The Russian Orthodox churches are distinguished by their verticality, bright colors and multiple domes which provide a striking contrast with the flat Russian landscape often covered in snow. The very first churches in Kievan Rus’, such as the 13-domed wooden St. Sophia Cathedral in Novgorod, differed in this regard from their mainly single-cupola Byzantine predecessors. The number of domes was important symbolically. One dome symbolized the single God; three represented the Trinity and five represented Christ and his four evangelists. At first the baptistery, narthex, and choir gallery above the narthex were a common feature of Rus’ churches, but gradually they disappeared. After a century of Byzantine imitations, the Russian masons began to emphasise the verticality in church design.
The late 12th century saw the development of so-called tower churches in Polotsk and Smolensk; this design later spread to other areas such as Kiev and Chernihiv. A visual transition between the main cube of the church and the elongated cylinder below the dome was provided by one or several rows of curved corbel arches, known as kokoshniki. They could be spade-shaped, semicircular, or pointed. In later Muscovite churches, the massed banks of kokoshniki evolved into a distinctive pyramidal shape. The reign of Ivan the Terrible was marked by the introduction of so-called tent roofs. The churches such as St. Basil’s Cathedral were an agglomeration of chapels capped by the steeply-pitched conical roofs of fanciful designs.
The architects of Vladimir-Suzdal switched from brick to white limestone ashlar as their main building material, which provided for dramatically effective church silhouettes, but made church construction very costly. The ornamentation combined native carpentry, oriental, Italian Renaissance, and German Gothic motifs. The architects of Novgorod and Pskov constructed their churches of fieldstone and undressed blocks of limestone. As a result, the northwestern buildings have highly textured walls, as if hand-moulded of clay. A trefoil facade with pointed gables was a common arrangement in the later Novgorod Republic. The churches of Pskov were tiny and gabled; they developed an enclosed gallery which led to a porch and a simple belfry, or zvonnitsa.
The dominant problem of late medieval Russian architecture was the placement of the belfry. An early solution to the problem was to put the belfry above the main body of the church. Detached belfries with tent roofs are exceedingly common in the 17th century; they are often joined to the church by a gallery or a low elongated narthex. The latter arrangement is known as the “ship design”, with the belfry rising above the porch serving as the prow. The Muscovite Baroque churches represent the tiered structure of traditional Russian log churches “in which a pyramidal silhouette ascends in a series of diminishing octahedrons” (W. C. Brumfield). This type of the church is known as the “octagon on cube” church.
Pre-Mongol period
The technique of stone construction and architectural typology were borrowed by Ancient Rus from Byzantium. The first stone churches after the Baptism of Rus were built by the invited masters. Their buildings are among the prominent works of Byzantine architecture, but from the very beginning they have their own characteristics, conditioned by the features of the order and local conditions.
Immediately after the christening of Kiev in 988, the Church of the Tithes (989-996) was built in Kiev, destroyed by the capture of Kiev by Batu.
Grandiose construction unfolded under Yaroslav the Wise. When he built the main temple of Kiev – 13-head five-nave St. Sophia Cathedral. The size of the cathedral has no analogies in the architecture of Byzantium itself of that time and are conditioned by a special task: to create the main cathedral for the newly-baptized huge country. The space of the choirs, intended for the prince and the nobility, was also used for palace ceremonies. During the reign of Yaroslav, two more St. Sophia cathedrals were built: in Novgorod (built in 1045-1050) and Polotsk (1060s). Other temples of Kiev, built under Yaroslav, are known only from archaeological excavations , among them were the churches of St. Irene and the Great Martyr George. They were considered five-nave, as well as Sofia, but, perhaps, their external naves – these are common in the temples of this time bypass galleries .
Most of the ancient Russian cross-domed churches were three-nave temples. The classification of their types according to the number of internal pillars is accepted: they are called four-pillars (analogue of the temple on 4 columns), six-pillars, and there are rare examples of eight-faced churches.
