FRYAZIN Without a thorough knowledge of the ancient Russian life and language, it is very difficult to guess that this surname, like Fryazinov, means a resident not of a town near Moscow, but of Italian Genoa. Fryazin - so in the old days they called first the Genoese who came to Russia, then

Aleviz Fryazin

Aleviz Fryazin (Aleviz New)

Ruffo (Mark Fryazin)

Fryazin Mark

Italian architect con. 15 - beg. 16th centuries In 1505-08 he built the lower 3 tiers of the Ivan the Great Bell Tower in the Moscow Kremlin.

Watch value Bon-fryazin in other dictionaries

Bon- m. German. Baum, see Bom. | Franz. Von, label, pay, a note for extradition, to receive something.
Dahl's Explanatory Dictionary

Bon M.— 1. see bonds (2*).
Explanatory Dictionary of Efremova

Bon- see 2. Bonds.
Explanatory dictionary Kuznetsov

Cash Bon- one of the types of bank bonds.
Economic Dictionary

Bon- (Beaune, 23 thousand inhabitants) - a city in France (see France), in the department of Côte d'Or, located on the Bouzez River southwest of Dijon. It has been known since ancient times as a center of production ... .....
Geographic Encyclopedia

Bon- see Annaba
Geographic dictionary

Aleviz Fryazin- - Italian, engineer-architect, "master of the wall and ward", hired by the envoy Mamyrev to serve the Grand Duke Ivan III, a native of the mountains. Milana (Aloisio da Milano),........

Alevis Fryazin- (Aloisio), architect, native of Milan, brought to Moscow in 1494, built another 1514
Big biographical encyclopedia

Anton Fryazin- architect under Ivan III, mentioned. 1469-1488
Big biographical encyclopedia

Bon- (from the Dutch boom - a tree, a log, a barrier) - a floating berth for small ships. s are equipped with lifting mechanisms, devices for supplying fuel, water, compressed fuel to ships ........
Historical Dictionary

Bon-la-roland (beaune-la-rolande) Franco-Prussian War- Place of battle 28 Nov. 1870, 80 which was attended by 9,000 Prussians under the command of the Grand Duke of Mecklenburg and 60,000 French under the command of Gen. Cruz. French people........
Historical Dictionary

Bon, German Ivanovich General-Anshef, 1st Cavalier of the Order of St. Alexander Nevsky; † in Apr. 1744
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Bon, Girolamo- theater mechanic in St. Petersburg. under Anna
Big biographical encyclopedia

Bon, Rose- (before marriage with Girol. B. - Ruvinetti), prima donna of the Buffa opera, with Anna and Elisabeth. Peter. in St. Petersburg (1735-1750
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River Bon- - a floating obstacle on the rivers, arranged in front of bridges to protect them from floating mines or small acts of sabotage by the enemy descending in boats and others ........
Historical Dictionary

Lee Bong- Li Bi, Li Nam-de (d. 548), - Vietnamese nobleman, leader of the Antikit. uprising, the founder of the early Li dynasty. He came from a large feudal-bureaucratic family, In 541 he headed ........

jung bong soo- (1572-1645) - Kor. military leader, one of the organizers of the bunk. struggle against the Jur-Chen (Manchu) invaders. Came from the provinces. nobles. In 1627, during the Manchu ........
Soviet Historical Encyclopedia

jeon bong jun- (1853-95) - head of the cross. uprisings in Korea. Genus. in Kobu County, Prov. Chollado (South Korea) in the family of a minor county official who was executed for organizing a cross. uprisings.........
Soviet Historical Encyclopedia

John Fryazin- - cm.
Big biographical encyclopedia

Bon Jovi- (real name and surname Jon (John) Bongiovi; b.1962) - Amer. vocalist, composer. Italian by origin. He worked in the USA as a cleaner in a recording studio. In 1982 he recorded his first album...
Encyclopedic Dictionary of Nicknames

Fryazin Ivan- Fryazin (Ivan) - a visiting Italian; served Ivan III as a coin master, and performed various other assignments: he traveled as an ambassador, negotiated, built cities. Most........
Historical Dictionary

Marco Fryazin- (second half of the XV - beginning of the XVI century) - Italian architect. From 1484, he carried out work in the Kremlin on the dismantling of old wooden palace buildings, carried out the construction of ........
Big biographical encyclopedia

Pavel Fryazin- - the doctor of the kings Theodore Ioannovich and Boris Godunov, a citizen of the mountains. Milan, was invited by a letter of 1595 from the French. King Henry IV to Tsar Theodore in Paris for a meeting with relatives........
Big biographical encyclopedia

Pavel Fryazin Theodora Ioannov, the physician of the tsars. and Boris Godunov, ex. citizen of
Big biographical encyclopedia

BON-FRYAZIN

Italian architect con. 15 - beg. 16th centuries In 1505-08 he built the lower 3 tiers of the Ivan the Great Bell Tower in the Moscow Kremlin.

TSB. Modern explanatory dictionary, TSB. 2003

See also interpretations, synonyms, meanings of the word and what is BON-FRYAZIN in Russian in dictionaries, encyclopedias and reference books:

• BON-FRYAZIN
  Italian architect con. 15 - beg. 16th centuries In 1505-08 he built the lower 3 tiers of the Ivan the Great Bell Tower in Moscow ...
• BON-FRYAZIN
  BON-FRYAZIN, Italian. architect con. 15 - beg. 16th centuries In 1505-08 he built the lower 3 tiers of the bell tower "Ivan the Great" in Moscow. …
• BON The Illustrated Encyclopedia of Weapons:
  - Korean combat ...
• FRYAZIN in the Encyclopedia of Russian surnames, secrets of origin and meanings:
  
• FRYAZIN in the Encyclopedia of Surnames:
  Without a thorough knowledge of the ancient Russian life and language, it is very difficult to guess that this surname, like Fryazinov, means ...
• FRYAZIN in the Big Encyclopedic Dictionary:
  (wrong Ruffo) Mark Italian architect of the 15th century. In 1487-91 he participated in the construction of walls, towers and chambers (the Faceted Chamber, together with ...
• BON in the Big Encyclopedic Dictionary:
  
