgian and Polish crowns. In all these cases, Solntsev’s drawings remain the only historically visual source of information.

Annointment Vessel. As pictured in the coronation books of 1730 (Anna Ioannovna) and 1883 (Alexander III).

28 The drawing is located in ORPGF, inv. gr. 3926. For evidence of its use at two coronations, please see: Opisanie koronatsii Eia Velichestva Imperatritsy, i Samoderzhitsy Vserossiiskoi, Anny Ioannovny, torzhestvenno otpravlennoi v tsarstvuiushchem gradie Moskvie, 28 aprielia, 1730 godu (Moscow, 1730); and Opisanie sviashchennago koronovanïia ikh Imperatorskikh Velichestv Gosudaria Imperatora Aleksandra Tretiago i Gosudaryni Imperatritsy Marii Fedorovny vseia Rossii (St. Petersburg, 1883). 29 ORPGF, inv. gr. 3925.

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Beginning in the 1830s, the search for national forms became a general quest in art, a widespread search for the nation’s cultural roots. The main focus fell on historical and Orthodox traditions and their practice in Byzantium and ancient Rus’. Officialdom greeted the new direction as an opportunity to build ideological support for the regime and contributed with its own doctrine of “Orthodoxy, Autocracy, Nationality.” The outstanding exponents of this new aesthetic, the Russian style, proved to be Solntsev himself and the architect, Konstantin Ton. During his reign, Nicholas I believed that one of his paramount tasks was to restore the Moscow Kremlin to its lost symbolic and signal role as the ancient political and religious center of Muscovite Russia. He dispatched Solntsev again to the Kremlin, this time to work on the restoration of the interiors of the Terem Palace and some of the churches. Undoubtedly, the tsar chose this particular artist because of their personal acquaintance, Solntsev’s proven dedication to the study of antiquity, and the ruler’s previous patronage as well as his high estimation of the results. This was the first restoration of the seventeenth-century palace, and it was much needed; since the time of the transfer of the capital to St. Petersburg and Napoleon’s invasion, the palace was in a state of disrepair. From 1836 to 1839, together with architects and graduates of the Moscow Court Architectural School, Solntsev labored on the project, and to this day the paintings and internal furnishings of the Terem Palace are those executed according to his design. Amazingly, in an epoch prior to the scientific study of restoration, his work was completely in harmony with the “old taste” of the ancient ensemble. Solntsev’s next project occupied him from 1838 to 1848 and involved building the New Kremlin Palace. Ton, the main architect, introduced the Russian style on the exterior of the edifice, while forty extant drawings provide Solntsev’s plans for the parquet floors and doors in the ceremonial rooms, and the mosaic floors, chandeliers, and carpets both for the ceremonial and private quarters of the palace. He also designed entire halls in the early Russian manner. While not all his plans were brought to fruition, nonetheless in both these Kremlin projects, Solntsev acquired the experience of being a designer, which would dominate the second half of his artistic career and would prove very influential in popularizing the Russian style especially among masters of applied art such as silversmiths and makers of porcelain. For his accomplishments in historical scholarship, Solntsev was elected a member of the Russian Archaeological Society and made an

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honorary member of the Archaeological Institute. His labors in the field of artistic archaeology rescued many national cultural treasures from oblivion and made them accessible to artists, architects, and the broad circle of those interested in Russian history. In the nineteenth century, when photography had not yet been invented, his drawings of antiquities possessed great significance both for the study of Russia’s past as well as for the formulation of new artistic ideals. Translated by Cynthia Hyla Whittaker with the assistance of Aleksandr Gelfand.

CHAPTER FOUR

SOLNTSEV AND THE REFORM OF ICON PAINTING Marina Evtushenko During a lifetime that spanned the nineteenth century, Fedor Solntsev played a leading role in the study, preservation, and restoration of Russia’s cultural legacy. He learned the new discipline of artistic archaeology from Aleksei Olenin, who understood that works of art are inseparable from the specificities of their historical life. Solntsev thus strove to broaden and deepen his knowledge through archival study and through countless trips to ancient Russian cities, emerging as the era’s foremost expert on medieval monuments. Scholars, albeit slowly, have come to recognize Solntsev’s importance in Russian cultural history.1 One aspect of Solntsev’s creative biography, though, that remains largely unknown is his effort to reform the painting of icons through a class he taught at the St. Petersburg Orthodox Theological Seminary. While he was neither a theorist of religious art nor an iconographer, he possessed the practical and historical knowledge that enabled him to make direct contributions to the preservation and improvement of Russian religious painting and also to appraise the various suggestions for its reform. This aspect of Solntsev’s career stood as a matter of utmost importance, since from the moment of Russia’s adoption of Christianity from Byzantium, icon painting occupied the most honored position among the arts, and they form a distinctive feature of Orthodox Christianity. Originally, Greek artists painted icons according to strict rules or canons, which were established at ecumenical councils. In general,

1 Please consult: A. N. Andreev, Zhivopis’ i zhivopistsy glavneishikh evropeiskikh shkol (St. Petersburg, 1857), 157–158; P. N. Petrov, ed., Sbornik materialov po istorii Sankt-Peterburgskoi imperatorskoi Akademii khudozhestv 2 (1865), 132, 167, 172; F. I. Bulgakov, Nashi khudozhniki 2 (St. Petersburg, 1890), 176–180; N. P. Sobko, Slovar’ russkikh khudozhnikov, vaiatelei, zhivopistsev, zodchikh, risoval’shchikov 2 (St. Petersburg, 1893–1899); and F. G. Solntsev, “Moia zhizn’ i khudozhestvenno-arkheologicheskie trudy,” Russkaia starina 16 (1876).

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it is not allowed to depict that which is not in the Gospels.2 The icon is a visual or visible Gospel, and nothing should be imagined or invented. Within the Orthodox Church, religiously themed paintings are allowed only as frescoes or murals, but the icon is not a painting to be looked at, it is a ritual object to be prayed at. Russian icon painters adhered to these rules, and its practitioners transmitted their knowledge and traditions from generation to generation in closed workshops. However, beginning in the sixteenth century, Western influences began to infiltrate the ancient art and became dominant by about 1800. Icon painting was often taken up by graduates of the Academy of Arts, who not knowing the rules, painted in accordance with their imagination. This school, reflecting the growing secularization of society, emphasized the aesthetic aspect of the icon, rather than regarding it as a sacred image.3 The first half of the nineteenth century witnessed both an increasing interest in early Russian art and a widening of the chasm between the icons created by those striving to imitate the originals and the icons of fashionable artists with no religious grounding in the craft.4 Orthodox prelates, especially after the Polish Revolt of 1830–1831, worried that Western influences represented an attempt to expand the Catholic world and deemed any changes in traditional icon painting a retreat from true belief. On the other hand, many artists regarded the canon as a barrier to free expression. To help resolve this tension, the Holy Synod began to look for an academically trained artist familiar with the Orthodox traditions; fearing an overly independent voice, the church officials also wanted to work with someone who was part of the political establishment. Solntsev, having executed commissions for the imperial family and possessing an unrivaled expertise in early Russian culture, seemed the ideal person to establish guidelines for religious art, and the Academy of Arts recommended him to the Synod,

2 For example, it is not allowed to depict the Cross on the floor or to depict Christ as a fish or a lamb or to depict a naked body or to depict God the Father (since he was never seen by anyone) or to depict the resurrection of Jesus Christ (since it was also never seen by anyone). 3 L. A. Uspenskii, Bogoslovie ikony pravoslavnoi tserkvy (Moscow, 1989), 278, 287– 290; also see G. Filimonov, “Simon Ushakov i sovremennaia emu epokha russkoi ikonopisi,” Sbornik Obshchestva drevnerusskogo iskusstva (1873), 3–104. 4 See F. I. Buslaev, “Obshchee poniatie o russkoi ikonopisi,” in his Sochineniia 1 (St. Petersburg, 1908), 406.

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Icon of Our Lady of the Sign. Solntsev, Antiquities. Located in the Church of the Mother of God in Novgorod.

pointing out his “excellent and many works done in the ancient Russian taste.” As a start the prelates asked Solntsev to repair a wall painting in Novgorod’s Cathedral of the Sign. Soon, Solntsev began to illustrate prayer books and even to design objects of everyday ecclesiastical use, for instance communion cloths, which were then sent to Orthodox churches all over Russia. Solntsev’s memoirs indicate the variety of tasks he undertook: From 1844 on I began to work for the Holy Synod. Thus, I drew many saints, which were engraved first by Bernadskii, and then by our talented academician L. A. Seriakov. I did the illustrations for the prayer book that was sent to Napoleon III as a gift; it was not large, but printed extravagantly with chromolithographs on vellum. Then I illustrated a

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marina evtushenko large Gospel, more than two feet high, provided ornamentation for various laws, etc., etc. But probably the largest project I did for the Holy Synod was the church calendar that I worked on for a year and a half. The calendar consisted of twelve pages, with forty-eight weeks on each, and every week with one hundred figures of saints. Of course, I drew only selected saints. I had nine illuminated manuscripts at my disposal, among them those of schismatics, with the majority from the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries.5

A religious man, Solntsev was predisposed to seeing his work for the church a duty and a form of service to God. His diaries, found in the Russian State Museum, confirm that he was a true and well-schooled Orthodox Christian who attended church regularly, observed all fasts, offered prayers at the altar, and was on good terms with many churchmen. Throughout his life, Solntsev remained sensitive to the physical aspects of his place of worship; in deep old age, upon visiting a monastery, he remarked: “The church is well-arranged; the iconostasis is splendid; the central doors are stunning; the icons are arranged according to church statute; the singing is moving. . . .”6 On his travels, he visited a new church nearly every day. His diary not only notes such things as for whom a requiem is sung, which archbishop blessed him, or what new prayers he has heard but also includes detailed sketches of a church’s interior: door and window decorations; unusual forms of crucifixes and banners; various types of chandeliers and wooden carvings; and, of course, any relics of antiquity. Thus, working for the Holy Synod was thoroughly in keeping with Solntsev’s professional interests and personal and spiritual inclinations. The head of the Holy Synod since 1836, Count Nikolai Protasov, was in the process of carrying out a number of reforms, including some related to the seminary curriculum, which began to incorporate the study of icons. This measure seemed a vital necessity as both church and state officials wanted religious works of art to be “painted according to ancient prescriptions.”7 Instead, the market and even churches were flooded with icons of inferior quality that did not meet the Orthodox standards required to be worthy of veneration, either because of not adhering to canonical rules or because of faulty pro-

5

Solntsev, “Moia zhizn’,” 16:299–300. Rukopisnyi otdel, Gosudarstvennyi Russkii myzei (Manuscript Division of the Russian State Museum), fond 14, edinitsa khraneniia 143, listy 23–24. 7 Uspenskii, Ikony, 279–280. 6

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duction processes. The problem was most severe in dioceses in the far-flung corners of the empire, where the poorer churches, instead of having real icons, had to resort to pictures that were copied or torn out from old books or journals. Church officials also “confiscated and destroyed” some icons “not on theological grounds,” but because they belonged to the “satanistic” or “pagan” Old Believers.8 The Orthodox clergy bombarded the Holy Synod with grievances related to the canonically inadmissible nature of many icons on the market and with demands for resolving the problem. One report from a bishop in 1845 rued: Parishioners in cathedrals and urban and rural churches alike . . . and in their own private homes are supplied with icons by merchants . . . who themselves don’t know the rules for painting. . . . In addition, some icons are painted on boards with pastes not oil paints or even with egg white, as a result of which in a matter of days these images in peasant huts are destroyed by cockroaches, and despite the laws of May 31, 1722 and February 19, 1723, are painted with no artistry whatsoever or with any attention to rules, and some even with a schismatic’s point of view. . . .9

In response, the Holy Synod decided to regulate and centralize the teaching of icon painting by introducing its study at the St. Petersburg Orthodox seminary as a theological discipline, that is, teaching its dogmatic foundations as well as attending to the technical aspects and canonical rules. Metropolitan Antonii (Rafael’skii), for one, hoped that the proliferation of knowledge would mean that it could become “the direct responsibility of both the priest and the church caretaker to . . . understand icon painting.”10 Protasov issued a report in 1843 providing the rationale for the course: Given the insufficiency of experts with solid knowledge about the ancient style of icon painting, many Orthodox churches in our vast land are filled with icons that bear the imprint of foreign influence or having been painted by someone with an inexperienced hand or ignorance of the rules, depict holy images in a less than majestic way. The elimination of these problems depends to a certain degree on our theological seminaries . . . which will find it beneficial to gradually introduce the study of iconography . . . to future servants of the church . . . and for the first time

8 O. Iu. Tarasov, “Ikona i blagochestie,” in Ocherki ikonnogo dela v Imperatorskoi Rossii (Moscow, 1995), 258, 147. 9 Rossiiskii gosudarstvennyi istoricheskii arkhiv (Russian State Historical Archive, hereafter RGIA), f. 796 (Holy Synod), op. 126, d. 1260, l. 1 (1845). 10 Solntsev, “Moia zhizn’,” 16:299.

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marina evtushenko to open at the local seminaries, as an experiment, a class in drawing for those students who possess the inclination and the talent.11

The lessons began in April of 1844 with Solntsev as the instructor, assisted by an artist named Zabolotskii; together, they offered ten hours of instruction per week.12 In the beginning there was no precise program, but Solntsev devised one in the process of teaching the seminarians. His lifelong belief in the importance of copying original pieces of antiquity is clear from a letter written in 1845 by Protasov to the other members of the Holy Synod: “To prepare students to paint icons with oils, it is imperative to have the original representations of the faces, clothes, and belongings of saints that were drawn by the old Russian icon painters and that are still available in various Russian monasteries. . . . Solntsev asks permission . . . to borrow some items, such as old books and church calendars, and return them when no longer needed.”13 Solntsev hoped to publish these images and use the collection as a textbook for the course. The seminary administration gladly consented to this “highly useful” project, as did the Holy Synod.14 The administration was also generous in providing pupils with the equipment needed for the course, including oils, brushes, gold foil, tables, and shelves.15 In his memoirs, Solntsev described the stages of the course: “The students began, first of all, to sketch with a pencil, and then when some of them showed satisfactory progress, they started painting with water colors. Next, the students had to draw from a human figure; as a preliminary, using chalk, I put the picture of a figure on the board including the proportions of the various parts of the body.” Students also learned the basics of restoration, which was just as useful as icon painting for future clergy. Solntsev then suggested hiring an experienced icon painter to teach the craft’s technical aspects. In the early 1850s Aleksandr Korotkov joined the faculty. Of peasant origin, he had worked in churches in Moscow and many other cities and was supremely qualified for the task of introducing students to the rules and regulations governing

11 “Izvlechenie iz Otcheta ober-prokurova Sv. Sinoda za 1843 g.,” quoted in Istoriia Sankt-Peterburgskoi dukhovnoi seminarii (St. Petersburg, 1885), 113. 12 RGIA, f. 796, op. 124, d. 1829 and d. 1628, l. 3. 13 RGIA, f. 796, op. 126, d. 403, l. 1 (1845). 14 Ibid. 15 RGIA, f. 796, op. 124, d. 1628, l. 6.

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icon and wall painting as well as gilding and restoration. However, he was soon fired since Solntsev did not think the students were making sufficient progress under Korotkov’s direction.16 To replace him, Solntsev hired experts to teach on an ad hoc basis under his supervision. Another project that Solntsev encouraged was sending students at the expense of the seminary to other cities in order to copy icons. The archives record several such expeditions in the 1850s, including a graduate sent to Jerusalem and a student sent to Novgorod to copy images of St. Sofiia and the apostles Peter and Paul.17 More ambitiously, Solntsev wanted to send two students to Mount Athos in Macedonia to record the frescoes and icons located there. This would be a significant undertaking because the models for medieval Russian icons were Byzantine and after the fall of Constantinople in 1453, the best collection could be found in this storied monastery. The Synod issued an official order that, while there, the students were to “make exact and faithful drawings of ancient icons.” The trip had to be postponed because of the Crimean War, but soon after it ended, the two students guided by an arkhimandrite from the Synod office, Porfirii Uspenskii, set off on the journey, with expenses shared by the Academy of Arts and the Holy Synod.18 Solntsev was pleased with all this activity and progress. He admitted that as the program grew more difficult, students began dropping out: “More than seventy enrolled, but only fifteen made it to graduation, since I advised many to stop due to their lack of ability.”19 However, the professor advised the especially gifted to take classes at the Academy of Arts. As he wrote, “Some fell in love with art, left their priestly calling, and later became independent artists or even academicians; others became priests but still continued to paint.”20 With the success of the Solntsev model and with the hope of educating future pastors, seminaries around the country began introducing courses in iconography. When they sought guidance from St. Petersburg, they were given certain guidelines: admit only those with ability

16

RGIA, f. 796, op. 130, d. 511, ll. 1–3, 8, 30. Istoriia, 407–408. 18 “Postanovleniia i rasporiazheniia Sinoda o sokhranenii i izuchenii pamiatnikov drenostei (1825–1880),” Vestnik arkheologii i istorii 6 (1886), 51. 19 Solntsev, “Moia zhizn’,” 16:298–299. 20 RGIA, f. 796, op. 130, d. 511, l. 21; Solntsev, “Moia zhizn’,” 16:299. 17

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to the program; do not allow students to skip any of the general courses; and have students continue with their iconographic studies until they graduate, that is, for six years.21 The real longterm significance of Solnstev’s efforts arose from the fact that, during the 1850s, classes in iconography opened in seminaries throughout the empire.22 Further demonstrating Solntsev’s influence, in 1856 the Academy of Arts inaugurated a class in Orthodox icon painting. Spurred on by its president, Grand Duchess Maria Nikolaevna, and its rector, Prince Grigorii Gagarin, the Academy’s goal was purely “Solntsevian,” that is the program of study was to include “a special section on ecclesiastical painting, in which artistic norms would be merged with archaeological correctness and church tradition.”23 The rector had a specific task in mind, namely figuring out how to restore the interior of the Church of Christ the Savior in Moscow “using models from the past.” Gagarin thought that the class should be taught by a person like Solntsev, who possessed knowledge “rarely found in one and the same person, namely that he should be a scholar, a believer, excellent artist, and archaeologist.”24 The choice fell on Timofei Neff, a recognized icon painter. Prince Gagarin was a prominent and highly respected dilettante, having acquired his knowledge of art from his long stays in Europe. Like Solntsev, when he traveled he made sketches of whatever captured his attention. In Constantinople, he became captivated by the mosaics in Hagia Sofiia and then began to seriously study those Russian religious monuments that preserved the traces of Byzantine influence. Building on this background, for the purposes of the course in iconography, he published an album, Illustrations for the New Testament Freely Imitating Ancient Manuscripts, and decided to create an iconographical and archaeological museum. The project was funded “even if not all were originals, but at least copies, worthy of the originals” and if it included “true and superior examples of Byzantine painting and ancient Greek sculpture . . . from the ancient cities of Novgorod, Moscow, Suzdal, Vladimir, Kiev, the Caucasus, and especially Georgia as well as from

21

RGIA, f. 796, op. 138, d. 1666, l. 8. RGIA, f. 796: op. 131, d. 963, l. 2; op. 133, d. 833, l. 2; op. 135, d. 1161; op. 138, d.1666; op. 140, ed. khr. 1252, l. 2. 23 RGIA, f. 472, op. 18, d. 26, l. 1. 24 Ibid. 22

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Exterior View of St. Mark’s in Venice. Prince G. G. Gagarin, located in Sobranie vizantiiskikh, gruzinskikh i drevnerusskikh ornamentov i pamiatnikov arkhitektury (Collection of Byzantine, Georgian and Old-Russian Ornaments and Monuments of Architecture), St. Petersburg, 1897–1903.

the Slavs and Greeks who remain Orthodox and from Mount Athos and, finally, from Venice and other cities of Italy.”25 State funds were allotted to pay for books, drawings, models, and other necessities for the course.26 Nonetheless, the course lasted only a short time because the students ended up synthesizing the elements of academic painting with those of early Russian art, which did not correspond to the original goal. Thus, the only attempt in the mid-nineteenth century to resolve the challenge of teaching a truly Orthodox way of painting icons remained

25 26

Petrov, Sbornik, 258–259. RGIA, f. 472, op. 18, d. 47, l.1 (1859).

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Solnstev’s course at the St. Petersburg seminary. Even then, by 1870 the course was demoted to an elective, and the artist-archaeologist was no longer involved. Unfortunately, it is impossible to determine the fate of the icons produced while Solntsev taught the course or their artistic quality since records had not been kept. Nonetheless, his initiatives for restoring the canonical standards of religious painting proved seminal. By the beginning of the twentieth century, the problem still remained of creating icons for a mass audience that conformed to high levels of artistry, both in the aesthetic and dogmatic sense. In response, the government created the Committee for the Oversight of Russian Icon Painting with the aim of reforming the way in which artists were trained as well as regulating the activity of existing workshops and the opening of new ones. The committee started a journal in which it published its recommendations and represented the largest-scale commitment to date both of artists and enlightened officials to resurrect the traditions of icon painting in Russia, a renaissance to which Solntsev was the major contributor.27 Translated by Cynthia Hyla Whittaker with the assistance of Aleksandr Gelfand and Anton Masterovoy.

27

The journal’s name was entitled, Izvestie Vysochaishe uchrezhdennogo Komiteta popechitel’stva o russkoi ikonopisi: Iu. R. Savel’ev, “Obraz N. P. Kondakova v perepiske S. D. Sheremeteva i N. V. Sultanova,” in I. L. Kyzlasova, ed., Mir Kondakova: Publikatsii i stat’i: Katalog (Moscow, 2004), 150.

CHAPTER FIVE

IN FEDOR SOLNTSEV’S FOOTSTEPS: ADRIAN PRAKHOV AND THE REPRESENTATION OF KIEVAN RUS’1 Olenka Pevny Fedor Solntsev, a pioneering preservationist, spent his life drawing the antiquities and ethnic dress of the peoples of the Russian Empire. An artist-archaeologist, he provided imaginative renditions of past events, archaeological objects, and historic monuments that romanticized things medieval. In his illustrations and designs Solntsev selectively incorporated and often combined his interpretations of Byzantine, Rus’, and Muscovite motifs in an effort to formulate a coherent style that would reflect Russian national identity. Positing the Russian Orthodox Church as the successor of Constantinople’s ecclesiastical authority, his pseudo-Byzantine designs borrowed elements from the medieval art works of Greece and Asia Minor pre-dating the fall of Constantinople to the Ottoman Turks in 1453. The Rus’ elements referenced the eleventh- through thirteenth-century churches of Kiev, Vladimir-Suzdal, and Novgorod, as well as the fifteenth- and earlysixteenth-century churches of Moscow inspired by pre-Mongol Rus’ monuments. Rus’, a vast medieval polity that emerged in eastern Europe in the second half of the ninth century, extended from the steppes north of the Black Sea to the regions beyond the upper Volga River and Lakes Ladoga and Onega and was settled largely by East Slavic peoples. The dominant Riurikid dynasty, the Slavic language, and, after 988, Orthodox Christianity contributed to shared political-cultural imperatives among the numerous centers of power throughout Rus’. Kiev held seniority as the dynastic and ecclesiastical center of Rus’. After the 1 For the sake of consistency and familiarity, the editor of this volume has chosen to transliterate names of individuals and places from Russian. It should be noted that many of the individuals mentioned in this essay are part of the historical past of Belarus and Ukraine as well as of Russia. Similarly, many of the place names transliterated from Russian actually fall outside of the borders of the Russian Federation.

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Mongol invasions of the 1240s, the already loosening ties among Rus’ centers of power deteriorated and further promoted their autonomous development.2 During the fourteenth century, in the northern area of Vladimir-Suzdal, Moscow emerged as a center of power laying the foundation for the state of Muscovy. Kiev and southwestern Rus’ lands gradually fell under Lithuania and Poland, and on the plains of the Dnieper basin, Cossack society evolved.3 With the rise and expansion of Muscovite power in the second half of the fifteenth century, the grand prince Ivan III began to claim that all Rus’ lands should fall under Muscovite jurisdiction.4 Today, the three modern nation-states of Belarus, Russia, and Ukraine all trace their origins to the Rus’ polity. In the nineteenth century, however, Russian imperial visual culture projected an uninterrupted linear continuity with the Rus’ past. Juxtaposed with the historicizing Byzantine and Rus’ motifs were designs referencing the monuments of late sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Muscovy, a period linked with an idealized perception of Russian autocracy and one providing a historical precedent for nineteenthcentury imperial expansion.5 Solntsev’s body of work, carried out under the imperial patronage of Tsar Nicholas I and Tsar Alexander III, reflected the imperial desire to define a collective and unifying historical and cultural inheritance that could serve nineteenth-century Russian national and monarchial interests. Solntsev’s illustrations appear in nineteenth-century Russian publications on ethnography, culture, and history. Their meticulous detail suggests the artist’s familiarity with the depicted subjects and implies the accuracy of the renditions. At the same time, the images

2 On the origins and development of Rus’ see: Simon Franklin and Jonathan Shepard, The Emergence of Rus’ 750–1200 (New York, 1996). 3 On Ukrainian lands under the Poles, see: T. Snyder, Ukrainians and Poles (Cambridge, UK, 2006). On the Cossacks, see: Albert Seaton, The Horsemen of the Steppes: The Story of the Cossacks (London, 1985); Orest Subtelny, The Mazepists: Ukrainian Separatism in the Early Eighteenth Century (Boulder, CO, 1981); Zenon E. Kohut, Russian Centralism and Ukrainian Autonomy: Imperial Absorption of the Hetmanate, 1760s–1830s (Cambridge, MA, 1988); and Serhii Plokhy, The Cossacks and Religion in Early Modern Ukraine (Oxford, 2001). 4 For a brief overview of the reign of Ivan III and for further bibliography, consult Donald Ostrowski, “The Growth of Muscovy (1462–1533),” in Maureen Perrie, ed., The Cambridge History of Russia. Vol. 1: From Early Rus’ to 1689 (Cambridge, 2006), 213–239. 5 On sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Moscow and Russia, see The Cambridge History 1:213–662.

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reveal the idiosyncrasies of Solntsev’s style and underscore the fictitiousness of the Slavophile narrative that they recount. Broadly, the Slavophiles held that the Westernizing reforms of Peter the Great in the early eighteenth century disrupted the proper course of Russian history, but that pre-Petrine traditions survived in the cultural practices of the people or narod. The projection of a Russian national past in the service of an anticipated future was as much the theme of Solntsev’s work as was the attempt to record actual remnants of the past. Recognition of the ideological objectives of nineteenth-century renditions leads to the unsettling realization of the degree to which Slavophile and, later, Pan-Slavic predispositions frame present-day views of pre-Mongol Rus’ visual culture. Existing interpretations of Kiev’s medieval monuments and specifically the mid-twelfth-century Church of St. Cyril of Alexandria make evident the impact of nineteenth-century preservation and restoration

West façade of the Church of St. Cyril of Alexandria, Kiev. Photographed by Olenka Pevny.