The temples of Kiev, Chernigov, Vladimir-Volynsky and Smolensk
Well preserved Spaso-Transfiguration Cathedral Chernigov, founded in 1030-m year. It is a temple with narthex and an additional pair of eastern pillars, to which adjoins the iconostasis (originally – the altar barrier). Due to this, the space of Naos becomes larger. Another feature of the Transfiguration Cathedral is the two-tiered arcades, set along the naves between the main pillars of the temple. At first glance, this detail gives the interior some basilic, but the composition of the vaults of the temple entirely follows the cross-domed type. Initially, the choirs of the cathedral, occupying the space above the narthex, continued along the lateral naves to the altar. In the lateral naves, their flooring has not survived. The arcades in the lower tier rely on imported marble columns, later reinforced with brickwork. Each nave ends with an apse from the east, and from above the temple is completed by the five-headed .
The model for the construction of many cathedrals in various cities of Russian principalities was the Assumption Cathedral of the Kiev-Pechersky Monastery, built by the Greeks in 1073-89. The three-a-nave cathedral with narthex and small choruses that occupy only the western part of the church, with a spacious interior not pinned by thin pillars, received the name “Great Church”. The temple ended with a single dome. Nephi forming the cross, as in all cathedrals of this type, are distinguished by their width and height. This is also expressed in the external appearance of the temple. Thus, the vertical division of the facades by the blades into the weave corresponds to the internal arrangement of the supporting columns, so the central spade is wider than the lateral ones. Zakomary, used to complete the facades, are now placed above each strand, forming a continuous series of semicircular waves. Zakomary central nave and transept above the rest.
The Assumption Cathedral was blown up in 1941, now restored in the forms of Ukrainian Baroque, as it looked at the time of the destruction.
On the sides to the western part of the temples adjoined additional structures. In the Chernigov cathedral it is a baptistery and a chapel, and in the Assumption Church there is a small baptistery church with a dome.
owards a new type of temple are partially preserved temples Kiev Vydubychi Monastery (1070-1088 gg., The cathedral has an elongated eastern part with additional pillars to the present day survived only the narthex with a ladder and choirs) , the Savior on Berestove (1113-1125 gg, an unusually large (broader than the temple itself) narthex with a burial vault, on its facade there are traces of an unusual three-bladed arch of a small vestibule , St. Michael’s Golden-Domed Monastery (1108-1113, destroyed in 1936 and restored in the 1990s in the forms of the Ukrainian baroque ko, was closer to the Assumption Cathedral) and a well-preserved church of St. Cyril (1140-1146 biennium).
Two large cathedrals of this type were preserved in Chernigov. This is Borisoglebsky Cathedral of the Kremlin (1120-23) and the Assumption Cathedral of the Yelets Monastery (1094-97) .
The Uspensky Cathedral of Vladimir-Volynsky (1160) is close to them.
The oldest surviving church in Smolensk is the Cathedral of Peter and Paul (1140-50). It is similar to other temples of its time, but does not have a narthex .
Temples of Veliky Novgorod
The type of three-nave cathedrals with narthex include a number of temples of Veliky Novgorod, erected in the first third of the XII century.
Among them – the princely Nicholas-Dvorishchensky Cathedral, built on the other side of the Volkhov, opposite Sofia. That is why a five-headed completion was chosen for him. Typology of the temple as a whole is similar to the Assumption Cathedral of the Kiev-Pechersky Monastery. The facades are divided into spindles and completed by zakomaras. Three strands of the western facade correspond to three naves, and the fourth was spun on the side facades – narthex. Above the narthex there are choruses, which have a U-shape. Their bent ends go to the corner cells of the Naos, skirting the western branch of the inner cross. The iconostasis of the temple is set along the eastern pair of pillars and separates the eastern branch of the cross, but since the altar barriers in the 12th century were not very high, this did not disturb the unity of the interior.
St. George’s Cathedral of the St. George’s Monastery is somewhat different. It is completed by three asymmetrically placed domes. The main dome is crowned by the environment, the second dome (inside it there was a special aisle for a separate monastic service) is placed above the ladder tower, attached to the side of the narthex, and the third small chapter balances the second one. It is placed over the opposite western corner of the temple .