• FRYAZIN
  (Ivan) - visiting Italian; served Ivan III as a coin master, and performed various other assignments: he traveled as an ambassador, negotiated, ...
• BON RECHN. in the Encyclopedic Dictionary of Brockhaus and Euphron:
  floating logs or rafts connected by chains or ropes; serve to seal the harbor from ships, and also, if they are sufficiently buoyant ...
• BON
  1. a floating structure made of floats, logs, nets, weights, etc., serving as a barrier against penetration into the harbor or into the raid of ships ...
• BON in the Encyclopedic Dictionary:
  a, m. 1. A floating structure made of floats, logs, nets, sinkers, etc., serving as a barrier against penetration into the harbor or onto ...
• FRYAZIN in the Big Russian Encyclopedic Dictionary:
  FRYAZIN (wrong Ruffo) Mark, Italian. 15th century architect In 1487-91 he participated in the construction of walls, towers and chambers (the Faceted Chamber, jointly ...
• BON in the Big Russian Encyclopedic Dictionary:
  b. name Annoba, in ...
• FRYAZIN in the Brockhaus and Efron Encyclopedia:
  (Ivan)? visiting Italian; served Ivan III as a coin master, and performed various other assignments: he traveled as an ambassador, negotiated, ...
• BON in the Full accentuated paradigm according to Zaliznyak:
  bo "n, bo" us, bo "na, bo" new, bo "well, bo" us, bo "n, bo" us, bo "nom, bo" us, bo "not, ...
• FRYAZIN
  Italian architect, creator of the Kremlin towers and, together with P.A. Solari, Granovita ...
• BON in the Dictionary for solving and compiling scanwords:
  Port in…
• BON in the New Dictionary of Foreign Words:
  (head. boom log; barrier, barrier) 1) a floating structure made of floats, logs, nets, sinkers, etc., serving as a barrier from ...
• BON in dictionary foreign expressions:
  [ 1. a floating structure made of floats, logs, nets, sinkers, etc., serving as a barrier against penetration into a harbor or onto ...
• FRYAZIN in the dictionary of Synonyms of the Russian language.
• BON in the dictionary of Synonyms of the Russian language:
  log, ...
• BON in the New Explanatory Dictionary of the Russian Language by Efremova:
  m. see booms ...
• BON in the Dictionary of the Russian Language Lopatin:
  bon, -a (floating ...
• BON full spelling dictionary Russian language:
  bon, -a (floating ...
• BON in the Spelling Dictionary:
  bon, -a (floating ...
• BON in the Dahl Dictionary:
  husband. , it. Baum, see Bom. | Franz. Bon, label, pay, note for issuance, for receipt ...
• FRYAZIN
  (incorrect Ruffo) Mark, Italian architect of the 15th century. In 1487-91 he participated in the construction of walls, towers and chambers (the Faceted Chamber, jointly ...
• BON in the Modern Explanatory Dictionary, TSB:
  the former name of the city of Annaba, in ...
• BON in the Explanatory Dictionary of Efremova:
  m. see booms ...
• BON in the New Dictionary of the Russian Language by Efremova:
  m. see booms ...
• BON in the Big Modern Explanatory Dictionary of the Russian Language:
  m. see booms ...
• LOLLIPOP;"BON-BON" in the 1998 Guinness Book of Records:
  A 1.37 ton candy was prepared by the Bon-Bon team in Holm-Ölstrup, Denmark on April 22, 1994...
• ALEVIZ FRYAZIN in the Architectural Dictionary:
  (Aleviz Milanese) (Aloisio da Milano) - Italian architect of the late 15th - early 16th centuries. From 1494 he worked in Moscow, participated ...
• BON MATSURI in Encyclopedia Japan from A to Z:
  - Day of Remembrance of the Dead - celebrated since the VI century. In ancient times, it was associated with the religious rituals of the cult of ancestors. …
• FRYAZIN IVAN
  Fryazin (Ivan) - visiting Italian; served Ivan III as a coin master, and performed various other assignments: he traveled as an ambassador, led ...
• ALEVIZ FRYAZIN in the Big Encyclopedic Dictionary:
  (Aleviz Milanese) (Aloisio da Milano) Italian architect con. 15 - beg. 16th centuries From 1494 he worked in Moscow, participated in ...
• Jung Bong Joon
  Bong Jun (1853-1895), leader of a peasant uprising in Korea. Born in Kobu County, Jeolla Province (South Korea), in the family of a small county ...
• FRYAZIN MARK in the Great Soviet Encyclopedia, TSB:
  (erroneously Ruffo) Mark, Italian architect of the 15th century. According to chronicles, in 1487-91 he worked in Moscow. Participant in the construction of brick walls and ...
• RUFFO (MARK FRYAZIN) in the Great Soviet Encyclopedia, TSB:
  the surname of the Italian architect Mark Fryazin, who worked in Moscow in the 1480s-90s, was mistakenly accepted in architectural studies ...
• ALEVIZ FRYAZIN (ALEVIZ NEW) in the Great Soviet Encyclopedia, TSB:
  Fryazin, Aleviz (Aloisio) New, architect of the late 15th - early 16th centuries. Italian by origin. In 1503-04 he worked in Bakhchisarai (Crimea), ...
• ALEVIZ FRYAZIN in the Great Soviet Encyclopedia, TSB:
  Fryazin, Aleviz Milanets (Aloisio da Milano) (years of birth and death unknown), architect. Italian by origin. Arrived in Moscow in 1494 ...
• Ioann Fryazin in the Encyclopedic Dictionary of Brockhaus and Euphron:
  cm. …
• ALEVIZ FRYAZIN in the Encyclopedic Dictionary of Brockhaus and Euphron:
  (Aloisio) - Italian architect, originally from Milan, led. Prince Ivan III Vasilyevich, in 1494, was brought to Moscow ...
• BELL TOWER in the Dictionary of Fine Art Terms:
  - a tower with an open tier for bells. They were placed next to the temple or included in its composition. In Italy they are called campanile. …
• IVAN THE GREAT BELLTOWER
  Open Orthodox Encyclopedia "TREE". The ensemble of the Ivan the Great Bell Tower is located between Cathedral and Ivanovskaya squares and is the compositional center of the Kremlin. …
• AFRICAN SAINTS in the Orthodox Encyclopedia Tree:
  Open Orthodox Encyclopedia "TREE". Attention, this article is not finished yet and contains only part of the necessary information. Saints, in the lands of Africa...
• BUDDHIST MYTHOLOGY
  a complex of mythological images, characters, symbols associated with the religious and philosophical system of Buddhism, which arose in the 6th-5th centuries. BC e. in India, in...
• BEAUNE in the Directory of Characters and Cult Objects of Greek Mythology:
  la-Rolande | Beaune-la-Rolande Beaune-la-Rolande - Franco-Prussian War Place of battle 28 Nov. 1870, 80 which was attended by 9,000 Prussians under the command of ...
• JOHN III VASILIEVICH in the Brief Biographical Encyclopedia:
  John III Vasilyevich - Grand Duke Moskovsky, the son of Vasily Vasilyevich the Dark and Maria Yaroslavna, was born on January 22, 1440, ...
• VOLPE (GIAN-BATTISTA DELLA VOLPE) in the Brief Biographical Encyclopedia:
  Volpe (Gian-Battista della Volpe) - Ivan Fryazin of our annals. His real name was only recently discovered by Pearling. Noble origin, from ...

From the 70s of the 15th century until the end of the 30s of the 16th century, Moscow was enriched with works of architecture worthy of the capital of a vast country.

The final unification of the Russian lands under the auspices of the Moscow Grand Dukes is still far away, but there was already the Battle of Kulikovo (1380), which marked the beginning of the deliverance of Russia from Tatar yoke. Dmitry Donskoy returns to Moscow with a victory. At the end of the XIV century, a long struggle with the Suzdal-Nizhny Novgorod and Tver princes also ends in favor of Moscow. By the beginning of the 80s of the XIV century, its leading political role was determined. In the eyes of contemporaries, Moscow is already a city that "exceeds ... all the cities in Rustei of the earth with many honors."

After the battle on the Don, the process of consolidation of forces Ancient Russia intensifies. Despite the campaign of Khan Tokhtamysh against Moscow, the entry of the Lithuanian troops of Prince Olgerd into the borders of Russia and the resistance of individual princes, there is a gradual unification of Russian lands around Moscow.

Ivan III (1440-1505, since 1462 - the Grand Duke of Moscow) continues the struggle against the feudal fragmentation of the Russian principalities, for their unification into a centralized Russian state. During the reign of Ivan III, the period of creation of outstanding works of Moscow architecture also falls.

Two circumstances influenced the formation of the architectural style of the second half of the 15th and the first three decades of the 16th century and the selection of masters. In 1453, Constantinople fell under the onslaught of the Turks, and the centuries-old connection with Byzantium, from whose hands East Slavs received Orthodoxy, was interrupted. A new period began in the history of foreign relations of Muscovite Russia.

The tragic fall of Constantinople made Moscow, in the eyes of its contemporaries, the only defender of Orthodoxy and the continuer of Byzantine traditions. The niece of the last Byzantine emperor Constantine XI - Sophia (Zoya) Paleolog, who was brought up in Rome at the court of Pope Sixtus IV, in 1472 becomes the wife of Grand Duke Ivan III.

An educated person, Princess Sophia was well versed in the art of her time, and in particular in Italian Quattrocento architecture. And her confessor, Cardinal Bessarion of Nicaea, a major Byzantine political figure and scientist, was associated with engineers and architects of Northern Italy. And when the need arose to build structures that corresponded to the increased strength of the Muscovite state, it was natural to turn through Princess Sophia to the Italian masters of architecture [One should not exaggerate, however, the role of Princess Sophia in inviting the Italians to Russia. Despite the Tatar yoke and isolation for this reason from Western Europe, communication between Russia and foreign countries has never been interrupted. This is evidenced by the many treasures of money found on trade routes, objects of material culture and art that existed in Russia, as well as those architectural elements that are present in the buildings of pre-Mongol Russia. Sophia Paleolog in this case played only the role of an intermediary].

Thus, for the first time in Russia, Italian craftsmen appeared who achieved high perfection in the construction of castles and fortresses, enriching the architecture with new engineering and artistic techniques.

The works of fortress architecture created by them, the nature of which was largely due to a purely utilitarian purpose, did not run counter to the Russian artistic traditions that had developed by the 15th century. Things were different in civil and especially in cult architecture, where visiting architects had to reckon with centuries-old national traditions. This was the difficulty of the position of Italian architects who gave their talent and knowledge to the Muscovite state. The Italians respected what they saw in Russia. They were struck by the originality of ancient Russian architecture. Preserving its traditions, they enriched it with progressive techniques for that time and a new idea of ​​architectural proportions.

According to chronicle Russian sources and Italian chronicles, it is possible to establish with sufficient accuracy which Italian architects worked in Russia in the last thirty years of the 15th century and in the first decades of the 16th century.

The first, according to chronicle evidence, Anton Fryazin appeared in Moscow in 1469, then, in 1475, Aristotle Rudolf Fioravanti. In 1487 Marco Fryazin (Marco Ruffo?) is already working - exact date his arrival is unknown. In 1490, Pietro Antonio Solari arrives; in 1494 - (?) r. - Peter Francis Fryazin. Around the same time - Alevia the Old, according to Italian sources - Aloisio da Carcano. In 1504, Aleviz the New arrived (Aloisio Lamberti da Montagnana) and Bon Fryazin was already working. In 1517 Fryazin Ivan appears, his full name is John-Battista della Volpe, and, finally, in 1522 - Petrok Maly.

Thus, over a period of more than half a century, ten Italian architects came to Russia; they participated in the construction of Moscow to an unequal degree. Peter Francis and Ivan Fryazin should be immediately excluded from this list. It is only known about the first of them that in 1508 he was sent by Grand Duke Vasily Ivanovich to Nizhny Novgorod, where he built a stone fortress after a partial collapse of its walls due to a landslide of a high mountain, under which 150 courtyards were buried in the settlement. The second Fryazin came to Pskov twice - in 1517 and 1538. - to fix the main wall of the Pskov Kremlin. Chronicles do not name the works of these architects in Moscow, although, undoubtedly, they lived in Moscow for a long time, since only from here they could be sent by order of the Grand Duke to other cities. Thus, eight Italian architects worked in Moscow, possessing great knowledge and practice in construction in general and military installations in particular.

ANTON FRYAZIN

Very little is known about this Italian architect. Some sources call him the birthplace of the Italian city of Bigenzu. He arrived in Moscow in 1469 as part of the embassy of the Greek Yuri from Cardinal Vissarion, who then began negotiations on the marriage of Ivan III to Princess Sophia Paleolog.

