Art XV IV. Eastern European art

1. Byzantine art

The Christian East begins on the eastern borders of Scandinavia, Germany and Italy. Everywhere, where the domination of the Orthodox Greek Church reached, in this whole area and after the fall of Constantinople (1453), Byzantine art formed the basis of all artistic life: first of all, in the Greek-speaking part of the Balkan Peninsula, in Serbia and in Russia. Together with the western church in Poland, Hungary and on the eastern shore of the Adriatic Sea dominated the influence of German and Italian art. Poland, as Sokolovsky found out, from the very beginning of the XVI century resolutely turned to the Italian Renaissance, in the XV century. was still influenced by German art. Hungary, which received Romance and Gothic art in addition to Germany, was in the XV century. the first country north of the Alps, which passionately rushed into the arms of the Italian Renaissance. The Dalmatian coast and the Ionian Islands have long been in the artistic and historical respect of the province of Italy. Dalmatia was already proud of such artists as Luciano Laurana, Francesco Laurana and Giovanni Trau (Dalmata). If in the XV century. Byzantine art, leaving aside individual manifestations, has lost any influence on Western art, now, on the contrary, Western art has decisively penetrated the ancient regions of the sacred east. This process is interesting because of the mixing of Western and Eastern artistic trends emerged new features in the national art. This happened in Russia, which amazingly early used the early Italian Renaissance to form its own style.

Byzantine art remained unchanged only on Mount Athos. The spirit of the ages passed almost without a trace past the secluded solitude of the Athos monasteries. The church of the monastery of Dionysiat of the XVI century was rebuilt and painted in 1547, following the old canons; The church of the Dokhiar monastery is crowned with a beautiful dome and also expanded without changing the basic shape. By the XVI century. beautiful frescoes of the monastery churches in Lavra, Kutlumush, Xenoph, Dionysiat and Dohiar. They also develop the same basic theme with various changes, but their style is still only a shadow of the ancient Byzantine style. Nevertheless, the works of art created in the Athos monasteries are an interesting, albeit pale, echo of Byzantine art.

2. Russian Art of Renaissance (1462–1598)

Under the Grand Duke of Moscow, Ivan III (1440–1505), the Russian people in 1480 finally freed themselves from the Tatar-Mongol yoke, and, together with the Russian state, rose up the newly born and revived national art. In the epoch of the specific principalities, Russian art was mainly Byzantine; during the Tatar-Mongol yoke, it soldered numerous Asian elements with the Byzantine, but transformed them in its own way. The architecture is at this time almost exclusively the carrier of Russian artistic thought. First of all, Ivan III laid the Assumption Cathedral in the Moscow Kremlin, but he collapsed shortly before the end. Then the autocrat turned to Italy. Architect Aristotle Fioravanti (born in 1414) from Bologna appeared in Moscow and in four years (1475–1479), together with Russian masters, rebuilt the cathedral, which in its main forms is a repetition of the Old Russian Dmitrov Cathedral in Vladimir. Five heart-shaped domes resting on tower-shaped drums, on which golden crosses shine, are new to Russian art; only in some parts, for example on the outer pilasters, are Italian profiles at the bases and on the capitals, and on the outer eastern side above the apses even purely Ionic pilasters, from which volute-shaped capitals rise the semicircular arches of the upper division of the facade.

The builder of the Annunciation Cathedral (1484–1489), located on the highest point of the Moscow Kremlin, called the Milan architect Pietro Antonio Solari, who died in 1493 in Russia, and the countryman and follower of Aleviz Fryazin Novyi is considered the artist who completed the construction. The upper tympanas of the facade are no longer enclosed in semicircular arches, but are again framed with keel-shaped ones; its portal is the richest page of the North Italian Renaissance with pilasters; nine golden domes, equipped with crosses with chains, produce a fabulous effect from afar. The secular building of Ivan III was the Palace of the Faceted Chamber (Facettenpalast). Around 1487, the Italian Mark Fryazin took up the construction already begun, and finished it in 1491 by Pietro Antonio Solari. On the outer walls of the palace, we see those Italian facet-facets, which, consisting of crystal-hewn stones, represent a kind of refined rusticism; inside it consists of one hall, four powerful arches of which are supported by one pillar in the middle.

Fig. 470. Church of the Assumption of the Mother of God in the village of Kolomenskoye. According to Novitsky

The third largest church of the Moscow Kremlin - the Archangel (St. Michael) Cathedral - the work of Alevizo Fryazin Novy. Erected in 1505–1508. The interior of this church also represents the pure Russian-Byzantine style. Outside, with its two floors, dissected by pilasters, capitals imitating Corinthian, and upper semi-circular arches with shells under the gables, the Archangel Cathedral, despite its five heart-shaped domes, gives the impression of building an early Italian Renaissance. The terem palace, built of brick by the same architect (1499–1508), represents pure Italian forms with a slight Russian accent.

