Download Novgorod Architecture at the End of the 12th Century and

Novgorod Architecture at the End of the 12th Century and Architecture of the Pre-Mongol Period at
the Turn of the 12th and the 13th Centuries
The main result of the Ladoga stage in the history of the Novgorod school was the development of a
small church type built in the Novgorod manner with its distinct stylistic and imaginative features. The
cross-domed form, simplified to the maximum, assumed in Ladoga buildings a distinctive artistic shape
typical of the Novgorod style.
The small size makes construction of such churches affordable for patrons from different social groups,
starting with archbishops or princes and ending with groups of average citizens and separate wealthy
individuals. Such churches were built fast, often within one season. This was facilitated not only by the
relatively small dimensions of the building, but also by the masonry of local limestone, which sped up
the work. The cheapness of this material also contributed to the democratisation of architecture, for it
made church construction affordable for the wilder population.
As already mentioned, the Ladoga type of stone construction belongs to the third quarter of the 12th
century. The next, also the last, stage in the development of pre-Mongol architecture in Novgorod dates
back to the last quarter of the 12th and the beginning of the 13th centuries. Construction becomes
especially intensive and is conducted in Novgorod itself and its surroundings. The type of church
developed in Ladoga becomes the dominant one. Its main features were as follows:
small size;
four pillars;
one dome;
simplified interior structure;
laconic treatment of the facades.
The simplicity of forms creates the artistic image full of manly dignity and strength.
Among the first buildings belonging to this new stage is the Annunciation Church in the village of Arkazhi
near Novgorod built in 1179 (the chronicle records the exact time period - from May 21 to August 25).
The vaults and the drum of the church, as well as parts of the western and southern walls, belong to the
17th century; the apse has mural paintings from 1189. In 1185, residents of Lukina Street founded the
Church of Sts. Paul and Peter, according to the chronicle, “on Silnishche”, that is, in Sinichya Gora. For
unknown reason the construction was delayed and only completed in 1192. The building is wellpreserved. The church followed the tastes of the time: a tight four-pillared composition with zakomari
crowing the facade tops, one dome, and three apses rising as high as the main structure of the building.
The floor plan dimensions were 16.8 x13 m, the height - about 17 m. The depth of the foundation made
of boulders covered with crushed-brick mortar was typical for the time - about 60 cm.
The Church of Sts. Peter and Paul stands apart from other Novgorod churches because of its unusual
masonry technique. The building mainly uses plinfa brick masonry with the "hidden" layer. The
Novgorod school typically used local limestone and plinfa brick masonry. Plinfa brick masonry with the
hidden layer where plinfa bricks appeared on the face of the wall on each second course, with one
course hidden inside the wall, was in the 12th century only used by Polotsk builders. This technical
feature makes it possible to assume that masters from Polotsk participated in the building of the church.
As for the architect, he was probably a native of the Novgorod land, judging by the spatial composition
of the church.
A number of other churches of that period have survived only at the level of their foundations or lower
parts of the walls. These are the Cathedral of the Transfiguration at the Khutyn Monastery built in 1192
(its underground part was uncovered below the existing church of 1515), the Church of the Resurrection
on Lake Myachino built in 1196 (it was demolished in 1463 and built anew using the old foundations),
the Church of the Prophet Elijah in Slavna built in 1202 (rebuilt anew in 1455 and surviving only in its
lower parts), the Church of St. Panteleimon built in 1207 (known only through excavations), and the
non-extant Church of St. Cyril built in 1196 on commission from the brothers Konstantin and Dmitr. The
chronicle even records the name of the architect - the church builder Korov Yanovich from Lubyanaya
Street. The exact similarity of technical-technological features and the plans of these churches make it
possible to assume a fundamental similarity of their spatial compositions as well.
Among the monuments mentioned above a special place, in terms of historical-architectural importance
and the role in the history of Russian culture, belongs to the Church of the Transfiguration of Our
Saviour on Nereditsa Hill. The church was commissioned by Prince Yaroslav Vladimirovich and built in
1198. Commission from a prince at that period was a rare occasion. Starting from the end of the 19th
and the early 20th centuries when the study of Old Russian, including Novgorod, architecture was placed
on a scientific basis, the Church of Our Saviour on Netreditsa has been recognized by researchers as one
of the most typical buildings of the Novgorod school and one of the most interesting realisations of the
Novgorod imagery and style.