For sixteen years, the chronicles do not say anything about the construction activities of Anton Fryazin and only in 1485 they name his first work - the construction of the Tainitskaya tower (according to the terminology of the time - archers) of the Moscow Kremlin: "... In the same spring on May 29, it was laid on Moscow - strelnitsa river at the Sheshkov (Cup) gates, and under it a hiding place was brought out, and Anton Fryazin did it.

Such a gap between the year of arrival and the first mention of the building drew the attention of modern historiography. This silence of the chronicler can be explained by the fact that in 1471 a diplomat, also Anton Fryazin, arrived in Moscow as part of the Venetian embassy of Trevisan. The Nikon Chronicle and other sources give a lot of information about the activities of this Anton Fryazin in the diplomatic field and then, under 1485, they suddenly report about the construction of the Tainitskaya tower by him. It is not clear how a diplomat, to whom Ivan III gives a number of assignments and who, fulfilling them, travels between Venice and Moscow, turned into an architect, is not clear. Obviously, the ancient chronicler united two different people in one person. All this does not explain the reasons for the chronicler's silence on the activities of the architect. It is possible that Anton Fryazin arrived in the year of the laying of the Tainitskaya Tower, but then this does not coincide with the year when the embassy of Cardinal Vissarion appeared in Moscow.

There is only one explanation for this historical incongruity: significant facts in the history of the construction of Moscow appear on the pages of the annals; such a fact was the construction of a new Kremlin tower; everything else passes by the attention of the chronicler.

The construction of the Tainitskaya Tower - the first work of the first of the Italian architects who arrived in Moscow - begins the restructuring in brick of the white-stone, which has fallen into disrepair, from the time of Dmitry Donskoy, the Moscow Kremlin. Three years later, in 1488, Anton Fryazin built the corner tower of Sviblov, which in 1686 was renamed Vodovzvodnaya.

Speaking about the Kremlin towers of the 15th-16th centuries, it should be remembered that they did not have the tented tops built in the 17th century. Initially, they were massive cylindrical or rectangular volumes, with some exceptions, they were raised high above the walls and pushed forward beyond their line, which made it possible to fire longitudinally at the enemy going on the assault.

The Tainitskaya tower, which got its name from a secret passage dug in the direction of the river, is a passageway, rectangular and very massive, with a diversion archer, relatively low raised above the walls. She not only played the role of a archer, but also was a support for the adjacent wall strands. In 1772, in connection with the construction of the palace according to the project of V. I. Bazhenov, the tower was demolished, and then restored according to the measured drawings of M. F. Kazakov in size and architectural details, which were given by Anton Fryazin, with the subsequent superstructure of the tent top .

During the reconstruction and expansion of the Kremlin embankment, in 1953, the outlet archer was demolished, and the Tainitskaya Tower acquired a modern look.

The Sviblova (Vodovzvodnaya) tower was the second in terms of time of construction of the three, placed at the base of the Kremlin triangle, overlooking the Moscow River. In terms of its proportions, it is more massive than Beklemishevskaya (Moskvoretskaya) and more decorated. Not far above the white stone plinth are round loopholes of the plantar fight. Up to the middle of the height, the tower is lined with alternating belts of protruding and sinking brickwork, which makes it even more massive. Then comes a narrow strip of white stone, on which the arcade belt rests. This motif is not repeated on any of the Kremlin towers. Everything is completed by a magnificent crown of hinged loopholes (mashikules) and crenellations in the form of "dovetails" with slots for shooting.

The Sviblova Tower was destroyed in 1812 and then restored by the architect O. I. Bove.

And the arched belt, and the shape of machicolations, and "dovetails" - this is something new that first appears in the ancient Russian architecture of fortifications and to which we can find direct analogues in the architecture of medieval Italy. Let us remember the castle and the bridge of the Dukes of Scaligeri in Verona or the Palazzo del Capitano in Orvieto. Exactly the same arched belt as on the Kremlin's Sviblo's tower, we will find as a frieze under the eaves of the Cathedral of San Cirnaco in Ancona and on many other monuments of the proto-Renaissance to the Quattrocento. And the main innovation was that, starting from the second half of the 15th century, bricks were widely used in Russia in the construction. This was the merit of Anton Fryazin, who began the reconstruction of the Moscow Kremlin.

Aristotle Fioravanti is one of the greatest Italian engineers and architects of the 15th century. Much more is known about his life and work than about his predecessor. He was born in the city of Bologna in 1415, in a family of hereditary architects, whose names are mentioned in the city chronicles from the middle of the XIV century.

The father of the architect was, apparently, an outstanding architect. He is credited with rebuilding from 1425 to 1430 after the fire of the Palazzo Communale (Palace of the Community), as well as strengthening the tower of Aringo over the Palazzo del Podesta in Bologna.

In the traditions of the Quattrocento people, fascinated by antiquity, it was customary to give newborns the names of ancient heroes and thinkers. Both the future engineer and architect were given the name of Aristotle at birth, thereby, as it were, foreseeing the vastness of his knowledge and the courage of technical thought.

For the first time the name of Aristotle Fioravanti is mentioned in the chronicle of his native city in 1436. This year, together with the foundryman Gaspar Nadi, he casts a bell and raises it to the city tower of Aringo. This bell rang until 1452, then, in 1453, a new, larger one was cast. This bell was raised to the tower with the help of devices invented by Aristotle Fioravanti.

By the 50s of the 15th century, the master's building art flourished. By this time, he, along with his uncle Bartholomew Rudolfino Fioravanti, began a number of engineering and construction works.

Per short term, from August to December 1455, with extraordinary skill, he moves one of the city towers in Bologna from one place to another. In the new place, the tower stood for about four centuries and only in 1825 was demolished due to dilapidation. At the same time, he straightened the bell tower in the city of Cento, which also stood until the middle of the 18th century. The third tower is a campanile at the church of St. Angela in Venice - after straightening, she stood for only two days and, due to the weakness of the ground, unexpectedly collapsed, crushing several passers-by. This tragic incident forced Fioravanti to leave Venice, where he never returned. Subsequently, Fioravanti agreed to carry out all work of this kind only after a preliminary check of the strength of the soil and the foundation of the structure.

Until 1458, Aristotle worked in his native city, where he repaired and built part of the city wall and, to strengthen the defense, cleared large spaces in front of the walls from any building. In connection with these works, he is brought to trial, accusing him of arbitrariness. In general, when you read Italian chronicles and archival documents, a picture of the difficult life of one of the greatest engineers and architects of the second half of the 15th century gradually rises before your eyes. Twice he was accused of making a counterfeit coin, filed endless lawsuits; then he was forced to flee Venice, because the Council of the Republic wanted to put him in prison because of the fall of the tower he straightened. Fioravanti was neither a counterfeiter nor an adventurer. He was a courageous and talented civil engineer, and in those buildings that have come down to us, he appears as an architect who is fluent in the art of architecture.

The Italian period of creativity of Aristotle Fioravanti is remarkable mainly for engineering work. And in this respect, he can be called the predecessor of Leonardo da Vinci. Bold solutions for devices for lifting heavy loads to great heights, hydraulic structures made on the instructions of the Duke of Sforza - the canal in Cremona and the Parma Canal, which a quarter of a century later is continued by the great Vicentine, the strengthening of military castles and especially the shifting and straightening of the towers in Bologna, Cento and Mantua - all this made a huge impression on contemporaries. In 1458, Aristotle entered the service of Francesco Sforza and moved to Milan with his family.

This city, like northern cities Italy, differed from the southern city-republics. In contrast to commercial and industrial Florence, Milan was an important military and political center. Aristotle Fioravanti, like later Leonardo da Vinci, came to this city primarily as an engineer. He begins his work with the Dukes of Sforza by repairing an ancient stone bridge on the Ticino River.

It is known that Aristotle at that time worked with Antonio Averelino, nicknamed Filarete (1400-1469), the creator of the bronze doors of the Cathedral of St. Peter in Rome, over the construction of the Milan hospital, which has survived to this day. In his treatise on architecture, written in 1464, Filarete speaks of Fioravanti with great praise several times. Filarete builds only the southwestern part of the huge building, until 1465, and the architect Gviniforte Solari, the father of Pietro Solari, who later worked in Moscow, is finishing it.

Fioravanti stayed in Milan until the end of 1464 and returned to Bologna with his family. By this time, he was firmly established as a major engineer. In a letter from the Bolognese authorities, who offered him a permanent service in the city, Fioravanti is called "an amazing genius, unparalleled in the whole world."

The rumor about him has already crossed the borders of Italy. In 1467, Fioravanti was invited by the Hungarian king Matthias Korvin to build military fortifications in connection with a possible invasion of the Turks. With the consent of the Bologna authorities, who kept his salary, Aristotle leaves for Hungary (according to some sources, together with Antonio Filarete), where in six months he manages to draft fortresses and build a bridge across the Danube. King Matt was so pleased with his activities that he allowed him to have his own seal and gave Aristotle valuable gifts.

Perhaps it was the last eight years of the Italian period of Aristotle's life that were the most fruitful. Even a simple list of works carried out by Fioravanti at this time testifies to this: 1466 - correction of the city tower of Aringo in Bologna; there is also work to strengthen the city gates; straightening the course of the Reno River in 1470; Fioravapti is building a water pipeline in the city of Chento and at the same time receives an invitation from the College of Cardinals to come to Rome to draw up a project for the transfer to another place of the famous obelisk, which at that time stood where it was supposed to build the Cathedral of St. Peter.

