In the matter of architecture, there are only two principles: structure by wood and concrete structure: grottoes, and construction with clay, and with masonry, which is derived from it. As to construction with cut stones, there results, either from a tradition of building with wood or from concrete construction, grottoes or conglomerate masses, sometimes both, as in Egyptian art, for example.
The innumerable races who issued from the East and finally overwhelmed the Roman Empire had preserved from their cradle their own traditions, and continued to keep up communication with their old homes. Better than any other nation, the Russians preserved these traditions, and they were, so to speak, rejuvenated every time a new wave passed across their territories; for it was always from the northern or southern Orient, from the Ural or the Taurus, that the invaders came. Whether they presented themselves as enemies or colonists they brought with them something of Asia, the great mother of civilizations.
This Russian art, therefore, was never struck with decadence as was the Byzantine art. It did not live solely upon itself, but profited by all that was brought from the Orient. So, when the Eastern Empire fell during the Fifteenth Century, leaving only a pale trace of the last expressions of its arts, Russia, on the contrary, was raising edifices and fabricating objects of great value from an artistic point of view.
The West had only a small share in these productions, but even this was enough to enable Russian art to be distinguished from the arts of the East by a certain freedom of conception and variety in the execution that rendered it an original product full of promise, the developments of which might have been marvellous if the natural course of events had not been hindered by the passion with which high Russian society threw itself on the works of art of Italy, Germany and France.
[SCULPTURE AND PAINTING]
PHILIPPE BERTHELOT
Western influence was very strongly felt in sculpture and painting in Russia during the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries. Narrowly confined to the representation of conventional types of saints, these arts did not acquire either personality or expression for two centuries. It was not until the Eighteenth Century that they began to raise statues to the memory of Russia's great men: one of the first monuments was consecrated, as was indeed just, to Peter the Great, Russia's great reformer; in his lifetime, Count Bartolomeo Rastrelli the sculptor, father of the architect, executed a Peter the Great on Horseback, which was cast in bronze in 1847; but the successors of Peter the Great did not like this group which they did not consider sufficiently animated and would not allow it to be erected on a public square. Catherine II. had Falconet model a Peter the Great mounted on a fiery horse climbing up a rock; this bronze group is placed in the centre of the Square of Peter the Great on the Neva, at St. Petersburg. Among the most celebrated works of Russian sculpture, we may cite the bronze monument erected to the memory of Prince Poyarski and the butcher Minine on the Red Square, Moscow (by Martoss, rector of the Academy of Fine Arts, St. Petersburg, in 1888); Lomonossov's monument (by Martoss); those of Generals Barclay de Tolly and Koutousov (1818-1836 after the model by B. Orlovski, placed in front of the Cathedral of Kazan, St. Petersburg); the colossal bust of Alexander I. (by Orlovski); the commemorative monument of Alexander I. (1832, by Montferrand), with a statue of the Angel of Peace, by Orlovski; the statue of Krilov, the fabulist, 1855, by Baron Clodt in the Summer Garden, St. Petersburg; an equestrian statue of the emperor Nicholas I. (by Clodt, 1859, on the St. Mary square); the monument of Novgorod, elevated in memory of the millenary of the Russian occupation (1862), in the form of a gigantic bell containing scenes from Russian history, by Mikiechin; the monument to Catherine II. by Mikiechin, she being represented as surrounded by her generals and statesmen (1874, before the Alexander Theatre); the monument to Pushkin in Moscow (1830, by Objekuchin and Bogomolov); the monument to Bohdan-Chmelnizki, at Kiev (1873, by Mikiechin and other sculptors). The principal Russian sculptors are Popov, Antokolski (statue of Ivan the Terrible, 1871, in St. Petersburg), Tchichov and E. Lanceray. They are characterized by a very pronounced realism that is common to all.
Russian painting has developed in various directions during the last two centuries under the influence of Western Europe; until the first half of the Nineteenth Century the imitation of Italian painting, the classical French school and the execution of strictly academic painting were the three principal paths attempted by the Russian artists. But for half a century, art has found a national expression for itself. At the end of the Eighteenth and beginning of the Nineteenth Century, the principal representatives of religious and historical painting were Losenko (died in 1773), Antropov (died in 1792), Akimov (died in 1814), Ugriumov (died in 1823), Levizki (died in 1822), Ivanov (died in 1823), and Moschov (died in 1839). The landscape and marine painters of greatest repute are Sim. and Sil. Schtchedrin (the first died in 1804, and the second in 1830), Pritchetnikov (died in 1809), F. Alekseiev (died in 1824). Academic painting was cultivated principally by Tropinin (died in 1827), Warnek (died in 1843), Lebediev (died in 1837), Worobiev (died in 1855), K. Rabus (died in 1857), Bruni (died in 1875), Markov (died in 1878), A. Beidemann (died in 1869) and Willewalde. The chief painter of the romantic school is K. Brullov, who formed a school and had numerous scholars. Other romantic painters of repute are Bronnikov and various landscape and marine painters such as Aivasovski, Bogolnibov, L. Lagorio and A. Mechtcherski. Religious and popular painting has A. Ivanov for its representative. The principal realistic painters in genre and historical painting are Fedotov, Makovski, Perov, Polenor, Vereschagin, etc.
STATUE OF PETER THE GREAT AND THE ADMIRALTY PALACE, ST. PETERSBURG.