I would like to add that this building from the concluding period of Old Russian architecture, the Church
on Nereditsa, can be regarded as the crowning point in the transformation of Byzantine architectural
heritage by Russian architects. I believe that the Novgorod stylistic identity of this church does not
prevent it from representing pre-Mongol architecture of the late 12th and the early 13th century in its
entirety. This is a very definitive result, though not the only one.
Let me elaborate upon the process of the church building as it is seen now in accordance with the
results of modern research. After the solemn prayer service, the place was chosen on the levelled
ground for the altar stone and the east-west longitudinal axis of the future church. Then, using a cord
and wooden pegs, the builders marked the layout of the church. First of all, they pegged out the overall
dimensions of the building: its length - 15.7 m, its width - 11.4 m, as well as the depth of the foundation,
the position of the four pillars, three semicircular apses and a small vestibule at the west end. Using the
layout, they started the earthworks, which consisted in digging ditches for the foundation about half a
meter deep and backfilling it with boulders. Before laying the ground parts above the foundation, they
made a final adjustment and established the thickness of the walls, the width of the pillars and the nave,
the length and the width of the domed central bay.
Then the masonwork started; the skill of the builders was apparent as well as their extensive experience
in erecting this kind of churches. Churches of the Nereditsa type had become wide-spread in the
practice of Novgorod building as early as the 1260s-70s (buildings of the Ladoga type). The masonwork
was progressing fast; the builders were working efficiently, without delays or interruptions. They had
made preparations for the construction beforehand: there was no lack of plinfa bricks, dark-red shelly
limestone, mortar or any other building material. The masonry used alternating layers of stone and
plinfa bricks without strict order. The walls, except for the thicker western wall where the staircase to
the choir loft was planned, were about one meter thick. Three door openings were bridged with oak
beams; in order to stiffen the masonry, wooden braces of square or circular section were placed inside
the walls. For better acoustic properties, resonators were installed. The rough finished stone gave a
pleasant softness to the walls; the walls were not finished in stucco: the surfaces were floated with a
thin layer of crushed brick mortar also used for rubbing the joints; the vaults and arches were built with
the help of wooden falsework. The semicircular facade tops, the zakomari, were built using a kind of
compass in the form of a peg secured inside the masonry, with a cord attached to it. When the wooden
roofing and the floor made of straight ceramic tiles were finished, the main construction work was over.
"And finished in the month of September", writes the chronicler, i.e. the construction lasted about three
months. And in a year the church would be decorated with mural paintings.
The written sources are silent about the architect who built the Church on Nereditsa. Only taking into
account the building situation in Novgorod by the end of the 12th century, it would be possible to put
forward a hypothesis concerning the authorship.
Large-scale stone construction in the last two decades of the 12th century was commissioned by
Novgorod archbishops who had, most probably, a permanent team of builders at their disposal. In 1196,
builders of the archbishop finished the Church of the Resurrection. At the same time, as already
mentioned, master Korov Yakovich built the Church of St. Cyril, commissioned by the residents of
Lubyanaya Street. We have no information about any other constructions built by this master. But in
1198, when the Church on Nereditsa was under construction, the archbishop's team was working in
Russa where they were building the Church of the Transfiguration commissioned by Archbishop Martiry.
Therefore we have a reason to believe that the prince's commission, i.e. the building of the Nereditsa
Church, was fulfilled by Korov Yanovich and his team of masons.
In the second half of the 19th century, the Church on Nereditsa caught the interest of lovers of the
antique, artists, historians of painting and architecture. Special attention was paid to the perfectly
preserved murals - a unique body of wall paintings dating back to the 1199. We can say that due to the
heightened attention to the Russian antique among the members of the educated public, the Church on
Nereditsa took on a new lease of life.
In 1903-1904, architectural restoration of the church took place under the supervision of Petr
Pokryshkin, an experienced renovator and a great expert in Old Russian architecture. The Church on
Nereditsa was given a renovated look. Petr Pokryshkin saw the main purpose of restoration in giving
assistance to the bearing constructions of the building, in revealing its original forms and preserving the
later ones if there was lack of documented information or field data to justify reconstruction.
Restoration of the Nereditsa Church was performed to a high, one might say to European, standards, if
not without certain shortcomings, which later, in 1919-1920, the restorer had to correct. Thoroughly
investigating the technical details of the ancient building, Pokryshkin also managed to capture the
imaginative content of the construction. It is interesting to hear his ideas about characteristics of
Novgorod churches in the pre-Mongol period. He wrote: "I have realized what constitutes the appeal of
Novgorod churches. This appeal lies in their simplicity and shapely proportions, especially in the interior.