The only architectural work of Fioravanti surviving in Italy is the building of the Bologna municipality - the Palazzo del Podesta. In 1472, after returning from Rome, Aristo-. The tel begins work on the restructuring of this building.

A model of the building was preliminarily made, which Aristotle completed in 1472, three years before leaving for Russia. The municipality of Bologna could not immediately begin to rebuild the old buildings, and when this opportunity arose, Aristotle was no longer in Italy. The Bolognese waited patiently for the return of their famous architect. In 1479, "sixteen members of the Government of the city of Bologna wrote to the Grand Duke of All Russia, so that he would allow the architect Aristotle Fioravanti to return to his homeland, which his work needs and the absence of which is very difficult and inconvenient for his family." But Aristotle did not return. In 1489, according to his model, the building of the Palazzo del Podesta in Bologna was completed and has survived to this day in this form.

In June 1474, Ivan III sent his ambassador Semyon Tolbuzin to Italy with a special assignment to find architects and engineers to work in the Muscovite state. According to some chronicles, Aristotle Fioravanti met with the Russian ambassador in Venice, according to others - in Rome. Obviously, this meeting nevertheless took place in Rome, where the architect went in 1473 in connection with the renewed negotiations on the project of moving the obelisk.

But unexpectedly, Aristotle was imprisoned on charges of selling counterfeit coins. This became known in Bologna. The city archives preserved the decision of the authorities: "June 3rd day 1473. Since it came to the attention that the master of engineering, Aristotle, was captured in Rome about counterfeit coins and, thus, covered himself with shame in the state where he was was sent by our Government precisely for the service and execution of the orders of the Holy Father, then we with all white beans (i.e. unanimously. - P. 3.) deprived the aforementioned Master Aristotle of the position and maintenance that he receives from the Bologna Camora, and decided that this deprivation was considered forever from the day of his exposure, provided that the accusation turned out to be true.

The accusation turned out to be false. In 1474, Fioravanti was already free and met with Semyon Tolbuzin to sign a contract to work in Russia.

A cautious diplomatic representative of the Grand Duke made inquiries about Fioravanti. And here, probably, it was not without the recommendation of Cardinal Vissarion, who took part in the fate of Aristotle.

The accusation overwhelmed Aristotle's patience. The sixty-year-old architect saw the only salvation from persecution and envy in leaving Italy. There is evidence that at that time the Turkish Sultan invited him to build fortresses. But this would already be a betrayal of the homeland and the entire Christian world. And Aristotle Fioravanti chooses Muscovite Russia, which was then legendary in Europe.

His choice was not accidental. Meetings with Bessarion of Nicaea and especially his stay in Venice prepared this choice. Fioravanti was in Venice a year or two after the fall of Byzantium. In the city they only talked about tragic fate Constantinople. The value of Byzantine art increased enormously. And before Aristotle's eyes, the multi-dome of Mark's Cathedral, the semicircular completions of the main facade (they resembled the zakomaras of the temples of Ancient Russia), frescoes and mosaics by Byzantine masters or works made under the impression of their art by Italian artists rose before Aristotle's eyes. An intelligent and impressionable architect, who has an excellent professional memory, has preserved all these images. Therefore, he so quickly penetrated the very essence of ancient Russian art, rooted in the artistic traditions of Byzantine.

Six months after the signing of the contract - in January 1475 - Aristotle, together with his son Andrei and servant Petrusha, as part of the embassy of Semyon Tolbuzin, sets off on a long journey. At that time, getting to Moscow was not easy. Travelers may have chosen the path that Sophia Palaiologos had taken three years earlier from Rome to her new homeland: from the German city of Lübeck, then through the Livonian lands, Novgorod or Pskov to Moscow.

The best time of the year, it was winter to overcome many rivers, streams, swamps and off-roads. We drove all January, blizzard February, March. Past rare villages, even rarer towns, past smoky huts and huge, seemingly endless dense forests. And everywhere a tree: white birches, gloomy spruce, mighty oaks. Walls and towers made of huge log cabins and unexpectedly elegant boyar mansions decorated with various carvings, "siege yards" - fortified estates and rare roadside taverns where horses were changed.

According to the First Sophia Chronicle, "in the summer of 6983 (1475), on the Great Day, the ambassador of the Grand Duke Semyon Tolbuzin came from Rome, and brought with him a master murol, who builds churches and chambers, named Aristotle."

"Great Day" - the feast of Easter - in 1475 fell on March 26th. Then Aristotle Fioravanti appeared in Moscow. The capital greeted the Italian architect with the crimson chime of church bells and an amazing appearance, unusual for a European. From the high bank of the Moskva River, Aristotle saw a picturesque cluster of log huts, intricate boyar choirs, outbuildings, white stone dilapidated fortress walls. Settlements, villages and fortified monasteries adjoined the city. And on the horizon there was a blue forest, through which winding paths and wide-rutted roads went.

In 1367, the Kremlin was surrounded by a white stone wall for the first time. By the time Fioravanti arrived, the walls of the Kremlin were dilapidated, smoked from many fires, sagged and partially lost their battlements. The fortress that defended the town of Moskov, which had settled on Borovitsky Hill three centuries earlier, had already taken on the outlines that, in a somewhat expanded form, were forever established in the planning of Moscow. And who knows, maybe it was then, on this spring day, before the mind's eye of the architect that a grandiose plan of the strongest citadel in Europe arose!

At the court of Ivan III, Aristotle was warmly received. Perhaps personally and, undoubtedly, from the words of Cardinal Vissarion, Sofya Fominichna knew Aristotle Fioravanti, she had heard a lot about his engineering skills. In addition, the reports of Ambassador Semyon Tolbuzin also confirmed the high skill of Fioravanti. The Venetian diplomat Ambrogio Contarini, who visited Moscow in 1476, reports that various Italian masters worked in this city, among them the master Aristotle from Bologna, an engineer who built a church on the square. I happened to live for some time in his house, which was almost next to the house of the Lord, "that is, in the Kremlin, near the palace of the Grand Duke. And the first thing that was entrusted to the architect was the construction of the main shrine of Ancient Russia - the Assumption Cathedral in the Kremlin.

This problem was tried to be solved even before Aristotle. It is known that on the site of the current cathedral there was a small white-stone church, which fell into disrepair by the beginning of the 70s of the 15th century. According to the chronicle, the walls threatened to fall and were supported by thick logs, and one of the chapels adjoining the northeast corner of the church collapsed. Three years before the arrival of Aristotle Fioravanti, according to the custom of those times, auctions were scheduled for the construction of a new cathedral. The lowest price was announced by two masters - Ivan Krivtsov and Myshkin. They were commissioned to build the temple. The architects were supplied certain conditions: it was required to build a new cathedral on the model and likeness of the Assumption Cathedral in Vladimir, but larger in all its parts.

Krivtsov and Myshkin set about dismantling the old church, which was three meters smaller than the newly erected one and therefore ended up inside. Chronicles report that a temporary wooden church was built there, in which the wedding of Ivan III with Princess Sophia took place.

In 1474, the walls were brought out under the arches, but suddenly in May the northern wall collapsed, inside which there was a staircase to the choir stalls, and part of the western one. Everything had to be started over. Pskov craftsmen were urgently called in for consultations. They praised the "smoothness" of the walls, but stated that the lime used for the construction was not "glueite" enough, that is, it did not have the necessary viscosity to fix the stone blocks. They refused to participate in the construction.

Reporting on this event, the chronicle names as the reason "the cracking of the earth", which allegedly took place in Moscow on a May night, but at the same time does not give any details of this rare phenomenon for Moscow and does not speak of damage to other buildings. Such stinginess of the chronicler raises doubts about the veracity of the story. Maybe all this was needed in order to somehow justify the failure with the construction of the cathedral church of the Assumption of the Virgin in the Kremlin.

In fact, everything was explained more simply. Krivtsov and Myshkin, like the Pskov masters, did not build such vast temples as were to be erected in the Kremlin. The Mongol invasion interrupted the building traditions of the Kiev and Vladimir-Suzdal lands, which once provided unsurpassed examples of architecture. It was necessary to restore these traditions, but on the basis of modern building technology. This was the meaning of inviting the Italians to Russia.

The cathedral stood half-ruined for a year. And in 1475, immediately upon arrival in Moscow, Aristotle began construction. According to the annals, it is possible to restore the order of work almost year after year. Researchers disagree only on the time of Fioravanti's trip to the cities Northeast Russia- Vladimir, Novgorod, Pskov, where he went to get acquainted with the monuments of ancient Russian architecture and, above all, with the Assumption Cathedral in Vladimir. There is reason to think that he made this journey twice: the first time - to Vladimir, relatively close to Moscow, then, later, to the north.

Fioravanti did not consider it possible to include the surviving parts of the old church in his construction, and work began with the destruction of its remains. This was done in an amazing way for Muscovites. The so-called "ram" - a heavy oak log, bound with iron and suspended between three beams connected by the upper ends, swaying back and forth, hit the wall with terrible force and destroyed it. The chronicler wrote about the impression made by this device: "... they did it for three years, in one week and less collapse."

Before starting to dig the foundation and lay the walls, Fioravanti carefully found out the reasons for the fall of the Assumption Cathedral Church. He confirmed the point of view of the Pskov masters about the unsuitability of lime mortar and showed how it should be prepared. As a result, "I commanded to stir the lime thickly with hanks, and if it dries up in the morning, then it’s not urine to split with a knife ... like a thick dissolving dough, but smeared with iron blades."