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West façade of the Cathedral of St. Vladimir, Kiev. Photographed by Olenka Pevny.

practices on the understanding of Rus’ culture. Along with eight hundred square meters of medieval frescoes, St. Cyril’s documents the late nineteenth-century effort at “archaeological revivalism” spearhead by Adrian Prakhov (1846–1915). A successor to Solntsev, in the 1880s and 1890s with imperial patronage, Prakhov completed two monumental commissions in Kiev, the restoration of St. Cyril’s and the decoration of the newly erected Cathedral of St. Vladimir. In keeping with the notions of romanticism and nationalism, both of Prakhov’s projects employed historical revivalism to delineate a monumental past. Social changes associated with industrialization and urbanization, the Napoleonic wars, the Revolutions of 1848–1849, the 1861 abolition of serfdom in Russia, and the assassination of Alexander II in1881 provoked a reassessment of the relationship between tsar and his subjects as well as between Russia and Western Europe. From roughly 1850 to 1880 the Crimean War, the Polish uprising, the Franco-Prussian War, and the Russo-Turkish War further advanced rising national senti-

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ments. Changing imperatives and personal predilections nuanced the political agendas of nineteenth-century tsars; however, the desire to integrate developing national concerns with imperial ideology and the interest in the recovery and reconstitution of a specifically Russian past formed a steady undercurrent. Starting with the legendary beginning of Rus’ in 862 when Viking princes arrived in the northern city of Novgorod, select historical events associated with the achievements of past rulers from various periods were pulled together to link the past with the present and to project the unity of the Russian Empire and the integrity of the monarchy as essential to Russia’s identity. Orthodox Christianity provided a palpable bond for linking autocratic power to national consciousness, and medieval churches became a principal symbol of the Russian monarchy. For Nicholas I and Alexander III, in particular, the patronage of art was an integral element of state policy.6 The Official Nationality promulgated by Nicholas I found expression in the Rus’-Byzantine and Neo-Byzantine styles, which quoted from Rus’ monuments predating the Mongol invasion and from late Byzantine monuments in Greece and then folded them into the framework of the reigning neoclassical aesthetic.7 Underlying the use of these styles was the notion that the culture of medieval Rus’ was Byzantine in derivation and that the Russian Orthodox Church had inherited its ecclesiastical authority from Constantinople. Furthermore, Byzantine imperial ideology promoted the image of a pious and divinely sanctioned emperor, privileged in his access to Christ, thus granting historical and ecclesiastical legitimization for Russian autocracy. Orthodoxy also distanced Russian culture from that of western Europe and provided the premise for expansion of influence to the Orthodox Slavic nations of the Balkans, then under Ottoman rule.

6 For an overview of the cultural concerns of nineteenth-century Russian tsars and for further bibliography consult: Richard S. Wortman, Scenarios of Power: Myth and Ceremony in Russian Monarchy. Vol. 1: From Peter the Great to the Death of Nicholas I (Princeton, 1995), and Scenarios of Power: Myth and Ceremony in Russian Monarchy. Vol. 2: From Alexander II to the Abdication of Nicholas II (Princeton, 2000). 7 On these styles, see: E. A. Borisova, Russkaia arkhitektura vtoroi poloviny XIX veka (Moscow, 1979); V. G. Lisovskii, “Natsional’nyi stil’ ” v arkhitekture Rossii (Moscow, 2000), 53–108; and Iu. R. Savel’ev, “Vizantiiskii stil’ ” v arkhitekture Rossii. Vtoraia polovina XIX-nachalo XX veka (St. Petersburg, 2005).

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From the mid-1860s, the concept of Official Nationality developed ever-stronger Russophilic implications. The Slavophile and Pan-Slavic movements that were rising interpreted nationality or narodnost’ not as a term encompassing a broad ethnic base, but as denoting “a purely Russian nationalism with imperial aspirations.”8 By the 1870s the notion of Russia as a protector of all Slavic people gained currency in both circles. Under Alexander III, nationalist notions of the tsar as a Russian autocrat of the Russian people displaced the priorities of social reform and broader representation as a means of bridging the divide between ruler and subject. Personally, Alexander III favored the historical precedent of late sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Muscovy, with its idealized perception of a distinctly Russian monarchy, to that of tenth- to early thirteenth-century Rus’ with its emphasis on the Byzantine inheritance. Russification policies intensified and found visual form in imperially sponsored architectural projects and monumental decorative programs executed in the Russian revival style.9 The building of such churches in regions of the Empire where the form was foreign signaled Russian imperial domination. Such measures touched non-Slavic, as well as Slavic lands.10 Richard Wortman referred to the propagandistic use of this architectural style as “inverted archaeology,” explaining that “monuments were constructed to resurrect an invisible past, particularly in regions deemed to need admonition and edification.”11 In the reign of Alexander III, among the celebrated events that linked the present with the medieval past was the 900th anniversary of

8 H. F. Jahn, “ ‘Us’: Russians on Russianness,” in Franklin and E. Widdis, eds., National Identity in Russian Culture: An Introduction (Cambridge, UK, 2004), 62–63. 9 See: P. Paszkiewicz, W sluzbie Imperium rosyjskiego 1721–1917. Funcje i treci ideowe rosyjskiej arkhitektury sakralnej na zachodnich rubiezach cesarstwa i poza jego granicami (Warsaw, 1999); Wortman, “The ‘Russian Style’ in Church Architecture as Imperial Symbol after 1881,” in J. Cracraft and D. Rowland, eds., Architectures of Russian Identity, 1500 to the Present (Ithaca, NY, 2003), 101–116; Marc Raeff, “Patterns of Russian Imperial Policy Toward the Nationalities,” in Edward Allworth, ed., Soviet Nationality Problems (New York, 1971); Edward C. Thaden, Russia’s Western Borderlands, 1710–1870 (Princeton, NJ, 1984); and Theodore R. Weeks, Nation and State in Late Imperial Russia: Nationalism and Russification on the Western Frontier, 1863–1914 (DeKalb, IL, 1996). 10 Elizabeth Valkenier, Russian Realist Art (New York, 1989), 52–134; and Paszkiewicz, W sluzbie, 7–139; Lisovskii, “Natsional’nyi stil’,” 167–238. 11 Wortman, “The ‘Russian Style’,” 103.

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the baptism of Rus’, commemorated in 1888. Thirty-five years earlier, Metropolitan Filaret of Kiev and Galich first conceived the idea to build a church dedicated to the tenth-century Kievan prince who Christianized Rus’, Vladimir the Great.12 The proposed cathedral was to be executed in the Rus’-Byzantine style. Ivan Shtorm served as the architect of the initial design, which referenced Kiev’s Cathedral of St. Sofiia with its original thirteen cupolas. Lack of adequate funding necessitated simplification of Shtorm’s proposal by the architects, Aleksandr Beretti and Pavel Sparro.13 The resulting structure, built in the eclectic Neo-Byzantine style, differed from earlier nineteenthcentury Rus’-Byzantine projects in that it appropriated elements from the late Byzantine churches of Greece, rather than from Rus’ prototypes of the eleventh through thirteenth centuries.14 While the idea of building the Cathedral of St. Vladimir was conceived during the reign of Nicholas I, the project was begun only in 1862, during the reign of Alexander II and completed in 1882, when Alexander III occupied the throne. In contemplating a program of wall paintings for the cathedral, the Kiev Ecclesiastical-Archaeological Society reasoned that the interior décor should conform to the late tenthearly eleventh-century Rus’ style contemporary with Prince Vladimir and sanctioned a proposal designed by one of its members, Professor Ivan Malyshevskii. Instead, the Imperial Archaeological Society in St. Petersburg, at the behest of Count Dmitrii Tolstoi, the Minister of Internal Affairs, backed a decorative scheme submitted by Prakhov that incorporated themes from later periods of Russian history. Prakhov was considered an expert in church archaeology and had recently returned from a study trip to the eastern Mediterranean on which he was accompanied by Tolstoi’s son.15 A prolonged stay abroad from 1869 to 1873 studying the art and antiquities of Italy, France, Germany, Greece, Egypt, and Asia Minor first awakened Prakhov’s interest in Russia’s past. Upon his return, Prakhov taught at St. Petersburg University (1873–1887 and 1897–1916)

12 Metropolitan Filaret proposed the building of a church dedicated to Grand Prince Vladimir in objection to the commemorative sculpture of the Rus’ prince erected in 1853 by Nicholas I on the banks of the Dnieper River. The Metropolitan questioned the appropriateness of an “idol-like” monument to honor the ruler who brought Orthodox Christianity to Rus’: Sobor sv. kn. Vladimira v Kieve (Kiev, 1905), 5. 13 Ibid., 12–24. 14 Lisovskii, “Natsional’nyi stil’,” 120–122. 15 Sobor sv. kn. Vladimira, 31–34.

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and at Kiev University (1887–1897). He also lectured at the Academy of Arts in St. Petersburg in the mid-1870s, a post from which he was dismissed for his support of the Russian realist painters known as the Peredvizhniki or Wanderers. The Russian realists depicted populist themes in their works and were critical of the Academy and of the tsarist regime. Prakhov became their vocal supporter while serving as the art editor of the popular journal, The Bee (Pchela). With the RussoTurkish War, the Peredvizhniki refocused their work on the growing ethnocentric interests of Russian society. Prakhov shared their empathy for the burgeoning national sentiment.16 The heightened Russian nationalism that came to characterize the works of the Peredvizhniki appealed to Alexander III, who from the beginning of his reign patronized their work while also supporting Prakhov’s restoration projects. Thus, in 1884 Alexander III appointed Prakhov, who was a member of the Imperial Russian Archaeological Society, to oversee the decoration of the newly erected Cathedral of St. Vladimir. Prakhov labored on this project from 1884 to 1896.17 By the time of his arrival in Kiev, he had traveled to the Russian cities of Novgorod, Vladimir, Uglich, Rostov, and Iaroslavl to study surviving monuments. Once in Kiev, prior to working on the Cathedral of St. Vladimir, he undertook a full-scale cleaning and restoration campaign in the Church of St. Cyril of Alexandria and exposed mosaic and fresco compositions in the Cathedral of St. Michael of the Golden Domes and in the Cathedral of St. Sofiia, a monument already restored by Solntsev.18

16 On the Peredvizhniki and Prakhov’s association with them, see: Valkenier, Russian Realist Art, 43, 44, 72–73, 82–83, and 124. Also consult Prakhov’s own writings: “Chetvertaia peredvizhnaia vystavka,” Pchela 1 (16 March 1875), 121–126; “5-ia peredvizhnaia vystavka i 1-ia vystavka obshchestva vystavok Khudozhestvennykh proizvedenii,” Pchela 2 (22 April and 30, 2 and 6 May 1876), 6–8, 2–3, and 10–11; and “Vystavka v Akademii Khudozhestv proizvedenii russkago iskusstva, predznachennykh dlia pocylki na vsemirnuiu vystavku v Parizhe,” Pchela 4 (26 February; 5, 12, 19 and 26 March; 2 April 1878), 142–143, 154–155, 170–175, 190–191, 203–207, and 222–223. 17 Sobor sv. kn. Vladimira, 31–34. 18 In the 1880s and 1890s Prakhov exposed the mosaics of the Pantokrator, an archangel, and the apostle Paul in the dome, the figure of Aaron on the triumphal arch and fresco compositions in the north and south galleries and the baptistery of the Cathedral of St. Sofiia. In 1888 he cleaned the mosaics of the Cathedral of St. Michael of the Golden Domes. Prakhov also worked in twelfth-century cathedrals in Vladimirin-Volynia and Chernigov. See G. I. Vzdornov, Istoriia otrkrytiia izucheniia Russkoi srednevekovoi zhivopis: XIX vek (Moscow, 1986), 134–136.

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Indeed, Prakhov’s work in Kiev followed in Solntsev’s footsteps. Starting in the 1830s the latter visited numerous medieval cities throughout the Slavic lands of the Russian Empire painstakingly recording antiquities and monuments in careful watercolor renditions and creating over five thousand drawings.19 From 1843 into the 1850s Solntsev worked in Kiev on the renewal of the interior decoration of such important eleventh-century Rus’ monuments as the Dormition Cathedral of the Monastery of the Caves and the Cathedral of St. Sofiia. Nicholas I sponsored this chapter in Solntsev’s artistic life. In 1842, upon his visit to Kiev, the tsar found the newly renovated interior of the Dormition Cathedral displeasing and established a commission to evaluate the adherence of the freshly executed wall paintings to medieval Byzantine artistic traditions.20 The commission concluded that the “new painting does not have the superlative character of Greek painting because it is bright and colorful.” 21 Solntsev was brought in to remedy the situation, and from then on, he participated in all of the tsar’s projects involving the cleaning and renewal of medieval wall paintings. Solntsev worked alongside another imperial favorite, the architect Konstantin Ton, whose Rus’-Byzantine projects in 1841 were cited as exemplars of the national style favored by the tsar.22 Solntsev drafted hundreds of decorative schemes for his imperial patron.23 In Kiev, Solntsev’s most important undertaking was the cleaning and restoration of the eleventh-century Cathedral of St. Sofiia. He outlined his proposed course of work in a memo to Nicholas I. In order to maintain the prominent monument in an appropriate state of preservation, Solntsev deemed it necessary to repair every last detail of the cathedral. After removing later painting to expose underlying medieval images, this involved mending losses on the exposed fresco surfaces and renewing the uncovered images. In areas completely devoid of medieval remains, Solntsev suggested facing the walls with copper 19

Ibid., 29 and 280–281, n. 4. On the nineteenth-century renovation of the interior of the Dormition Cathedral in Kiev see: P. G. Lebedintsev, “Vozobnovlenie stennoi zhivopisi v velikoi tserkvi Kievo-Pecherskoi lavry v 1840–1843 gg.,” Kievskie Universitetskie izvestiia 3 (1878), 56–64. For further bibliography consult Vzdornov, Istoriia, 280, n. 1–3. 21 As quoted in Vzdornov, Istoriia, 29. 22 Svod zakonov Rossiiskoi imperii poveleniem Gosudaria Imperatora Nikolaia pervago 12 (St. Petersburg, 1857), 49 (n. 218). Ton’s designs were published as a volume of plates: Konstantin Ton, Tserkvi, sochinennye arkhitektorom Ego Imperatorskogo Velichestva professorom arkhitektury Imperatorskoi Akademii khudozhestv i chlenom raznykh akademii (St. Petersburg, 1838). 23 Vzdornov, Istoriia, 30. 20

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and then painting representations of subjects sacred to the Russian Church, especially those associated with Kiev. He enumerated eleven scenes from the history of Kievan Rus’ and announced that all of the proposed restoration work would be executed in the “Greek style.”24 The cleaning, which took place from 1844 to 1845, involved the mechanical scraping of over-paint using metal instruments and the treatment of medieval surfaces with alcohol, soap, potash, turpentine, and poppy seed oil. As a result, twenty-five compositions, two hundred and twenty standing figures, one hundred and eight bustlength figures, and numerous ornaments were exposed. The restoration work began in 1848 and reached completion in 1853. During the process, which involved the restoration of losses, attempts were made to maintain the contours of medieval compositions In the end, fresh oil painting was applied over all the exposed medieval imagery; only the frescoes in the south aisle dedicated to the archangel Michael remained “un-retouched.”25 Writing on the history of the nineteenth-century cleaning and restoration of Rus’ monuments, Soviet art historian Gerold Vzdornov disparaged Solntsev as the personal court artist-archeologist of Tsar Nicholas I. He labeled the “restorer’s” work as “barbaric,” stressing that Solntsev made crude use of a knife and scalpel to clean unique medieval remains and held him personally responsible for the obliteration of actual remnants of the past.26 In today’s post-Soviet context, scholars have adopted a more sympathetic attitude toward their nineteenth-century predecessor. They are rehabilitating him as a pioneer in the study of medieval Rus’ and are arguing for his reevaluation within the cultural and historical parameters of his time.27 Solntsev’s efforts deserve due recognition, as does the dedication and conviction with which he approached his work. The imagined inherent nature of the sacred triad of “Orthodoxy, Autocracy, Nationality” that came to define Russian identity during the reign of Nicholas I formed the

24 L. Hanzenko, “Fedir Solntsev: Sproba naukovoi reabilitatsii,” Pam’iatky Ukrainy 1 (1899), 112. The author cites Solntsev’s memo to Nicholas I, which is preserved in the Russian State Historical Archive (Rossiskii gosudarstvennyi istoricheskii arkhiv): “Ob ispravlenii Kievskogo sobora, 1843–1853,” fond 797, opis 13, edinitsa khraneniia 330, listy 6–8. 25 Vzdornov, Istoriia, 32–33; Hanzenko, “Solntsev,” 116. 26 Vzdornov, Istoriia, 28–46. 27 Hanzenko, “Solntsev,” 111–121.

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Rus’ and Russian Prelates Before a Russian Cathedral, by V. M. Vasnetsov. South Wall of the Sanctuary of the Cathedral of St. Vladimir, Kiev.

framework within which Solntsev and his contemporaries searched for the indigenous distinctiveness of the Rus’ past. Analogously, in restoring the interior wall painting of the Church of St. Cyril and in devising a program of decoration for the Cathedral of St. Vladimir, Prakhov promoted the paradigm of Russian nationalism associated with the attitudes and predispositions of Alexander III’s reign. In the Cathedral of St. Vladimir, Prakhov interspersed select themes and subjects of the Byzantine and Kievan Rus’ past with later Muscovite ecclesiastical developments of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries and positioned Moscow as the inheritor of Kiev’s legacy and the successor to Byzantium.28 On the south wall of the sanctuary, a composition depicts a group of Rus’ and Muscovite prelates standing in front of the Moscow Kremlin’s Dormition Cathedral. Facing this

28

On the decoration of the Cathedral of St. Vladimir, see: Sobor sv. kn. Vladimira, 33–120; and V. H. Kyrkevych, Volodymyrskyi sobor u Kyievi (Kyiv, 2004), 26–177.

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Orthodox Prelates Before a Byzantine Church, by V. M. Vasnetsov. North wall of the sanctuary of the Cathedral of St. Vladimir, Kiev.

group on the north wall of the sanctuary, Orthodox Church Fathers gather before a Byzantine church. The subjects, formal similarities, and the juxtaposition of the two images parallel the Russian and Byzantine churches. The selection of the Kremlin Cathedral as the backdrop for the Rus’ and Russian figures, as opposed to Kiev’s eleventh-century Cathedral of St. Sofiia, posits Moscow, rather than Kiev, as the center of Rus’ Orthodoxy. It glosses over Kievan claims to ecclesiastical and political primacy and promotes the notion of uncontested Muscovite authority into the Rus’ past. Only those Rus’ and Muscovite saints who were viewed as supporting Alexander III’s nationalist vision of the past appear on the cathedral walls.29 Local aspects of Kievan piety, perceived as disjunctive with the propagated grand narrative, find no reflection in the decorative

29 For the saints depicted, see: Sobor sv. kn. Vladimira, 76–93, 98–100, and 102– 106; and Kyrkevych, Volodymyrs’kyi sobor, 26–177.

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program that outlines the sovereign, all-encompassing national character of Russian Orthodoxy under the patronage of the Great Russian tsar. Narrative compositions from Kievan history, such as the baptism of Rus’ and the baptism of Prince Vladimir, signify the divine benefaction enjoyed by the Russian monarch and his central role in the context of the Orthodox Church. To decorate the cathedral, Prakhov selected Mikhail Vrubel’ as well as the Russian Peredvizhniki artists Viktor Vasnetsov and Mikhail Nesterov in addition to Polish and Ukrainian artists (Pavel Swedomski, Wilhelm Kotarbinski, Mykola Pymonenko, Viktor Zamyrailo, Tymofii Safonov, and Serhii Kostenko).30 Vrubel’, though of a younger generation, was on his way to becoming Russia’s leading Symbolist artist. When Prakhov hired Vasnetsov, this artist had already won the favor of the tsar; he was recognized for his paintings of medieval Russian heroes and epic themes. Nesterov was still formulating his oeuvre, but as a religious man, he worked to portray the mysticism of Russian Orthodoxy in his paintings of saints. The Cathedral of St. Vladimir was consecrated in August 1896. An album on the cathedral published in 1905 asserts: “The entire history of the Rus’ faith, all the breakthroughs in the search for truth, and all the feats of the soul are narrated in these deeply national figures [portrayed on the walls] . . .”31 Konstantin Pobedonostsev, Alexander III’s tutor and the Chief Procurator of the Holy Synod, writing to his imperial pupil in 1888 described the paintings executed by Vasnetsov in the Cathedral as “truly above all else that I have seen to this date, anywhere” and went on to declare that “this church truly will be a great monument of your tsardom and the day of its consecration will be an all-Russian holiday. . . .”32 In the publication, Art Treasures of Russia, Prakhov highly praised Alexander III’s achievements as patron of a national Russian art and listed such projects as the erection and decoration of the Cathedral of St. Vladimir and the restoration of the Church of St. Cyril of Alexandria in Kiev among the monarch’s most noteworthy accomplishments.33

30

On the work of these artists, consult Kyrkevych, Volodymyrs’kyi sobor, 26–177. Sobor sv. kn. Vladimira, 37. 32 Pis’ma Pobedonostseva k Aleksandru III 2 (Moscow, 1926), 186–187. 33 “Imperator Aleksandru III kak deiatel’ russkago khudozhestvennago prosveshcheniia,” Khudozhestvennye sokrovishcha Rossii 3 (1903), 4–8, 150, and 168. 31

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At the same time as starting the decoration of the Cathedral of St. Vladimir, Prakhov was in the midst of “restoring” the twelfth-century wall paintings of the Church of St. Cyril of Alexandria, working from 1880 to 1886 under the auspices of the Imperial Russian Archaeological Society and with the personal backing of Alexander III, Pobedonostsev, Tolstoi, and Ivan Delianov, Minister of Public Education. Prakhov identified this project as “the first large-scale ecclesiastical-archaeological undertaking begun in the providential reign of the Sovereign Emperor” and proclaimed his intention to carry out the restoration of the monument in a manner that would “address the interests of both Russian archaeology and the Orthodox Church.”34 The five helmet-shaped domes of the Church of St. Cyril of Alexandria rise above the treetops of a steep hill in northwest Kiev. This monumental twelfth-century structure preserves extensive areas of medieval frescoes and after the Cathedral of St. Sofiia, is Ukraine’s second-best preserved medieval monument. Founded prior to 1169 probably by the widow of Prince Vsevolod Ol’govich, the Church of St. Cyril functioned as a burial site for the princess and her descendents.35 An impressive masonry structure, the church is dedicated to the fifth-century patriarch of Alexandria, who defended the title of Mother of God for the Virgin Mary at the Third Ecumenical Council of Ephesus in 431.36 Prakhov’s study of the Church of St. Cyril is closely linked with the nineteenth-century interest in the Rus’ past and with the Pan-Slavic

34 Prakhov, “Freski kievo-kirillovskoi tserkvi XII v.,” Kievskaia starina 6 (1883), 97; and N. I. Veselovskii, Istoriia Imperatorskago Russkago Arkheologicheskago obshchestva za pervoe piatidesiatilietie ego sushchestvovaniia, 1846–1896 (St. Petersburg, 1900), 159. 35 There exists a longstanding debate regarding the identity of the founder of the Church of St. Cyril, which is attributed either to Prince Vsevolod Ol’govich and dated to the 1140s or to his widow and dated to the very end of the 1160s. In addition to the grave of Vsevolod’s wife, St. Cyril’s housed the burial of Vsevolod’s son, the Kievan prince, Sviatoslav Vsevolodovich. For evidence of Vsevolod’s patronage, see: E. F. Karskii, ed. “Lavrent’evskaia letopis,” 2nd ed., Polnoe sobranie russkikh letopisei (hereafter, PSRL) 1 (1926–1927; repr., Moscow, 1997), 412. For evidence of the patronage of Vsevolod’s wife, see: A. A. Shakhmatov, ed., “Ipat’evskaia letopis’,” 2nd ed., PSRL 2, (1908; repr., Moscow, 1998), 612. 36 On St. Cyril of Alexandria, see: John A. McGuckin, St. Cyril of Alexandria: The Christological Controversy, Its History, Theology, and Texts (Leiden, 1994) and Susan Wessel, Cyril of Alexandria and the Nestorian Controversy: The Making of a Saint and a Heretic (Oxford, 2004).

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movement.37 In 1860, during maintenance work, medieval frescoes first came to light in St. Cyril’s.38 Lack of funding, however, delayed further investigation for another fourteen years. In 1874, on the occasion of the Third All-Russian Archaeological Convention to be held in Kiev and organized by the Moscow Archaeological Society, select wall areas were partially cleaned.39 Meeting every three years in different cities of the Russian Empire, the archaeological conventions promoted broad public interest in the Rus’ past and contributed to the study and preservation of cultural sites throughout the empire. The relatively poor state of conservation of the frescoes in St. Cyril’s, as well as the damage caused by the rough and often careless mechanical cleaning process, launched a heated debate over restoration measures and overpainting.40 In 1880 the project caught the interest of Alexander III, who then designated ten thousand rubles for the full exposure of the medieval frescoes. For the next two years Prakhov studied and copied the twelfth-century frescoes in St. Cyril’s under the auspices of the St. Petersburg Russian Imperial Archaeological Society.41 In order to expose the medieval frescoes, Prakhov removed later overpainting; however, the original decoration did not survive on all of the wall surfaces, and in some areas it was barely visible. Therefore, soon after the cleaning was completed, Prakhov resolved to return the church to what he surmised was its original twelfth-century appearance. He opted to leave the well-preserved frescoes untouched, to

37 Olenka Z. Pevny, “The Kyrylivs’ka tserkva: Byzantine Art and Architecture in Kiev,” (Ph.D. diss., New York University, 1995), 169–179. 38 The local priest, Petr Orlovskii, reported the discovery of frescoes in the church on May 29, 1860: Tsentral’nyi derzhavnyi istorychnyi arkhiv Ukrainy u m. Kyievi (Central State Historical Archive of Ukraine in Kyiv), fond 442, opys 89, sprava 248, arkush 42. 39 The exposed frescoes included the Eucharist, figures of officiating prelates, segments of the Nativity and the Dormition, two scenes from the life of St. Cyril of Alexandria, and a few figures of saints. Different authors vary in their enumeration of the frescoes exposed in 1874. See: V. Prokhorov, Khristianskiia drevnosti (Kiev, 1875), 26–30; Prakhov, Katalog vystavky kopi s pamiatnikov iskusstva v Kieve, X, XI, i XII v. (St. Petersburg, 1882); A. Sovetov, “Kievo-kirillovskaia tserkov: Tserkovnoarkheologicheskoe izsledovanie,” Ucheno-bogoslovskie i tserkovno-propoviednicheskie opyty studentov Kievskoi dukhovnoi akademii LXVII kursa (Kiev, 1914), 318–322; and I. Marholina and V. Ulianovskyi, Kyivska obytel sviatoho Kyryla (Kyiv, 2005), 26–27. 40 Prokhorov, Khristianskiia drevnosti, 26–27; Sovetov, “Kievo-kirillovskaia tserkov,” 319. 41 Prakhov, “Freski,” 97.

