Conquest of the 1237, Russia fell a prey to the Mongols, who, however, remained contented with the suzerainty of the country, but who, through the frequent visits of the Russian grand dukes and barons to the court of the Great Khan, must have exercised an indirect influence. Kiev ceased to be the capital, and after Vladimir had enjoyed this honor for a short time Moscow became in 132S the seat of the grand dukes, as well as of the archbishop or metropolitan. The city, built entirely of wood, suffered repeatedly from conflagrations.
Architecture of the Fifteenth to the close of the fif teenth century there were in all Russia no stone structures except the churches: houses and palaces—even the walls of various cities—were of wood. Bishop Enphemins of Novgorod is said to have been the first who erected a palace of stone (1433); it was constructed by German architects. The Grand Duke Ivan III. summoned architects, masons, quarry men, smiths, goldsmiths, and bell-founders from the West. He mar ried (1472) a princess of the exiled Byzantine family of the she had been educated in Italy, and brought Western ideas to her new home. In 1494 the metropolitan Jonas erected a stone palace.
Church of the Ivan III., employing Russian work men, had nearly completed the stone church of the Assumption of St. Mary upon the Kremlin, in Moscow, it entirely collapsed, and he de spatched an embassy to the. Doge of Venice for an architect, who was deputed to him in the person of Ridolfo Fioravanti of Bologna. But when this artist, after an honorable reception, entered upon his duties (1475), he was commanded to keep strictly to the style of the country, and especially to take the Cathedral of Vladimir for his model. In 1479 the still-existing structure was completed. The walls have outside buttresess united by arches, four on each side and three at each end; these arches correspond to barrel-vaults which are without any outer roof-covering. In the centre rises a dome, and four similar domes stand at the four angles, all upon lofty tambours. These. cupolas, like those of the Persians and Hinclus, are bulb-shaped. There are three apses on the eastern side. Small blind arcades on colonnettes with cuboidal capitals and rings of mouldings round the shafts, which rest on consoles, are reminiscences of the Romanesque of the West, while the Renaissance is denoted in the Ionic pilaster-caps. The Church of the Archangel Michael was the work of the same architect, and has exactly the same characteristics.
Architecture of the Selrieenth the aspect of the churches of the fifteenth century is decidedly Oriental, that of the churches of the sixteenth century is much more so, on account of their greater elabora tion. Though the architects were chiefly foreigners, the pure forms of
the Renaissance are nowhere employed, and can be recognized only with difficulty among the completely fanciful, and for the most part barbaric, workmanship surrounding them. Next to the two churches in the Krem lin comes that of the Annunciation, a work of the Italian architect Aloisio. In this the exterior of the barrel-vaults takes the form of the pointed arch, and instead of five cupolas there are nine.
The Cathedral Vassili Blashennoi (St. Basil) was built in 1554 by Ivan the Terrible. This consists of eighteen smaller shrines united, arranged in two differently-designed storeys, and provided with the greatest variety of dome-covered towers (/5/. 23, AT. 3). The form of the domes, which curve out far beyond their tambours and bear immense crosses, the pecu liar decoration of the tower-like tambours with round and pointed arched pediments, as well as the filling in of the few flat surfaces, are extraordi narily characteristic. A number of details recall the Italian style, yet the composition as a whole is thoroughly original and produces a decidedly Oriental impression. A miniature imitation of this structure is the Church of the Beheading of St. John the Baptist at Jakovo, near Moscow, in which five octangular chapels are symmetrically arranged into a square plan and four lower cupolas are dominated by a large central structure.
Architecture of the CenillIT.—The churches erected in the seventeenth century have less fanciful shapes, but the details have be come still more bizarre; Figures I, 2, and 4 show very characteristic examples. Even palaces obtained a fantastic expression, chiefly through capricious and improper use of Renaissance forms, which in palace- as in church-construction developed into an independent national style (fig. 5). At the end of the sixteenth century, in the time of Peter the Great, when the Western style itself became fantastic by its degradation into the baroque style, Russia came into closer relations with the Occident, and the old forms became antiquated and survived only in remoter districts. At the present day the attempt is being made to bring them again into general use as a national element. Even outside of Russia, wherever Russian princesses live or colonies of rich Russians are settled we see national Russian churches which, with their gilded bulb-shaped cupolas, look strange enough amid their surroundings, yet which preserve in their details more of the antique classic forms than their prototypes in Russia.