The simplicity, cosines and shapeliness of Novgorod churches tell much more to a Russian architect than
the amounting to dryness sumptuous decoration and pretentious proportions of Romanesque and
Gothic churches. However, few Russians after looking at the foreign wonders would agree with me."
The new appearance of the church influenced considerably the understanding of Novgorod architecture,
its distinctive features and style. The builders captured in stone an original type of church beauty which
fused together the impulses coming from the Byzantine architecture and the architecture of South Rus',
and features inherent only to Novgorod architecture.
Let us imagine the Church of Nereditsa standing next to other buildings of the same period, created by
other schools, for instance, the Pyatnitskaya Church in Chernigov or the Church of the Intercession on
the Nerl River. They belong to the same type of building - three-pillared churches with three apses and
one dome. But even a quick comparison shows that the Nereditsa Church is imbued with such inimitable
Novgorod identity, a little awkward, rough but acutely appealing, that you begin to understand this: the
architectural canon is not an obstacle but a direct precondition of creativity in architecture.
Three same-type churches appear to draw three architectural portraits of the 12-century Old Russian
society. The Church on Nereditsa is devoid of affectation, of pretentious beauty. Its strong image
embodies the naive simplicity of its creators who even in everyday life, probably, felt shy in the presence
of decorative ornamentation, if not openly avoiding it; it is not befitting a Novgorodian, and it is not
befitting a real man. The beauty of the Nereditsa church is achieved by purely architectural devices: the
line, the plane, the space, the rhythm of their combination. This is quite different in case of a baroque
church where the abundance of decorations creates an impression of self-admiration, as if the building
is aware of its own assets and is proudly showing them off, admiring them together with the observers.
A serious ordeal awaited the Nereditsa Church in the autumn of 1941 when the church was destroyed
by the Nazi gunfire. After the war, thanks to the efforts of Novgorod restorers, the church was
reconstructed on the basis of accurate measurement drawing made by Pokryshkin. Only about 40% of
the original masonry survived. One should give proper respect to the high quality of the restoration and
reconstruction work.
Of the numerous stone constructions built after the Nereditsa Church only a small Church of the Nativity
of the Blessed Virgin on Peryn is extant. It was built most probably in the 1220s-30s. After WWII the
church was restored to its original look. After the Nereditsa Church, it seemed that the simplification of
church architecture had reached its ultimate limit. But the architect of the Peryn Church managed to
prove this wrong. The facades lost their lesenes which were left only at the corners. Only one apse
remained instead of three, and it only reached up to half of the church's height. Simplicity and
monumentality of this small building is an indication, imbued with appealing intensity, of the Novgorod
style, which is conclusively present in the largest cathedrals of the late 11th and the early 12th centuries,
starting from the Holy Sophia Cathedral, and is easily recognisable in the miniature-churches like the
Peryn Church. There is one feature of this church that had far-reaching consequences for the Novgorod
architecture of the 13th to the 15th centuries. The side vaults of the church are quarter-round in section.
This construction method changes the top of the facades on the outside. Instead of the gentle curve of
the traditional semicircular zakomari, facades of the Peryn Church received a dynamic three-centered
top. This is an important innovation, which can be explained by referring to another extant Novgorod
building of the early 13th century.
I mean the Church of Paraskeva Pyatnitsa on the Market (Pyatnitskaya Church). It was built earlier than
the Peryn Church, in 1297, by the Novgorod merchants who, according to the chronicle, traded with
foreign countries. The Pyatnitskaya Church is an unusual building; its plan and spatial composition
cannot be seen as a development of the Novgorod architectural tradition of the 12th century. The
design of the church seems to be a kind of inlay in the history of Novgorod architecture. In fact, this is
exactly so.
The four-pillared, one-domed plan here is treated in a way uncharacteristic for the Novgorod manner.
Three high, two-storey vestibules give the church composition a stepped look. The vestibules are fully
open inside the church proper, which gives the interior a cross-shaped character and makes it more
spacious. The concept of the sanctuary is also unusual. The central semicircular apse is projected far to
the east. The side apses inside are also semicircular but outside they become rectangular.