Even more interesting is the Cathedral of the Nativity of the Virgin Antony monastery, which is relatively modest in size. It is also a three-headed one. The staircase adjoining the north of the narthex is round in shape. Otherwise, the interior is decided. The eastern pillars, to which adjoined a rather high altar barrier, were made not baptized (as in most temples of the time), but flat. The western pillars are octagonal in shape. Because of this, they are thinner and do not crowd out the space of the Naos .
During the XII century in Novgorod was built a large number of churches of smaller sizes. They were ordered by wealthy individuals or associations of citizens. The type of the temple was simplified – there were only four pillars, the eastern pair of which belonged to the altar barrier, and the western one – supported the small choruses. The central nave and the transept continued to be distinguished. The eastern part of the temple was often made shorter, and the western part under the choruses – more spacious, it was expressed in the asymmetry of the side facades.
This type includes the temples of the Old Ladoga, from which the Assumption and St George’s churches were preserved (1165) . Near Novgorod – the Church of Our Savior on Nereditsa (1198), until the Great Patriotic War, was in perfect preservation . Strongly destroyed, it was rebuilt in the postwar years. The high central apse and the low lateral express the crosswise interiority of the interior.
Pskov
From the second quarter of the XII century Pskov belonged to the Novgorod Republic. The oldest of its temples – the Trinity Cathedral – was not preserved (there is a reconstruction of its appearance after perestroika in the XIV century). At the initiative of the Archbishop of Novgorod Nifont, here in the 1140s the Transfiguration Cathedral of the Mirozhsky Monastery and the Cathedral of the Ivanovo Monastery were built.
The Cathedral of the Mirozhsky Monastery has no analogies in the pre-Mongolian Russian architecture. Instead of pillars, its interior is divided by walls into a cross-shaped dome space and low angular compartments (rectangular from the west and small apses from the east). The corner pieces are connected to the interior of the temple by low arched passages. Due to the greatly reduced angles, the cross-shaped was clearly expressed in the appearance of the temple. Already in the process of building the western corners of the cathedral were built on. The closed rooms built here were joined in the interior by the wooden flooring of the choirs, this somewhat distorted the clear structure of the building. At present, the external appearance of the cathedral is very different from the authentic one. Its architectural restoration is supposed. In the interior, almost entirely preserved frescos created at the same time. They were performed by the Greeks .
The cathedral of the Ivanovo monastery was solved in a fundamentally different way. This is a squat three-aft temple with narthex and choirs. It is completed with three domes.
White-stone buildings of Galich and Vladimir-Suzdal princedom
The architecture of the Vladimir-Suzdal princedom occupies a special place. Although here architecture followed the established types, the buildings of Vladimir and Suzdal and other cities of North-Eastern Russia differ from the temples of Kiev, Chernigov, Novgorod, Smolensk with other construction equipment – after 1152 they were built of white stone (previously construction in North-Eastern Russia led the father of Yuri Dolgoruky Vladimir Monomakh, who built the first cathedral from Plinfa in the beginning of the 12th century in Suzdal after the model of the Assumption Cathedral of the Kiev-Pechersky Monastery.
At the beginning of the 12th century, white-stone churches were built in the Galician principality in the south-west of Russia. But from the Galician buildings, almost nothing has been preserved, except the church of Panteleimon (see the section Temples with elevated arches). The use of smooth-white white stone makes Galician architecture similar to the Romanesque buildings of neighboring European countries.
The origin of the white-stone architecture of North-Eastern Russia has two main views:
NN Voronin and PA Rappoport believed that construction equipment came to North-East Russia from Galic due to the union of Yuri Dolgoruky with the Galician prince Vladimir .
S. V. Zagraevsky believed that the borrowing of white stone technology from Galich was not, and the novelist came to the Vladimir-Suzdal principality directly from Europe, that is, the architecture of Galich and North-Eastern Russia has common origins . In his opinion, the immediate precursor of both the Galician and Vladimir-Suzdal temples is the imperial cathedral in Speyer .
