Page:A History of Architecture in All Countries Vol 2.djvu/497

Rh Bk. IX. Ch. VII. RUSSIA. 481 CHAPTER VII. MEDIAEVAL ARCHITECTURE OF RUSSIA. CONTENTS. Churches at Kieff — Novogorod — Moscow — Towers. CHRONOLOGY. DATES Rurik the Varangian at Novogorod a. d. 850 Olga baptized at Constantinople. . 955 St. Vladimir the Great 980-1015 Yoraslaf died 1055 SackofKietf IKW Tartar invasion under Gengis Khan lliliS DATES. Tartar wars and domination till. A. D. 1480 Ivan III 1462-1505 Basil IV 1505-1533 Ivan IV., or the Terrible .... 1533-1584 Boris 1598-1605 Peter the Great 1689-1725 THE long series of the architectural styles of the Christian world which has been described in the preceding pages terminates most a])propriately with the description of the art of a people who had less knowledge of arcliitecture and less appreciation of its beauties than any other with which we are acquainted. During the Middle Ages the Russians did not erect oile single building which is worthy of admiration, either from its dimensions, its design, or the elegance of its details ; nor did they invent one single architectural feature which can be called their own. It is true the Tartai's brought with them their bulbous form of dome, and the Russians adopted it, and adhere to it to the present day, unconscious that it is the symbol of their subjection to a race they affect to despise ; but excepting as regards this one feature their architecture is only a bad and debased copy of the style of the Byzantine Em]iire. There is nothing, in fact, in the arcliitecture of the country to lead us to doubt that the mass of the population of Russia was always of purely Aryan stock, speaking a language more nearly allied to the Sanskrit than any of the other Mediaeval tongues of Europe, and that whatever amount of Tartar blood may have been imported it was not sufficient to cure the inartistic tendencies of the race. So much is this felt to be the case, that the Russians themselves hardly lay claim to the design of a single building in their country from the earliest times to the present day. They admit that all the churches at Kieff, their eai-liest capital, were erected by Greek architects ; those of Moscow by Italians or Germans ; while those of St. Petersburg, we know, were, with hardly a single exception, erected by Italian, German, or Frencli architects. VOL. II. — 31