The unique character of the interior is achieved through the use of round pillars, the second floors of the
vestibules that play the role of choir lofts and are connected by passages inside the walls, and the
stepped archivolts surrounding the door openings, which were not typical for Novgorod churches. The
original top of the building is lost and, therefore, the main difficulty for reconstructing its original look is
perhaps determining the shape of its crowning parts. The studies have enabled us to identify two
important features of the exterior composition of the church. The corners of the church proper and of
the vestibules were accentuated with ornately shaped pilasters familiar to us from the architecture of
the late 12th and the early 13th centuries, but not of the Novgorod school. The facades ended not with
the usual zakomari, like in all Novgorod churches of the 12th century, but with the trefoil-shaped top,
where the side parts were quarter-circular and the central part - semi-circular in shape. This is where the
three-foiled top of the Peryn Church, mentioned above, comes from.
All these facts made researchers come to the conclusion that the Pyatnitskaya Church belonged to the
group of tower-shaped churches known from the architecture of Chernigov, Polotsk, Smolensk and
other towns of the late 12th and early 13th centuries. Especially close to the design of the Pyatnitskaya
Church comes the Church of the Archangel Michael in Smolensk built in the 1190s, and its predecessor,
the church in the Polotsk Detinets that is known only through excavations. It becomes obvious that the
Novgorod merchants commissioned a church to be based on the model of Polotsk-Smolensk churches
and, most probably, invited a master who was experienced in building this type of churches unusual for
Novgorod. Apparently the architect was invited from Polotsk or Smolensk. The Pyatnitskaya Church was
not the only Novgorod church of the tower-shaped type.
At the end of the 1980s, archaeological research of the Church of the Archangel Michael on Prusskaya
Street, built in the 1230s, showed that its technical and stylistic features were similar to those of the
Pyatnitskaya Church. Thus, the Novgorod school was not untouched by the architectural concepts that
were common to other parts of Kievan Rus' and were implemented in the tower-shaped churches of the
late 12th and the early 13th centuries, which marked a new stage in the history of Russian architecture.
The independence of architectural schools in the 12th century was accompanied by a gradually forming
tendency for integration. It had as its foundation the common culture of various lands existing during
the period of feudal fragmentation, the similarities of social conditions determining their development,
the acquisition of stone construction skills by local masters, the increased contacts between builders
from different schools that intensified in the 12th century, the transformation of the Byzantine
architectural system in order to develop the national artistic thought.
The tower-shaped church is the most brilliant and conclusive result of this process. Separate elements of
the future architectural compositions of this type appeared as early as in the 11th and the beginning of
the 12th centuries. The stepped vaults of the Holy Sophia Cathedral in Kiev, the quarter-circular vault of
the Holy Sophia in Novgorod, the trefoil-shaped vestibule tops of the Transfiguration Church in
Berestovo - these are separate elements that stood alone within a totally different architectural context.
The preconditions for the development of the tower-shaped church were formed in the Polotsk land as
early as in the first half and the middle of the 12th century. A perfect example of this new compositional
concept was the Transfiguration Church of the Euphrosyne Convent. The influence of the Polotsk models
led to the appearance in Smolensk at the end of the 12th and the early 13th centuries of an entire
architectural school where the ideas of Polotsk masters were further developed. Unfortunately, its only
extant building is the Church of the Archangel Michael on the Smyadyn River. The South Rus' group of
monuments belonging to the newly evolved type includes the Church of Paraskeva Pyatnitsa in
Chernigov, the Palace Church of St. Basil in Ovruch, and the church dedicated to the apostles in
Belgorod, known through excavations. Construction of these churches (commissioned by Rurik
Rostislavich) is connected with the name of Petr Milaneg, a prominent architect of the late 12th and the
early 13th centuries.
Archaeological research has identified buildings of this type in Kiev: the church on Voznesensky Descent
in Kiev, churches in Novgorod-Seversky and in Putivl. In our overview of architectural schools existing in
the late 12th and the early 13th centuries, we mentioned buildings of differing stylistic overtones but
similar in their compositional concept in Grodno, Halych and Yuriev-Polsky. This was the general context
of Kievan Rus' architecture, and the Pyatnitskaya Church on the Market, so unusual for the Novgorod
school, fits into it quite seamlessly. The church-monument of the late 12th and the early 13th centuries
with its stepped design, its dynamic top, its leaning towards ornamentation, clearly marks the
emergence of a distinct Old Russian architectural style. At the beginning of the 13th century, there were
promising conditions for its fruitful further development. But the Mongol Invasion put an end to the
possible realization of this potential.