Temples of the Vladimir-Suzdal princedom
The Transfiguration Cathedral of Pereslavl-Zalesskiy and the church of Boris and Gleb in Kideksha near Suzdal (both temples were built in 1152) are the first white stone buildings erected under Yuri Dolgoruk. These are small four-pillared temples with choruses and three high apses, completed by one chapter (the temple in Kideksha was only partially preserved). This type of temple was widely distributed in the middle of the XII century. In contrast to Novgorod’s four-pillar churches, churches have well-proportioned proportions, strict symmetry of facades. Smooth masonry is made of carefully processed blocks of limestone. From the following buildings, the temples of Yuri Dolgoruky differ in the brevity of the external design.
The best white stone churches were built by the sons of Yuri – Andrei Bogolyubsky and Vsevolod the Big Nest.
Under Bogolyubsky, the Assumption Cathedral was built in Vladimir (1158-1160), which later became the main temple of Russia (before the construction of the Moscow Assumption Cathedral) and other non-preserved temples of Vladimir, the palace with the Church of the Nativity of the Mother of God in Bogolyubovo (1158-1165) and the Church of the Intercession on the Nerl (1158).
The Assumption Cathedral was originally a three-nave temple with narthex. A unique feature is the trompe that replaced the sails in the base of the central dome drum. According to SV ZAGRAEVSKY, the cathedral was originally five-domed. Corner domes were dismantled during the reconstruction of the temple in 1186-1189. At the same time the cathedral received galleries with four new chapters. The appearance of the temple (before the building of the galleries) was complicated by the stair tower and small vestibules. The vestibules adjoined each of the three portals of the temple: on the western and side facades. This arrangement of the entrance gates of the temple was generally accepted. The portals emphasized the central lines of the facades, corresponding to the branches of the inner cross. Five-headed always had a strict hierarchy. The central dome was larger and higher, responding to the centric construction of buildings, and also in connection with its symbolic meaning.
The palace church in Bogoliubov was preserved fragmentarily, but it is known that its pillars had an unusual round shape – in the form of columns. The Church of the Intercession on the Nerl, in spite of the perfection and beauty of its proportions, also remained incompletely. Originally it was surrounded by low galleries with a staircase leading to the choir.
Under Prince Vsevolod, in addition to the expansion of the Assumption Cathedral, the court was built Dmitriyevsky Cathedral (1191). The main volume of the temple is similar to the buildings of Yuri Dolgoruky and the Intercession Church, but differs from the latter in less graceful proportions. With the erroneous restoration of the XIX century, the temple lost its original galleries and stair towers.
The buildings of Andrei Bogolyubsky differed from his father’s early temples with rich carved decor. But the maximum flourishing technique decoration of the facade reached later, at the beginning of the XIII century (St George’s Cathedral in St. George’s Polish).
Temples with elevated arches
In the temples of the end of the 12th – beginning of the 13th century, a special constructive method appears, allowing to create a beautiful gradual completion of the temple. His appearance was caused by the desire of architects to give the churches a distinct vertical accent, to make the buildings pillar-shaped.
The aspiration to this is found already in the small Spassky Cathedral of the Euphrosyne Convent in Polotsk (1161). Its narrow interior is very high. The cathedral used to have a beautiful gradual completion (the appearance is strongly distorted by the late roof). In its forms, the form of the cross is especially persistently used, since the temple served as a place of storage of the dear shrine – the Reliquary Cross with the particle of the tree of the Cross of the Lord .
A number of temples of the end of the XII century, created, probably, by one architect – Peter Milonej.
Pyatnitskaya Church of Chernigov (reconstruction of the 20th century). In it, the arches carrying the drum of the dome are made higher than the adjacent cylindrical vaults. Usually it was done on the contrary. Due to this, a small slender church received an effective step-by-step completion, leading to the foundation of the chapter. The corner parts of the temple are covered with special semicylindrical vaults (a quarter of a circle), this gives the facades a gradual three-bladed finish.