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intensify the contours of faint compositions, and to repaint areas of loss so as to “return the church” to its “primary artistic countenance.”42 As no entire program of church decoration from the Kievan Rus’ period survived, Prakhov’s amalgam of appropriate subjects was based on recently surveyed and restored Rus’ churches and on interpretations of the Rus’ past found in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Russian monuments. The result of Prakhov’s restoration work was a nineteenth-century Rus’-Byzantine interior with areas of cleaned, retouched, and overpainted frescoes, as well as entirely new oil compositions. In his restoration, the artist incorporated subjects not documented in extant twelfth-century Rus’ monuments. His oil paintings depicted currently popular Rus’ saints imagined as part of a Pan-Slavic past, as well as widely celebrated Byzantine military saints and Christological feasts. The added tenth- and eleventh-century figures included Prince Vladimir the Great; Princess Ol’ga, Vladimir’s grandmother, the first female ruler of Rus’, and the first member of the Riurikid dynasty to be baptized; the princely brothers Boris and Gleb, the first Rus’ martyrs; and Wenceslaus of Bohemia and his grandmother Liudmilla, the first Christian martyrs among the Slavs.43 Other nineteenth-century additions were the popular Byzantine military figures Theodore Stratilates, St. George, St. Demetrios of Thessalonike, and St. Theodore Teron, as well as the clearly more personal choices of St. Aleksandr, St. Adrian, and St. Viktor, the namesakes of the tsar and of the restorer himself.44 In his quest to recreate the initial appearance of the church’s interior, Prakhov went so far as to replace the existing seventeenth-century, multi-tiered, wooden Cossack baroque iconostasis with a single-tier, marble templon decorated with icons executed by the young artist Vrubel’, who had been hired to assist in the repainting.45

42

I. P. Dorofienko and P. Ia. Red’ko, “Raskrytie fresok XII v. v Kirillovskoi tserkvi Kieva,” in Drevne-russkoe iskusstvo: monumental’naia zhivopis’ XI–XVII vv. (Moscow, 1980), 45. 43 Other figures added to the church program in the 1880s included St. Eufrosinia of Polotsk, the patroness of female monasticism in Rus’ and St. Theoktistos, the saintly namesake of the early twelfth-century Bishop of Chernigov. 44 Also depicted are St. Nicholas of Myra and Sts. Cosmos and Damian. For other nineteenth-century figures and compositions found throughout the church, see: Marholina and Ulianovskyi, Kyivska obytel, 287–335. 45 On the iconostasis, see: V. G. Antonov, “Kievo-Kirillovskaia Troitskaia tserkov’,” Trudy tret’iago arkheologicheskago siezda v Rossii, byvshago v Kieve v Avguste 1874 godu 2, (Kiev, 1878), 7; Sovetov, “Kievo-Kirillovskaia tserkov’,” 378–384; Marholina,

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St. Vladimir, nineteenth-century oil painting, north wall, Church of St. Cyril. Photographed by Olenka Pevny.

Prakhov’s work in the Church of St. Cyril invites many parallels with Solntsev’s restoration of the Cathedral of St. Sofiia and documents the late nineteenth-century visualization of the Rus’ past. Like Solntsev, Prakhov felt obliged to return the church to the full glory of its primary appearance. The aim of both restorers was not to turn the medieval structures they were studying into relics of the past, but to activate a selective past in the promotion of a collective present. Prakhov’s views on the social role of art are expressed in many of his writings. Contemplating the works of the Peredvizhniki, he emphasized: “Genre painting, without argument is a pleasing thing, but historical painting,

“Ikonostasy Kyrylivskoi tserkvy,” Liudyna i svit 10 (1996), 20–24; and Marholina and Ulianovskyi, Kyivska obytel, 244–247.

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also without argument, is more important and paramount, and can render a greater didactic and elevating influence.” He questioned, “What have Russian fine arts done thusfar for Russian history, for example for the brilliant period of Kievan princes? . . .” and preached that “it is necessary to give full equality to the Russian genre . . .”46 Solntsev and Prakhov, as well as their patrons and contemporaries, were aware that the abraded and damaged frescoes of undecipherable and unfamiliar subjects might fail to resonate with viewers.47 They also feared that left to their own devices viewers might “misinterpret” the frescoes. It is for the latter reason that Metropolitan Filaret of Kiev opposed Solntsev’s cleaning the medieval frescoes in St. Sofiia. He expressed apprehension that the ranks of Old Believers might inappropriately interpret and use the exposed frescoes to their advantage.48 These considerations, as well as political motivations, gave direction to the resulting restoration programs. Under Solntsev’s supervision and with the backing of Nicholas I, nineteenth-century overpainting came to camouflage most of the medieval frescoes of the Cathedral of St. Sofiia. In the ideological setting of Official Nationality, Solntsev was preoccupied with the Byzantine inheritance of Rus’. For instance, he mistakenly restored the remains of the dedicatory fresco of the family of Prince Iaroslav the Wise, located in the west arm of the central crossing, as depicting the four female saintly virtues and used Greek inscription to identify the newly painted figures of Wisdom (Sophia), Faith (Pistis), Hope (Elpis), and Charity (Agape).49 Solntsev painted copies of the overlying compositions he cleared to expose medieval frescoes and also made at least some record of the frescoes before their restoration. In 1857, Count Sergei Stroganov— who oversaw the publication of Antiquities of the Russian State, which featured plates of the medieval frescoes from the Cathedral of St. Sofiia—complained to the Russian Imperial Archaeological Society that the images submitted by the artist-archaeologist did not correspond to the appearance of the paintings presently on the walls of the monu-

46

Prakhov: “Vystavka,” 190; and “Chetvertaia peredvizhnaia vistavka,” 126. Marholina and Ulianovskyi, Kyivska obytel, 30. 48 F. G. Solntsev, “Moia zhizn’ i khudozhestvennmo-arkheologicheskie trudy,” Russkaia starina 16 (1876), 289–290. 49 Vzdornov, Istoriia, 45. 47

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ment. Apparently, the illustrations showed the medieval frescoes prior to their restoration and enhancement with oil paint. In the discussions that followed, members of the society identified the nineteenthcentury renditions of medieval frescoes now decorating walls, rather than the sketches of the cleaned originals recorded by Solntsev, as of primary significance. In accordance with their expressed preference for the retouched frescoes Solntsev was required to rework the images he made for publication to reflect not the exposed frescoes but their revitalized nineteenth-century renditions that now decorated the walls of the cathedral.50 When Prakhov raised the issue of restoring the cleaned frescoes of the Church of St. Cyril, he argued that the historical significance of the monument warrants the refurbishing of the interior to a pleasing state. He explained that “the work auspiciously initiated with the cleaning of significant frescoes, merits culmination in the renewal of the Church of St. Cyril, [an undertaking] which would equally address both the interests of Russian archaeology and of the Orthodox Church.”51 Prakhov proposed leaving well preserved frescoes exposed, filling in minor areas of loss, refreshing partially preserved frescoes with appropriate additions, and painting new images in the Rus’ style in areas of complete loss.52 In the end, the pale tones of the poorly preserved twelfthcentury images created a stark contrast with the saturated colors of the new oil paintings. Even the life cycle of Cyril of Alexandria decorating the south sanctuary apse was retouched although not overpainted.53 Like Solntsev and other restorers-archaeologists, Prakhov maintained a visual record of his findings. Using oil paint on tracing paper, he systematically completed an actual-size copy of each cleaned fresco prior to its restoration. At a significant cost he took over two hundred photographs of the restoration process. Although neither his copies nor his photographs were ever published, some of these images were

50 On the record of cleaned frescoes, see Hanzenko, “Fedir Solntsev,” 119, citing “Ob izdanii risunkov F. G. Solntseva (1853–1877)” from the Arkhiv Gosudarstvennyoi Akademii istorii material’noi kul’tury, Sankt-Peterburg, f. 3, ed. khr. 21, l. 10–11. For Solntsev’s published images, see Drevnosti Rossiiskogo gosudarstva: Kievskii Sofiiskii sobor: Atlas 1–4 (St. Petersburg, 1886–1887). 51 Veselovskii, Istoriia, 159. 52 Marholina and Ulianovskyi, Kyivska obytel, 30. 53 Vzdornov, Istoriia, 134.

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featured in a traveling exhibition with an accompanying catalogue that identified and described the items.54 As with Solntsev, Prakhov’s restoration efforts advanced the political ideology of his time and reflected the inclinations of his imperial patron. Alexander III was a strong adherent of current Slavophile and Pan-Slavic sentiments and advocated Russia’s involvement in the 1875 and 1876 uprisings of Orthodox Slavic populations within the Ottoman Empire, which popularized the idea of Slavic unity and of Russian leadership among the Slavs. The Peredvizhniki artists with whom Prakhov was closely connected expressed support for the war in their canvases. For instance, Konstantin Makovskii produced the popular painting Bulgarian Women Martyrs (Bolgarskie muchenitsi), and Il’ia Repin dubbed the plight of the Balkan Slavs “our war.”55 Such pronouncements underscored Russian affinity with the South Slavs, and as a result of this conflict Russia extended its political influence over Bulgaria. In the Church of St. Cyril, Prakhov recreated an extended congregation of Pan-Slavic saints. He identified the remains of the thirtyseven figures in the north apse as Balkan prelates connected with the activities of the ninth-century apostles to the Slavs, Sts. Cyril and Methodius. Only fragmentary vestiges of characters from identifying inscriptions accompanied the poorly preserved figures, and due to loss and abrasion, the depicted saints lacked easily discernible and readily identifiable characteristics. At any rate, during the restoration, Prakhov added Slavonic inscriptions both to the renewed and the newly painted subjects.56

54 Some of Prakhov’s copies are preserved in the Copy Archive of the Russian State Museum in St. Petersburg (Arkhiv Gosudarstvennogo russkogo muzeia, kopiinyi, f. 274–394). Due to their brittle nature and storage on rolled drums, it is impossible to view the copies. Also, the whereabouts of only a handful of Prakhov’s photographs is known. On the creation and use of these and similar copies, see Vzdornov, Istoriia, 21, 29, 44, 46, 136, 205. Also consult Veselovskii, Istoriia, 159 and Prakhov, Katalog vystavki kopi. 55 Valkenier, Russian Realist Art, 71, citing a letter written by I. Repin to V. Stasov on June 18, 1878. For the coverage of the Russo-Turkish War of 1877 in the works of the Peredvizhniki, see pp. 68–73 and 205–206. 56 On the lack of known established twelfth-century portrait types for the ninththrough twelfth-century Slavic saints see: A. Vasiliev, “Obrazi na Kiril i Metodii v chuzhdoto i nasheto izobrazitelno izkustvo,” in Khiliada i sto godini slavianska pismenost 863–1963 (Sofia: 1963), 393–488; D. Hemmerdinger, “La Representation iconographique de Cyrill et Methode,” in I. E. Anastasiou, ed., Kyrillôi kai Methodiôi tomos eortios epi têi chiliostêi kai ekatostêi etêridi (Thessaloniki, 1966), vol. 1, 333–344;

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Pentecost, nineteenth-century oil painting by M. A. Vrubel. Gallery of the Church of St. Cyril.

The nineteenth-century restoration of the Church of St. Cyril has had a profound effect on the monument’s appearance and on the scholarly assessment of its significance. Today, upon entering the church it is not the twelfth-century frescoes, nor the few remaining seventeenth-century compositions that draw the viewer’s attention. The saturated hues of nineteenth-century depictions of saints and narrative scenes overwhelm and subsume the pale-toned medieval frescoes, and baroque images, while the brash execution and jarring legibility of the nineteenth-century paintings imprints Prakhov’s medieval vision on the memory of viewers. The easily decipherable identifying inscriptions and the present-day familiarity with the nineteenth-century figures due to their centrality in contemporary narratives of Russian and Ukrainian history establish a level of recognition for viewers that is absent in the case of the abraded frescoes.

and C. Grozdanov and G. Krsteski, Portreti na svetitelite od Makedonija od IX–XVIII vek (Skopje, 1983). See Prakhov: Katalog vystavki kopii, 20 and 24; and “Kievskie pamiatniki vizantiisko-russkago iskusstva,” in Drevnosti. Trudy Imperatorskago Moskovskago arkheologicheskago obshchestva, 11 (1883), 16.

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Readily available publications on the Church of St. Cyril corroborate the visual impression of the monument fashioned by the nineteenthcentury oil paintings. Small guide books devote as much room to praising the work of Vrubel’ as to discussing the twelfth-century remains in the monument.57 The six-volume authoritative History of Ukrainian Art, published in the 1960s, asserts that “the general decorative scheme [of the fresco program] was maintained during the renovation of the church and provides incomplete, but more or less adequate material for determining the style of Kievan art and its developmental tendencies.” In the text, photographs of frescoes completely covered with nineteenth-century overpaint are juxtaposed with exposed frescoes as illustrations of twelfth-century works.58 This survey, as well as others, assess the importance of St. Cyril’s as documenting the independence and originality of Rus’ art and as attesting to the forging of Rus’ cultural ties with Balkan nations, especially Bulgaria. Saints added to the decorative program by nineteenth-century restorers, including Boris, Gleb, and Alexander, are listed as dating to the twelfth century, and Prakhov’s identification of the figures in the north apse as Balkan prelates is accepted without question and even expanded upon.59 In almost all of the available publications on the Church of St. Cyril, the localization of the Byzantine inheritance is reduced to the identification of Rus’ and Slavic saints, and the emphasis is placed on the importance of the monument as a document of the desired independence of the Rus’ Church from Constantinople. The use of Slavonic inscriptions is taken as an indication of the work of Slavic artists and claims continue to be made that St. Cyril’s contains the only twelfthcentury frescoes of Boris and Gleb. On occasion even the best preserved twelfth-century fresco remains—those of the Life of St. Cyril of Alexandria—are misidentified in terms of a Pan-Slavic agenda and are said to illustrate the apostolic activities of Sts. Cyril and Methodius. In a recent symposium volume dedicated to the brotherly apostles to the Slavs, a scene depicting Sts. Cyril and Athanasius of Alexandria conversing with a ruler from the south apse of the Kiev church was 57 See, for example, I. I. Movchan and F. Totska, Kyrylivska tserkva v Kyievi; and Kyrylivska tserkva: fotoalbom (Kyiv, 1980). 58 Ie. S. Mamolat, “Monumentalnyi zhyvopys,” in M. P. Bazhan et al., eds., Istoriia ukrainskoho mystetstva 1: Mystetstvo naidavnishykh chasiv ta epokhy Kyivskoi Rusi (Kyiv, 1966), 307–314. 59 Ibid., 314–315; and I. Ie. Grabar et al., eds., Istoriia russkogo iskusstva, Vol. 1: Zhivopis’ i skul’ptura Kievskoi Rus’ (Moscow, 1953), 214–220.

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Sts. Cyril and Athanasios of Alexandria Conversing with a Ruler. Twelfthcentury fresco, south apse, Church of St. Cyril. Photographed by Olenka Pevny.

mistakenly labeled as portraying Cyril and Methodius conversing with the ninth-century Byzantine emperor Michael III.60 And in May 1970, the Greek postal system issued 1,300,000 copies of a five drachma stamp in commemoration of the missionary activities of Sts. Cyril and Methodius reproducing the same misidentified Kiev fresco.61 Overall, the nineteenth-century oil paintings in the Church of St. Cyril tell of a fictional medieval past populated with Slavic and Rus’ saints. It is clear why nineteenth-century scholars interpreted the twelfth-century monument as they did. What is more perplexing is why

60 See Anastasiou and K. Paneistimiou, eds., Praktika Synedriou-Eortastikai ekdêlôseis pros timên kai mnêmnên tôn agiôn autadelfôn Kyrillou kai Methodiou tôn Thessalonikeôn fôtistôn tôn Slabôn (10–15 Maïou 1985) (Thessalonike, 1986), 461. 61 On the commemorative stamp, see “Pamiatky kniazhoi doby Rusi-Ukrainy na markakh suchasnoi Hretsii,” Novyi Shliakh 11 (13 March 1971), 9.

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nineteenth-century Slavophile and Pan-Slavic interpretations continue to exercise such a firm hold on contemporary studies of medieval Rus’ culture. In the case of St. Cyril’s, acceptance of the nineteenth-century decorative scheme as indicative of Rus’ realities has deferred judicious analyses of the monument’s participation in the medieval ecumenical dialogue between Constantinople and Kiev. It also has had an impact on contemporary restorations of other medieval monuments in the Ukrainian capital. The rebuilding of the Cathedral of St. Michael of the Golden Domes in Kiev—destroyed on the orders of Joseph Stalin in 1935 and newly consecrated in 1998—offers a conspicuous example of a current revivalist endeavor beholden to nineteenth-century perceptions of the Rus’ past. A mosaic and painting program based on Rus’ and Byzantine monuments (including the Cathedral of St. Sofiia restored by Solntsev and the Church of St. Cyril restored by Prakhov) decorates the central core of the rebuilt cathedral. The saints featured reflect the hypothesized Cyril-Methodian orientation of the eleventhcentury founder of St. Michael’s, Prince Sviatoslav Iziaslavich. Among the selected saints, the figures of Boris, Gleb, Cyril and Methodius, find no precedents in extant medieval church programs; they do, however accord with, and further naturalize, nineteenth-century conceptualizations of Rus’ church decorative programs. Understanding the priorities and practices of nineteenth-century restorers such as Solntsev and Prakhov provides insight into past and present choices that structure today’s reality.

CHAPTER SIX

THE MATERIAL WORLD OF OLD RUS’ AS DEPICTED IN THE HISTORICAL NOVELS OF THE NICHOLAEVAN ERA Irina Reyfman The same intellectual climate in the reign of Nicholas I that prompted the tsar himself, scholars, architects, archaeologists, ethnographers, and artists to explore and document the material culture of Old Russia also found expression in the literature of the era, particularly in historical novels. The phenomenon had deep roots. Andrew Wachtel, in his book An Obsession with History: Russian Writers Confront the Past, points out that “for almost 200 years, Russian writers of belles letters . . . produced fiction, drama, and narrative poetry on historical material. . . .”1 The beginning of this obsession can be dated from 1705, when Feofan Prokopovich wrote his tragicomedy “Vladimir,” and drama became the first place such material appeared in Russian literature. Feofan’s historical drama established what became a prolific and long-lived genre, with scores of plays produced in its wake, covering Russian history from the time of the legendary Riurik to the very real Time of Troubles. The dramatists of the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries generally based their works on the chronicles, but ideology was their primary focus, rather than striving for a verisimilar reconstruction of the past. They used history to comment on contemporary events. There were, of course, exceptions. In Aleksandr Pushkin’s tragedy, Boris Godunov, Fedor, Boris’s son and heir, draws a map of Russia and describes it to his father: This is a chart of the land of Muscovy; our domain From end to end. Here, you see, is Moscow, Here Novgorod, here Astrakhan. Here is the sea, Here lies the thick forest of Perm, And here is Siberia.2

1 Andrew B. Wachtel, An Obsession with History: Russian Writers Confront the Past (Stanford, CA, 1994), 7. 2 A. S. Pushkin, Sobranie sochinenii v 10–ti tomakh 5 (Leningrad, 1978), 225.

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Along with recalling the opening of William Shakespeare’s King Lear, this passage is perhaps the first description of a material object in a Russian historical play. Nestor Kukol’nik’s drama, The Hand of the Almighty Saved the Fatherland (1832)—set during the Time of Troubles of the early seventeenth century—lists, but does not describe, objects donated by patriotic Russians to the cause of winning the war. In Aleksei Tolstoi’s trilogy of the 1860s that included The Death of Ivan the Terrible, Tsar Fedor Ioannovich, and Tsar Boris, the author makes some attempt to reproduce the historical settings of his plays. His characters occasionally refer to items from the period, and his staging instructions mention them to create historically verisimilar settings. But, generally, Russian plays were minimally concerned with the material world of the time they portrayed. In the nineteenth century, the narrative poem began to pay particular attention to historical topics, very likely under the influence of The Lay of Igor’s Campaign, discovered in the late eighteenth century and extensively studied and frequently translated in the early nineteenth century. The list of historical narrative poems is long and covers a time range from the tenth to the seventeenth centuries. As in drama, the material world is barely present. Nonetheless, Aleksandr BestuzhevMarlinskii gives some historical flavor to his Andrei, Prince of Pereiaslavl (1832), set in the twelfth century, by occasionally using early Russian words such as odnoriadka, an old-fashioned caftan. However, his anachronistic usage of the term iasel’nichii, a courtier in charge of the tsar’s stables in fifteenth- to seventeenth-century Russia, demonstrates that his knowledge of the historical past was shaky. Mikhail Lermontov’s unfinished poem, The Boiar Orsha (1835–1836), contains a depiction of the decorative setting of a monastery refectory’s interior: The meal went on silently. By the wall to the left there were two tables And a semi-circle of chairs made by a monk, Their brocade glistening. Through large windows the light of day Bursting in as a white strip, Splintering into sparks against the glass, Played on the stone of the floor. The wall was artfully decorated By delicate carving, And on the door in golden rosettes The images of saints were glistening. The heavy, low ceiling

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A diligent monk painted The best he could: a pitiful labor That had taken many minutes Away from God, pious thoughts, and deeds: This is the doleful fate of art!3

Abstract as it is, this seems to be the only example of a sustained poetic description of the interior of a medieval building in Russian narrative poetry of the Romantic period. Because another Lermontov poem, The Song of Merchant Kalashnikov (1837), set in the time of Ivan the Terrible, is an imitation of folk poetry, its descriptions of the characters’ dress and other material items are formulaic and thus do not aspire to be historically accurate. It was in prose that Russian historical writers attempted to recreate the material world in which their characters existed.4 The examples are many: Nikolai Karamzin’s novellas, “Natalia, the Boiar’s Daughter” (1792) and “Marfa the Governor, or the Subjugation of Novgorod” (1802); Mikhail Zagoskin’s novels, Iurii Miloslavskii or The Russians in 1612 (1829) and Askold’s Grave, a Tale of the Times of Vladimir I (1833); Faddei Bulgarin’s Dimitrii the Pretender (1830); Nikolai Polevoi’s Oath at the Holy Sepulcher (1832), set in fifteenth-century Muscovy; and Aleksei Tolstoi’s Prince Serebrianyi, a Tale from the Times of Ivan the Terrible (1850s). These authors attempted to fill their narratives with what they viewed as authentic descriptions of clothing and jewelry, buildings and furniture, food and utensils, weaponry and hairstyles. Karamzin’s “Natalia,” set in the early seventeenth century, opens with the programmatic declaration that readers are interested in the Russian past, a time when Russian dress, customs, and language were not yet affected by Western influences: “Who among us doesn’t love those times, when Russians were Russians, when they dressed in their own clothing, walked in their own manner, lived according to their own custom. . . .?”5 This introduction promises an authentic representation of clothing and customs, and to some degree, Karamzin delivers on

3

M. Iu. Lermontov, Boiarin Orsha, in Sochineniia v 6–ti tomakh 4 (Мoscow, 1955),

17. 4 For a particularly useful overview of the Russian nineteenth-century historical novel, see: Dan Ungurianu, Plotting History: The Russian Historical Novel in the Imperial Age (Madison, WI, 2007). 5 N. M. Karamzin, “Natal’ia, boiarskaia doch’,” in his Zapiski starogo moskovskogo zhitelia (Moscow, 1986), 55.

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Torzhok woman at the ball. Solntsev, Costumes, n. 25 (1832).

his promise. His descriptions of the characters’ dress, mostly rather generic, include items that are easily identified as pre-Petrine; Natalia, for example, wears “a quilted sleeveless jacket made of damask” (kamchataia telogreia) and a pearl headdress.6 When, dressed as a boy, she joins her secret husband Aleksei in a battle against the Lithuanians, she dons a suit of armor with the inscription “God is with us, and nobody [would dare to be] against us” (S nami Bog: Nikto zhe na ny). To emphasize the authenticity of the item, Karamzin appends a footnote: “In the Armory in Moscow, I saw much armor with this inscription.”7 “Marfa the Governor” is presented as an eyewitness’s memoir of the events it describes, and Karamzin signals the memoir’s authenticity not by focusing on contemporary material objects but by using historically

6 7

Ibid., 59 and 60. Ibid., 85.

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correct terminology, such as posadnitsa/posadnik (governor), tysiachskie (regiment commanders), liudi zhitye (the Novgorodian landowning and industrial class), or vechevoi kolokol (the bell that summoned the popular assembly). Karamzin thus experiments with two different ways to achieve the effect of authenticity in portraying the past, but he is restrained in his use of both devices, employing them only to signal the reader that his novellas are set in the past. Zagoskin’s Iurii Miloslavskii follows the model proposed by Karamzin in “Natalia,” but does it with greater zeal. Zagoskin provides detailed descriptions of early seventeenth-century buildings and their interiors and of the era’s clothing, weaponry, food, and drink. Where Karamzin uses a word or two to remind the reader that the action takes place in the past, Zagoskin exults in descriptive detail, for example when depicting the female protagonist, Anastasia: The Eastern pearls which decorated her sparkling wristband [zarukav’e] and snow-white veil did not surpass in whiteness her pale face, which clearly showed the signs of incessant emotional sufferings. . . . Her rich hooded frock [opashen’] made of brocade, carelessly thrown over the light dress [ feriaz’] of watered silk, her broad golden band with the pearl pendant [podviaz’], her large emerald earrings, her precious [dragotsennye] wristbands—in a word, all her splendid costume was in sharp contrast with the expression of deep sorrow that showed in all the features of her face.8

Like Karamzin, Zagoskin footnotes the most exotic terms, providing explanations. Unlike Karamzin—who uses historical terms accurately—in at least two cases, Zagoskin appears to be erroneous in his usage; dictionaries list both zarukav’e and opashen’ as items of men’s, not women’s, dress. In Zagoskin’s other historical novel, Askold’s Grave, he is far less exuberant, using descriptions of historical objects only sparingly and functionally. For example, the writer mentions the motley shirt of a mysterious stranger to make him recognizable in his subsequent appearances in the novel. Likewise, Zagoskin uses a girl’s blue cape to mark her as a secret Christian. It is noteworthy that Zagoskin’s contemporaries received Askold’s Grave much less enthusiastically than his first historical novel, which enjoyed tremendous success, going

8

M. N. Zagoskin, Iurii Miloslavskii, ili Russkie v 1612 godu: Istoricheskii roman v trekh chastiakh (Moscow, 1983), 117–118.

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Attire of Russian Noblemen of the 17th Century. Solntsev, Costumes, n. 229 (n.d.).

through eight editions over Zagoskin’s lifetime and “close to one hundred” editions altogether.9 In the preface to Dimitrii the Pretender, Bulgarin—who wrote the novel in competition with Zagoskin, hoping to get it published before Iurii Miloslavskii10—promises his readers “to present Russia of the early seventeenth century as it really was [v nastoiashchem ee vide].”11 He also points out something that seems to escape the notice of the majority of his colleagues: I didn’t want to describe the details of seventeenth-century commoners, since their everyday life [byt] hasn’t changed much. It is the court, the boiars, the gentry, and the merchants who have changed. Russian

9 10 11

Ungurianu, Plotting History, 22–23. Ibid., 23. F. V. Bulgarin, Dimitrii Samozvanets. Istoricheskii roman (Moscow, 1994), 6.

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Woman of New Torzhok. Solntsev, Costumes, n. 29 (1830). noblemen of the early seventeenth century look to us like people from another planet. Their way of life, dress, view of things, ideas, language— everything was different. This is why it is interesting to look at them in action.12

Indeed, unlike his rival Zagoskin, Bulgarin concentrates on action, giving material objects relatively little attention. A short paragraph is devoted to a description of Ksenia Godunova engaged in needlework with her maids: in her quarters (devichii terem) “in the Kremlin palace young pretty maidens, girlfriends, and servants of Tsarevna Ksenia Borisovna, embroidered gold and decorated silk towels, headdresses, and veils, harmoniously singing a sad song. The tsarevna, sitting on 12

Ibid., 7.