According to the chronicle, the foundation was laid at a depth of more than two sazhens, and it was laid not on the ground, but on oak piles hammered into the base of the moat. These were all innovations that surprised Muscovites, but were quickly accepted by them.

Russian builders used brick even before the arrival of Fioravanti, but it was of poor quality and was used mainly for backfilling white stone walls. Aristotle built special brick factories behind the Andronikov Monastery in Kalitnikov, on the banks of the Moskva River. Compared to the old Russian brick, the new one was more oblong and immeasurably harder.

Having completed the preparatory work (the destruction of the old church, digging ditches for the foundation and preparing bricks), Fioravanti in the same 1475 began laying the walls. Previously, he went to the ancient developments of white stone in Myachkovo near Moscow, tested the stone and arranged its delivery to the construction site.

The chronicle reports that in the same year the walls came out of the ground, but they were laid in a different way. Instead of broken bricks and small stones, which served for backfilling, bricks, prepared according to the size and recipe of Fioravanti, were now laid between the outer and inner white stone walls. It was easier, faster, and most importantly, the load was not placed on the cladding, but on the brickwork, which, in fact, was the wall. Then they began to put up internal pillars. There are six of them in total: four are round, two are square, hidden by an altar barrier. Twelve cross vaults rest on them. This was also news, because the ancient form of the pillar is square, with four corners cut out, forming an equal cross in plan.

In 1476, Aristotle brings the walls to the height of the arched-columnar belt. For a fortress, he uses metal ties instead of traditional oak ties, fixing them with anchors on the outer walls. Elevators were used to supply bricks and lime. The chronicle dwells in detail on these innovations.

In 1477 the cathedral was finished in rough. Two more years were spent on interior decoration, and on August 15 (26), 1479, the Assumption Cathedral was solemnly consecrated.

Already contemporaries were able to appreciate the beauty of the new cathedral. The author of the Resurrection Chronicle wrote: "Because that church was wonderful in majesty and height and lordship and sonority and space; this has never happened before in Russia, besides the Vladimir church; and the master is Aristotle."

Fioravanti had to take into account in his work local traditions, which were developed over the centuries by ancient Russian masters, and adapt his understanding of architectural forms to them. Five domes, pozakomarny covering, articulation of the walls by pilasters, arcade-by-column belt, perspective portal - architectural and structural elements that determine the composition of the building. The Italian architect, brought up in the art of the Renaissance, introduces order into this construction, strict subordination of parts, accurate drawing of details and subtly found proportions - the ratio between the height and width of each of the links of the facade - and this gives the entire structure an impressive, strict and monumental appearance.

Taking Vladimir's Assumption Cathedral as a base, Fioravanti creates a work that is different from his prototype, with architectural and artistic features inherent only to him. They consist not only in a different proportionality of all elements, but also in the strict symmetry of their arrangement. The eastern facade, sandwiched by two powerful buttresses, is divided by five apses - two on each side of the central, main apse. It is completed with three arcs of zakomara, forming a free space filled with paintings above the hemispheres of the apses. This technique distinguishes the work of Fioravanti from the Cathedral of the Assumption in Vladimir, where the apses almost reach the height of the roof covering.

The southern and northern facades have four equal sections of walls, the western - three. In the middle section of this façade, along the axis of the central apse, there is a porch decorated with a double arch with a hanging weight in the middle. This technique subsequently became very widespread in Russian architecture. Lateral perspective portals are shifted to the third section and form the transverse axis of the building. Each upper window is cut along the axis of the zakomar semicircle, and the middle window is cut along the axis of the arcuate-columnar belt. All individual elements of the building and its proportions form a single harmonious whole.

The chronicler found a penetrating definition of the sensation that arises in entering the cathedral: majesty, lordship and elation, which he called "sonorousness". For the first time in the history of Russian architecture, the interior of the temple appeared in the form of a huge and undivided, freely visible and high hall. And inside the cathedral, as well as in the facades, Fioravanti preserves the rhythm and interconnection of equal-sized elements, in their totality organizing the space. These elements were twelve equal compartments between the pillars, covered with cross vaults. The architect abandoned the choirs - an indispensable accessory of the grand ducal cathedrals - and from the dome space, equal to the diameter of the large middle dome. But the need to adhere to the church canon, which required that the central dome be larger than four lateral ones, forced Fioravanti to lay out his drum on a wall located indented from the inner ring, due to which a hollow annular chamber formed at the base of the drum. With this constructive technique, the architect reconciled the new solution with the traditions of ancient Russian temple construction.

Even during the life of Fioravanti, in 1481, the main cycles of fresco painting were completed, and by 1515 all the walls, columns and pillars were completely covered with painting. It remained until the middle of the 17th century, when, having become very dilapidated, it was renewed according to specially taken copybooks. Then, over the centuries, they were repeatedly updated. And only in 1914 their scientific restoration began. In the 1920s, authentic wall paintings of the 15th - early 16th centuries in the northeastern apse and in the altar barrier, which were considered lost, were unearthed. These priceless fragments, in their stylistic nature, go back to the frescoes of the Ferapontov Monastery, made in 1500-1502. Dionysius and his squad of artists.

Let's try to imagine what the cathedral looked like in the year it was completed. In place of the blank wall of the iconostasis, built only in the 17th century, there was a low altar barrier that opened up a view of the central apse and side aisles. Four columns - high and thin - did not clutter up the interior. They were decorated with Romano-Byzantine capitals, possibly inspired by the capitals of St. Mark in Venice.

The Cathedral of the Assumption, which turned five hundred years old in 1979, has undergone relatively little change. And subsequent restorations, especially at the beginning of the century and in the 70s, almost completely restored its original appearance. It is not known for what reasons the sculptural capitals of the columns carved from white stone were knocked down in the 17th century. But their Romanesque form has been preserved, perfectly coordinated with the girth arches of the vaults.

In the 19th century, the white-stone slabs of the original floor were replaced with cast-iron slabs with relief ornaments, and as a result, the level of the floor rose somewhat. The northeast aisle was rebuilt, over which a sacristy was built.

There are good reasons to believe that Aristotle Fioravanti thought out the general arrangement of the walls and towers of the Kremlin. In the interval between 1475 and 1485, when work began on replacing the dilapidated white stone walls and towers with new, brick ones, Fioravanti in Moscow, in fact, had no competitors. The only Italian architect Anton Fryazin, who, as already mentioned, in 1485 and 1488. builds two towers and a wall between them on the river side of the Kremlin, could not start this work without having general plan the whole fortress. Such a plan could only be given by Aristotle Fioravanti, the famous fortifier who built in his homeland Castello Sforcesco and fortified castles for the Duke of Milan, towers and walls of Bologna, defensive lines in Hungary.

Even now, despite the superstructure of the towers in the 17th century with various hipped roofs, the architectural and spatial composition of the Kremlin amazes with the integrity and thoughtfulness of the solution. And at the end of the 15th century, when the Kremlin appeared before the astonished contemporaries with all the might of its walls and towers, this wholeness, which is easy to imagine mentally, was even more striking. Such completeness of architecture could only have arisen by the will of one genius, who outlined the general plan of the structure, determined its individual parts, their size and shape.

The rationalism of Quattrocento architecture was reflected here in the straightening of the northeastern wall and the construction of round towers at the base and top of the Kremlin triangle, which created a balanced spatial composition of the entire citadel. Thus, both in the Assumption Cathedral and in the huge ensemble of fortress walls and towers of the Kremlin, one can trace this attraction to geometrism - from the point of view of the Italian architect of the 15th century, the only way to establish the ideas of humanism and order in architecture, as opposed to the chaos of the Middle Ages.

There is another, albeit indirect, evidence that Aristotle Fioravanti was the creator of the Kremlin's master plan. In the manuscript section of the library of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR in Leningrad, there is a manuscript of the 15th century - "Treatise on Architecture" by Antonio Averelino Filarete, with whom, as mentioned above, Fioravanti built the hospital building in Milan, and according to some information, traveled with him to Hungary at the invitation of King Matthias Corvinus. Filarete's treatise became a reference book for architects of the 15th century and was distributed in Italy in many lists. It is natural to assume that Filarete's friend and colleague, Aristotle Fioravanti, had a copy of this book and that he brought it to Moscow. In the treatise, its author speaks of Aristotle several times with great praise.

If you go into a detailed study of the grandiose monument of architecture and engineering, which is the Kremlin, then you can trace the stylistic features of the northern Italian fortress architecture in it, see the recommendations set out in the treatise implemented.

In 1478, a year before the end of the Dormition Cathedral, Aristotle Fioravanti, at the insistence of Ivan III, went on a campaign against Novgorod as chief of artillery. This field was fully affected by the diversity of knowledge and experience of Aristotle. When the army of Ivan III approached the Novgorod fortress, it became necessary to build a bridge across the Volkhov. Fioravanti built a temporary pontoon bridge of extraordinary strength. The chronicler tells about this engineering structure as follows: “On December 6, the prince ordered the great bridge to be repaired (i.e., arranged) on the Volkhov River to his master Aristotle Fryazin, near Gorodishche; and that master made such a bridge near Gorodishche on ships on that river, and beyond the great prince, having overcome, returned to Moscow, but the bridge is still standing.