Such a completion had and the church of Basil in Ovruch, preserved to the level of arches. It was restored by AV Shchusev, erroneously giving the vaults the shape of the middle of the 12th century. Two round towers on the western corners of Vasilievskaya church are unique .
Similarly, the Church of Archangel Michael was completed in Smolensk (later – Svirskaya), built in 1191-1194 by the Polotsk architect. The temple is well preserved until our time, despite slight distortions .
Later Smolensk masters built the Church of Paraskeva-Pyatnitsa on Torgov in Veliky Novgorod (1207). Although the temple has not been preserved completely, the conducted studies show its similarity with the church of the Archangel Michael. The shape of the temple had a three-bladed completion of the facades, which emphasized the movement to the dome and highlighted the high branches of the cross. Elevated archways underlined the high dome. The altar part was enlarged. The facades were adjoined by high vestibules .
The porches of these churches were not communicated with the portal’s naos of the church, but were completely connected with its interior. Between them the wall disappears.
A new version of the architectural type also affected the construction of north-eastern Russia in the first half of the 13th century.
Partially preserved cathedral of the Nativity of the Virgin in Suzdal (1222-1225) and St. George’s Cathedral in St. George’s in Poland (1230-1234 biennium) could have elevated arches.
Suzdal Cathedral replaced the early temple of the early 12th century, built on the model of the cathedral of the Kiev-Pechersky monastery. Unlike most other buildings of his time, he has a narthex; originally the cathedral ended with three domes. Both the Suzdal Cathedral and the St. George’s Cathedral preserved their porches adjacent to the building on three sides. Their space is completely merged with the interiors of the temples as well as in the above-mentioned temples of Smolensk and Novgorod. St. George’s Cathedral is strictly centered. Originally it was a tall, slim building, even if the arched dome bearing was not elevated.
The vaults of both churches collapsed in the 15th century. The Suzdal Cathedral was completed in the 16th century on top of the arkaturno-columnar belt made of bricks and received five-domed. St. George’s Cathedral was rebuilt, but it became much lower. The rich sculptural decoration of its facades was severely damaged .
The only surviving temple of Galich – the church of Panteleimon – also belongs to the boundary of the XII-XIII centuries. Although it has lost its arches, but the special complicated profiling of the inner pillars indicates the unusualness of their solutions. It is possible that early-vascular arches were used here
Architecture of the XIV-XV centuries
The Mongol-Tatar Invasion of Russia in 1237-1241. interrupted construction in all areas of Russia, including in Veliky Novgorod, although it was not plundered. The subsequent period of temple construction has its own innovations and unique features. Construction was carried out in several independent centers: Veliky Novgorod, Pskov and northeast Russia, where Moscow was gradually leading.
Veliky Novgorod
Novgorod churches of the XIV-XV centuries are a special local variant of the cross-domed type. In terms of these are the same four-pillar churches, but with one apse. Thick square in section columns are placed closer to the corners of the building. The altar and the deacon occupy the eastern corners of the main volume of the temple. Choruses develop unusually. As early as the 12th century, their angular parts were transformed into closed rooms – chambers. Sometimes the same kind of camoras appear and over the eastern corners of the temple. In some of them, the chapels that served for solitary private prayer were placed, others could perform auxiliary functions. The appearance of the temple is changing. If the arms of the cross continue to overlap with cylindrical arches, which on the facades are expressed by zakomaras, then the corner rooms of the temple are overlapped by the halves of the arches (a quarter of a circle) as has already been done in the temples with elevated arches of the end of the 12th century. Thanks to this, the facades instead of lined up in a row receive a pyramidal three-bladed finish. The facade is divided by simple wide blades. The planes of the strands at the end can receive several additional bends, semicircles that break the zakomars and the adjacent corner arcs. Such a solution already has churches of the late 13th century – in theThe Pereyn skete and the island of Lipno. From the temples of the XIV century, the most famous church is Fyodor Stratilat on the Stream and the Church of the Savior’s Transfiguration on Ilin Street. In the Spassky temple, the roof was laid not by the bends of the vaults, but by straight ramps, so the outlines of the facades turned out to be triangular. These same architectural traditions continued in the temples of the XV century, for example in the church of Peter and Paul in Kozhevniki. In the XVI century Novgorod churches adopted many features of Moscow architecture, and later they were characterized by the all-Russian features of 17th-century temple architecture.
