Page:A History of Architecture in All Countries Vol 2.djvu/506

490 490 RUSSIAN ARCHITECTURE. Part II. Terrible (1534-1584), and its architect was a foreigner, generally supjDosed to have • III I I Doorway of the Troitzka Monastery, near Moscow. come from the West, inasmuch as this monarch sent an em- tassy to Germany under one Schlit, to procure artists, of whom he is said to lave collected 150 tor his service. If, however, German woi'kmen erected this __ building, it certainly was from Tartar de- signs. Nothing like it exists to the west- ward. It more re- sembles some E:ist- ern pagoda of modern date than any Euro- pean structure, and in fact must be con- pure Tartar building. sidered as almost a Still, though strangely altered by time, most of its forms can be traced back to the Byzan- tine style, as certainly as the details of the cathedral of Cologne to the Romanesque. The central spire, for instance, is the form into which the Russians had during five centuries been gradually changing the straight-lined dome of the Armenians. The eight others are the Byzantine domes con- verted by degrees into the bulb-like forms 948 Planet the Church of the ^^^iif'^» the Tartars practised at Agra and Assumption, Moscow. No scale. DpDjJ^ ^^ ^^.p]] ^^g throughout RuSsia. The arrangement of these domes will be under- stood by the plan (Woodcut No. 949), which shows it to consist of one central octagon surrounded by eight smaller ones, raised on a platform ascended by two flights of stairs. Beneath the platform is a crypt. For the general appearance the reader must be re- ferred to Woodcut No. 950, for words would 949. Plan of the Church of St. • i ^ i • i Basil, Moscovr. Ko scale. fail to couvcy any idea of so bizarre and