Biographers of Aristotle Fioravanti associate the construction of the Cannon Yard in Moscow with his name. It was located on the site of Pushechnaya Street, parallel to the Kuznetsk Bridge, where forges were located along the then-flowing Neglinnaya River. Apparently, this was the case. Foundry, which Fioravanti was engaged in in his youth, coinage and artillery - the subject of his research in connection with the construction of fortified castles. All this allowed him to take up the organization of the Cannon Yard in Moscow. Foundry business in Ancient Russia was developed from time immemorial. But there were not enough of their own masters, especially in the 15th century, when the tasks of uniting Russia and getting rid of the Tatar yoke required extensive military operations. Therefore, the Italian architect and engineer, in terms of the versatility of his knowledge - a typical representative of the Renaissance, became an indispensable specialist in Moscow.

In 1482, Aristotle Fioravanti, in anticipation of a campaign against Kazan, was sent ahead with an artillery convoy and reached the banks of the Volga near Nizhny Novgorod.

A letter from Fioravanti, dated February 22, 1476, was found in the Milan archives to the Duke of Milan, Galeazzo Maria II of the Sforza dynasty, who ascended the throne in 1466. The quarrelsome and cruel duke devoted most of his time to hunting. Obviously, Fioravanti, working in Milan, met with him. Once in Russia and remembering the passion of Galeazzo, Fioravanti went in search of gyrfalcons and, judging by the letter, reached the White Sea, visited the Solovetsky Islands. Fioravanti sent the harvested white gyrfalcons with his son Andrei to Milan. By the way, this letter is one of the earliest testimonies of a foreigner about Moscow, which Fioravanti calls "a glorious, richest and commercial city."

Fioravanti made his last journey through Ancient Russia in 1485. But before that, an event occurred that was also the last test in the difficult life of the great architect.

Among the foreigners living in Moscow at that time was the Italian doctor Antonio. He undertook to treat the sick Tatar prince Karakucha, but he died. And then the Italian doctor was accused of poisoning the prince. After severe torture, at the behest of Ivan III, Antonio was executed. This made a terrible impression on Aristotle, and he decided on a secret escape. The attempt turned out to be a disaster. The Sophian Chronicle reports that Aristotle "was afraid of the same thing, began to ask the Grand Duke for his own land; the great prince caught him and robbed him of the plantations in the Onton's courtyard behind Saint Lazor." Obviously, then the drawings of Fioravanti, his letters, diaries and travel notes perished.

Aristotle was imprisoned, and perhaps that would have ended his life path. But he was necessary. And in 1485, the chronicle mentions the name of Fioravanti for the last time as the chief of artillery in the campaign of Ivan III to conquer the Tver principality. Obviously, the seventy-year-old engineer and architect in this year [Professor P. Cazzola in his work "Masters of Mud in Moscow at the End of the 15th Century (From Russian Chronicles and Documents of Italian Archives)" believes that Aristotle Fioravanti died in 1486. ​​This assumption he based on what was found in State Archive Bologna notarial deed of August 24, 1487, where the architect's children from the first and second marriages were fussing about the division of the property of their father - the "magnificent horseman" (an honorary title given by the government of Bologna to eminent citizens), who died some time ago] found peace in the land, to whom he presented his best work.

Aristotle Fioravanti can be ranked among the rare masters who entered the history of world culture with only one work.

The Assumption Cathedral opened a new page in the history of ancient Russian architecture. The influence of its forms can be traced in many works - from the Novodevichy Convent Cathedral in Moscow to distant Vologda - and in time periods from the 15th to the end of the 17th century and even in the 19th century. The use of large-sized bricks, the laying out of walls in bandaging, the erection of domes in one brick, the use of iron ties and anchors instead of oak logs, the progressive organization of construction work, and most importantly, the understanding of a work of architecture as a harmonious combination of all its elements - this is something new that the Italian master brings in ancient Russian building practice.

Fioravanti was a contemporary of the largest and early theorists of the Italian Renaissance - Antonio Filarete, Leon Battista Alberti (1414–1472). They developed the ideas of proportionality in nature and in man, which were laid down in the philosophical concepts of ancient architects. This understanding of harmony, built on the numerical relations of proportionality, formed the basis of the composition of the Assumption Cathedral. Without using details from the architectural arsenal of the Renaissance, as other Italian architects did, Aristotle creates a work imbued with the spirit of the Renaissance and at the same time deeply national.

They appeared in Moscow at different times: Marco Fryazin [Historian N. M. Karamzin, without good reason, gives Marco the surname Ruffo, which was picked up by subsequent Russian historiography. The Italian scholar Merzario lists him among the descendants of Marco dei Frisoni or da Coropa. In our essay, we have retained the surname by which he is known in Russian chronicles. - Marco Fryazin] was already working in 1484, while Pietro Antonio Solarn only arrived in 1490. They were united by their joint work on the construction of the Great Golden Chamber, which we know as Faceted.

Italian sources do not mention Marco Fryazin, and one can learn about his work in Moscow only from Russian chronicles. Antonio Solari and both sources pay a lot of attention.

The first news about Marko Fryazin in Moscow refers to the beginning of work on replacing old wooden palace buildings with stone ones. It was part of Ivan III's plan for the reconstruction of the old white-stone Kremlin. In 1484, Marco Fryazin built a brick chamber to store the grand ducal treasury. The place for construction was chosen between the Annunciation and Archangel Cathedrals. Before the construction of the Treasury Court (as the chronicles call this building), the personal treasury of the Grand Duke was kept in two places - under the Church of the Nativity of the Virgin and under the Annunciation Cathedral, and the treasury Grand Duchess- in the Church of the Nativity of John the Baptist.

Marco's first building has not been preserved, but it can be described from the images that have come down to us, in particular, from a drawing from the book "Election to the Kingdom". The Treasury Court was a relatively small brick building, consisting of two parts: one of them, closely adjoining the apse of the Annunciation Cathedral, was relatively low and covered with a gable roof; the other, which seemed rather impressive in comparison with the first tower, ended with a high tent. Completely smooth, without any architectural decoration, the walls of this building ended in its tower-like part with a wide cornice. The Treasury yard was connected by passages with the rest of the Terem Palace.

In 1487, Marco Fryazin, to the west of the Annunciation Cathedral, built the Small Embankment Chamber, which also did not survive, but was carefully recorded in the measured drawing by D. Ukhtomsky before it was rebuilt in 1751. It was a two-story brick building, covered with vaults. The basement towered above the basement floor, and on the second floor there were two chambers - the Dining Room and the Reply, each with its own exit.

The facade of the Embankment Chamber, judging by the drawing of Ukhtomsky, is interesting because it is decorated with details that were first used in Russian architecture: these are triangular sandriks above the windows of the first floor, arches of the second and a wide, full-profile cornice crowning the entire building. Horizontal rods separate the floor from the floor, the proportions of the windows and their arrangement leave large free planes of the walls. All this together creates a new image of a public building, in which "Italianisms" sound stronger than in other civil buildings of the Kremlin. With this building, which existed until the middle of the 18th century, Marco Fryazin, as it were, anticipated the character of the architecture of the Arsenal in the Kremlin, and perhaps even influenced it.

Simultaneously with the Malaya Embankment Chamber, in 1487, "Marco Fryazin made an archer, at the corner down Moscow Beklemishevskaya." He put it on the site of the corner tower of the white stone fortress of 1367 and thus completed the construction of the brick walls of the southern side of the Kremlin. Inside the tower, Marco Fryazin arranged a hiding place-well.

The Moskvoretskaya Tower, as the chronicle otherwise calls it, has survived to this day. In 1680, the tower was built on with a multifaceted tent, and in 1707, at its foot, in anticipation of a possible offensive by the Swedes, earthen ramparts were poured and loopholes were somewhat hewn to install more powerful guns (during the restoration of 1948, the loopholes were given their original size and shape ).

It has already been said above that the Kremlin towers of the 15th-16th centuries should be imagined without the tented completions built almost two hundred years later. In the Beklemishevskaya strelnitsa, it is especially easy to draw a line between its old and new parts. Following the machicolations protruding beyond the entire volume, the overhanging upper part once bore teeth in the form of dovetails. Then they were replaced with a brick parapet with fly, typical for all the towers of the Kremlin. Compared to the Vodovzvodnaya Tower, Beklemishevskaya is laconic to the limit. Its tall and slender cylinder is placed on a beveled white stone plinth and separated from it by a semicircular roller. And no more decor, nothing that could disturb the image of a combat archer. The tower is good not only in itself, but also because it enriches the silhouette of this part of the city. The walls of the Kremlin diverge from it at an angle and the river carries its quiet waters close by. It is visible from Zamoskvorechye, from Red Square and the adjacent streets of Kitay-Gorod.

In addition to Beklemishevskaya, Marco Fryazin, according to the chronicle, "founds two archers in Moscow - Nikolskaya and Frolovskaya." But obviously, it only lays, since in the future the chronicle ascribes the construction of these and other towers to Pietro Solari.

The last time the chronicle (Nikonovskaya) mentions the name of Marko Fryazin was in 1491. Whether he left for his homeland or ended his days in Russia is unknown. His creative life was not easy. With the exception of the Beklemishevskaya Tower, all the buildings he started after 1487, including the Faceted Chamber, were completed by other masters. But in the Moskvoretskaya Strelnitsa, Marco Fryazin showed himself to be a mature architect with a great sense of proportions and a progressive fortification engineer who used the most advanced techniques for that time.

