The publication of the monograph is timed to the anniversary of the Cathedral of the Intercession on the Moat, better known as the Cathedral of St. Basil the Blessed, - this year the temple, whose construction was completed in 1561, turns 455 years old. The author - the historian of architecture, doctor of art history, professor Andrei Leonidovich Batalov, told us about the history, main research topics and plans to publish the second volume:
“I have been studying the cathedral since the early 1980s - that is, all my scientific life. In the early 2000s, after the death of my teacher Sergei Sergeevich Podyapolsky, I had to head the commission for the restoration of St. Basil's Cathedral. From that moment on, we were tightly connected with him. This made it possible to truly explore the monument, get used to it, see what I could not see before. At the same time, the wonderful publisher Sergei Obukhov literally forced us, together with Lyubov Sergeevna Uspenskaya, to write a small book. It became a kind of digest of a real tome, on which I have been working for over twelve years. I wrote and rewrote the book, returning to it until the fall of this year, when it was already edited and typeset.
Over the years, books have been published"
Sacred Space of Medieval Moscow "," Church of the Ascension in Kolomenskoye ", written together with Leonid Belyaev; the first volume of the Collection of architectural monuments of the Moscow Kremlin, dedicated to the bell tower" Ivan the Great "and cathedral belfries, and other collective monographs. I wrote a lot, but I have a duty and conscience constantly forced me to return to the Intercession Cathedral. I must say that initially my plans did not include writing a separate work about it. I worked on a book dedicated to the history of Russian architecture under Ivan the Terrible. But after finishing it, I realized that the history of the Cathedral of the Intercession on the Moat was there just won't fit in. It was then that the idea arose to devote a separate monograph to him.
This book has become a landmark for me. She talks about the history of the architectural concept and construction of the temple, about the program that underlies it - about those intentions that led the donor to the need for its construction. At the same time, the book is not only about the cathedral itself, but also about the artistic culture of the era of Ivan the Terrible through the prism of one architectural monument. There is no story about the restoration of the cathedral in the book. But I plan to devote the second volume to this issue, it is already in the works.
In 1988, I co-authored with Tatyana Vyatchanina wrote an article on the role and significance of the Jerusalem model in Russian architecture. Then everything seemed extremely clear to me. In this book, I have had to rethink my own concepts. I departed from the original version that St. Basil's Cathedral is a kind of symbolic image of the Jerusalem temple. I had to answer the most important question: what is the secret of the cathedral? Now, it seems to me that I was able to find the answer. I proved to myself that this work is in the mainstream of the European Renaissance. In line with that trend in the Italian Renaissance - la maniera tedesca - which is associated with the Gothic. Gothic has never been hostile to the Renaissance. It's just that she was always perceived that way, based on the angry phrases of Giorgio Vasari.
I anticipate a negative reaction from some of my readers, because in the book I revise and deny most of the myths. But the truth is dearer. The book refutes the evolutionary theory, overcomes the myth of the isolation of Russian art after the flight in 1538 of the last "big" Italian architect. For many years I have been studying all the contacts of the Moscow kingdom with western Europe. Documents show that since 1548, a stream of specialists of various professions has been sent to Moscow - from gunpowder makers to tile manufacturers (tiles are present both in the Intercession Cathedral and in the Grand Ducal Palace renovated after the fire in 1547). Military engineers from Europe also appear, who, as you know, were also architects. It is reliably known that English architects worked at the court of Ivan the Terrible. This entire multinational world was seething and creating in 1550-1560.
I repeat once again that one can understand the cathedral only on the basis of the peculiarities of the Renaissance tradition. It cannot be studied as a medieval work. The cathedral should be viewed only through the prism of the combinatorial thinking of the Italian architect, who is able to paraphrase the most diverse traditions - Romanesque and Gothic. Able to combine all this and create an architecture that has never existed before. The Cathedral of the Intercession on the Moat is an architectural treatise of the Renaissance. And this is the main point of the whole book. But at the same time, the cathedral is a key monument of all Russian art.
This year we are celebrating the 455th anniversary of its founding. And I am happy that I managed to complete the work on the book by this date."