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an oak bench covered with a rich Persian rug, strung pearls. . . .”13 It is noteworthy that, unlike other writers of historical fiction, Bulgarin describes the girls’ handiwork, not their dress. Bulgarin also describes Tsar Boris’s inner chamber, his foreign regiment’s attire (contrasting it with that of the Muscovy military), and the gifts offered to the tsar’s family by the Polish ambassadors. Finally, he offers a brief description of the clothing worn by one of the female characters: “Kaleria donned new sarafan made of silk velvet, decorated her head with pearls and covered it with a veil, and left home in the dusk.”14 However, this description is functional since the girl is on her way to be secretly married, which her pretty dress indicates. All in all, to reconstruct the past, Bulgarin relies less on the depiction of material objects than on the characters’ old-fashioned behavior and the stylization of their speech. To this end, he frequently switches to dramatic form in his generally third-person narrative, providing pages of direct dialogue without any commentary. He thus seems to follow the model of Karamzin’s “Marfa the Governor” in his representation of the historical past. In Polevoi’s Oath at the Holy Sepulcher, he claims to favor a similar approach. The novel begins with a lengthy “Conversation between the Composer of Russian Stories, True and Tall and the Reader,” in which the writer describes the artistic technique he plans to use to achieve authenticity: I imagine that from 1433 to 1441 I live in old Russia, see the main characters, hear their conversations, go from the hut of a peasant living near Moscow to the Moscow Kremlin, from the Cathedral of the Assumption to the Novgorodian veche; write down, capture the details of everyday life, of the characters, of their speech, their words; and recount everything sequentially, the way everything was, the way one event followed another: this is history enacted [v litsakh]; it is not a novel, the initiating action and the dénouement are not mine. Down with pompous scenes, declamations, and all coups de théâtre! Let everything live, act, and speak the way it lived, acted, and spoke. . . .15

13

Ibid., 35. Ibid., 173. 15 N. A. Polevoi, Kliatva pri grobe Gospodnem, Biblioteka Maksima Moshkova at http://az.lib.ru/p/polewoj_n_a/text_0190.shtml (last time accessed on 17 April 2009). 14

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He continues: “My job is to furnish the scene with proper decorations and to dress the actors. Yours is to take my book, move mentally to the fifteenth century, and read a true Russian story.”16 To fulfill his promise, however, Polevoi relies not on dialogue but on numerous and detailed descriptions of the Kremlin, peasant huts, boiars’ houses, the characters’ dress, and the objects they use. Like Zagoskin, Polevoi puts obsolete words in italics then explains them for his readers. In the following passage, he describes the crude lamp that illuminates a supper in a peasant hut: We almost forgot to tell you that this efficacious liquidation of the hostess’s supplies at this time was lighted not by a splinter, but by a crude lamp of a special kind that, it seems, has been providing light without any alterations for centuries, from the bloody feasts of the Scythian savages up to present-day meager peasant dinners. Grandpa Matvei’s and his comrades’ supper was lighted by precisely such a centuries-old lamp. It was a flat clay saucer placed onto a chiseled wooden piece and filled with all kinds of lard and fat; a long narrow strip of cloth, tightly twisted, was sunk into the saucer, moved to its rim, and lighted. All this was called a grease-lamp [zhirnik].17

As we see, unlike Bulgarin, Polevoi scrupulously describes an item that still existed in contemporary peasant life and presents it as something exotic, coming down to Russia from the barbaric Scythians. Polevoi is particularly fascinated by the customs and ceremonies of olden times, such as weddings and the celebration of Shrovetide. In preparation for the grand prince’s wedding, his inheritance is enumerated: A holy cross, the Jerusalem relics [Strasti bol’shie], Patriarch Filofei’s cross, an icon by Paramshin, a chain of cross-shaped links [tsep’ kreshchatnaia], a golden cap, shoulder mantle [barmy], a golden sash decorated with precious stones, a sash connected with chains and decorated with precious stones, a sash with blue straps [poias na sinem remne], a carnelian box, Prince Simeon’s golden dipper, a vessel forged of gold, Witowt’s great stone vessel, a royal crystal goblet.18

Some of the things listed are, of course, symbolic objects that connect Russian grand princes to Byzantium; the rest are luxury items befitting a grand prince.

16 17 18

Ibid. Ibid. Ibid.

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Polevoi then provides long and detailed descriptions of the wedding ceremony and the feast that followed, including an extensive inventory of utensils and foods. Curiously, the writer attempts to present his exhaustive account as simple and unpretentious: If we wanted to dazzle [our reader] with archaeological knowledge, it would be easy for us to select from old chronicles and notes the names of various dishes that made up the diet of our ancestors. The more difficult and obscure the names, the more readers would wonder at our great erudition and expertise concerning Russian antiquities.19

This disclaimer is not quite convincing, however, as it is followed by a long list of dishes, some requiring special culinary knowledge to be fully appreciated: Luxury meant a plenitude of dishes: cold [dishes], roasted [dishes], and soups; but the recipes [sostav] were always simple: meats, fishes, fowls were cooked simply [bez zatei], roasted, and served with sauces. To all this was added a large number of chicken pies, bread loaves, cheese cakes, and other pies: [some] with feta cheese [rassol’nye], [some] bought at the market [torgovye], [some] baked on the hearth [podovye], some sour [kislye]; puff cakes, and egg pies, spice cakes, pancakes, sweetmeats, fruit leathers, vegetables, marzipans, and gingerbreads.20

Polevoi’s description of Shrovetide festivities in the house of one of the characters is similarly long and detailed. The festive crowd of visitors is described especially thoroughly: The visitors were dressed richly: they wore silk velvet, pearls, precious stones. Their light dresses [ ferezi], their headdresses, earrings, necklaces, wristbands, sleeveless jackets glittered with gold and precious embroidery. Their cheeks were thickly covered with ceruse and rouge. The hostess stood in front of some princess, bowing low and holding a silver tray with small golden goblets.21

Whether Polevoi consulted historical sources or not, in order to reconstruct old Muscovy he filled the pages of his novel with long lists of objects he believed authentically represented the epoch. In contrast, in Ivan Lazhechnikov’s novel The Infidel (1838), he uses descriptions of early Russian material objects sparingly. Only objects

19 Ibid. Ungurianu, on pp. 55–56 of his Plotting History, interprets the comment as self-conscious defense against accusations of compilation based on historical sources. Ungurianu’s translation is used here. 20 Polevoi, Kliatva. 21 Ibid.

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Women of Torzhok in Finery. Solntsev, Costumes, n. 27 (1830).

that are perceived as exotic by his sixteenth-century Russian characters are described in detail. One example is a minute description of a lavish palace built in Moscow for one of the characters by foreign architects, another a detailed portrayal of a group of Jews entering Moscow. At the same time, authentic Russian objects are barely mentioned; and if they are, in Lazhechnikov’s portrayal, everything—even the grand prince’s palace—appears plain, rustic, almost squalid. The result is a picture of the Russian past that represents the characters’ point of view and thus feels real. The author’s technique in The Infidel stands out among historical novels of its time. His experiments, however, did not change the prevailing trend, and in the 1850s Aleksei Tolstoi continued to provide detailed descriptions of antiquated and unfamiliar objects in his representations of the Russian past. In the preface to Prince Serebrianyi, Tolstoi follows Karamzin in his promise to provide a historically accurate picture of Ivan the Terrible’s reign. Moreover, the writer claims that this is his primary goal in the novel: “The proffered story’s goal is not so much the depiction

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of certain events, but the representation of the general character of the entire epoch and the reproduction of the notions, beliefs, mores, and degree of education of Russian society in the second half of the sixteenth century.”22 He even points out that for him accuracy in presenting events was secondary to “truth and precision in the depiction of characters and of everything that has to do with the life of the people [narodnyi byt] and with archaeology.”23 Indeed, Tolstoi’s presentation of the material world in which his characters exist is at least as detailed as Zagoskin’s or Polevoi’s. Throughout the novel, he provides exhaustive descriptions of houses, churches, costumes, furniture, and food. Again, the female protagonist’s costume is typical: Elena, with her female servants [sennye devushki], sat under some lime trees on a grass settee, next to a palisade. She wore a blue velvet dress [aksamitnyi letnik] with sapphire buttons. Wide muslin sleeves, gathered into fine folds, were held above her elbows with diamond bands [zapiast’ia] or bracelets [zarukavniki]. Earrings of the same material hung down to her shoulders. Her head was covered by a headdress [kokoshnik] with sides [naklony] embroidered with pearls; her morocco boots glistened with golden stitching [nashivka].24

Like some of his predecessors, Tolstoi seems not to be quite sure of the words he uses: zapiast’ia (wristbands) are difficult to imagine being worn above the elbows; and a kokoshnik, the headdress of a married woman, is inappropriate on the head of the maiden Elena. As we can see, the use of ostensibly genuine details in descriptions of material objects of the past and the employment of historical terminology in order to give readers an authentic sense of the life of past epochs could produce questionable results. Writers who used this device with abandon failed to deliver on their promise to provide their readers with an authentic picture of the Russian past. Their fancy descriptions contained errors, but the writers seemed not to care; what they apparently tried to do was to overwhelm their readers with unfamiliar words and bright colors. As a result, in their works the Russian past appeared as exotic and alien. At the same time, the stories these writers tell are not exotic at all. They offer easily recognizable sentimental and romantic plots, with characters psychologically similar to 22 23 24

A. K. Tolstoi, Sobranie sochinenii v chetyrekh tomakh 2 (Moscow, 1969), 177. Ibid., 178. Ibid., 206.

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the ones presented in non-historical sentimental and romantic fiction of the time. The reader was on firm ground with the stories and could enjoy the exotic settings without being disoriented. Against this background, the historical novels of Aleksandr Vel’tman (1800–1870) look strikingly different. One of the most popular writers of his time—although thoroughly, and perhaps undeservedly, forgotten soon after his death—he was a professional historian, archaeologist, and ethnographer. He authored a number of historical treatises, including On Lord Novgorod the Great (1834) and Studies on Suevi, Huns, and Mongolians (1856–1860), as well as one of the first Russian works on onomastics, Ancient Slavic Proper Names (1840). In 1833 he translated, or rather transposed into amphibrachic verse, The Lay of Igor’s Campaign; this was one of the translations studied by Pushkin and is still considered useful by students of The Lay. From 1842 to 1852 Vel’tman served as Assistant Director of the Kremlin Armory and its director from 1852 to his death in 1870. In this capacity he published two guides, The Sights of the Moscow Kremlin (1843) and The Moscow Armory (1844). Together with Fedor Solntsev—the ubiquitous central figure in this book of essays—Vel’tman was appointed a member of the committee for publishing The Antiquities of the Russian State, a six-volume edition that appeared between 1849 and 1853, which he edited and to which he contributed several sections. Thus, Vel’tman had a professional’s knowledge of both antiquities and the language of Old Rus’ and was superbly equipped to produce historically accurate and believable descriptions of old Russian life. And yet, Vel’tman chose not to do so. Instead of attempting “to recount everything sequentially,” as Polevoi claimed, or “to present Russia of the [past] as it really was,” as Bulgarin promised, Vel’tman moves freely among the worlds of the chronicle, folk epic, and fairy tale; he even uses Western chivalric romances, such as Bova and Eruslan Lazarevich, which had been adapted in Muscovy and eventually converged with original Russian fairy tales. Even though some readers (Polevoi among them) and scholars think that Vel’tman in fact succeeded in reconstructing the Russian past, the effect of his technique was not that of historical authenticity but that of a runaway— and clearly ironic—fantasy.25 Sensing Vel’tman’s playfulness, Dan

25 One scholar who argues that Vel’tman successfully reconstructs the past is Boris Bukhshtab; see his “Pervye romany Vel’tmana,” in B. M. Eikhenbaum and Iu.

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Ungurianu, one student of Vel’tman’s historical novels, rightly points out “a whimsical Sternian twist” in his method, while another suggests that their heterogeneity results in a grotesque effect.26 A closer reading would lead to the conclusion that Vel’tman is mocking and parodying the very genre of historical fiction as it existed in Russia at that time. Indeed, not only does Vel’tman’s genre lack stability, his characters (even the ones given historical names, such as Prince Vladimir the Great) are astonishingly fluid, their behavior alternating between heroic and foolish. Furthermore, the time of action seems to be porous; the narrative easily transports readers several centuries into the past from the initial time point and just as easily brings them back. Finally, Vel’tman’s language in these novels is a collage of highfalutin utterances with inverted syntax, of archaic terminology—often given in italics and sometimes explained in footnotes—and of quotations from medieval Russian writings. The result is a text that feels treacherously unstable and unreliable. Into the narrative of this unstable world, where everything (time, place, characters’ status, and gender) can be questioned, surprisingly solid descriptions of material objects are inserted. In these passages, Vel’tman uses his professional knowledge with a vengeance, producing long lists of Old Russian names for dress, jewelry, food, and furniture. Unlike the emphatically diffuse and confusing surrounding text, these passages packed with objects seem by contrast too substantive and material. Early in Koshchei the Immortal (1833), Vel’tman inserts a long description of a maiden’s costume that is overburdened with exotic words: Oleg looked at Svelda. He saw how the pearl band encircled her forehead; how the latticed thick plait, interlaced with golden strings, reached her waist; how the decorations [uzoroch’e] made of blue-colored silks [pavoloki] were becoming to her; how the shirt made of nettle [kropinaia ruba], thin and white, trimmed with fringe, clung closely to her shoulders and rippled in agitation when tender sounds, and sometimes a deep breath, burst out of her white bosom; he saw how the string of pearls encircled Svelda’s neck; and how the rings [zhukoviny] with precious [chestnye] stones

N. Tynianov, eds., Russkaia proza: Sbornik statei (Leningrad, 1926), 209. Bukhshtab quotes Polevoi on the same page: “Olden times [starina], precious, dear to our hearts Russian olden times came to life for me [in Vel’tman’s work] with all their liveliness.” 26 Ungurianu, Plotting History, 29; Z. S. Efimova, “Nachal’nyi period literaturnoi deiatel’nosti A. F. Vel’tmana,” in A. I. Beletskii, ed., Russkii romantizm: Sbornik statei (Leningrad, 1927), 76.

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A Maiden of Torzhok in her best Summer Attire and Headdress. Solntsev, Costumes, n. 21 (1832). shone on her small fingers; and how a girdle made of hammered gold tightly, tightly encircled her waist; and how the dark red cloak [iaponchitsa chervlennaia], thrown over her shoulders, dropped off; and how morocco shoes with laces made in Torzhok [torzhokskie cherevichki s tes’mami] encircled her tiny feet like snakes.27

The most obscure and exotic words (uzoroch’e, pavoloki, kropinaia ruba, zhukoviny, iaponchitsa chervlennaia) are in italics, and some (uzoroch’e, for example) are explained in footnotes. A number of them come from The Lay of Igor’s Campaign, which Vel’tman was studying and translating at the time the novel was written. In other cases, however, the origin of words is obscure and their meaning doubtful. In the case of kropinaia ruba, for example, both Vladimir Dal’ and Max Vasmer define ruba as a coarse shirt that is used for work and thus

27

A. F. Vel’tman, Romany (Moscow, 1985), 28.

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cannot be “thin” and is unlikely to be white. The meaning of kropinaia is murkier still, and the word’s use here is even more questionable. If Vel’tman is right, and it means “made of nettles,” the shirt cannot be described as a luxury item.28 If Dal’ is right, and it means “speckled,” the shirt cannot be white. If Vasmer is right, and korpina/kropina means “silk,” the shirt cannot be coarse. What is Vel’tman doing here? Is he as ignorant as his fellow writers of historical fiction? It seems highly unlikely: not only is kropinaia ruba inserted among other terms that are used correctly, signaling that Vel’tman most probably did it with tongue in cheek, but the tone of the entire passage sounds like a parody of a Romantic description of a fair maiden. Moreover, Vel’tman opens his novel with an address to the reader in which he hints at the polemical nature of his enterprise and points at his fellow writers of historical fiction as the target of his parody: “Poor reader! Who has not used your weakness, your trustfulness! Who has not led you through the thorns of his style, through the ruins of the subject matter, over the graves of sense, over the abyss of incongruities?”29 Mocking his fellow historical writers’ absence of sense and knowledge seems to be Vel’tman’s method throughout the novel. At times the very concentration of the described artifacts overwhelms the reader: [T]he Boiar’s beautiful daughter Miriana comes out: She is in a cape lined with the fur of forty choice sables [iaponchitsa na otbornom soroke sobolei], her headband with tassels is of silver brocade [iz ob’’iari serebrianoi] embroidered with Eastern beads; on her neck there are large, round pearls [skatnyi zhemchug] and a golden medallion with a cross-like pattern [grivna zolotaia kreshchanaia], her apron is of silk embroidered with silver and gold pieces [drobnitsy], on her feet there are embroidered morocco shoes [charki], her girdle is decorated with large, round [skatnyi] beads and precious stones; she wears hammered bracelets [kovanye obruchi] with embedded blue sapphires.30

In the original, these clusters of extraordinary things are even more overwhelming: the reader is lost among the rare and antiquated words, half of them in italics to emphasize their exotic flavor, and cannot make much sense of the passage without the help of specialized dictionaries. A similar technique is used in Vel’tman’s other novel based on Russian history, Sviatoslavich, the Enemy’s Fosterling (1835), set during the 28 29 30

Ibid., 28, n. 3. Ibid., 23. Ibid., 152.

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Attire of a Prince and Princess. Solntsev, Costumes, n. 261 (n.d.).

life of Prince Vladimir and exploring Vladimir’s double nature, both evil and heroic. The novel oscillates among historical reality, myth, and fairy-tale, and the overall effect is as unsettling as in Koshchei the Immortal. Similar to the earlier novel, here and there Vel’tman inserts descriptions of objects, most often clothing. For instance, he describes the tsar’s daughter, brought up as a boy, changing into a woman’s dress to conceal her “male” sex in order to see Prince Vladimir in Novgorod. An old woman agrees to lend the cross-dressing young warrior her late granddaughter’s garb: The old woman brings him first light blue stockings with a pattern [strelka] and morocco shoes embroidered with gold, with high heels and white edging; then [she brings] a blouse embroidered with Shemakha silk, with sleeves of fine cloth; then [she brings] a necklace made of pearls, a brocade vest [dushegreika] with golden lace, and a skirt of heavy silk [shtof ].31

31

Ibid., 313–314.

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Having helped the counterfeit young man put on these items, the old woman offers her charge a choice of earrings: “Oh, girl, I have forgotten about earrings! Should I attach an emerald or pink stone [alik]? Or pear-shape pearls [grushku]?”32 Vel’tman italicizes the words alik and grushka and explains them in footnotes.33 Finally, the old woman offers the girl in disguise three choices of headdress: venchik, rafet, or koronka. All three are in italics, and rafet and koronka are explained in footnotes.34 Once again, the reader is overwhelmed by exotic words of obscure or uncertain meaning. Embedded in the text of the novel, these clusters of exotic words recall museum displays, where real historical objects are presented out of their natural context and in unrealistic concentrations. The effect is somewhat comical and indeed parodical, with the bite directed at contemporary writers of historical fiction, whose chief device for producing a sense of historical verisimilitude was using precisely such lists, albeit in a less informed and sophisticated way. Vel’tman’s mockery of the inadequacy of contemporary historical narratives, particularly of the way they represented material objects of past epochs, may be seen as an attempt to change the way Russians wrote historical fiction. If this was his purpose, his attempt failed, since, as I have shown earlier, in the 1850s Aleksei Tolstoi continued to write in the same vein. It also could be, however, that Vel’tman was simply having fun, playing with the words and things that, in other contexts, he studied quite seriously. Finally, it should be noted that the polemical thrust of Vel’tman’s historical novels does not preclude them from having a serious purpose. Whether Vel’tman was driven by a desire to restore for the reader an authentic Russian past or by an obsession “with reconstructing Germano-Slavic and Indo-Arian prehistory,” a discussion of his potentially serious intentions would go beyond the purview of the present study.35 This present study, though, does indicate the “obsession with history” of Russian prose of the Nicholaevan period and writers’ participation in the grand project of imagining Russia’s past. 32

Ibid., 314. A. P. Bogdanov, who provides commentary to the novel, questions Vel’tman’s use of alik for “pink stone.” He writes: “The word is most probably invented by Vel’tman: alik, alak is the old Siberian name for deer or dog harness.” Ibid., 314, n. 1. 34 Ibid., 314, n. 3 and 4. 35 Bukhstab, “Pervye romany,” 208–209; Ungurianu, Plotting History, 52; and Bogdanov, “Aleksandr Vel’tman—pisatel’-istorik,” in Vel’tman, Romany, 471–472, 474–475. 33

CHAPTER SEVEN

RUSSIAN ETHNOGRAPHY AND THE VISUAL ARTS IN THE 1840S AND 1850S Nathaniel Knight The work of Fedor Solntsev reveals clearly the role of art within the tradition of the natural sciences and its applicability to ethnography in particular. His architectural and archeological drawings, by accentuating patterns of ornamentation and design that might not otherwise be visible to the unassisted eye, show the capacity of art to draw to the surface deeper elements structuring the visible world.1 Solntsev also applied these skills to visual ethnography, producing a unique set of 324 watercolors that depict the dress of the various peoples of the empire, The Costumes of the Russian State.2 The images convey the specificity of regional dress, design, and physiognomy and in so doing express in tangible form a vision of the ethnic content of the empire. Even as photography gained acceptance as a tool of ethnographic research, Solntsev’s traditional media of drawing and painting retained their power to communicate ideas about the empire and its peoples. But while the artist-archaeologist-ethnographer was laboring singlemindedly over his work, the field of Russian ethnography was in a state of ferment. In 1857 Nikolai Vtorov, an official in the Ministry of the Interior, presented the Ethnographic Division of the Russian Geographical Society with a novel and innovative proposal: a plan to use the new medium of photography as a tool in the study of the peoples of the Russian Empire. For Vtorov himself this was not a new venture. Several years earlier, while serving in Voronezh Province, he had joined forces with a local photography enthusiast, Mikhail Tulinov. Using a homemade camera with lenses ground from the bottoms of glass bottles, the two

1

See especially his Drevnosti Rossisskago gosudarstva, 6 vols. (Moscow, 1849–1853). F. G. Solntsev, Odezhdy Russkogo gosudarstva (St. Petersburg, ca. 1820–1869), owned by the New York Public Library. 2

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A Rich Kirgiz Girl. Solntsev, Costumes, n. 254 (n.d.).

headed out into the surrounding countryside to describe and document the costumes, dwellings, and physical appearance of the local Russian and Ukrainian peasants. The results were so impressive that Vtorov assembled his images and descriptions into an ethnographic album, which, upon his return to St. Petersburg, he presented to the Grand Duke Konstantin Nikolaevich, Chairman of the Russian Geographical Society. Encouraged by the response, Vtorov proposed that the society undertake a series of photographic expeditions to the southeastern provinces of European Russia, a colonized area whose inhabitants still preserved the traditions and traits of their ancestral homeland in their dress, housing, and personal effects.3 Vtorov’s activities in the 1850s represent the first systematic attempt to use photography in doing research on the peoples of the Russian Empire and as such deserve recognition as a milestone in the history

3

Arkhiv Russkogo geograficheskogo obshchestva, St. Petersburg, hereafter ARGO, fond 1–1857, opis’ 1, edinitsa khranenie 25, list 5.

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Villagers of Voronezh Province. V. F. Timm, Russkii khudozhestvennyi listok (Russian Newsletter on the Arts), published from 1851 to 1862, based on photographs in Vtorov’s ethnographic album.

of both the fields of ethnography and photography.4 But like many innovative and ambitious plans, the proposal never saw fruition. The Ethnographic Division made inquiries into the costs of outfitting a photographic expedition and found them to be quite substantial. As an alternative the division suggested that every expedition sent out by the Geographical Society should include an ethnographer or at the very least ethnographic instructions. To start, the committee suggested adding an ethnographer and perhaps a photographer to a planned expedition to the Volga region, but it remained silent on the key question of financial support. Having been duly examined by a properly constituted body and found impractical, Vtorov’s proposal fell by the wayside as did plans to publish his album in the 1858 volume of

4 Vtorov and Tulinov’s work is briefly mentioned in Elena Barkhatova, “Realism and Document: Photography as Fact,” in David Elliot, ed. Photography in Russia, 1840–1940 (London, 1992), 42.

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the society’s transactions. In 1861 the artist Vasilii Timm’s journal, Russian Newsletter on the Arts, published two large colored engravings depicting peasant costumes of the Voronezh region based on the images in Vtorov’s album accompanied by an explanatory article.5 The fate of the album itself remains a mystery to this day. Vtorov’s ventures in Voronezh exemplify the natural compatibility between ethnography and the visual arts. Ethnography by its very nature is a process of representation, but its expression is predominately verbal, involving, for example, descriptions of customs and rituals, classification and analysis of the relationships that structure community life, and recordings of oral traditions. But there comes a point when words are no longer effective in conveying essential aspects of ethnographic information—the distinctive quality of ethnic physiognomy, for instance, or characteristic design elements in costumes, dwellings, and the various accoutrements of everyday life. Short of the actual collection of physical artifacts—a common pursuit of ethnographers—visual representation would seem to be an inevitable and necessary accessory to research. Certainly this is reflected in Vtorov’s activities. Even before he turned his attention to photography, he had made a point of including local artists in his research. As early as 1852 he had prepared an album of watercolors depicting peasant costumes which he presented to the Minister of the Interior, Lev Perovskii, on a visit to St. Petersburg.6 As photography gained popularity through the mid-1850s, becoming accessible even in the provinces, its promise of precise visual rendering made it intrinsically attractive to someone like Vtorov, infused with the positivistic ethos of the times. But if the need to supplement ethnographic description with visual imagery was obvious to someone like Vtorov working in the depths of Voronezh Province, why was it not more apparent to his colleagues in St. Petersburg who made up the membership of the Ethnographic Division of the Geographical Society? Even if we attribute the lukewarm response to Vtorov’s proposal to the expense and technical complexity of early field photography, one might expect a greater degree of attention in general to the creation of imagery. Yet the ethnographic publications of the Russian Geographical Society throughout the 1850s 5 “Poseliane Voronezhskoi gubernii,” Russkii khudozhestvennyi listok 34 (1 December 1860). 6 Voronezhskii iubileinyi sbornik v pamiat’ 300-letiia g. Voronezha 2 (Voronezh, 1886), 246. Vtorov continued to supplement his album with the assistance of his artist friends, S. P. Pavlov and Mikhail Tulinov: Ibid., 251.