A special type of original Russian art appears in the Church of the Dormition of the Mother of God that arose in 1582 and now restored in Kolomenskoye village, near Moscow (Fig. 470), which is all designed to carry the medium powerful octagonal pyramid. The Church of the Intercession of the Blessed Virgin, or St. Basil's Cathedral (Fig. 471), in the southern part of Red Square, in front of the Moscow Kremlin, was built in 1555–1560, under Ivan the Terrible. It represents, to some extent, the end result of all the aspirations of national Russian architecture, merged on the ancient Byzantine basis with many oriental forms, and then overgrown with the motives of the Italian Renaissance. The interior of the church has no unity of space. Eleven chapels, distributed between two floors, are connected by means of long, low stairs and passages. Each of the chapels is located under one of the domes, from the arches of which look the images of saints. Everything is strange, and everything is interesting. Outside, this church, repeating the expression of one of the art historians, can perhaps be compared with the ridge of “giant fungi casting with all the colors of the rainbow”, brilliant with all sorts of shapes and colors. Only India produced such fantastic art [15].

Very interesting are some of the surviving Russian wooden churches. Instead of stone arches there are gable roofs that form keel-like gables. The Church of the Vladimir Mother of God in the village of Belaya Sluda of the Solvychegodsky district of the Vologda region with its covered galleries in the lower floor and the tent tower as the main part of the building stands out almost as a direct prototype of a rich stone church in the village of Kolomenskoye.

Fig. 471. St. Basil's Cathedral in Moscow. From the photo

Russian manuscripts are magnificent with their ornaments. Ornaments, consisting of figures of animals and people, in the XV century. almost forgotten. Screensavers and caps become simpler and clearer and often consist only of weaving fine lines, and the only decoration of long and thin letters are elegant curls of floral tendrils. In the XVI century. spread two types of ornament. One type is geometric multicolored ribbon patterns on a light background, purely Russian, although in many respects due to patterns taken from Islamic art; the other, in its splash and ornamented surfaces, reveals primarily Western European division into fields, with rectangles, circles and semicircles on a gold, blue or red background filled with flowers or leafy shoots, often joined by fantastic Indian or Persian weaves and leaves. For the first of these styles are characterized, for example, the Gospel of the XVI century, in the Russian National Library of St. Petersburg (from the Pogodin collection); The second kind is characterized by some of the apostles of the library of the Chudov Monastery in Moscow and the Russian National Library in St. Petersburg. If specimens of the first kind in their totality resemble embroideries, the latter often resemble carpets trimmed with fringe, like lace.

If the old Russian ornamentation amazes our eyes with a multitude of skillful details, architectural and pictorial works of Russia - churches with domes, frescoes on gold backgrounds - make an indelible impression when viewed from a certain distance at which they merge into one. A look, for example, from the Ivan the Great Bell Tower - from the center of the grandiose ensemble of the Moscow Kremlin - to the widely spread Moscow with its hundreds of golden or bright domes and small colors embraces not only the originality and beauty of everything that created Russian art, but all the most fantastic, that christian architecture produced.

3. Art of the Italian Early Renaissance in the islands of Rhodes and Cyprus, in Turkey and Hungary

For the first time, Western European art stretched to the shores and islands of the eastern Mediterranean in the footsteps of the Crusaders, whose soul was the French. Therefore, it is not surprising that the French Gothic settled here. For the second time, Western European art moved eastward after the trade colonies headed by the Italians and all Venetians were in charge, so the art of the Italian Renaissance spread to the places of commercial and state dominance of Venice.

Mahmoud II in 1480 failed to subjugate the island of Rhodes. During the entire XV century. The island remained in the possession of the Order of St. John, who cultivated their art here, of course of medieval nature. Gothic lancet arches supplied with those buildings 1482, 1492 and 1495. in the street of the Knights, in which they see the former farmsteads of various European nations; the windows of the buildings of the modern European quarter, now called the Court and the Admiralty, are framed in late gothic rectangular style with rich decoration. Gothic churches are also cities, such as the church of St.. Mark. But the Rhodian late Gothic style is more of a Spanish than a French character, which is quite understandable in the relations of Barcelona with the eastern part of the Mediterranean Sea; it is simpler, more solid and less elegant. The Italian Renaissance appears rather late and isolated on the portal of the Soliman mosque, apparently, brought in parts from Italy in finished form.