Moscow
In Moscow and Tver principality through a long break after the Mongol invasion stone construction is reviving. At the same time, Tver beat Moscow, having built the Transfiguration Cathedral in 1285. The new buildings were oriented to the white-stone temples of the pre-Mongol period, although from the very beginning they obtained a number of their own features.
The first stone church in Moscow was the Assumption Cathedral, founded in 1326 – the new cathedral of the Russian Metropolitan (there was a version of the earlier construction of the first stone church). Placed by Metropolitan Peter, the temple was completed after his death. Several other churches were built under the Metropolitan Feognoste : the Church of St. John of the Ladder (1329), the Church of the Savior on Bor (1330), the Archangel Cathedral (1333) and the Church of the Epiphany Monastery in Posada (1340). All listed buildings were not preserved, as they were later replaced by new, larger buildings. The Church of St. John of the Ladder was not an ordinary cross-domed church, but a tower-like structure “under the bells”. It is possible that in 1913 in the center of the Cathedral Square were found the remains of this building, which was an octagonal building . Thus, this is an example of another typology that existed in the church architecture of Ancient Rus.
The Assumption Cathedral of Moscow was a small four-pillared temple with vestibules, reminiscent of St. George’s Cathedral in St. George’s in Polish. Already in it appeared new features of the Moscow white-stone architecture, distinguishing it from the Vladimir buildings of the pre-Mongol period. The most important of these is the keelike (pointed) form of zakomar and kokoshniks. The same form was given to the completion of the portals and window openings of the Moscow churches.
The earliest surviving buildings are small churches: Nikolsky in the village of Kamenskoe, the Church of the Conception of John the Baptist at the Gorodische in Kolomna, and the Nativity of Our Lady in Gorodnya on the Volga. Zagraevsky dated them the beginning of the fourteenth century . St. Nicholas Church is interesting for its interior, in which the pillars are moved apart and merged with the corners of the building. Thanks to this, a single cross-shaped space was obtained.
The best early Moscow buildings were erected at the end of the 14th – the first decades of the 15th century. Partially preserved Church of the Nativity of Our Lady in the Moscow Kremlin (1393-94), built by Princess Evdokia and included in the ensemble Terem Palace . Four cathedrals of this time were completely preserved.
The earliest of these is the Assumption Cathedral on Gorodok in Zvenigorod in 1399. The church has choirs that later disappear in Moscow architecture. The dome of the temple is somewhat displaced to the east, so that the facade sections do not fully correspond to the actual construction of the building. The drum of the dome is high, thanks to the raised arches. Slender proportions of the building were emphasized by the sharp endings of the zakomar and the now lost series of kokoshniks in the base of the dome drum. Instead of the arkaturno-columnar belt, the facades are horizontally divided by strips of ornamental carving, and vertically split by thin half-columns. The cathedral stands out among other buildings of the era with an abundance of elegant decoration .
Cathedral of the Nativity of the Virgin, located near Zvenigorod Savvoy-Storozhevsky Monastery was built around 1405 year. It differs for many from the Uspensky temple, possessing squat proportions, strongly protruding apses. Its facades are dissected by heavy blades. However, between the temples there is an undoubted similarity: first of all, in the keel-shaped forms of the zakomar and portals, in ribbons of ornamentation on the facades. Restored during the restoration of the pozakomarnoe coating, complemented by a crown of kokoshnikov at the base of the drum and four more, placed diagonally, gives the temple a special elegance. Between the eastern pair of pillars originally existed a stone altar barrier, now closed by a high iconostasis .