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are remarkably devoid of illustration. Leafing through the pages of the society’s journal from this period one can find detailed ethnographic articles containing long lists of regional vocabulary, folkloric texts of all varieties, and detailed descriptions of rituals, customs, and local practices, but illustrations and diagrams rarely appear. It is possible that the state of printing technology at this time may have been a factor; well into the 1860s, for example, there was still no commercially viable method for rendering photographs directly into print, and the expense of preparing engravings may well have deterred the chronically underfunded Ethnographic Division. Even so, the lack of interest in visual information is apparent not only in the publications of the Geographical Society but also in its research methods. The various questionnaires issued and distributed from the late 1840s through the 1850s devoted little attention to physical appearances and the creation of visual images. Overwhelmingly the interests and attention of the members of the Ethnographic Division were focused on texts. This suggests that the lack of interest in visual information was a product not just of external circumstances but also of the way in which the group that dominated the division conceived of ethnography as a field. This approach is all the more jarring when juxtaposed against the eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century tradition of visual ethnography, one that would be resurrected in the 1860s after being submerged in the 1840s and 1850s. From the early eighteenth century onwards, visual representation played an integral role in the efforts of the Russian state through its newly instituted Academy of Sciences to explore the vast territories under its control. Professional artists were recruited to participate in both of the academy’s expeditions in the eighteenth century, which were complex multi-year projects involving teams of explorers spread throughout the empire. In the first expedition (1733–1743), led by Gerhardt Friedrich Müller and Johann Gmelin, the artists Johann Lurcenius and Johann Berkhan produced panoramic views of Siberian towns, recorded the finding of archaeological expeditions, and executed numerous drawings of flora, fauna, and, of course, the native peoples.7 The visual results of the second expedition (1768–1774), led

7 On Lurcenius and Berkhan, see G. F. Miller, Istoriia Sibiri 1 (Moscow, 1999), 147–148. Berkhan’s work was particularly significant due to his skill in rendering natural specimens and the fact that he accompanied the naturalist Georg Steller in his

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by Peter Pallas, were even more impressive as evidenced by the richly illustrated volumes that documented the travels of its participants.8 In the process of visual representation, trained artists collaborated with the naturalists, who themselves produced drawings and diagrams: rough sketches by a participant in the expedition would be refined by a professional and then turned over to an engraver for reproduction with additional details and compositional elements added at each step of the process.9 Needless to say the accuracy of such images was often degraded. But what such images lost in fidelity to direct observation they may have gained in rhetorical force. Foregoing the external truth of photographic veracity to a specific scene, naturalists could convey a deeper ethnographic truth through the manipulation of imagery. Subjects, clad in distinctive ethnic garb, could be portrayed against a backdrop of native flora and fauna surrounded by the implements and accoutrements of domestic life. Thus a single composite image could encapsulate the distinctiveness of a particular group equally if not more effectively than a literal realistic rendition of a scene from actual life. Above and beyond their scientific value, illustrations undoubtedly enhanced the commercial appeal of publications, bringing the exotic and the picturesque into the realm of visual imagination. The most famous of the eighteenth-century compendia—Johann Gottlieb Georgi’s multi-volume Description of all the Peoples of the Russian Empire— had its origins in 1774 in a commercial venture to produce an album depicting various groups in their native attire. Drawing on publications, sketches, and artifacts produced in the course of the recently completed Academy expeditions, the engravers produced a series of images that sparked the interest of viewers but left them in ignorance

expedition to Kamchatka. Numerous references to his activities can be found in Georg Wilhelm Steller: Pis’ma i dokumenty (Moscow, 1998). 8 Peter Simon Pallas, Reise durch verschiedene provinzen des Russischen reichs (St. Petersburg, 1773–1801). Some of the artists who worked with Pallas are mentioned in Barkhatova, “Visual Russia: Catherine II’s Russia through the Eyes of Foreign Graphic Artists,” in Cynthia Hyla Whittaker, ed., Russia Engages the World, 1453–1825 (Cambridge, MA, 2003), 72–89. 9 Elena Vishlenkova makes this point in her paper “Vizual’naia antropologiia imperii, ili ‘uvidet russkogo dano ne kazhdomu’,” Preprint WP6/2008/04 (Moscow, 2008), 13–14. URL: http://new.hse.ru/sites/infospace/podrazd/uvp/id/preprints/Doc Lib/WP6_2008_04-ff.pdf.

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of what was displayed.10 At this point Georgi took up the task of writing ethnographic profiles of the peoples depicted based on both his own experiences in the expeditions and the writings of other participants.11 Illustrations figured prominently in the resulting volume. Ninety-five full-page images depicted male and female representatives of the empire’s main ethnic groups, often shown from both front and back either with arms extended and palms forward or carrying implements of daily life.12 Apart from the intrinsic interest evoked by representations, to what extent did they contribute to the ethnographic goals of identifying and classifying groups on the basis of their distinguishing features? Botanists, following the system of Carolus Linnaeus, in which identity is determined through a single set of attributes, looked to the organs of plant reproduction to distinguish among species. Likewise, eighteenthcentury naturalists, striving to link individuals to a particular group or nationality, tended to assign a similar function to language, which served as the clearest and most reliable indicator of ethnic identity.13 But if language was the essential distinguishing trait, what role was there for visual representation, which lacked the capacity to convey linguistic characteristics? Georgi’s compendium suggested a possible alternative. Rather than seeking to define ethnicity in linguistic terms, the images direct the viewer’s attention toward the details of dress. Every nationality that is depicted is unique and identifiable by virtue of the types of clothing worn, and the fabric, colors, and design elements are all portrayed in scrupulous detail. Since this type of information could not be conveyed through written text, visual representation in Georgi’s collection was central to the key ethnographic task of identifying and documenting ethnic distinctiveness. Yet one major aspect of visual representation is strangely neglected in Georgi’s illustrations. While details of dress are 10 The images were initially published as a separate album entitled Otkrivaemaia Rossii, ili Sobranie odezhd vsekh narodov v Rossiiskoi imperii obitaiushchikh (St. Petersburg, 1774). 11 S. A. Tokarev, Istoriia russkoi etnografii (Moscow, 1966), 104. Georgi explains the origins of his project in the preface to the first German edition. 12 The full collection of illustrations to Georgi’s “Description” can be viewed at the New York Public Library Digital Gallery: . 13 Yuri Slezkine, “Naturalists vs. Nations: Eighteenth-Century Russian Scholars Confront Ethnic Diversity” in D. R. Brower and E. J. Lazzerini, eds., Russia’s Orient (Bloomington, IN, 1997), 46–48.

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Mongolian Woman. J. G. Georgi, Opisanie vsekh obitaiushchikh v rossiiskom gosudarstve narodov . . . (Description of all nations populating Russia . . .), St. Petersburg, 1799.

carefully recorded, very little attention is paid to physical features. Even Siberian and Turkic peoples, such as the Tungus and Kirgiz, are given generic European features. Only the unmistakably Mongol Kalmyks are shown with stereotypical Asian features. Possibly, the artists who prepared the engravings were working not from live subjects but from costumes which had been collected during the expedition and housed in the museum of the Academy of Sciences. It is also likely that Georgi and his collaborators tended to view physical features as a less reliable indicator of ethnic identity than patterns of dress. The eighteenth-century tendency to downplay physical features soon gave way to a new wave in natural history, which, in the spirit of German naturphilosophie, sought the essence of identity in the totality of organic traits rather than a single distinguishing external feature. Biologists such as Johann Friedrich Bloomenbach taught that distinctiveness emerged through the workings of a vital force (Bildungstrieb), an internal teleological agent that guided the development of organ-

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isms and determined their character.14 Bildungstrieb, moreover, operated not only on the level of individuals but of entire peoples and races. Bloomenbach thus set about creating a universal classification of the human race based on morphological features which he believed reflected not only physical appearance but also character and mental capacity. The impact of Blumenbach’s naturphilosophie on visual ethnography can easily be perceived in the richly illustrated volumes documenting the voyages of exploration carried out by the Russian navy in the first quarter of the nineteenth century.15 For instance, in the volumes devoted to Fedor Litke’s voyage on the Seniavin in 1826 and 1829, alongside the illustrations of flora, fauna, and natives in their natural surroundings, detailed studies show typical individuals up close and from different angles to highlight not only characteristic facial features but also the size and shape of the skull.16 Even when the subjects are shown going about the business of their daily lives, the artists took care to depict not only their environment, tools, and attire but also their characteristic physical features. For the physical anthropologist working in the tradition of Blumenbach, such depictions would constitute the most valuable scientific data from the expedition, and short of actual physical specimens, this information could not have been conveyed in any other way. Fifteen years after returning from his voyage on the Seniavin, Litke found himself at the forefront of an initiative to found a new scientific institution, the Russian Geographical Society. Working closely with him throughout the entire process was his close friend and colleague Karl von Baer. A Baltic German whose family owned land in Estonia, Baer had established himself as a scientist in Prussia where he conducted path-breaking embryological research at the University of Konigsberg. Enticed to move to Russia in 1835 by the educational minister, Sergei Uvarov, Baer shifted his attention to geographical

14 On Blumenbach see Timothy Lenoir, “Kant, Blumenbach, and Vital Materialism in German Biology,” Isis 71 (1980), 77–108. 15 For a more detailed discussion of the voyages of exploration see Richard Wortman, “Texts of Exploration and Russia’s European Identity,” in Whittaker, Russia Engages the World, 90–117. 16 F. P. Litke, Voyage autour du monde, exécuté par ordre de Sa Majesté l’Empereur Nicolas Ier, sur la corvette Le Séniavine, dans les années 1826, 1827, 1828 et 1829 (Paris, 1835).

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Interior of a Cabin of Tlingit Indians. F. P. Litke, Voyage autour du monde. (Voyage Around the World), Paris, 1835.

research, embarking in 1837 on a voyage to the island of Novaia Zemlia in the Arctic Ocean together with Litke. Baer’s earlier biological studies and his later geographical research were linked by his interest in the determinative forces of environment on human physical and cultural traits.17 To further research in this area, he proposed an ethnographic division, the first institution of its kind in Russia, as part of the new Geographical Society and took on the task of being its first chairman.18 Baer presented his vision of ethnography as a scientific endeavor in a programmatic speech presented to the Geographical Society in 1846.19 He understood ethnography as a new science directed at explaining 17 B. E. Raikov, Karl Ber: Ego zhizn’ i trudy (Moscow-Leningrad, 1961). On Baer’s shift to geography, see: Erki Tammiksaar, Geograficheskie aspekty tvorchestva Karla Bera v 1830–1840 gg. (Tartu, 2000). 18 Baer’s role in the founding of the Geographical Society can be traced in T. A. Lukina, ed., Perepiska Karla Bera po problemam geografii (Leningrad, 1970). 19 Karl von Baer, “Ob etnograficheskikh issledovaniiakh voobshche i v Rossii v osobennosti,” Zapiski Russkogo geograficheskogo obshchestva 1 (1846), 93–113.

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the origins and extent of human diversity. If all human beings were part of a single unified species, how could the striking variations in physical appearance, lifestyles, and cultural achievement be explained? Baer’s first impulse was to look toward the power of environment in shaping the differing abilities and proclivities of various populations. Nonetheless, he also acknowledged the fundamental role of heredity as manifested most distinctly in physical characteristics, especially the size and shape of the skull. Therefore, documenting facial features and portraying physically distinct individuals in the context of their natural surroundings became a central task of ethnography; thus, visual representation was an essential element in Baer’s vision. The ethnographic studies in the Baltic region that Baer organized while chair reveal his priorities. Soon after he gave his presentation to the Geographical Society, Baer launched an expedition to the Lifland and Courland provinces to study the Livs, an ancient Finno-Ugrian people believed to be in imminent danger of ethnic extinction. Baer chose Academician Andrei Sjögren to head the expedition; the leading specialist on Finno-Ugrian linguistics, he had spent years traveling throughout the Russian Empire studying the languages of various Finnic peoples and was therefore uniquely qualified to undertake this particular task.20 Baer insisted that an artist should also participate, and he devoted considerable effort to finding the appropriate person.21 He considered and rejected three candidates before finally settling on August Georg Pezold, a Baltic-German artist from Estonia serving as an instructor at St. Petersburg University. Not only was Pezold a skilled portrait painter who had worked on Baltic themes before, but he also had a smattering of Estonian which, Baer hoped, would prove useful in working with the Livs. After some bureaucratic wrangling, Pezold was granted leave from his teaching position and was allowed to join Sjögren on the expedition. In preparation, Baer supplied Pezold with detailed instructions. He was to accompany Sjögren for the entire course of the expedition and was to paint individuals chosen by Sjögren on the basis of

20 On Sjögren see Michael Branch, A. J. Sjögren: Studies of the North (Helsinki, 1973). 21 Renāte Blumberga, “A. J. Sjögren’s expeditions to the Livs in 1846 and 1852,” in Michael Branch, ed., Defining Self: Essays on Emergent Identities in Russia, Seventeenth to Nineteenth Centuries (Helsinki, 2009).

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their “true physiognomic type.”22 In addition to portraits, the artist was to paint groups in their natural surroundings showing household implements, native dress, and occupations. Furthermore, Baer instructed Pezold to prepare plaster casts, recording the craniological features of selected Livs. In the course of their travels, Sjögren and Pezold carried out much but not all of Baer’s instructions. Despite having to leave Sjögren a few weeks early to fulfill his teaching responsibilities at the university, Pezold was able to complete a fine set of paintings depicting Liv individuals and groups in a variety of settings. Whether or not they represented the “true physiognomic type” is harder to say; Sjögren, who was charged with making this determination, could only report that the Livs were physically indistinguishable from the surrounding Latvian population.23 Baer’s instructions regarding plaster casts were much less successful. Two botched attempts were made to prepare the face masks. What happened during these attempts is not known, but it must have been fairly alarming since the remaining Livs in the village could not be induced for any sum of money to undergo a third attempt. In the aftermath of Sjögren’s expedition to the Livs, Baer proposed a similar expedition to study the Finnish peoples in the vicinity of St. Petersburg and put forward a proposal for a “collection of ethnographic objects” at the Geographical Society, a proposal which he later expanded into a plan for a full fledged museum.24 But by this time, his influence was waning. As early as mid-1847 a new orientation in the ethnographic division was taking shape, and in late 1848 Baer finally resigned as chair citing his inadequate knowledge of the Russian language. Baer was replaced by Nikolai Nadezhdin, the editor and literary critic best known for having published Chaadaev’s Philosophical Letters in his journal Telescope in 1836. As a professor at Moscow University in the early 1830s, Nadezhdin played a key role in popularizing the philosophy of Friedrich Schelling, exerting a powerful intellectual

22

ARGO, 1846–1, op. 1, no. 4. 11.31. Blumberga, “A. J. Sjögren’s expeditions,” 2. A. M. Shegren (Sjögren) “Izvlechenie iz otcheta predstavlennogo russkomu geograficheskomu obshchestvu chlenom-sotrudnikom A. Shegrenom,” Zapiski Russkogo geograficheskogo obshchestva 2 (1847), 255. 24 ARGO, f.1–1846, op. 1, no. 4, ll. 33. Baer’s proposal for a collection of ethnographic artifacts can be found in Geograficheskie izvestiia 2 (1848), 35. 23

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influence on his students many of whom would go on to become prominent participants in the Slavophile-Westernizer debates of the following decade. In the wake of the Chaadaev debacle, however, Nadezhdin’s interests shifted away from philosophy, literary criticism, and aesthetics toward the more empirical fields of history, geography, and ethnography. Yet certain key elements and assumptions rooted in Nadezhdin’s Schellingian world view persisted as he delved into his new fields. In particular, Nadezhdin was guided by the concept of narodnost’ or nationality which he viewed as the totality of distinguishing features endowing a people with its unique identity. In certain respects, Nadezhdin’s narodnost’ can be compared to Blumenbach’s Bildundstieb, as both concepts denoted an internal spirit guiding a process of organic development toward a distinctive identity. But while Blumenbach, following the lead of Emmanuel Kant, posited a sharp divide between the Bildungstrieb itself, which was inaccessible to human understanding, and its physical manifestations, which could be documented through scientific methods, Nadezhdin’s narodnost’ remained in the realm of spirit accessible through flashes of insight brought on by engagement with the written and spoken word. In his early career Nadezhdin had written extensively about the problem of narodnost’ in literature.25 After his shift toward empiricism, he sought to ground his search for narodnost’ in the actual conditions of daily life, devoting attention to language, dialect, and oral tradition and relying on written communication to convey the results. For Nadezhdin ethnography was first and foremost an exercise in the collection and production of texts. In November 1846 Nadezhdin, now serving under Perovskii in the Ministry of the Interior, put forth in a speech before the Geographical Society his own vision of ethnography as a scholarly field.26 Baer had focused his efforts on all the peoples of the Russian Empire with a particular emphasis on those like the Livs who seemed in immediate danger of disappearance. Nadezhdin, on the other hand, advocated an emphasis on ethnic Russians and their narodnost’, the totality of traits and characteristics that made them distinct. Narodnost’, to be sure, was a holistic concept incorporating a wide range of traits and features, 25

N. I. Nadezhdin, Literaturnaia kritika: Estetika, ed. Iu. Mann (Moscow, 1972). Nadezhdin, “Ob etnograficheskom izuchenii narodnosti russkoi,” Zapiski Russkogo geograficheskogo obshchestva 2 (1847), 65–115. 26

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including those physical, but Nadezhdin specifically highlighted the role of language, which he termed the main “mark and token of narodnost’, and therefore the main topic attracting the attention of ethnography.” In contrast to his emphasis on language, Nadezhdin consciously downplayed the importance of physical features, at least in the study of the ethnic Russian population. He repeatedly stated his conviction that the advance of civilization tended to smooth over the physical differences among peoples. Thus when studying tribes living in a state of nature close attention might fruitfully be paid to physical features, body proportions, and craniology. But the same investigations when applied to a relatively advanced people such as the Russians would provide little of use. As an example, Nadezhdin cited the English ethnologist James Pritchard who for all his intensive research could say nothing about the Russian people and their physical characteristics other than the fact that they were “quite fair haired.”27 Unlike Baer, who emphasized the importance of research expeditions directed by trained scholars, Nadezhdin drew on the efforts of local enthusiasts. In 1848 over seven thousand copies of an ethnographic survey drawn up by Nadezhdin and his colleagues were distributed throughout the empire.28 The questions covered a range of topics from folklore and language to clothing, housing, and rites and ritual. Physical appearance was included but not as strongly emphasized as the other points. Moreover, the survey did not specify how physical appearance was to be represented. Anthropometric and craniological methods pioneered by scientists such as Bloomenbach and Georges Cuvier would obviously have meant little to the rural correspondents filling out the survey. Therefore it was assumed that responses would consist of descriptive texts. Visual representation was mentioned only once: if there is a particular facial expression characteristic of a particular group, the instructions read, then a portrait would be desirable, but certainly not obligatory. Not surprisingly, in the tremendous mass

27

Ibid., 73–75. ARGO, f.1–1846, op. 1, no. 4, ll. 60–73. The full text of the ethnographic survey remains unpublished but detailed discussion and analysis can be found in M. G. Rabinovich, “Otvety na programmu Russkogo geograficheskogo obshchestva kak istochnik dlia izucheniia etnografii goroda,” Ocherki istorii russkoi etnografii, fol’kloristiki, i antropologii 5:39; and Nathaniel Knight, “Science, Empire, and Nationality: Ethnography in the Russian Geographical Society, 1845–1855,” in Jane Burbank and David Ransel, eds., Imperial Russia: New Histories for the Empire (Bloomington, IN, 1998). 28

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of responses received to the instructions, visual representation played almost no role. Nadezhdin’s colleagues in the Ethnographic Division shared his philological orientation. Vladimir Dal’, the great Russian lexicographer, was a founding member of the Geographical Society and participated in the work of the Ethnographic Division until his departure from St. Petersburg in 1849. Izmail Sreznevskii, Nadezhdin’s successor as head of the Ethnographic Division, held the chair in Slavic linguistics at St. Petersburg University and led the philological division of the Academy of Sciences. Pavel Savel’ev and Vasilii Grigor’ev were both skilled orientalists trained in Arabic, Persian, and Turkic linguistics. Konstantin Kavelin, while not a philologist himself, had gained recognition as a legal historian known for his synthesis of Russian juridical practices into a grand Hegelian historical narrative. In short, the individuals who dominated the Ethnographic Division in the 1850s had neither the inclination nor the skill to integrate visual representation into their ethnographic scholarship. Ethnography as it took shape in the Geographical Society in the 1840s and 1850s stood at the crossroads of two distinct scholarly traditions with very different approaches to the use of visual information. The dominant philological approach exemplified by Nadezhdin and his colleagues lay firmly within the tradition of European humanism wherein meaning is extracted from texts through the application of linguistic analysis and empathetic understanding.29 Visual representation functions within the tradition of the humanities as a parallel process, an aesthetic endeavor working within its own parameters, capable of illustrating and elaborating but in no way essential to the fundamental encounter between the reader and the text. Baer, on the other hand, represented the tradition of the natural sciences in which visual representation served not merely as a source of illustration but also as a fundamental component of the investigative process. Information in the natural sciences is presented in visual form because it cannot be expressed in any other way.

29 For a good discussion of the humanistic tradition in relation to anthropology see Andrew Zimmerman, Anthropology and Antihumanism in Imperial Germany (Chicago, 2001).

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The dominance of the humanistic approach to ethnography in the 1850s explains why Vtorov’s proposal to apply photography to ethnographic research met with a lukewarm reception from the other members of the Geographical Society. Why was Vtorov an exception to the general trend? First, he was not a professional scholar and did not have specialized training or interests in philology; indeed, his intellectual interests lay primarily in history, economics, and statistics. More significantly, having worked as a provincial bureaucrat in Voronezh Province in the 1850s, unlike his colleagues in St. Petersburg, Vtorov was in a position to actually conduct ethnographic research and did it with great enthusiasm. Given his particular interest in peasant costume, practical exigencies led him to discover the necessity of using visual media in his work. As Vtorov’s experience suggests, visual ethnography, while neglected within the confines of the Ethnographic Division, could not easily be excluded from the broader boundaries of the ethnographic endeavor as a whole. Artists were also inspired to take part in the quest that lay at the heart of Russian ethnography to represent the spirit of narodnost’. The same impulse that sent ethnographers like Vtorov into the countryside to document peasant customs and costumes also lay behind the efforts of artists to capture images of rural Russia, the hardships of peasant life, and the human spirit of the simple muzhik. From the early portraits of Ivan Argunov to the genre paintings of Aleksei Venetsianov and Grigorii Soroka and the full fledged ethnographic realism of the Peredvizhniki or Wanderers, ethnographic images and themes occupy a prominent place in the classic tradition of Russian painting, paralleling the prominence of ethnographic strains in Russian literature.30 Even within the narrower confines of scholarly ethnography, the naturalist tradition represented by Baer would continue to play a role. He returned to his post as chair of the Ethnographic Division between 1859 and 1861, but still feeling the bitter aftereffects of the conflicts of the late 1840s, he was not particularly active or energetic. Nonetheless, he did participate in two significant endeavors. The first was his initiative to create a full-fledged ethnographic museum.31 The second project 30

For an excellent overview see Richard Stites, Serfdom, Society, and the Arts in Imperial Russia: The Pleasure and the Power (New Haven, CT, 2005). 31 ARGO, f. 1–1857, op. 1, no. 28 (Ob uchrezhdenii etnograficheskogo museia) l. 14.

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A Family of the Russian Empire. Theodore de Pauly, Description ethnographique des peuples de la Russie (Ethnographic Description of the Peoples of Russia), St. Petersburg, 1862.

was to sponsor and support the publication of a major ethnographic album encompassing the entire population of the Empire, Theodore de Pauly’s Description ethnographique des peuples de la Russie.32 This was the first work of its kind since the publication of Georgi’s compendium almost a century earlier and like its forebear contained both detailed ethnographic descriptions and abundant multi-colored illustrations. Reflecting Baer’s influence, perhaps, Pauly’s illustrations provided not only detailed depictions of the native surroundings, dwellings, costumes, and accoutrements of everyday life, but also showed clearly articulated portrayals of the stereotypical native physiogmony. Pauly’s volume amounted in essence to the fulfillment of Baer’s ambitions as an ethnographer.

32 T. de Pauly, Description ethnographique des peoples de la Russie (St. Petersburg, 1862).

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By the 1860s, the Russian Geographical Society was no longer the sole institution to include ethnography as a distinct scholarly field. With the founding of the Society of Friends of Natural Science, Anthropology and Ethnography in Moscow, a new center of research emerged, one more open to the practice of visual ethnography. Its founder, Anatolii Bogdanov, was trained as a zoologist and pursued a research agenda devoted to physical anthropology firmly within the confines of the natural sciences. Not surprisingly therefore, the ethnographic endeavors of the new society highlighted the use of visual information. Its first major initiative, the All-Russian Ethnographic Exhibition of 1867 consisted of a large number of dioramas made up of mannequins carefully constructed to reproduce characteristic ethnic features and clothed in native costumes surrounded by tools and implements of daily life.33 Meanwhile, by the mid 1860s Vladimir Lamanskii, a prominent Slavic philologist, had taken up the post of chair of the Ethnographic Division of the Geographical Society, insuring thereby the continuation of its philological orientation. In short, both the humanities and the natural sciences would remain vital strains within the Russian ethnographic tradition.

33 Nataniel Nait [Nathaniel Knight], “Imperiia napokaz: Vserossiiskaia etnograficheskaia vystavka 1867 g.,” Novoe literaturnoe obozrenie 51 (2001), 111–131.

CHAPTER EIGHT

VIOLLET-LE-DUC AND SOLNTSEV: PUBLISHING PATRIMONY IN FRANCE AND RUSSIA Lauren M. O’Connell In his 1877 monograph on the history and future of Russian art, French architect Eugène Emmanuel Viollet-le-Duc (1814–1879), an advocate for the study and preservation of national heritage, points admiringly to the publication efforts of a like-minded artist in Russia, Fedor Solntsev (1801–1892). To get an idea of the “richness” of art treasures conserved in Russian storehouses, Viollet-le-Duc writes, “one need only leaf through the voluminous albums of the Antiquities of the Russian State, published by order of His Majesty the Emperor Nicholas I.”1 While the two artist-authors toiled separately in distinct politico-cultural spheres, their parallel publication efforts heightened awareness of neglected national traditions in France and Russia in the mid-nineteenth century. An analysis of similarities in training, patronage, and philosophy aligning Solntsev and Viollet-le-Duc and of the subtly significant differences distinguishing their printed works from one another dramatizes the broadly cross-cultural nature of the nineteenth-century turn toward the medieval past. Interestingly, the same forces that focused Russia’s attention on her past in the early nineteenth century were at work in France in the same era. If the 1815 defeat of Napoleon was one watershed for Russia’s cultivation of a distinctive identity, its precursor in France, the Revolution of 1789, inspired that new nation’s own resolve to examine her patrimony. At the same time, the work of these two talented and prolific publishers of past monuments underscores the national particularities of the patrimonial urge.

1

Eugène Emmanuel Viollet-le-Duc commented that “the treasuries of Russia still conserve a large quantity of furnishings, clothing, arms and armor, jewelry, and metalwork of great artistic value: L’Art russe, ses origines, ses éléments constitutifs, son apogée, son avenir (Paris, 1877), 129–130.