Complicated and difficult were the relations of the Kingdom of the Island of Cyprus, which in the continuation of most of the XV century. paid tribute to the Egyptian sultans. His last queen, the Venetian Katharina Cornaro, in 1489 resigned her crown in favor of the Venetian Republic, under the powerful patronage of which the island flourished again for a century. The Gothic churches of the Cypriot cities, with which we have already become acquainted, in the XV century, only in some places received extensions and alterations, in which the French late Gothic is mixed with the Spanish, so that immediately after the onset of Venetian domination the forms of the Italian Renaissance. Of the Byzantine and Islamic elements, the French and Italian Gothic, as well as the Italian Renaissance, separate buildings often arise in an amazing, non-uniform mixed style, which especially stands, for example, in Nicosia and in the exterior of the Greek chapel of Stavrotou-missirika, inside sustained in purely Byzantine style.

The more or less pure style of the Italian Renaissance appears for the first time in residential buildings, farmsteads, etc., as, for example, built in 1467–1473. portions of the Augustinian monastery in Nicosia, with its gables covered, rectangular windows, or as in the large semi-circular windows of the Ayia Napa monastery, framed with Renaissance pilasters and a coronal cornice. As early as the 15th century, the tower-like portal of the royal palace in Nicosia was decorated with a large gothic window in a rich “flaming” style. However, the palace in Famagusta, as its ruins show, received in the 16th century a facade in the style of a pure Renaissance.

The sculpture of Cypriot churches also sometimes reveals a transition to the style of the Italian Renaissance, such as the statue of Sts. Nicholas over the front door of the church in Nicosia.

The frescoes that have been preserved in Cyprus belong to the mixed style that combines the Jotte-Italian features with the late Byzantine ones: for example, in the painting of the vaults (“The Resurrection of Lazarus”, “The Entry of the Lord into Jerusalem”, etc.) of the Passion chapel in Pirge, in the Larnaca

In the XV century. centers of art of the Renaissance became the main cities of Turkey and Hungary.

The conqueror of Constantinople, Mahmoud II (1451–1481), wanted to surround himself with representatives of European science and art. The prohibition of the Koran to depict living beings, he neglected. Around 1479, he called into Constantinople many Italian sculptors and artists, who, first of all, were to pass on to posterity his own features. Among these artists were a student of Vittore Pisano, Matteo de 'Pasti, a student of Donatello Bellano and Gentile Bellini; of his works, not only a medal depicting the Sultan was preserved, but also his portrait in oil colors (Fig. 472), in the Leyard collection in Venice, and the image of the reception of the Venetian embassy in the High Porto, in the Louvre. The best medal with the image of the Sultan belongs, however, to an unknown master of Constantius (1481). The son and heir of Mahmud Bayazet II, apparently, returned to the view of the compilers of the Koran, who considered portrait painting a sin. The efforts of Mahmud II to introduce into Italian Constantinople the art of the Renaissance did not produce lasting results.

Already in the XIV century. (1308–1386) under the rule of the kings of the Neapolitan branch of the Anjou house of Hungary, they had to maintain close relations with Italy, which continued under King Sigismund (1386–1437).

Fig. 472. Gentile Bellini. Portrait of Mahmud II. With photos Alinari

Florentine Manetto Ammanatini (1384-1450) built churches and palaces in Hungary for 40 years. We know that Florentine painter Mazolino and Panicale lived in Hungary as far back as 1427. But the heyday of the Hungarian-Italian early Renaissance began under King Matthias Corvinus (1459–1490), whose second wife Beatrice was the daughter of the Neapolitan king. Mainly for the decoration of his books Corwin along with others called in Ofen and the Florentine masters. Attavante Attavanti, the king of miniaturists, performed his best miniatures specifically for the manuscripts of the library of the Hungarian king. In 1467, Aristotle Fioravanti was in Ofen, who later moved to Moscow. But the main architects who built the castles in Ofen, Visegrad, Stulweissenburg, Comorn, etc., were the Florentines Kymenti di Leonardo and Baccio Cellini. The sculptor Benedetto da Mayano made marble reliefs of the king and his wife in the Berlin Museum. Verrocchio in Florence made a marble fountain for Corvina. Giovanni Dalmata also worked for some time at the Hungarian court as an architect and sculptor. In vain did Corvin try to attract Filippino Lippi to Hungary, who limited himself to writing a portrait for him in Florence. Ercole Roberti, a native of Ferrara, apparently also worked at the Hungarian court. From all this magnificence of the early Renaissance, however, almost nothing was left. Only paintings and sculptures were saved. Preserved 8 medals with portraits of the king or queen. In 40 different libraries in Europe there are 125 manuscripts from the Matthias Corvins Library, of which at least 206 are decorated with portraits of the king and his Italian wife. The preference rendered by the Hungarian court to Italian art meant the victory of the Renaissance; this victory was only the prelude of that victorious march through the whole of Europe, which began in the sixteenth century.