Page:A History of Architecture in All Countries Vol 2.djvu/498

482 482 RUSSIAN ARCHITECTURE. jeART il. These last have perpetrated caricatures of revived Roman architec- ture worse than that to be found anywhere else. Bad as are some of the imitations of Roman art found in. Western Europe, they are all the work of native artists, are, partially at least, adapted to the climate, and common sense peeps through their Avorst absurdities ; but in Russia only second-class foreigners have been employed, and the result is a style that out-herods Herod in absurdity and bad taste. Architecture has languished not only in Russia, but wherever the Sclavonic race predominates. In Poland, Hungary, Moldavia, Wallachia, etc., although some of these countries have at times been rich and prosperous, there is not a single original structure worthy to be placed in comparison with even the second-class contemporary buildino-s of the Celtic or Teutonic races. Besides the ethnographic ina])titude of the nation, however, there are other causes which would lead us to anticijiate, a j^riori^ that nothing either great or beautiful was likely to exist in the mediaeval architecture of Russia. In the first place, from the conversion of Olga (964) to the accession of Peter the Great (1689), with whom the national style expired, the country hardly emerged from barbarism. Torn by internal troubles, or devastated by incursions of the Tartars, the Russians never enjoyed the re])ose necessary for the development of art, and the countiy was too thinly peopled to admit of that concentration of men necessary for the carrying out of any great architectural undertaking. Another cause of bad architecture Is found in the material used, which is almost universally brick covered with ])laster ; and it is well known that the tendency of plaster architecture is constantly ^o ex- travagance in detail and bad taste in every form. It is also extremely perishable, — a fact which opens the way to repairs and alterations in defiance of congruity and taste, and to the utter annihilation of everj - tiling like archaeological value in the building. When the material was not brick, it was wood, like most of the houses in Russia of the present day ; and the destroying hand of time, aided no doubt by fire and the Tartar invasions, have swept away many buildings Avhich would serve to fill up gaps, now, it is feared, irremediable in the history of the art. Notwithstanding all this, the history of architecture in Russia need not be considered as entirely a blank, or as Avholly devoid of interest. Locally we can follow the history of the style from the south to the north. Springing originally from two roots — one at Constantinople, the other at Armenia — it gradually extended itself northward. It first established itself at Cherson, then at Kieff, and after these at Vladimir and Moscow, whence it spread to the great commercial city of Novogorod. At all these places it maintained itself till supplanted by the rise of St. Petersburg.