Sources attribute the beginning of the construction of the Faceted Chamber to the same 1487. The final date is 1491. Solari arrived in Moscow in 1490. So, Marco Fryazin worked for three years without him. Thus, the entire architectural and spatial design of the Faceted Chamber and its implementation belong to Marco, and the architectural decoration of the facades and interiors is apparently the work of Solari. But in order to establish this, one should briefly describe the creative path of the famous architect and sculptor in his homeland. He belonged to a family of famous Milanese sculptors and architects. The son and student of Gviniforte Solari (1429-1481), Pietro Antonio (circa 1450-1493) took part in the construction of the cathedral in Milan, Ospedale Maggiore - in the same place and the famous monastery of Certosa in Pavia. In addition, he also worked as a sculptor. In Italy, two of his works, dating from 1484 and 1485, have been preserved: the tomb of de Capitani in Alexandria and the sculpture of the Madonna in the Museum of the Sforza Castle in Milan. Both of them characterize Solari as a somewhat archaic master, keen on the ornamental development of sculptural images. This is especially noticeable on the façade of the Cathedral of the Pavian Certosa (1453-1475), completely covered with lace ornaments, which is very significant for confirming our assumptions about Pietro Solari's attitude to the decorative decoration of the Faceted Chamber. Here the master had a full opportunity to satisfy his love for the ornamental filling of the plane also because Orthodoxy forbade the use of round thematic sculpture in church and secular life.

The Faceted Chamber was part of a large palace complex with its facade facing the Cathedral Square of the Kremlin. At the time described, this unusually picturesque ensemble was still far from complete. Only a year after the completion of the construction of the Palace of Facets, in 1492, Ivan III ordered to begin dismantling the wooden palace and build a stone one. And for the temporary grand ducal residence, wooden mansions were cut down. But the laying of a new stone palace took place only seven years later - because of a fire that destroyed all the wooden structures of the Kremlin. And the Faceted Chamber stood for some years on the Cathedral Square in the neighborhood of the Assumption Cathedral.

The building of the Faceted Chamber with a clear silhouette of a simple rectangular volume stood out among other, later buildings with the unusual decoration of the main (eastern) facade. It is lined with white limestone stones, hewn into four faces and forming a pyramid. Rows of faceted stones (they gave the name to the chamber) start from the height of the basement floor and end below the cornice, leaving a free strip of smooth white stone. The corners of the facade are covered with thin twisted columns, the capitals of which rise above the upper row of rustication, and rest on cubic stones. The cornice hangs a little over the wall and visually supports the high hipped steep gilded roof.

The windows were smaller than they are now. Two semicircular arches resting on an impost were inscribed in a rectangular casing. These are typically Italian windows; rarely placed on the facades, they left a large free space of the wall, giving the building even more monumentality.

In 1682, the windows of the Faceted Chamber were hewn, the semi-circular endings disappeared, and the architect Osip Startsev gave the frame a new look - in the form of a straight sandrik, leaning on columns freely standing on brackets. Everything is covered with the richest carvings: the trunk of the columns, panels under the windows with the image of lions holding cartouches with crowns, capitals and brackets.

Windows from the 17th century have survived to this day and are perfectly combined with the old facades of the 15th century.

On the left side facade there was an external open white stone staircase - a magnificent Red Porch. Its straight march of thirty-two steps, fenced with carved stone railings, was interrupted by two platforms - lockers, according to Old Russian terminology. The lockers were decorated with gilded figures of heraldic lions, and the steps were covered with iron plates.

The red porch, intended for the solemn exits of the king and the reception of foreign ambassadors, led to the second floor to the front rooms of the Faceted Chamber - the Holy Vestibule and the Great Golden Chamber.

Holy vestibule - an oblong low room under the vaults with four deep strippings. Above the vaults there was a mezzanine - a hiding place, from where, through the window, the female half of the grand-ducal family could observe the ceremonial reception of ambassadors and other events of court life, to which, according to the customs of those times, women were not allowed.

The richest carving, gilding and wall paintings give exceptional luxury to the interiors of the Faceted Chamber. Pietro Litoppo Solari concentrated the gilded stone “lace” on the portals of the door and window openings of the Holy Vestibule and the Great Golden Chamber. The huge door portal represents a very complex composition. The immediate frame of the doorway consists of two vanes covered with an entablature, followed by two protruding pilasters with complex bases and rich capitals. The pilasters, in turn, carry a strongly loosened entablature, on which the keel-shaped pediment rests, and the lower ends of its frame are bent outward in the form of volutes. The tympanum of the pediment contains a sculptural relief of a double-headed eagle - one of the earliest images of the coat of arms of Ancient Russia, inherited by the Grand Duke from Byzantium along with the cap of Monomakh. Above the eagle is a lion's mask, and on the sides are heraldic griffins. All other parts of the portal are covered with small, superbly arranged and masterfully executed ornamentation, in the design of which typical Russian double-headed eagles are woven. All portals of the Faceted Chamber are made in the same character and differ only in details.

The walls of the Holy Vestibule and the Great Golden Chamber are covered with paintings made by Russian masters, and together with the golden ornament of the portals, they form the main decorative decoration of the interiors.

From the Holy vestibule the visitor enters a vast space

Great Golden Chamber. In practice, this is a square room with sides of 22.1 X 22.4 m. In the center is a massive pillar, on which the heels of four cross vaults rest, forming a surprisingly bold, light covering, reaching a height of nine meters. The chamber is illuminated through two rows of windows, and in the lower row on its three sides there are twelve windows, and in the upper row there are only four.

The faceted chamber, begun by Marco Fryazin and completed by Pietro Antonio Solari, in its general architectural composition had both ancestors and descendants in Ancient Russia. The ancestor of the Moscow Chamber of Facets was Novgorod, mentioned as early as 1169. Extant, this chamber is the result of a restructuring in 1433. It is a vast square room, in the center of which is a massive pillar bearing the heels of four cross vaults. The stripping of the vaults rests on a star-shaped system of ribs. Despite the stylistic features (in this case, the ribs are a typical sign of the Gothic, explained by the fact that Russian and German masters worked together), the ancient one-pillar construction is characteristic here. An example, closer both in time and place, is the refectory of the Trinity-Sergius Lavra, built by the architect Vasily Dmitrievich Yermolin in 1469.

There are many descendants of the Faceted Chamber. Moreover, it should be noted that the rib vaults did not take root. Everything that was built after it is only its modification, more or less successful. An example is the White and Red Chambers of the Patriarchal Court of Rostov the Great.

Thus, the architects of the Great Golden Chamber did not introduce any fundamentally new features into its composition, but only brought the traditional ancient form to perfection.

The Faceted Chamber in the history of ancient Russian civil architecture occupies the same place as the Assumption Cathedral in the architecture of places of worship. And here and there we see a firm adherence to the national tradition, which even the art of the Italian Renaissance did not overcome. Italian masters could only modernize the ancient original architecture, but not change it. Marco Fryazin and Pietro Antonio Solari, with the construction of the Faceted Chamber, introduce for the first time the image of a city house into Russian everyday life. This is not a manor fenced off from the street, but a house where you can enter directly from the street or square. The main facade, as if transferred to Moscow from the northern Italian cities of Ferrara or Bologna, ends with a four-pitched steep roof, typical of Russian wooden choirs. We see the same combination of Italian and Russian traditions in the interior: the richness of Italian ornamentation in combination with the keeled pediment of the portals, the richest ancient Russian painting on the walls and the architecture of the one-pillar chamber. These features of the interpenetration of Italian and Russian artistic cultures are especially noticeable in this palace building - the only well-preserved monument of the 15th century. With the exception of the windows remodeled in the 17th century, the disappeared Red Porch and the hipped roof, as well as the walls painted in the 19th century, everything else has survived to this day.

Perhaps of all the foreign architects who worked in the Kremlin, Pietro Antonio Solari made the greatest contribution. In 1490–1493 he built Borovitskaya, Konstantin-Eleninskaya, Frolovskaya (Spasskaya) and Nikolskaya passing towers, archery with a hiding place over Neglinnaya and part of the walls. To this list, based on chronicle data, one can also add the Corner Arsenal (Sobakina) multifaceted tower and the rectangular Senate tower. However, it should be remembered that two towers - Nikolskaya and Frolovskaya - were founded by Marko Fryazin. We do not know what should be understood by the laconic annalistic term “lay”: did Marco really limit himself to laying the foundations of the towers, or did he begin to build walls as well? In any case, he facilitated the work of Solari, who built the main facade of the Kremlin fortress overlooking Red Square. The Kremlin walls here on the southeast side are closed by the Frolovskaya passage tower, renamed Spasskaya in 1678, and from the northeast - the faceted Corner Arsenalnaya (Sobakina) tower. The entire extended front of the wall is rhythmically divided into equal sections by means of the Senate (deaf) and Nikolskaya (travelling) towers.

From the side of Red Square, the Kremlin was most heavily fortified. Before the construction of the Kitaygorod wall, the square was a free space where the enemy could not hide.

Already after the death of Pietro Antonio Solari, the eastern side of the Kremlin was additionally reinforced with a second wall - it was lower and adjoined a moat filled with water.

Of the Kremlin towers built by Solari, we will focus on two - Arsenalnaya and Frolovskaya: on the first - due to its architectural merits, on the second - because it became the main entrance to the Kremlin and its silhouette and architectural decoration so organically entered the face of the city that became his symbol.