The builder of the Zvenigorod temples Prince Yuri Dmitrievich together with his brother the Grand Duke Vasily I of Moscow in 1422 build a stone Trinity Cathedral on the site of the wooden church of the Trinity-Sergius Monastery. The new cathedral, in which the relics of St. Sergius were transferred, was painted in a few years by Andrei Rublev. It became one of the most important temples of the Moscow principality, and then of all Russia. The cathedral has an unconventional solved interior, in which the eastern pillars are as close to the altar apses, which caused a strong shift of the dome to the east. Thanks to this, the interior of the temple has significantly expanded. At the same time, the division of the facades into strands, completed by the zakomaras, does not correspond in any way to the arrangement of the inner pillars, and is made symmetrical .
The Spassky Cathedral of the Andronikov Monastery in Moscow, apart from other temples of that time, stands apart. It was probably built in 1425-27 (although there is a version of the construction in the 1390s). In the present form, the temple is a partially preserved original building, restored in its original forms through carefully conducted scientific research. The interior of the temple does not have a displacement of the pillars to the east, due to which the internal structure of the building is expressed by external divisions of the facades. The exterior of the cathedral is unique. Corner parts are made lowered, due to which the whole volume receives a pyramidal structure. The branches of the cross rise considerably above the corners of the building, and the base of the drum is formed by several tiers of kokoshniks. The square base of the drum has three-bladed completions, the upper kokoshniks of which are included in the first octagonal wreath, over which is placed a second one, formed by smaller kokoshniks. A feature of the cathedral, placed on a very high podklet, are also the stairs leading to the three portals of the temple .
The reorganization of the Moscow Kremlin under Ivan III
The development of the architecture of the Russian temple was greatly influenced by the arrival of Italian architects who worked in Moscow and other Russian cities in the late fifteenth and first third of the 16th century.
In 1472 the construction of a new Uspensky Cathedral began, instead of a dilapidated old church. According to the plan, the temple was to be repeated in an enlarged amount, the Assumption Cathedral of Vladimir, but the construction begun by the Russian masters was interrupted by the collapse of the walls brought to the top. To continue the work, Ivan III invited the Italian Aristotle Fioravanti, an experienced builder and engineer from Bologna. Fioravanti made a new project of the cathedral, the construction of which was completed in 1479. Repeating the recognizable details of the sample – five-headed, pozakomarnoe coating, arkaturno- columnar frieze – he created an original building that possessed previously unknown qualities in Russia. The temple of Fioravanti is three – nave six – pillar. The architect simplified the structure of the building, removing the bypass galleries and making all the naves equal in width. Thus, the interior is divided into 12 identical square cells, five of which are covered by domes, and the rest – cross vaults. The eastern pair of pillars is made rectangular, between them a wall is built, separating the altar. It is attached to a high iconostasis. Pillars of the space of the Naos were made round, with bases and the likeness of capitals, which allows them to be called columns. Thanks to this the interior has acquired an unprecedented wholeness and spaciousness. In addition, it was well lit.
Although Fioravanti relied on the traditional cross-dome structure of the temple, his cathedral can not, strictly speaking, be called cross-domed. The interior of the temple – zalny. It does not have a central nave and a transept. The Assumption Cathedral served as a model for the construction of many similar churches in the cities and monasteries of Russia during the 16th-17th centuries. In them, either a new internal structure of the interior is transferred, or it approaches the tradition of cross-domed churches.
It is interesting that the second largest church in the Moscow Kremlin – the Archangel Cathedral – follows the cross-domed type. Its author was another Italian – Aleviz Novy, who finished building in 1508. Although the exterior of the cathedral stands out for its abundant Renaissance decor, its interior is more Russian. The naves are divided by crosses in cross-section by pillars. The spatial cross is highlighted in width and height. The main dome that stands on the crossroads is more emphatic than the others.
Two other churches of the Kremlin, erected at the end of the XV century, were built by Pskov masters.
The Annunciation Cathedral (1489) is a small four-columned cross-domed church, originally a three-domed church. Its central dome is high on raised arches.
Even less Risopolozhskaya church, a feature of which is the lack of the construction of arches of sails.
Source from Wikipedia