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Ironically it was the destructive fervor of the Revolution that provoked a few enthusiasts to collect and catalog the relics of the old regime.2 What began with the infamous taking of the Bastille prison would culminate in the government confiscation, sale, and destruction of countless artistic and architectural monuments regarded as symbols of the overturned monarchy, aristocracy, and clergy. Alexandre Lenoir was one of the first to bring the value of the French medieval heritage to the attention of the public by appealing to the revolutionary government to spare the pillaged treasures as objects of artistic and historic value. By 1795 statues and sculptural fragments rescued from confiscated churches—such as the royal tombs at the Abbey of St. Denis, looted by revolutionary “vandals”—were put on display in Paris in a new Musée des monuments français, founded by Lenoir.3 Lenoir’s pioneering work would directly inspire that of Viollet-le-Duc later in the nineteenth century, when the latter established a successor museum of comparative sculpture at the Trocadero Palace, where the history of French religious architecture can still be read in the stone spolia of the Revolution. Revolutionary destruction also inspired printed repertories of national monuments, such as the multi-volume Antiquités nationales of 1790 by archaeologist and naturalist Aubin-Louis Millin, who wrote that the “precipitous sale” of confiscated church properties would have “fatal consequences for the arts and sciences by destroying products of genius and historic monuments that would be worth conserving.”4 Millin was a specialist in numismatics and curator, in 1795, of the Cabinet des Médailles, an initially royal repository at the Bibliothèque

2 On the relationship between revolutionary destruction and the emergence of an architectural preservation movement in France, see: Françoise Choay, The Invention of the Historic Monument (New York, 2001), 63–81; Dominique Poulot, Musée, nation, patrimoine, 1789–1815 (Paris, 1997); and Lauren M. O’Connell, “Architecture and the French Revolution: Continuity and Change under the Conseil des Bâtiments Civils, 1795–1799,” (PhD. diss., Cornell University, 1989), chap. 5. 3 Christopher M. Greene, “Alexandre Lenoir and the Musée des monuments français during the French Revolution,” French Historical Studies 12 (Autumn, 1981), 200–22; Poulot, “Alexandre Lenoir et les musées des monuments français,” in Pierre Nora, ed., Les Lieux de mémoire 2 (Paris, 1986), 497–532; and Anthony Vidler, The Writing of the Walls: Architectural Theory in the Late Enlightenment (Princeton, NJ, 1987). 4 Aubin Millin, Antiquités nationales ou Receuil de monuments: Pour servir à l’histoire générale et particulière de l’empire françois, tels que tombeaux, inscriptions, statues, vitraux, fresques, etc.: Tirés des abbayes, monastères, châteaux, et autres lieux devenues domaines nationaux 1 (Paris, 1790–1798), 1–2, quoted in Choay, Invention, 64.

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nationale whose collection of coins and antiquities swelled with the revolutionary nationalization of assets.5 Particularly concerned about the fate of non-transportable architectural “monuments,” which could not be dispatched to the safety of Lenoir’s museum, Millin pressed for the publication of endangered built works as a means of preserving them: “It is these precious monuments that that we have formed the intention of saving from the destructive scythes of time . . . We will provide representations of a variety of national monuments, such as ancient châteaux, abbey churches, and monasteries, in short, all of those capable of retracing the great episodes in our history.”6 The recognition by French antiquarians like Millin of the value of visual representation in print medium as a means of preserving the monumental past finds echo in Solntsev’s mammoth publication project in Russia a century later. After Millin, the rise of Napoleon and the reframing of revolutionary rhetoric in terms of empire inspired such works as Count Alexandre de Laborde’s Les Monuments de la France classés chronologiquement et considerés sous le rapport des faits historiques et de l’étude des arts (1816–1836).7 Fruit of a thirty-year effort that began before the revolution and was finally published under the restored Bourbon monarchy, Laborde’s publication sought to lay out no less than the entire history of French accomplishments in the arts with a particular focus on architecture. Like Viollet-le-Duc and Solntsev, Laborde presents his illustrated compendium as both a scholarly archaeological history and as a practical model book. In his preface he emphasizes his mission to contemporary artists: Young people, who will soon replace your masters, it is mainly for you that I write! You will find in this collection the works of the illustrious men who have preceded you, you will be able to observe the examples that should be followed and the traps that should be avoided; you will devote all of your efforts to creating works that can similarly serve as models for your successors.8

5 Les Directeurs du département des Monnaies, Médailles et Antiques depuis 1710 (Paris, 2005), 4–5. 6 Millin, Antiquités 1:1–2, quoted in Choay, Invention, 64. 7 Alexandre de Laborde, Les Monuments de la France, classés chronologiquement, et considerés sous le rapport des faits historiques et de l’étude des arts, 2 vols. (Paris, 1816–1836). 8 Laborde, Monuments 1:ii.

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Laborde’s pedagogical purpose highlights the prospective, rather than retrospective, character of patrimonial research in this period. Rather than a nostalgic rounding up of testaments to past glory, Laborde’s albums, like those produced later by Viollet-le-Duc and Solntsev, were conceived in a forward-looking, progressivist spirit meant to inform the production of new work in the present. In attempting to set forth the entire chronology of French monuments, Laborde placed no special emphasis on the medieval legacy that would preoccupy Solntsev and Viollet-le-Duc. Prehistoric megaliths from Quiberon on the northwest coast are shown alongside Roman aqueducts like the Pont du Gard in the southern town of Nîmes; France’s Gothic churches are assigned equal visual weight with the nation’s Gallo-Roman legacy. The engraving style for all the images registers as crisp crossover between neoclassical linearity and protoromantic nostalgia. Laborde, however, does single out the pointed arch (ogivale) architecture of the French thirteenth century for special praise in his preface, and following the lead of eighteenth-century theorists like Abbé Cordemoy and Marc-Antoine Laugier, he admires Gothic structures—such as the dilapidated basilica of Vézelay that Viollet-le-Duc would later restore—for their “elegance,” “solidity,” and “grace.”9 In this he also pre-figures Viollet-le-Duc’s argument for the medieval as the most original chapter in France’s artistic history. But it is the “eternal beauty” of the neoclassical work of the late eighteenth century that strikes Laborde as most worthy of emulation by contemporary artists.10 With his focus on architectural monuments, Laborde’s work closely anticipates that of Viollet-le-Duc. But Laborde owes a debt to the generation of French antiquarians that preceded him; he was by no means the first Frenchman to publicize the national heritage in illustrated book form. For instance, the important work of Bernard de Montfaucon underlies all French efforts in the nineteenth century; his copperengraved Monuments de la monarchie françoise of 1729 provides a closer French analogue to Solntsev’s Russian project in both scope and

9

Ibid., 1:iii. On the appreciation of the Gothic within the context of French neoclassicism, see: Wolfgang Hermann, Laugier and Eighteenth-Century French Theory (London, 1962). 10 Laborde, Monuments 1:iii and 57–58.

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intent.11 A Benedictine monk from the scholarly Congregation of St. Maur, Montfaucon began his career as a classical linguist and paleographer trained in the translation of Greek and Latin inscriptions. Sent by his order in 1698 to Italy to research some Greek sacred texts, he expanded the parameters of his project, ultimately producing a massive five-volume Antiquité expliquée in 1719, which has been called a “new social history, based on the study of objects.” In the 1720s Montfaucon set about to do for France what he had done for the Italian Peninsula, namely to narrate, through visual images, the illustrious history of the French monarchy. In opposition to the tradition of textual history based primarily on literary sources, Montfaucon offered accounts utilizing visual evidence, a “kind of text book based on illustrative material.” Such an approach, in his view, “permits modern man to see the past, to form knowledge of the customs of ancient peoples, and even to correct impressions gained from literature.”12 Unlike the later Laborde, who sought to provide artistic models for contemporary artists, Montfaucon’s interests were primarily historical and antiquarian. The images he assembled—redrawn by his artists from paintings, manuscripts, and objects in private and royal collections—interested him for their value as historical illustration. As Solntsev would do later for the history of the Russian state, Montfaucon included a broad range of artifacts, from scepters and crowns to arms and armor and period dress. Objects were organized by royal reign, and Montfaucon’s learned plate descriptions emphasized throughout the relationship of each object to the relevant monarch, whose traits and accomplishments were thereby brought to life through the power of the image. Montfaucon’s early efforts, and those inspired by the ravages of revolution, paved the way for an explosion of interest in the national patrimony as the nineteenth century unfolded. The quickening pace of industrialization accelerated the disappearance of medieval monuments, provoking a new wave of nostalgia famously chronicled by Victor Hugo in Notre Dame de Paris (1831). The French government soon 11 Bernard de Montfaucon, Les monumens de la monarchie française, qui comprennent l’histoire de France, avec les figures de chaque règne que l’injure des tems à épargnées. (Paris, 1729–1733). A good overview of Montfaucon’s publication efforts is provided in Alain Erlande-Brandenburg, “L’ Érudition livresque: Bernard de Montfaucon (1655–1714),” Revue de l’art 49 (1980), 34–35. See also Choay, Invention, 35–36. 12 Dora Weibenson, ed., The Mark J. Millard Architectural Collection, vol. 1: French Books from the Sixteenth to the Nineteenth Centuries (New York, 1993), 360.

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Images of Royalty. At the upper left, depiction of a fictive meeting between Charlemagne and Constantine, Emperor of the East, at the Gates of Constantinople, from stained glass windows in the apse of the Abbey Church of St. Denis; below, Abbot Suger, also from a stained glass window at St. Denis, and Charlemagne’s sword, from the treasury of St. Denis. Bernard de Montfaucon, Monuments de la monarchie française (Monuments of the French Monarchy), English edition, 1750, plate 24. Courtesy of Cornell University Library.

institutionalized the protection of architectural monuments with the creation in 1830 of an official post of Inspecteur des monuments historiques, and a host of artists and scholars, among them etcher Charles Méryon and early photographer Edouard Baldus, set out to document threatened treasures before the advancing tide of modernization.13 They paid particular attention to Paris, whose fabled charm was under assault as Napoleon III and Baron Georges-Eugène Haussmann 13 See, inter alia: Françoise Bercé, Les Premiers travaux de la Commission des monuments historiques, 1837–1848: Procès-verbaux et relevés d’architectes (Paris, 1979). For revolutionary era precursors to the 1830s legislation, such as the “Survey on Monuments” conducted in 1793–1794 by the Commission des travaux publics and the Conseil des Bâtiments Civils “Survey of Cathedral Churches” of 1796, see: Choay, Invention, 80; and O’Connell, “Architecture,” chap. 5.

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executed their plan to reshape the city for the modern age. Baldus, for example, made striking views of the Tour Saint Jacques in the heart of historic Paris, which had several times been spared from the wrecking ball by a few enlightened enthusiasts.14 It was during this period that France’s specifically medieval heritage would come into full focus as the special abode of Frenchness and thus worthy of celebration, preservation, analysis, and emulation. The dark beauty of Charles Méryon’s Paris etchings from the early 1850s captures the Romantic tenor of this period and appreciates in the Gothic past the juxtaposition of sublime scale and individualized craft.15 These efforts culminated in the prodigious output of artist, architect, and historian Viollet-le-Duc, who, like Solntsev, sought to provide his country with the fundaments of a national style through the lavish publication of historical motifs. In contrast to those who came before him, Viollet-le-Duc trained a technical eye on the monuments of the Middle Ages and made a powerful argument for the scientific rationality that made the epoch so suitable for reinterpretation in the modern age.16 In the novel and very successful format of the alphabetical dictionary, between 1854 and 1868 Viollet-le-Duc documented the history of French architecture, furniture, and costume in exhaustive illustrated detail. He followed these popular volumes with a more polemical collection of “lectures” that were more text intensive and theoretical. Here the trained medievalist laid out his argument for the Gothic age as the apogee of French national genius.17

14 O’Connell, “Afterlives of the Tour Saint-Jacques: Plotting the Perceptual History of an Urban Fragment,” Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians 60 (2001), 450–473. 15 Méryon’s Paris etchings, produced between 1850 and 1854 at the moment of Haussmann’s transformations of Paris, were published in his time as Eaux-fortes sur Paris (Paris, 1860). 16 For comprehensive overviews of Viollet-le-Duc’s career and thought, see several publications surrounding the 1979 centenary of his death: Pierre-Marie Auzas, Eugène Emmanuel Viollet-le-Duc, 1814–1879 (Paris, 1979); Viollet-le-Duc: [exposition] Galeries nationales du Grand Palais, 19 février–5 mai 1980 (Paris, 1980); and Actes du colloque international Viollet le Duc: Paris, 1980 (Paris, 1982). Recent studies include Laurent Baridon’s L’Imaginaire scientifique de Viollet-le-Duc (Paris, 1996), which focuses on his status as a pioneer of modern scientific thought. 17 Viollet-le-Duc: Dictionnaire raisonné de l’architecture française du XIe au XVIe siècle, 10 vols. (Paris, 1854–1868); Dictionnaire raisonné du mobilier français: De l’époque carolingienne à la Renaissance, 6 vols. (Paris, 1858–1875); Entretiens sur l’architecture, 2 vols. (Paris, 1863–1872). For translated excerpts and commentary, see: The Foundations of Architecture: Selections from the Dictionnaire raisonné (New York,

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Viollet-le-Duc and Solntsev enjoyed parallel training and career trajectories. Both were skilled watercolorists—Solntsev’s broad reputation indeed hangs on the coloristic brilliance and technical finesse of the watercolor renderings that translated so well into printable chromolithographs in his Antiquities of the Russian State of 1849–53.18 Viollet-le-Duc’s early artistic training was in drawing rather than in architecture, and in his published works he favored the black and white medium of wood engraving, because as a relief process it allowed him to juxtapose print and type on the same page.19 At the same time, he executed scores of watercolors and pastels, from fully rendered travel views made during a formative trip to Italy when he was in his early twenties to vivid painted documentation of the état actuel of monuments slated for restoration during his tenure at the Service des monuments historiques. Both artists are known for the limpid precision of their drawn work, and traces of a more nostalgic appreciation of the power of monuments to connect us with the past can also be found in each, for example, in Viollet-le-Duc’s evocation of Italy’s Greek past at Paestum or Solntsev’s romanticizing portrayal in the Antiquities of olden Kremlin palaces. Viollet-le-Duc is best known for his association with France’s medieval monuments. From his appointment to restore the Romanesque and Gothic Church of the Madeleine at Vézelay to his being named Inspector General of Diocesan Buildings in Paris in 1857, the architect was involved in most of the significant projects undertaken by the French government in the very active decades following the establishment of the Commission des monuments historiques. These include such staples of our modern conception of the medieval French patrimony as the Cathedral of Notre Dame in Paris, under restoration in the 1840s, the walled medieval town of Carcassonne in the following decade, and the fourteenth-century château at Pierrefonds, under scaffolding throughout the 1860s. On the strength of his restoration work

1990); and M. F. Hearn, ed., The Architectural Theory of Viollet-le-Duc: Readings and Commentary (Cambridge, MA, 1990). 18 F. G. Solntsev, Drevnosti Rossiskago gosudarstva, 12 vols. in 6 (Moscow, 1849– 1853). 19 Baridon, Viollet-le-Duc, 85–86 and 127; Françoise Boudon, “Le Réel et l’imaginaire chez Viollet-le-Duc: Les figures du Dictionnaire de l’architecture,” Revue de l’art 58–59 (1983), 95.

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alone, Leniaud estimates that Viollet-le-Duc was the most well known architect in France at this time.20 Solntsev shared this passion for restoration and worked on all of the major projects undertaken by the Russian crown in the same decades. Among the most prominent were the reconstruction, begun in 1835, of the seventeenth-century Terem Palace in the Kremlin, which the artist sought to return to “its primal Byzantine aspect,” and the restoration of the Byzantine Cathedral of St. Sofiia in Kiev. For both undertakings he drew upon his training as an artist-archaeologist, having studied and drawn remnants of the Russian artistic past in his earlier travels throughout the country under the sponsorship of his mentor Aleksei Olenin, Director of the Academy of Arts. At the Terem Palace, where little of the original interior décor had survived, he introduced reproduction furnishings, tiled stoves, fresco painting, and stained glass windows, all conceived in the early Russian style.21 Both artists enjoyed the highest levels of state patronage. After the death of Olenin in 1843, Solntsev was taken under the direct personal protection of Nicholas I, whose policy of “Orthodoxy, Autocracy, Nationality” underpinned the artist’s patrimonial research. Family connections accelerated Viollet-le-Duc’s access to power, especially through the person of Prosper Merimée, the director of the Monuments historiques, who brought Viollet-le-Duc into contact with Emperor Napoleon III. Both artists accordingly won important state commissions and were entrusted with personal imperial projects: Solntsev’s redesign of the Terem Palace included apartments specifically outfitted for the tsar, just as Viollet-le-Duc designed quarters for the French empress at Pierrefonds. Each was also chosen to design for the imperial offspring, with Solntsev creating a porcelain service for the Grand Duke Konstantin Nikolaevich in 1848 and Viollet-le-Duc’s adorning

20 Consult: Baridon, Viollet-le-Duc, 80–81; Louis Grodecki, Pierrefonds (Paris, 1979); Aron Vinegar, “Techniques of Imagination: Viollet-le-Duc and Restoration of the Chateau de Pierrefonds” (PhD diss., Northwestern University, 2001); and JeanMichel Leniaud, Les Bâtisseurs d’avenir: Portraits d’architectes XIXe–XXe siècle (Paris, 1998), 103. 21 G. I. Vzdornov, Istoriia otkrytiia i izucheniia russkoi srednevekovoi zhivopisi (Moscow, 1983), 29–30; Evgenia Kirichenko, Russian Design and the Fine Arts, 1750–1917 (New York, 1991), 76 (quoting Solntsev’s autobiographical essay, “Moia zhizn’ i khudozhestvenno-arkheologicheskie trudy,” Russkaia starina 3 (1876), 634 and 78–82); Irina Bogatskaia, “Russia’s Ancient Past in the Work of Fedor Solntsev,” Russian Fine Art (2006), 51.

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the interior of the Cathedral of Notre Dame for the baptism of the imperial prince, born in 1853.22 In their work as restorers of national monuments, both Viollet-leDuc and Solntsev faced criticism for the accuracy of their recreations. They shared a rather elastic early nineteenth-century conception of what we now term historic preservation and felt that a restoration architect, backed by careful study of the period, should enjoy broad license to reimagine portions of a building that had disappeared, even to create anew in the spirit of the earlier age. Viollet-le-Duc’s much quoted and often misinterpreted dictum on restoration in the Dictionnaire begins: “Both the word and the thing are modern. To restore an edifice means neither to maintain it, nor to repair it, nor to rebuild it; it means to reestablish it in a finished state, which may in fact never have existed at any given time.” As his detailed elaboration makes clear, he did not advocate fancifully unfounded invention of architectural form; his approach was driven by the specific nature of medieval buildings, which took decades to build and thus rarely enjoyed a specific moment of completion to which later restoration could be tethered. Further, he argued, medieval structures were constantly in evolution, undergoing frequent modifications over time to correct structural deficiencies. Only critical analysis by a knowledgeable scholar/architect could determine, on a case-by-case basis, what to retain, what to erase, or what to creatively reinvent.23 The built results of Viollet-le-Duc’s recreationist approach, at such sites as the city of Carcassonne or the Cathedral of Notre Dame, do not conform to the stricter preservation practices of the twentieth century and have earned him a mixed reputation. Appreciated for his labors on behalf of the medieval heritage, the architect is still maligned for the aggressiveness of those efforts.24 A similar mix of criticism and praise

22

Vzdornov, Istoriia, 30; Bogatskaia, “Russia’s Ancient Past,” 51–52; Baridon, Viollet-le-Duc, 79–80; Kirichenko, Russian Design, 86–87. Also see: Anne Odom and Liana Paredes Arend, A Taste for Splendor: Russian Imperial and European Treasures from the Hillwood Museum (Alexandria, VA, 1998), 246; and Odom, “Russki stil’, the Russian Style for Export—Hillwood Museum & Gardens,” Antiques 163 (March 2003), 102–107. 23 Viollet-le-Duc, Foundations, 195 and 210–211. 24 Jean-Michel Leniaud outlines the complexities of Viollet-le-Duc’s reputation in his comprehensive and opinionated study of Viollet-le-Duc’s restoration practice: Viollet-le-Duc ou les délires du système (Paris, 1994), 5–8. While recent scholarship has illuminatingly situated Viollet-le-Duc’s restoration theory in its nineteenth-century context, anti-Viollet-le-Duc passions still flare in such works as Jacques Harmand’s,

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surrounds Solntsev’s restoration of the Cathedral of St. Sofiia in Kiev. The overzealous cleaning of twelfth-century frescoes on the church’s interior, detractors charged, resulted in the loss of precious original work. “The ancient wall paintings of the Sofiia Cathedral in Kiev were damaged twice,” one critic wrote in 1864, “first when they were whitewashed by plaster, and then when that plaster was removed by careless day laborers, under the supervision of a restorer (Solntsev) without sufficient knowledge of archaeology and ancient frescoes.”25 But other contemporaries, such as a writer in the 1840s quoted by Evgeniia Kirichenko in her 1991 monograph on Russian design, appreciated that spirit of historically informed creative reconstruction that motivated Viollet-le-Duc: What was most valued in a restoration project (as in a new building) was not scholarly accuracy in relation to the original but an inspired, creative reinterpretation of it. This is evident from the way in which critics rated most highly work which, from a modern viewpoint, least merit [sic] being described as restoration: work in which the artist ‘by the power of the poetic attuning of his soul and of his hypotheses strives to convey the character of the original, not only with archaeological accuracy but also with that sublime feeling which moves the architect himself in moments of creation and lays upon his works the seal of true beauty and creativity.’26

These similarities of biography and theoretical bent give rise to compelling resemblances in content between the publications of Viollet-leduc and Solntsev, despite the great geographic remove that separated them. And the very fact of these publications is the most significant parallel of all; for both authors the book was seen as a primary vehicle for the dissemination of patrimonial research. Serving the synthesizing function of drawing together the disparate strands of national artistic Pierrefonds: La Forteresse d’Orléans: Les Réalités (Le Puy-en-Velay, 1983): reading Pierrefonds from the perspective of a medievalist, he refers to Viollet-le-Duc’s reconstruction as a “massacre” (p. 6); and in the book’s preface, Yvan Christ—noted for his writings on the history of the destruction of French monuments, as by war and cataclysm—ranks Viollet-le-Duc’s efforts with other vandalistic acts that have stripped the country of its artistic heritage (pp. vii–x). 25 Vzdornov, Istoriia, 34, quoting N. M. Sementovksii’s guidebook, Kiev, ego sviatynia, drevnosti, dostopamiatnosti, i svedeniia, neobkhodimye dlia ego pochitatelei i puteshestvennikov (Kiev, 1864), 99. The same author had praised Solntsev’s work in an earlier edition but then turned critical after the death of Solntsev’s protector and collaborator on the Kiev restoration, Nicholas I. 26 Kirichenko, Russian Design, 80, quoting “Restavratsii russkikh khudozhnikov. O restavratsii voobshche,” Khudozhestvennaia gazeta 10 (1940), 7.

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accomplishment, their books would make the case for the existence of national artistic traditions in their respective domains. Juxtaposition of plates from Solntsev’s Antiquities with images from Viollet-leDuc’s dictionaries of architecture and furniture vividly illustrates the parallels. At the same time, the artistic and topical affinities between their publications reveal distinctions between the two artists and bring their respective contributions into sharper relief. Like Montfaucon in the eighteenth century, Solntsev and Violletle-Duc conceive their topics broadly. The Russian’s source material in the Kremlin storehouses, where he was sent by Olenin on a recording mission in the early 1830s, included the tools and accoutrements of war, and his ethnographic urge is in evidence in myriad caftans, headdresses, and hairpieces. The Frenchman, seeking to re-create the daily rhythms of medieval life from combat to costume, displays the same types of object. Their representational strategies are also interestingly alike, although they worked in different media (watercolor/ chromolithograph vs. wood engraving). Both tended to show objects from multiple points of view, affording as complete an impression as possible of a given artifact. For instance, jewelry items are shown both in frontal views and in side elevation to reveal the degree of relief of the inlaid gems. The unconventionality of this technique is particularly striking in Solntsev’s presentation of the thrones of the tsars, which are represented not just from one ideal viewpoint but also from above and below.27 Despite these striking similarities, subtle differences in emphasis and intent point to larger divergences in scope that ultimately distinguish their published works. Directly underwritten by Nicholas I, Solntsev’s Antiquities are but one part of a larger state program in the formation of national identity. His mandate was to document and celebrate, through the power of the visual image, a vision of Russia’s past that would underpin contemporary aspirations. The emperor himself vetted Solntsev’s renderings and his architectural restoration projects at the Kremlin prior to execution.28 His images, accordingly, have a museo27 This format already appears in Solnstev’s drawings of treasures from the Hoard of Riazan discovered in 1822 and published under the authorship of Olenin, Riazanskiia russkiia drevnosti ili izviestie o starinnykh i bogatykh veliko-kniazheskikh, ili tsarskikh ubranstvakh, naidennykh v 1822 godu bliz sela Staraia Riazan (St. Petersburg, 1831). 28 Bogatskaia, “Russia’s Ancient Past,” 52. She notes that Solntsev’s drawings passed through two layers of review before publication; they were first submitted to Olenin who then presented them to the emperor for approval. In his autobiography, Solntsev

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A Different View of the Panagiia of Metropolitan Ioasaf I. Solntsev, Antiquities; also an entry by Viollet-le-Duc under “orfèvrerie” in Dictionnaire raisonné du mobilier français: De l’époque carolingienne à la Renaissance (Annotated Dictionary of French Furnishings: From the Carolingian Epoch to the Renaissance), Paris, 1858–1875.

logical character, combining a will to historical accuracy and completeness with the selection principle of aesthetic quality. In plate after plate, the products of Russian craftsmanship, as well as the gifts from all nations bestowed upon tsars past, are laid out to best advantage; their arrangement on the page itself offers an elegantly composed series of material culture still lifes. This conception of the illustrated book as exhibition invites comparison with an almost contemporary effort in a new medium. The French art critic, Théophile Gautier, published

records that a very particular Nicholas I “rejected fourteen restoration projects before approving the fifteenth”: Kirichenko, Russian Design, 82, quoting Solntsev, “Moia zhizn’,” 273.

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Arquebuses: Solntsev, Antiquities; and Pierre Amboise Richebourg, “Ancient Firearms from the Armory at Tsarskoe Selo,” in Théophile Gautier, Trésors d’art de la Russie ancienne et moderne (Treasures of Ancient and Modern Russian Art), Paris, 1859.

his Trésors d’art en Russie ancien et moderne, illustrated with photographs by Pierre-Amboise Richebourg, in 1859, just six years after the completion of Solntsev’s Antiquities. Trésors is remarkably similar in presentational style, with vitrine-like layouts of arms and armor from the repository at Tsarskoe selo.29 Soon, the coloristic advantage enjoyed by chromolithography would see the splendid Solntsev style albums replaced by photographic compendia.

29 Théophile Gautier, Trésors d’art de la Russie ancienne et moderne (Paris, 1859). For excerpts and analysis, see the modern critical edition of his 1867 Voyage en Russie, a compilation of travel bulletins serialized in the French press: Gautier, Voyage en Russie: Présentation, établissement du texte et des notes par Francine-Dominique Liechtenhan (Paris, 1990).

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In slight contrast to his Russian counterpart, by the time Violletle-Duc began to devote himself more intensively to writing, he had begun to drift away from direct imperial patronage and was motivated more by a personal theoretical passion, and one that ran him seriously afoul of the academic establishment in Paris, as incarnated in the École des Beaux-Arts.30 His book projects were not imperially commissioned and reflect the more individual agenda of promoting his own theories about the rationality of medieval architecture, its superiority over classically based forms, and—on a more political and somewhat heretical note—its relationship to an idealized vision of the secular character of medieval society. His books offer demonstrations of these principles in exhaustive analytical detail. Displays of medieval military dress are accompanied by studies of how each piece of armor rationally expresses its relationship to the human form, just as a medieval church pier is pulled apart to reveal the physics and statics of its structure. Indeed, by virtue of his anatomical and scientific approach to the study of historic monuments Viollet-le-Duc is remembered, paradoxically, as a pre-eminent figure in the seemingly opposed spheres of medieval revivalism and modernist architectural theory.31 A further distinction between the two artists’ conceptualizations concerns the context in which objects are presented. With his interest in the supposedly egalitarian social structure of medieval society, which, Viollet-le-Duc argued, made the Gothic cathedral possible, he

30 Baridon, Viollet-le-Duc, 82. On Viollet-le-Duc’s unhappy tenure at the École des Beaux-Arts, where he was denied a professorship and gave ill-received lectures that nonetheless formed the core of his landmark theoretical text, the Entretiens, see: Geneviève Viollet-le-Duc, Eugène Viollet-le-Duc: Esthétique appliquée à l’histoire de l’art. Suivi de Viollet-le-Duc et l’Ecole des Beaux-Arts, la bataille de 1863–1864 (Paris, 1994). 31 On the “anatomical” character of Viollet-le-Duc’s drawings (as related to the emerging science of comparative anatomy pioneered by Cuvier), in which he “dissects” historical objects to reveal their underlying structure, see: Barry Bergdoll, “The Legacy of Viollet-le-Duc’s Drawings,” Architectural Record 169 (1981), 62–67; and Vinegar, Architecture under the Knife: Viollet-le-Duc’s Illustrations for the ‘Dictionnaire raisonné’ and the Anatomical Representation of Architectural Knowledge (Ottowa, 1996). Martin Bressani traces the conceptual roots of Viollet-le-Duc’s approach to the late eighteenth-century studios of Jacques-Louis David, teacher of his uncle/mentor Etienne Delécluze, and situates Viollet-le-Duc’s drawings within the context of contemporary scientific illustration in Antoine Picot and Alessandra Ponte, eds., “Violletle-Duc’s Optic,” Architecture and the Sciences: Exchanging Metaphors (Princeton, NJ, 2003), 139.

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The Workings of a Church Pier and Knee Pads. Viollet-le-Duc: Dictionnaire raisonné d’architecture (Annotated Dictionary of Architecture), “pier”; and Dictionnaire du mobilier, “gèves,” knee pads.

pays particular attention to the way in which objects function.32 Thus Solntsev’s stately display of broadswords stands in contrast to Violletle-Duc’s modest vignette of a stock medieval figure holding such an instrument, and his quick rendition of a coat of arms as worn in medieval times contrasts with Solntsev’s grander formal portrait of military gear.

32 Viollet-le-Duc’s distinctly secular reading of the Gothic cathedral stands in sharp contrast to the thought of his counterpart in England, A. W. N. Pugin, whose advocacy for a Gothic revival was grounded in an argument for the moral superiority of medieval, ecclesiastical values. The importance of understanding and communicating, through drawing, the function of an object is laid out in Viollet-le-Duc’s Histoire d’un dessinateur: Comment on apprend à dessiner (Paris, 1879), through the device of a fictive conversation between an instructor and his young pupil, Petit Jean. Also see: Bruno Foucart, “Viollet-leDuc dessinateur,” in Viollet-le-Duc [exposition] Galeries nationale du grand palais, 348–353.

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The final overriding theme in Viollet-le-Duc’s published oeuvre closely mirrors the intent of Solntsev’s project and unites them as two protagonists of an international cultural phenomenon, namely the relationship between national identity and artistic expression and the related conviction that native traditions should inspire contemporary creation. This particular passion led Viollet-le-Duc, at the end of his life, to strike out beyond France and to apply his method to other traditions, such as the ancient Americas and, of greater interest here, Russia. In his last decade, Viollet-le-Duc entered into correspondence with Viktor Butovskii, director of the Stroganov School in Moscow and the related Museum of Arts and Industry. On the basis of materials supplied by Butovskii, the French architect proceeded to write a history of Russian art, culminating in a program for its future development. The two maintained a lively correspondence during the gestation of the book, together shaping and refining a politically palatable theory of the Slavic-Asiatic origins of Russian art and their peak expression in the architecture of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Muscovy.33 It is with this history of art that the parallel strands of the careers of the two figures finally intersect. Since Viollet-le-Duc never went to Russia, he was entirely reliant upon the work of other scholars, and many of his illustrations are redrawn directly from the books, photographs, and archeological reports supplied to him by Butovskii.34 These included the director’s own Histoire de l’ornement russe (1870) and Vladimir Stasov’s Russkii narodnyi ornament (1872), both of which contributed to the search for a national style in the Russian arts. Viollet-le-Duc also clearly had at hand a copy of the Antiquities. He cites the volumes in his text by title but not by author, and several of his plates are obviously drawn directly from Solntsev, such as a set of ornamental details of the throne of Tsar Aleksei, pulled from Solntsev’s larger collection and rearranged on the page. A lower

33 On the relationship of this text to Viollet-le-Duc’s theories of rationality and national expression, its sources, and its critical reception in Russia, see O’Connell: “A Rational, National Architecture: Viollet-le-Duc’s Modest Proposal for Russia,” Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians 52 (1993), 436–452; and “Constructing the Russian Other: Viollet-le-Duc and the Politics of an Asiatic Past,” Architectures of Russian Identity (Ithaca, NY, 2005), 90–100. See also Tatiana Savarenskaia, “Le Livre de Viollet le Duc ‘L’Art russe’,” Actes du Colloque International Viollet le Duc, 319–323. 34 O’Connell, “Viollet-le-Duc on Drawing, Photography and the ‘Space Beyond the Frame’,” History of Photography 22 (1998), 139–146.

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Details of Tsar Aleksei Mikhailovich’s Throne. Solntsev, Antiquities; Viollet-leDuc, L’Art russe, ses origenes . . . son avenir (Russian Art, its Origins . . . its Future), Paris, 1877, personal collection.

budget project than the Antiquities, Viollet-le-Duc’s book was chiefly illustrated in black and white but did include sixteen chromolithographs, which allowed him to transmit Solntsev motifs in close detail. The text makes clear that Viollet-le-Duc had studied Solntsev’s plates carefully and in them found the visual evidence to support his claims about the particular periods of Russian art most suitable for emulation in the present. One of Viollet-le-Duc’s key claims about the origins of Russian art was that, while its roots were inescapably Asiatic, it had more affinity with remote Hindu India than with the more proximate and “primitive” parts of Asia from which the Russians were at pains to distance themselves.35 These Indic elements were particularly prevalent, in his 35

O’Connell, “Constructing the Russian Other,” 96–97.

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view, in secular objects, which were less tied to Byzantine artistic traditions than the sacred arts. Solntsev’s Antiquities supply the French author with visual evidence for this argument, which he makes in slightly convoluted fashion. First, he observes, inspection of Solntsev’s magnificent plates illustrating objects of Russian fabrication alongside foreign productions gifted to the tsars reveals that the Russian objects compete on equal footing, in terms of craftsmanship, with those of other nations. In particular, referencing his own theory of the originality of drawing upon one’s national origins, the items distinguish themselves by the “originality of their ornamentation.” Further, he contends, these highly accomplished “local” works “harmonize in most complete fashion” with appended elements of obviously foreign provenance.36 The seventeenth-century throne of Tsar Aleksei, for example, is adorned with ivory plaques including elephant interlace, “obviously” made by Hindu artists. These blend beautifully, he argues, with the surrounding adornment by Russian artists and even meld seamlessly with traces of Persian influence, lending the whole a Hindu-Persian character. Such cross-pollination makes sense, he observes, given that Byzantine Christianity had ceased to function as a living source of artistic inspiration after the fall of Constantinople to the Ottomans in 1453 and that Russia’s own occupation by the Mongol Tatars exposed her to the ancient artistic traditions of Central Asia and beyond.37 And what could be more logical, he concludes, rejoining the master themes of his book and of his oeuvre in general, than that a people should draw inspiration from the diverse traditions it encounters over time, always emulating rather than imitating alien forms, and bringing to bear its own distinctive artistic genius, to yield a new national tradition? He ends with a rhetorical question: “Is that not how, in essence, a people constitutes its own art?”38 In the plates of Solntsev’s Antiquities, then, Viollet-le-Duc found powerful support for the theoretical principles that drove his entire scholarly enterprise.

36

Viollet-le-Duc, L’Art russe, 129. Ibid., 130–131 and 134: Viollet-le-Duc is careful to specify “ancient” Central Asian traditions here, as Butovksii had specifically coached him to emphasize the contributions of the “civilized,” “ancient” peoples of Asia (e.g., Persia, Mesopotamia, India), rather than those of the artless Tatars; also see O’Connell, “Constructing the Russian Other,” 97. 38 Ibid., 134: “N’est-ce pas ainsi, en effet, qu’un peuple constitue un art? N’est-ce pas en s’inspirant d’arts antérieurs et en les assimilant à son génie et à ses besoins?” 37

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Given the strong conceptual solidarity between Viollet-le-Duc and Solntsev, the interplay and direct borrowing are not at all surprising, in particular given the larger forces at play in the political environment both of nineteenth-century France and Russia. These currents led to a broad cross-cultural will to use the printed image as a vehicle for shaping and promoting distinctive national identities.

CHAPTER NINE

ECHOES OF SOLNTSEV: PUGIN AND THE GOTHIC REVIVAL IN ENGLAND J. Robert Wright A parallel to the art and impact of Fedor Solntsev—and to a large degree of Eugène Viollet-le-Duc—can be found in the nineteenthcentury Gothic revival in England. As in Russia this trend looked to the grandeur of a distant past, at times real but often imagined. The movement from neoclassicism to romanticism in England and Europe in general created a context in which the revival of interest in the High Middle Ages could be born and flourish. The Reformation was now condemned for fostering the destruction of so many monuments of art, and visible expressions of a national past were being sought in the art, literature, and even religion of the Gothic era. Bolstering this interest, Gothic ruins were certainly picturesque and Romantic, and the theory surfaced that the pointed arch might even have been English in origin. At the same time—as in Russia and other European countries, the new science of “ecclesiology”—the word first appeared in 1837 in the journal, British Critic—brought the design and decoration of church buildings to the fore, and groups arose that promoted and published the results of such studies.1 The major figure in the English Gothic Revival was the architect Augustus Welby Northmore Pugin (1812–1852). Like Solntsev and Viollet-le-Duc—although he had contact with neither and seems to have been the originator of his own ideas—he sought to create a usable patrimony and stimulate the religious imagination. This fascination with the Gothic era prompted Pugin to be received into the Roman Catholic Church at the age of twenty-three, and from then on he seamlessly blended his religious convictions with his architectural principles. Some Anglicans recognized Pugin’s conversion as a threat, worried that historical logic would lead others to prefer the

1 British Critic 21 (1837), 220, as noted in Oxford English Dictionary 5 (Oxford, 1989), 51.

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institutions and beliefs that had inspired the art they so admired.2 Others criticized Pugin for his spirit of total nostalgia, for highlighting “the differences between his idealized vision of medieval towns, churches, and institutions and the crude utilitarian forms and attitudes displayed in the nineteenth century.”3 The very titles of Pugin’s major works proclaim the message he offered to his fellow Englishmen. In 1836, he published at his own expense, Contrasts. Or, a Parallel Between the Noble Edifices of the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Centuries and Similar Buildings of the Present Day, Showing the Present Decay of Taste.4 Soon after, there appeared The True Principles of Pointed or Christian Architecture (1841)5 and An Apology for the Revival of Christian Architecture (1843).6 Less tendentious, his Glossary of Ecclesiastical Ornament and Costume (1844) proved to be a masterpiece of illustration in chromolithography. The driving theme that absorbed Pugin’s thought and work was stated on the first page of Contrasts: On comparing the Architectural Works of the last three Centuries with those of the Middle Ages, the wonderful superiority of the latter must strike every attentive observer; and the mind is naturally led to reflect on the causes which have wrought this mighty change, and to endeavour to trace the fall of Architectural taste, from the period of its first decline to the present day.7

Clearly, his admiration was reserved for the Gothic art of the High Middle Ages, and the reevaluation that he sought was less a matter of antiquarian study than a product of religious conviction, which of course made his writings controversial. His critics accused him of advocating a style unknown in the early Christian centuries, but Pugin replied simply that Gothic was the mature expression of forms that grew out of that primitive Christianity. Overall, Pugin saw an integral 2

Phoebe Stanton, The Gothic Revival and American Church Architecture (Baltimore, MD, 1968), 20. 3 Peter and Linda Murray, A Dictionary of Christian Art (Oxford, 2004), 450. 4 Charles Dolman published a second edition in London in 1841; a reprint with an introduction by H. R. H. Hitchcock was published in 1969 in New York by Humanities Press. 5 Note the subtle identification of “Gothic” or “pointed” architecture as “Christian.” The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York owns the manuscript copy: Stanton, Revival, 61, n. 45. 6 By the time of this title, Pugin makes a virtual and unequivocal identification of “Gothic” with “Christian.” 7 A. W. N. Pugin, Contrasts (London, 1844), 1.

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relationship among a better architecture, a better society, and religious reform. His concept of the Gothic pointed up toward God, as exemplified by great height and vertical lines, long considered emblematic of the resurrection. In True Principles, he remarked: “Nothing can be conceived more majestic than those successions of arches divided by light and elegant clusters of shafts running up to an amazing height and then branching over into beautiful intersected ribs, suspending a canopy of stone [at an] enormous height.”8 Pugin’s Gothic bespoke one faith and one society, interdependent in a common life, features that had been lost in the modern world, he believed, with its secularism, materialism, and disparate styles of architecture with no common meaning or purpose. Pugin, a believer in purpose or utility, advocated honest “structural” Gothic, not the merely “decorative,” which he scorned. His True Principles, he lectured, included: “First, that there should be no features about a building which are not necessary for convenience, construction, or propriety. Second, that all ornament should consist of enrichment of the essential construction of the building. . . . In pure architecture the smallest detail should have a meaning or serve a purpose.”9 His Glossary continued this theme: Ornament signifies the embellishment of that which is in itself useful. . . . Yet by a perversion of the term, it is frequently applied to mere enrichment, which deserves no other name than that of unmeaning detail, dictated by no rule but that of individual fancy and caprice. Every ornament, to deserve the name, must possess an appropriate meaning and be introduced with an intelligent purpose and on reasonable grounds.10

As to rationale and purpose, Pugin would wonder: Who could disagree? Obedience to his principles was not merely a technical nicety but a moral duty for English society and even more so for practicing architects. And should not architecture have some moral purpose, he argued, that was expressed in the principles of its design? Alongside utility, moral purpose, and a conviction of the superiority of Gothic architecture in his work and writings, Pugin displayed a deep sense of national pride. In his Apology he wrote: “In the name of common

8

Pugin, True Principles, ed. John Grant (Edinburgh, 1895), 55. Ibid., 1: “Strange as it may appear at first sight,” he concluded, “it is in pointed architecture alone that these great principles have been carried out.” 10 Pugin, Glossary (London, 1846), iii. 9

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sense, whilst we profess the creed of Christians, whilst we glory in being Englishmen, let us have an architecture, the arrangement and details of which will alike remind us of our faith and our country—an architecture whose beauties we may claim as our own, whose symbols have originated in our religion and our customs.” He saw England as taking the lead in his crusade: “Nor is there in the whole world a country which is better calculated for the revival of ancient excellence and solemnity than England. . . . With all her faults, we must remember that England, while she was the last to abandon Christian architecture, has been foremost in hailing and aiding its revival.”11 Pugin’s clarion calls fell on a receptive audience, who responded to his conviction that Gothic was a national, catholic, Christian, uniquely appropriate, and entirely superior style of art and architecture. He received more commissions than he could handle; the frontispiece of his Apology depicted twenty-two churches and chapels that he had designed. His most important works included the Roman Catholic cathedrals in Birmingham and Killarney, St. Patrick’s College, Maynooth, and his collaboration in rebuilding the Houses of Parliament after the great fire of 1834. Pugin was delighted with the success of his movement. In 1848, in the Tablet of London, he wrote: “England is, indeed, awakened to a sense of her ancient glory, and the reverence for things speedily passes on to the men and principles which produced them. But why do I say England—Europe, Christendom is aroused.” And not just Europe; the Gothic style spread to the United States, where architects carefully studied Pugin’s sketchbooks and designed such masterpieces as St. Patrick’s Cathedral and Grace Church in New York City as well as the Washington National Cathedral and the United States Military Academy in West Point. In all these structures, we see his emphasis upon verticality, revealed construction, and separately articulated component parts. Reviewing a 1995 exhibition on Pugin, the art critic John Russell concluded: “When Pugin wrote, it was as if he had a sharpened cutlass in his hand. When he sat down to the drawing board, designs poured from his hand as if from a spigot. He was admired throughout Europe for his championship of what became known as the Gothic Revival. Catholic and Protestant alike were to

11

Pugin, Apology (Edinburgh, 1895), 6 and 45.

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find in the Gothic esthetic of the pointed arch a soaring inspiration. In medieval ornament, they would find truth mated with beauty.”12 Thus, Pugin should not be labeled as merely a nostalgic convert to a medieval Catholicism that he sought to resuscitate by means of designs and architecture, for he constructed his historiography of the Gothic revival on a broader scale. Neither should he be regarded—any more than Solntsev in Russia or Viollet-le-Duc in France—as a simplistic copyist of a past long gone. He constantly reevaluated his positions. In the first edition of his Contrasts (1836) he had stated boldly that “pointed architecture was produced by the Catholic faith, and it was destroyed in England by the ascendancy of Protestantism.” But in the second edition (1841) he modified his position to assert that Protestantism was not the primary cause of that destruction, but rather that it was caused by “the decayed state of faith [generally] throughout Europe in the fifteenth century,” and at end of the book he concluded that the architecture of English churches would not “have fared much better under a Catholic hierarchy.” Pugin, overworked and perhaps worried that much of the ideal for which he had striven was little more than a utopian dream, succumbed to mental breakdown, insanity, and death at the age of forty. He was buried at St. Augustine’s Ramsgate in a family chapel designed by him—in the style of Gothic Revival.13 Both as artists and archaeologists, Pugin and Solntsev sought much of their inspiration in a distant past which they each splendidly revivified, and they were both extraordinarily creative thinkers, but each in his own way. There was an element of national pride in their works,

12 The New York Times (16 September 1995), C4. This magnificent exhibition, the first American retrospective on Pugin, resulted in a catalog: Paul Attenbury, ed., A. W. N. Pugin: Master of Gothic Revival (New Haven, CT, 1995). 13 The earliest biography of Pugin ever published seems to have been that by Benjamin Ferrey, entitled Recollections of N. Welby Pugin, and His Father, Augustus Pugin, with Notices of Their Works (London, 1861), with seven plates, seven in-text illustrations, and a portrait of A. W. N. Pugin by Joseph Nash. Ferrey, although a Protestant, had known Pugin well, but there is also an appendix intended to present Pugin’s conversion to Roman Catholicism in a favorable light. The latest biography of Pugin was published after the present essay was completed: Rosemary Hill, God’s Architect: Pugin and the Building of Romantic England (London, 2007). His letters have also been meticulously edited: Margaret Belcher, ed., The Collected Letters of A. W. N. Pugin, 2 vols. (Oxford, 2001–2003).

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Contrasted Chapels. The modern St. Pancras, London, at the top, with very little Christian symbolism and its ornaments merely tacked on, and with people cavorting in front of it. Bottom register, a late medieval pointed Gothic chapel in Yorkshire, with a memorial cross in front, before which someone prays.

perhaps more pronounced in Solntsev, and there was also a religious tone, perhaps more intentional in Pugin. They both sought to incorporate an attitude of authenticity or honesty, or what we moderns might call transparency, in their designs and in their dealings with the materials and media in which they worked. Probably because of his rather aggressive espousal of Catholicism, then a definite minority religion in England, Pugin seems to have had little or no contact with the British crown of his time—most especially with Queen Victoria—in contrast to Solntsev’s enjoyment of the patronage of Tsar Nicholas I, his designs of imperial porcelain dinnerware, and his state-sponsored publication of the six volumes of Antiquities of the Russian State. And where Pugin was given a relatively secondary role in the restoration of the Houses of Parliament after the fire of 1834, it was Solntsev who, only three years later, was chosen to lead the major restoration of the royal apartments in the Terem Palace at the Moscow Kremlin. While Solntsev allied himself with the officialdom of both church and state, Pugin took up the role of social critic, which can be seen most strikingly in the following illustrations from his first major work, Contrasts.

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Contrasted Residences for the Poor. In the upper register and center can be seen a modern poor house with its drab architecture and central observation tower. To the left is pictured a shabbily clothed man and, above and below, the master with his whip, handcuffs, and instruments of torture as well as the meager diet. The bottom middle provides evidence that the poor house made available subjects for medical experiment and even dissection. On the bottom right, discipline is enforced upon the poor. The bottom register, center, depicts the separated but related buildings of a medieval poor house (often called Domus Dei, or “House of God”), notably built in pointed architecture and focused upon the chapel. The left column features an honorably dressed poor man with a cross upon his cape, and below the master distributing alms. The bottom register, left, shows the hearty diet of beef, mutton, bacon, ale, cider, milk, porridge, wheat bread, and cheese. At bottom center a proper Christian burial is held for one of the inmates, with participation of the entire community. The bottom right illustrates discipline administered under the cross, the Scripture, and the community but without instruments of torture.

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Contrasted Altar Screens. On the left, a ruined cathedral sanctuary of 1830, with the Creed, Lord’s Prayer, and Ten Commandments displayed on the wall (as was generally the case on Anglican chancel walls from the mid-16th century). Protestant communion instruments are displayed on the altar, and kneelers at left and right for celebration of the Eucharist, together with the altar moved out from the wall. On the right, a glorious medieval reredos of 1430, with an abundance of pointed arches, statues of the saints, worshippers kneeling in prayer, and a priest facing eastward for celebration of the Holy Mass.

Contrasted Royal Chapels. On the left, the Chapel Royal at Brighton, the pulpit in the center and the preacher holding forth as though in a modern playhouse with rounded ceiling for better acoustics. On the right, the beautiful medieval chapel of St. George’s, Windsor, with its fan vaults and pointed arches and with the focus upon the divine service under way at the altar of God.

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Contrasted Sepulchral Monuments. Medieval on the right, with effigy of the dead asleep in Christ under pointed arches. On the left, the dead Earl of Malmsbury as though pausing in the midst of the enjoyment of a good book, comfortably reclining on a couch in Salisbury Cathedral with no Christian symbols evident.

Contrasted Parochial Churches. The Medieval Church of St. Mary Redcliffe on the right, and the modern Church of All Souls, Langham Place, London, under evangelical patronage on the left. The contrasting styles of architecture are obvious.

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Contrasted College Gateways. On the right, the medieval gateway of Christ Church Oxford, with pointed arches, statues, and a Christian procession under way, while on the left the modern doorway of King’s College in the Strand, London, founded 1829, with rounded arch, children playing rather than praying, and no sign of the presence of religion even though its purpose was supposed to be for the study of Anglican theology.

Whatever else Pugin may have been trying to say in his architectural studies and designs about the Gothic past, medieval Catholicism, pointed arches, national heritage, and ancient glory, there remains a strong social message that is present in his writings and drawings from the very beginning, namely a call for an ideal society, whether it ever actually existed or not, or whether it ever could exist. Pugin expressed this call most thoughtfully, creatively, and sharply in the foregoing examples of architectural illustrations from his Contrasts, and this dissatisfaction with his own contemporary society marks his essential contrast with Solntsev.

SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY Aksenova, Galina V., comp. Molitvoslov kniagini M. P. Volkonskoi: Raboty Akademiki zhivopisi Fedora Solntseva. Moscow, 1998. Attenbury, Paul, ed. Pugin: Master of Gothic Revival (New Haven, CT, 1995). Belozerskaia, N. A. “Fedor Grigor’evich Solntsev, professor arkheologicheskoi zhivopisi.” Russkaia starina 54 (April, May, and June, 1887). Bukhshtab, Boris. “Pervye romany Vel’tmana.” In Russkaia proza: Sbornki statei, ed. B. M. Eikhenbaum and Iu. N. Tynianov, 192–231. Leningrad, 1926. Efimova, Z. S. “Nachal’nyi period literaturnoi deiatel’nosti A. F. Vel’tmana.” In Russkii romantizm: Sbornik statei, ed. A. I. Beletskii, 51–87. Leningrad, 1927. Evtushenko, Marina. “Fedor Grigor’evich Sontsev: Novye dannye k tvorcheskoi biografii khudozhnika.” In Russkoe iskusstvo v Ermitazhe. Sbornik statei. St. Petersburg, 2003. Hill, Rosemary. God’s Architect: Pugin and the Building of Romantic England (London, 2007). Kirichenko, Evgenia. Russian Design and the Fine Arts, 1750–1917. New York, 1991. ——. Russkii stil’. Poiski vyrazheniia natsional’noi samobytnosti, narodnosti i natsional’nosti. Traditsii drevnerusskogo i narodnogo iskusstva v russkom iskusstve XVIII-nachala XX veka. Moscow, 1997. Knight, Nathaniel. “Science, Empire, and Nationality: Ethnography in the Russian Geographical Society, 1845–1855.” In Imperial Russia: New Histories for the Empire, ed. Jane Burbank and David Ransel. Bloomington, IN, 1998. Kudriavtseva, T. V., T. N. Nosovich and I. R. Bagdasarova. Farfor Brat’ev Kornilovykh. St. Petersburg, 2003. Lopato, M. N. Iuveliery starogo Peterburga. St. Petersburg 2006. O’Connell, Lauren. “A Rational, National Architecture: Viollet-le-Duc’s Modest Proposal for Russia.” Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians 52 (1993), 436–452. Odom, Ann. Russian Imperial Porcelain at Hillwood. Washington, D. C., 1999. ——. “Fedor Solntsev, the Kremlin Service, and the Origins of the Russian Style.” Hillwood Studies 1 (1991), 1–4. Pauly, T. de. Description ethnographique des peuples de la Russie. St. Petersburg, 1862. Pevny, Olenka, ed. Perceptions of Byzantium and Its Neighbors (843–1261): The Metropolitan Museum of Art Symposia. New Haven, CT, 2000. Raeff, Marc. Understanding Imperial Russia. NY, 1984. Rowland, Daniel and James Cracraft, eds. Architectures of Russian Identity. Ithaca, NY, 2005. Sobko, N. P. “Solnstev i ego khudozhestvenno-arkheologicheskaia deiatel’nost’.” Vestnik iziashchenykh iskusstv 1 (1883), 471–482. Solntsev, F. G. “Moia zhizn’ i khudozhestvenno-arkheologicheskie trudy: Rasskaz Akademika F. G. Solnsteva.” Russkaia starina 15 (1876), 109–128, 311–322, 617– 644 and 16 (1876), 147–160, 263–302. Tokarev, S. A. Istoriia russkoi etnografii. Moscow, 1966. Ungurianu, Dan. Plotting History: The Russian Historical Novel in the Imperial Age. Madison, WI, 2007. Valkenier, Elizabeth. Russian Realist Art. NY, 1989. Whittaker, Cynthia Hyla, ed., with Edward Kasinec and Robert H. Davis, Jr. Russia Engages the World, 1453–1825. Cambridge, MA, 2003.

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Wortman, Richard. Scenarios of Power: Myth and Ceremony in Russian Monarchy. Vol. 1: From Peter the Great to the Death of Nicholas I (Princeton, NJ, 1995). Vol. 2: From Alexander II to the Abdication of Nicholas II (Princeton, NJ, 2000).

INDEX OF SUBJECTS Note: The abbreviation ill. following a page reference indicates an illustration. Abbey Church of St. Denis, 150ill. Academy of Arts (Imperial), 4, 17, 19, 21, 25, 26–28, 42, 61, 63 Academy of Sciences (Imperial), 21, 61, 131–132 Adrian, St., 100 Afanas’ev, Aleksandr, 68 Aleksandr, St., 100 Aleksandr Nevskii, Prince, helmet of, 6, 13, 22–23, 34, 35, 35ill., 48, 63–64, 69 Aleksandra Fedorovna (wife of Nicholas I), 53 Aleksei Mikhailovich, Tsar, 6, 39, 44–45, 49 breastplate of, 34, 35ill. throne, 161, 162ill., 163 Alexander I, Emperor, xxvii–xxviii, 18, 19, 22, 31, 62–63 Alexander II, Emperor, xxix, 57, 58, 88, 91 Alexander III, Emperor anointment vessel, 72ill. art patronage of, 89 and Kievan restorations, 91, 92, 95, 96, 97, 98, 99, 104 menu for coronation banquet, 46ill. ornament and pageantry, 13 and Prakhov, 15, 91, 92, 95, 96, 97, 98, 99, 104 and Russian style, 59, 90 and Soltsnev, 86 Alexis Komnen, Emperor, 37 Anna Ioannovna, Empress anointment vessel, 72ill. Annunciation Cathedral of Our Lady of the Don, 68 Antiquities of the Russian State (Solntsev), 43, 55, 61, 65, 102, 121, 145, 152, 156–158, 162, 170 creation and influence, 11–15, 30–41, 42, 58, 70–72 illustrations, xxiv, 8, 9, 12, 29, 32, 33, 35, 36, 37, 38, 44, 56, 67, 71, 77, 162 Antonii, Metropolitan, 79 Archaeographical Commission, 61–62 Archaeological Institute, 74

archaeology, 3, 90 archaeology, artistic, 62–64, 74, 75 Argunov, Ivan, 142 arms and armor, 22–23, 42, 63–64, 149, 158, 159 Ashmolean Museum, xxiii Assumption, Cathedral of the (Moscow), 67–68, 70 Athanasius of Alexandria, 106 Augustus Caesar, 37 avant garde, 59 Baer, Karl von, 135–138, 142–143 Baldus, Edouard, 150–151 Ballets Russes, 1, 14, 14ill., 59 Basin, Petr, 25 Belarus, 86 Beretti, Aleksandr, 91 Berkhan, Johann, 131 Bestuzhev-Marlinskii, Aleksandr Andrei, Prince of Pereiaslavl, 110 Bildungstrieb, 134–135, 139 Black Death, xxi Blumenbach, Johann Friedrich, 134–135, 139, 140 Bodin, Jean, xxii Bogdanov, Anatolii, 144 Boltin, Ivan, xxvi Boris, St., 100, 106, 108 Borozdin, Konstantin, 62 bratina vessels, 52–53 bronze design, 42 Bruillov, Aleksandr, 65 Brumfield, William Craft, 39 Bulgarin, Faddei, 117 Dimitrii the Pretender, 114–116 Butovskii, Viktor History of Russian Manuscript Ornament of the X–XVI Centuries, 58, 161 Byzantine Empire, 2, 6, 26–27, 89, 95, 102, 106, 117, 153, 163 Calvin, John, xxii Catherine II, the Great, Empress, xxvii, 2, 6, 21, 31

178

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Chaadaev, Petr, 11, 139 Philosophical Letters, 138 charka cups, 47, 48 Chopen, Feliks, 55 Christ the Redeemer, Cathedral of (Moscow), 18, 20 chromolithography, 3, 30, 158, 166 Cody, William “Buffalo Bill,” 57 Collège de France, xxii The Complete Collection of Laws, 31 Constantine Monomakh, Emperor, 32 coronation books, 72ill. costume, Russian, 10–11, 25, 37–39, 40 photographic depiction, 127–130 visual representation of, 130–131, 140–143 Costumes of the Russian State (Solntsev), 11, 112ill., 114ill., 115ill., 119ill., 123ill., 125ill., 127, 128ill. Crimea, 21 Crimean War, 58, 81, 88 Crown or Cap of Monomakh, 32, 32ill., 34, 45, 69 Crystal Palace Exhibition (1851), 51 Cujas, Jacques, xxii Cuvier, Georges, 140 Cyril, St., 103, 104, 106, 107, 108 Czechoslovakia, 42 Dal’, Vladimir, 123–124, 141 Dashkova, Ekaterina, Princess, 21 Davydov, Nikita, 48, 69 Decembrist Revolt, xxviii–xxix Dehio, Georg, xxiv Delianov, Ivan, 98 Demetrios of Thessalonike, St., 100 Denon, Vivant, xxiii Diderot, Denis, xxiii Domostroi, xxvii Donskoi, Dmitri, Prince, 53 Dormition Cathedral of the Monastery of the Caves, 93, 95–96 drama, Russian, 110 dress, Russian. See costume, Russian Dresser, Christopher, 58 ecclesiology, 165 Ecole des Beaux-Arts, 159 Efimov, Nikolai, 19, 63 endova vessels, 53 English Gothic Revivial, 165–174 English Store, 51 Ermolaev, Aleksandr, 43, 62

ethnography, 3, 16 Academy of Sciences expeditions, 61, 131–132 Baer, Karl von, 135–138 Blumenbach’s naturphilosophie, 134–135 ethnographic division of Russian Geographical Society, 136–141 Georgi’s Description, 132–134 language study, 133 Nikolai Nadezhdin, 138–141 philological approach, 138–141 Society of Friends of Natural Science, Anthropology and Ethnography, 144 visual representation in, 130–131, 140–143 Vtorov’s photography, 127–130, 142 Europeanization, xxv–xxvi, xxviii, 2–3, 6, 87 Faibisovich, Victor, 22 Filaret, Metropolitan, 66, 91, 102 Fonvizin, Denis, xxvii France. See also Viollet-le-Duc, Eugène Emmanuel architectural preservation movement, 146–151 Revolution of 1789, xxii–xxiii, 145–146 Free Masons, xxvii French Revolution, 2 Gagarin, Grigorii, Prince, 82–83, 83ill. Garrard silversmiths, 54 Gautier, Théophile Trésors d’art en Russie ancien et moderne, 157–158, 158ill. Gay, Peter, 51 George, St., 100 Georgi, Johann Gottlieb Description of All the Peoples Inhabiting the Russian State, 10, 132–134, 134ill. Georgii Aleksandrovich, Grand Duke, 57 Giucciardini, Francesco, xxii Gleb, St., 100, 106, 108 Gmelin, Johann, 131 Gothic Revival, 3, 165–174 Great Exhibition of the Works of All Nations (1851), 51 “Greek Project” (Catherine the Great), 6, 21

index of subjects

179

Grigor’ev, Vasilii, 141 Guizot, François, xxiii–xxiv

John I Tzimisces, Emperor, 26, 27ill. Jones, Owen, 58

Haussmann, Georges-Eugène, Baron, 150 helmets, early Russian, 22–23, 63–64 Heraldic Hall, 66 Hindu influences, 162–163 historic preservation movement, 7, 31, 146 historical memory, xxi–xxiv, xxix historical writing, material representation in Bulgarin, 114–116 drama, 110 Karamzin, 111–113 Lazhechnikov, 118–119 Lermontov, 110–111 narrative poetry, 110–111 Polevoi, 121 survey of novels, 111–121 A. Tolstoi, 119–120 Vel’tman, 121–126 Zagoskin, 113–114 historiography, xxiii Hoard of Riazan, 5, 24, 65–66, 65ill. Holy Synod, 9 iconography instruction, 79–81 reforms, 78 and Solntsev’s iconography, 76–78 Hugo, Victor Notre Dame de Paris, 149 Hungary, 42 Huss, Jan, xxii

Kalaidovich, Konstantin, 61 Kant, Emmanuel, 139 Karamzin, Nikolai, xxvi, xxvii, 2–3, 11, 42, 61, 119 History of the Russian State, xxvi–xxvii, xxviill., 3 “Marfa, the Governor,” 112–113 “Natalia, the Boiar’s Daughter,” 111–112 Kavelin, Konstantin, 141 Khlebnikov, Ivan, 56–57 Kiev Cathedral of St. Michael of the Golden Domes, 108 Cathedral of St. Sofia, 7–8, 93–94, 101, 102–103 Cathedral of St. Vladimir, 88, 88ill., 91, 92, 95–97, 95ill., 96ill. center of Rus’, 85–86, 96 Church of St. Cyril of Alexandria, 87–88, 87ill., 92, 95, 98–101, 101ill., 103, 105ill., 107ill. Dormition Cathedral of the Monastery of the Caves, 93 Prakhov’s restoration work, 95–102 Solntsev’s restoration work, 93–95, 101, 102–103 Kiev Ecclesiastical-Archaeological Society, 91 Kiev University, 92 Kievan Rus’ about, 2, 6, 8, 16, 18, 23, 27, 63, 85–86, 89, 90–91, 94, 96, 98–99, 100, 106 in Bulgarin, 114–116 in drama, 110 in Karamzin, 111–113 and Kiev church restorations, 89, 90–91, 94–101, 103 in Lazhechnikov, 118–119 in Lermontov, 110–111 in narrative poetry, 110–111 in novels, 111–121 in Polevoi, 121 in A. Tolstoi, 119–120 in Vel’tman, 121–126 in Zagoskin, 113–114 Kiprenskii, Orest, 22 Kirichenko, Evgeniia, 28, 155 Kivelson, Valerie, 39 Klodt, Petr, 53

Iaroslav the Wise, Prince, 102 Iaroslav Vsevolodovich, 63, 64, 64ill. iconography, 10 canons of, 75–76 Committee for the Oversight of Russian Icon Painting, 84 Gagarin, 82–83 Holy Synod’s instruction, 79–84 secularization, 76 Solntsev, 10, 67–68, 76–78, 80–81 Ioasaf I, Metropolitan, 71ill., 157ill. Ireland, 3, 42 Iur’ev, Ivan, 45 Iurii Vsevolodovich, Prince, 63 Iusupov, Nikolai, 66 Iusupov family, 49–50, 49ill. Ivan III, 86 Ivan IV “the Terrible,” 49, 55, 110, 111, 119 Izbornik of 1073, 25, 27

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Kneller, Gottfried, 57 Konstantin Nikolaevich, Grand Duke (son of Nicholas I), 13, 47–51 Konstantin Service, 48ill. Konstantinov, Leontii, 44–45 Korotkov, Aleksandr, 80–81 Kostenko, Serhii, 97 Kotarbinskii, Wilhelm, 97 Kremlin. See also New Kremlin Palace Dormition Cathedral, 93, 95–96 Great Kremlin Palace, 55 Kremlin Armory, 5, 22, 23, 24 Kremlin Table Service, 6–7, 29–30, 43–47 restoration, 7, 12, 28, 30, 43, 73 Solntsev’s work in, 5, 67–68 Terem Palace renovation, 7, 28–29, 43, 73 Kukol’nik, Nestor The Hand of the Almighty Saved the Fatherland, 110 Kulikova, Battle of, 53 Laborde, Alexandre de Les Monuments de la France classés, 147–148 Lamanskii, Vladimir, 144 language study, xxv–xxvi, 133 law, xxii The Lay of Igor’s Campaign, 110 Lazhechnikov, Ivan The Infidel, 118–119 Leland, John, xxii Lenoir, Alexandre, xxiv, 146 Lermontov, Mikhail The Boiar Orsha, 110–111 The Song of Merchant Kalashnikov, 111 Litke, Fedor, 135–136 Liudmilla of Bohemia, 100 Livs, 137–138 Locke, John, 57 Lomonosov, Mikhail, xxv–xxvi London Service, 54 Louvre Museum, xxiii Lurcenius, Johann, 131 Luther, Martin, xxii Machiavelli, Niccolo, xxii Makovskii, Konstantin, 104 Malinovskii, Aleksei, 61 Malyshevskii, Ivan, 91 Martos, Ivan, 22

material representation in historical writing Bulgarin, 114–116 drama, 110 Karamzin, 111–113 Lazhechnikov, 118–119 Lermontov, 110–111 narrative poetry, 110–111 Polevoi, 121 survey of novels, 111–121 A. Tolstoi, 119–120 Tolstoi, 119–120 Vel’tman, 121–126 Zagoskin, 113–114 medieval period, xxi–xxii medieval revivals, 3, 7, 90, 94, 105, 107, 148, 151, 156, 165–174 Melville, Herman Benito Cereno, xxi memory, historical, xxi–xxiv, xxix menus, 46 Mérimée, Prosper, xxiv, 153 Méryon, Charles, 150–151 Methodius, St., 104, 106, 107, 108 Michael III of Byzantium, Emperor, 107 Mikhail Fedorovich, Tsar, 23, 33, 33ill. Millin, Aubin-Louis, 146–147 Minin, Kuzma, 22 Mongols, 2, 86 Mongolian Woman, 134ill. Monomakh, Crown or Cap of. See Crown or Cap of Monomakh Montfaucon, Bernard de, 148–149, 156 Monuments of the French Monarchy, 150ill. Monuments of German History, xxiv More, Thomas, xxii Moscow. See also Kremlin Cathedral of the Assumption, 67–68, 70 as center of Rus’ Orthodoxy, 96 Christ the Redeemer Cathedral, 18, 20 founding, 2 Moscow Archaeological Society, 99 Moscow Society of Russian History and Antiquities, 61 Moscow University, 61, 138 Mount Athos, 81 Müller, Gerhardt Friedrich, 131 Muscovite ornamentalism, 39 Muscovite Russia, 2, 6, 16, 18, 32, 39, 63, 85–86, 86, 90, 118

index of subjects Musée des monuments français, xxiv, 146 Musin-Pushkin, Aleksei, 17, 61, 63 Nadezhdin, Nikolai, 138–141 Napoleon I, Emperor, xxvi, 2, 61 Napoleon III, Emperor, 150, 153 Napoleonic wars, xxvii–xxviii narodnost’, 6, 17, 139–140 Naryshkina, Natalia (wife of Tsar Aleksei), 36, 45 national style, and political independence, 41–42 nationalism, 3, 41–42, 73 narodnost’, 6, 17, 139–140 Official Nationality, 89, 90 Neff, Timofei, 82 neo-Russian style. See Russian style neoclassicalism, xxii, 18–19, 39 Nevskii helmet, 6, 13, 22–23, 34, 35, 35ill., 48, 63–64, 69. See Aleksandr Nevskii, Prince, helmet of New Jerusalem Monastery, 18 New Kremlin Palace, 5, 7, 20–21, 20ill., 28, 30, 43, 73. See also Kremlin Nicholas I, Emperor, xxviii–xxix, 47, 73 art patronage, 68, 86, 89 eclecticism of, 39–40 and indigenous artistic tradition, 17, 95 interest in fostering national culture, 5–6, 15, 17–18, 43, 63, 66, 109 London Service, 54 Official Nationality, 89, 90 patronage of Solntsev, 5–6, 29, 59, 69, 93, 94, 102, 145, 153, 156, 170 politics, 58–59 promotion of national architecture, 18–19 and Russian style, 13, 14, 39, 41–42 veneration of antiquities, 23–24 Nicholas II, Emperor, 13, 59, 72 Nikolaevna, Maria, Grand Duchess, 82 Nikon, Patriarch, xxv, 71ill. Normans, 25, 33 Northern Bee, 50–51 Norway, 42 Notre Dame, Cathedral of (Paris), 149, 152, 153–154 novels, material representation in, 111–121 Novikov, Nikolai, xxvii Official Nationality, 32, 89, 90, 102 Old Believers, xxv, xxvii, 23, 102

181

Olenin, Aleksei about, 17 and Antiquities of the Russian State, 30, 42–43 career of, 21–22 “Essay on Russian Attire and Customs from the Ninth to the Eighteenth Centuries, An,” 66–67 ethnographical study, 25–26 influence on Solntsev, 4–5, 14, 24–30, 64–66, 75, 153; vision of, 4, 15, 21 and national museum, 62, 63–64 and Nicholas I, 19–20 The Russian Antiquities of Riazan, 65–66 vision of, 4, 21 Ol’ga, Princess, 100 “Orthodoxy, Autocracy, Nationality,” 6, 73, 94, 153 Ottoman Empire, 18, 104, 163 Ovchinnikov, Pavel, 56–57, 59 Pallas, Peter, 132 Pan-Slavism, 87, 90, 98–99, 100, 104, 106, 108 Paris Exhibition of Art and Industry (1855), 55 Pauly, Theodore de Description ethnographique des peuples de la Russie, 143, 143ill. peasant dress, 10–11, 37–39, 40 Peredvizhniki, 92, 97, 101–102, 104, 142 Perovskii, Lev, 130, 139 Peter I the Great, Emperor, xxivill., 32, 36 Europeanizing reforms, xxv–xxvi, xxviii, 2, 6, 87 historical treatment, 2–3 Pezold, August Georg, 137–138 photography, 127–130 places of memory, xxiii–xxiv Pobedonostsev, Konstantin, 97, 98 poetry, narrative, 110–111 Pogodin, Mikhail, 40 Polevoi, Nikolai, 121 Oath at the Holy Sepulcher, 116–118 Police Gazette, 50 Polish Revolt (1830–1831), 76 Porcelain Factory (Imperial), 43, 57–58 Potemkin, Grigorii, 21 Pozharskii, Dmitri, Prince, 22–23 Prakhov, Adrian archaeological revivalism, 88

182

index of subjects

Church of St. Cyril of Alexandria, 98–101 education and training, 91–92 Kievan restoration work, 15, 92, 95–101, 103–108 photography, 103, 104n54 on social role of art, 101–102 and St. Cyril of Alexandria Church, 92, 98–101, 103–108 and St. Vladimir Cathedral, 91, 92, 95–97 Pratt, Charles (Earl of Camden), xxii Pritchard, James, 140 Prokopovich, Feofan, 109 Protasov, Nikolai, Count, 78, 79–80 Protestant Reformation, xxii Public Library (Imperial), 19 Pugachevshchina, xxviii Pugin, Augustus W. N., 3, 15, 40, 58, 165–174 Apology for the Revival of Christian Architecture, 166, 167–168 Contrasts, 166, 170–174, 171ill., 172ill., 173ill., 174ill. Glossary of Ecclesiastical Ornament and Costume, 166, 167 True Principles of Pointed or Christian Architecture, 166–167 Pushkin, Aleksandr, xxvi, 4, 16, 22 Boris Gudunov, xxix, 109–110 Pymonenko, Mykola, 97 Racinet, Auguste, 58 Radishchev, Aleksandr, xxvii religion, and art Holy Synod and iconography, 76–84 Solntsev’s iconography, 10, 67–68, 76–78, 80–81 Repin, Il’ia, 104 revolutions, xxi Richebourg, Pierre-Amboise, 157–158, 158ill. Riurikid dynasty, 37, 54, 85, 100, 109 Romanov dynasty, xxiv–xxv romantic nationalism, 3, 7, 58 romanticism, xxiii Rosicrucians, xxvii Ruminantsev, Nikolai, Count, 61 Rus’. See Kievan Rus’ Russia antiquities veneration, 23–24 appearance of national dress, 37–39 court dress, 13–14 Europeanization, xxv–xxvi, 2–3, 6, 87

founding of, 2 indigenous artistic tradition, 17, 21–22 language, xxv–xxvi moral physiognomy of, xxvii origins of, 86 serfdom and popular participation, xxviii–xxix Russian Archaeological Society (Imperial, St. Petersburg), 73, 91, 92, 98, 99, 102 Russian Geographical Society (Imperial, St. Petersburg), 128, 129, 130–131, 135–138, 141–142, 144 Russian Orthodox Church, xxv, 2, 6, 20–21, 73, 89, 96–97, 106. See also Holy Synod; iconography Russian Newsletter on the Arts, 53 Russian style (le style russe or russkii stil’) advent of, 39–41 ecclesiastical nature of, 9 elite’s embrace of, 46 expression of, 1 international regard, 59 and national identity, 41 “Orthodoxy, Autocracy, Nationality,” 6, 73 reactionary nature of, 59 and Sazikov, 50, 51, 55–56 Solntsev’s development of, 11, 13, 15 teaching of, 13 Russo-Byzantine style. See Russian style Safonov, Tymofii, 97 St. Catherine, Church of (St. Petersburg), 18, 19–20 St. Cyril of Alexandria, Church of (Kiev), 15, 87–88, 87ill., 92, 95, 98–101, 101ill., 103, 105ill., 107, 107ill., 108 St. Mark’s Basilica (Venice), 83ill. St. Michael of the Golden Domes, Cathedral of (Kiev), 108 St. Petersburg Orthodox Theological Seminary, 10, 75, 79–84 St. Petersburg University, 91, 137 St. Sofia, Cathedral of (Kiev), 7–8, 23, 93–94, 101, 102–103 St. Sofiia, Cathedral of (Kiev), 8ill., 91, 92, 96, 108, 153, 155 St. Vladimir, Cathedral of (Kiev), 16, 88, 88ill., 91, 92, 95–97, 95ill., 96ill. Savel’ev, Pavel, 141

index of subjects Sazikov, Ignatii, 42, 50–55, 52ill., 56n42, 59 Sazikov, Pavel, 50 Schelling, Friedrich, 138–139 Schlözer, August-Ludwig, xxvi Semevskii, Mikhail, 40 Seniavin voyage, 135 serfdom, xxviii Seriakov, L. A., 76 Shcherbatov, Mikhail, xxvi Shishkov, Aleksandr, xxvi Shtorm, Ivan, 91 Shustov, A. L., 64ill. Sign, Cathedral of the (Novgorod), 77 Sjögren, Andrei, 137–138 Skotnikov, Egor, 68 Slavophilism, 87, 89, 90, 104, 108 Snegirev, Ivan, 32, 68 Monuments of Ancient Art in Russia, 58 Monuments of Muscovite Antiquities, 68 Society of French History, xxiv Society of Friends of Natural Science, Anthropology and Ethnography, 144 Solntsev, Fedor Grigorevich achievements, 11–12 Antiquities of the Russian State, xxiv, 8ill., 9ill., 11–15, 12–13, 12ill., 14, 29ill., 30–40, 32ill., 33ill., 35ill., 36ill., 37ill., 38ill., 43, 44ill., 55, 56ill., 58, 61, 65, 67ill., 70–72, 71ill., 77ill., 102, 121, 145, 152, 156–158, 157ill., 158ill., 162, 162ill., 170 and artistic archaeology, 64 attribution research, 69 awards and recognition, 73–74 “Battle of Lipits, The,” 64–65 Costumes of the Russian State, 11, 112ill., 114ill., 115ill., 119ill., 123ill., 125ill., 127, 128ill. criticism and reputation of, 94–95, 155 and Hoard of Riazan, 5, 24, 65–66 iconography, 10, 76–78, 80–81 ideology, 87 importance of, 40 Kievan restoration work, 93–95, 101, 102–103 Konstantin Service, 13, 47–51, 48ill., 153 Kremlin Table Service, 6–7, 29–30, 43–47 life’s work and influence, 5–14

183

New Kremlin Palace floors and carpets, 28, 30, 43, 73 and Nicholas I, 59, 93, 94, 153 and Olenin, 4–5, 17 parallels with Viollet-le-Duc, 151–164 presentation style, 156–158 promotion test exercises, 26–28, 27ill. and Pugin, 165, 169–170, 174 religiousness of, 78 and Sazikov, 13, 50–54 technique, 69 Terem Palace renovation, 28–29, 39, 43, 73, 153 youth and childhood, 4–5 Soroka, Grigorii, 142 Sparro, Pavel, 91 Sreznevskii, Izmail, 141 Stalin, Joseph, 108 Stange and Werfel, 54 starina, 23 Stasov, Vasilii, 18 Stasov, Vladimir, 41, 58, 161 Russki narodnyi ornament, 161 Stein, Baron von, xxiv Stroev, Pavel, 61–62 Stroganov, Sergei, Count, 102–103 Sultanov, Nikolai, 50 Sumarokov, Aleksandr, xxvii Sviatoslav Iaroslavovich, Prince, 25, 26–27, 108 Sviatoslav Igorevich, Prince, 26, 27, 27ill. Svin’in, Pavel, 23 Swedomskii, Pavel, 97 Tatishchev, Vasilii, xxvi Taylor & Knowles, 47 Temkin-Rostovskii, Mikhail, Prince, 22 Terem Palace renovation, 28–29, 29ill., 43, 51, 73 Theodore Stratilates, 100 Theodore Teron, St., 100 Time of Troubles, 109, 110 Timm, Vasilii, 129ill., 130 Tithe, Church of the (Kiev), 18, 63 Tolstoi, Aleksei, 110, 126 The Death of Ivan the Terrible, 110 Prince Serebrianyi, 119–120 Tsar Boris, 110 Tsar Fedor Ioannovich, 110 Tolstoi, Dmitrii, Count, 91, 98

184

index of subjects

Ton, Konstantin, 7, 19–20, 19n9, 73, 93 Ton style, 20–21 Trediakovskii, Vasilii, xxv–xxvi Tulinov, Mikhail, 127–128 Ukraine, 86 Ungurianu, Dan, 121–122 Uvarov, Sergei, 135–136 Valuev, Petr, 62 Varangians. See Normans Vasner, Max, 123–124 Vasnetsov, Viktor, 97 Banquet Menus from Czarist Russia, 46ill. Vel’tman, Aleksandr, 32, 121–126 Description of the New Imperial Palace in the Moscow Kremlin, 20ill. Koshchei the Immortal, 122–124 Sviatoslavich, the Enemy’s Fosterling, 124–126 Venetsianov, Aleksei, 142 Vernet, Horace, 53 Victoria and Albert Museum, 57 Viktor, St., 100 Viollet-le-Duc, Eugène Emmanuel, xxiv, 3, 8, 15, 40 criticism of restoration work, 154–155 Dictionnaire raisoné d’architecture, 160ill. Dictionnaire raisoné du mobilier français, 157ill., 160ill. L’Art russe, ses origenes . . . son avenir, 162ill.

medieval focus, 152, 159 and national identity, 161 and Pugin, 165 on objects and function, 159–160 parallels with Solntsev, 151–164 predecessors, 146–151 on Russian art, 162–163 state patronage, 153 training, 152 Vitali, Ivan, 53 Vitberg, Aleksandr, 18 Vladimir Monomakh, Prince, 32, 37 Vladimir the Great, Prince, (St. Vladimir), 91, 97, 100, 125 Volkonskii, Petr, 17n1 Vorob’ev, Maksim, 4, 18, 66, 105 Vrubel’, Mikhail, 97, 100, 105, 106 Vsevolod Ol’govich, Prince, 98n35 Vtorov, Nikolai, 127–130, 142 Vzdornov, Gerold, 25 Wachtel, Andrew, 109 Wenceslaus of Bohemia, 100 Winckelmann, Johann, 21 Woolf, Nikolai von, 45–46 Wortman, Richard, 90 Wyclif, John, xxii Zabolotskii (artist), 80 Zagoskin, Mikhail, 31–32, 120 Askold’s Grave, 113–114 Iurii Miloslavskii or the Russians in 1612, 113, 114–115, 117 Zamyrailo, Viktor, 97 Zauerveid, Aleksandr, 65 Zwingli, Ulrich, xxii