The arsenal tower, the most powerful of all the Kremlin towers, was built in 1492. Its task was to defend the crossing over the Neglinnaya to the market located on Red Square. On a deep foundation, in which a spring-well was hidden in case of a siege, a sixteen-sided mass of the tower rises. The powerful volume and stingy, clear lines of the silhouette make it a work of great monumental art. Prior to the addition of the tent in the 17th century, the tower above the machicules ended with dovetail-shaped battlements, replaced by a typical brick parapet with fly. The arsenal tower, like Beklemishevskaya, is not difficult to imagine in its original form, raised high above the angle of the converging Kremlin walls. The building of the Arsenal did not yet exist at the time of the Solari, and the tower dominated the district and, like Beklemishevskaya on the opposite corner, played a significant role in urban planning.

The most integral - in the sense of the fusion of two different stages of construction - is Frolovskaya, later renamed Spasskaya. By tradition and due to its topographic location, the Spasskaya Tower has always been the main gate of the Kremlin. It was built on the site of the Frolovskaya Strelnitsa of the white-stone fortress of 1367. During its next repair, the architect and sculptor V.D. Yermolin placed on it two white-stone reliefs with images of the patrons of the Moscow princes - Saints George and Dmitry Solunsky. Later, they decorated the tower built by Solari in 1491. And one of them - the spear-bearer Georgy - became the coat of arms of the city of Moscow.

Pietro Antonio Solari, erecting the towers of the main entrance to the Kremlin, gave them the stern appearance of a fortification. To the Spasskaya Tower, he attaches a retractable archer. There is no combat platform in pei, but a combat the move is on along the rectangle of the walls at the level of the merlons. In the direction of Red Square, a drawbridge was thrown across the moat, which tightly covered the arch of the gate in the event of a siege or assault. On the façade one can see the openings through which the chains were passed for lowering and raising the bridge, and in the passage of the gate one can still see the grooves along which the metal grate - the gers - was raised and lowered.

The retractable archer retained the architectural forms of the 15th century, laconic to the limit. The rectangle of its walls is fixed at the corners with strongly protruding shoulder blades and ends with a wavy line of dovetails, somewhat enlivening the severe appearance of the tower.

The newly built Spasskaya Tower differed from the strelnitsa in height and internal structure. It is divided into floors and has a combat platform for the upper battle. Obviously, immediately after the completion of construction, the battle area was covered with a wooden tent, on top of which a copper image of an eagle, the coat of arms of the Moscow State, was fixed. On one side of the wooden quadrangle was placed the dial of the clockwork inside. The tent often burned, and therefore the Spasskaya Tower was the first to receive the existing and still magnificent stone tent completion.

We cannot advise the reader to imagine the Spasskaya Tower as it was in the 15th century. In the 17th century, when adding other towers, a new tent was placed on the upper platform, and only instead of battlements a parapet with fly was laid out; everything else remained the same. In the Spasskaya Tower, the entire top was redone.

In 1625, the construction of the city clock on the main tower of the Kremlin was entrusted to mechanic Christopher Galovey, who was discharged from England, and the architecture of the tent belongs to the talented Russian architect Bazhen Ogurtsov.

In order to achieve the unity of the composition of the ancient and new parts of the Spasskaya Tower, Vazhen Ogurtsov took a slightly different path than other architects. He retains the battlefield merlons, but uses them as the foundation for the superstructure; for this, he completes them with a straight cornice, and on it he places circular arches. The corner vanes are topped with spiers reminiscent of gothic phials. All this - both arches, and spiers, and sculptures of lions - is made of white stone and forms a magnificent stone "lace" against the background of red brick walls. The next tier grows out of it - a quadrangle, on which the dials of the Kremlin clocks are installed. The high-rise composition is continued by an octagon with circular arches of “ringing”, where bells are placed. The tower is topped with a tall steep tent. The unity of the composition of this tower of the Kremlin was achieved by the fact that the architect not only builds on, but introduces a single decorative motif for all tiers, giving integrity to the entire structure; the proportions found by the architect emphasize the lightness of the tower and its aspiration to the sky.

The historian of Russian architecture, Professor M. V. Krasovsky writes that the Kremlin "at that time became like a warrior who, having forever repelled enemies from the borders of his homeland, returned home and calmly replaces a heavy steel helmet with a light hat, richly decorated with semi-precious stones."

Solari finished the Frolovsky (Spassky) gates in 1493, as the text of the stone memorial plaque, which was then built into the wall, reads: prince of Volodimir and Moscow and Novgorod and Pskov and Tver and Yugra and Vyatka and Perm and Bulgarian and others in the 30th year of his state and did Peter Anthony Solario from the city of Mediolan "(Milan. - P. 3.).

We have no information about what reasons forced Pietro Antonio Solari to leave his homeland for the sake of Muscovy, unknown to him. It is possible that Sophia's older brother Paleologus, Andrei, a political adventurer who twice came to Russia with the aim of selling his right to the Byzantine throne at a reasonable price, prompted him to do so. The last time he came here in 1490 (according to other sources - in 1489) together with the Russian embassy. This embassy was very crowded, for it brought with it various masters, including the architect Pietro Antonio Solari. In Moscow, he was surrounded by honor. Unlike other foreigners, the chronicle calls him not "murol", not "master of ward affairs", but "architect". In one of the letters to his homeland, preserved in the Vatican archives, Solari calls himself "the chief architect of the city."

On November 22, 1493, before reaching the age of 50, Pietro Antonio Solari died. It is possible that it was he who named before his death those architects who were then invited to Moscow - Aloisio da Carcano and Aloisio Lamberti da Montagnana.

With the death of Pietro Antonio Solari, the unfinished construction of the Kremlin found itself without an experienced leader. Ivan III in the same 1493 sent ambassadors Manuil Angelov and Daniil Mamyrov to Venice and Milan for "wall and ward masters". In 1494, according to Italian sources, they brought three masters from Milan: Aloisio da Carcano, a wall master and engineer, Mikhail Parpalone, a blacksmith, and Bernardine from Borgamanero, a stonemason. Good news came from them to their homeland. Aloisio da Carcano was favored by Ivan III, who presented him with eight of his own clothes and a fair amount of money, while expressing the wish that he build him a castle like the one in Milan. The letter from which we have drawn these details is dated November 19, 1496, and is kept in the Milan City Archives.

Nothing is known about the fate of the other two masters mentioned in Italian sources. But Aloisio da Carcano, known in the Russian chronicles under the name of Aleviz the Old, confused the Kremlin historians for a long time. A number of structures were attributed to him, which neither in time nor in architectural forms could belong to him. This continued until the 20s of our century, when the Soviet scientist N. A. Ernst in his book "The Bakhchisaray Khan's Palace and the architect of Grand Duke Ivan III Fryazin Aleviz Novy", published in Simferopol in 1928, put everything in its place. It turns out that two Aleviz worked in Moscow: Aleviz the Old, already mentioned by us, and Aleviz the New, which appeared in Moscow ten years later, in 1505.

We do not know anything about the first Aleviz. But judging by that part of the Kremlin wall (north-western), which Aleviz the Old erected, he was an excellent, courageous engineer.

After the death of Pietro Antonio Solari, the northwestern side of the Kremlin walls, along the bed of the Neglinnaya River, remained unfinished. In the first half of the 19th century, Neglinnaya was enclosed in a pipe and the Alexander Garden was laid out at this place. At the end of the 15th century, it was a river with a channel that often changed due to storm waters and a swampy floodplain, which approached the steep slopes of Borovitsky Hill. Before proceeding with the construction of walls, it was necessary to strengthen the creeping ground, to lay a solid foundation that could withstand the weight of the walls and massive towers. This was entrusted to Aleviz the Old. However, due to a devastating fire in 1493, work could only be started in the spring of 1495. The Chronicle reports under this year that Ivan III "laid a city wall ... near Neglinna, not in the old way, added cities."

During excavations in 1965, the bases of the walls were exposed here, and it turned out that Aleviz Stary along the steep bank of the Neglinnaya threw arched bridges that leveled the unevenness of the soil, and only then began to build walls. Aleviz the Old straightens the wall of the western façade of the fortress and brings it to the same height, and rests the long strands on the rectangular towers. Moreover, a whole complex of fortifications is being created in the center of this facade - the Trinity Passing Tower, a diversion archer, a stone bridge on nine arches across the Neglinnaya and another tower - a barbican that protects the bridge and was called Kutafya.

If you draw a line on the plan of the Kremlin from the Spasskaya Tower to the Trinity Tower, it turns out that they stand opposite each other on one straight line, forming one of the sides equilateral triangle. Here, the same rationalism of Quattrocento architecture, which is also embedded in the overall composition of the Kremlin citadel, has affected. The significance of the Trinity Tower for the western facade of the Kremlin is the same as that of the Spasskaya Tower for the eastern one. That is why the architect, who built both towers in the 17th century, gave their tent tops almost the same decorative decoration.

The chronicle also ascribes to Aleviz the Old the construction in 1499 of a palace for the Grand Duke Ivan III next to the Annunciation Church and an internal stone wall from the palace to the Borovitsky Gates. Perhaps he also carried out a number of engineering works to strengthen the defense power of the Kremlin from the side of Red Square. But here confusion begins in the sources, and it is not entirely clear to which of the Alevizovs these works should be attributed. None of the works of engineering skill of Aleviz the Old, with the exception of the northwestern wall of the Kremlin, has survived to this day.

In the ancient Russian diplomatic practice of the last quarter of the 15th century, a tradition was established: for whatever purpose ambassadors were sent to Western countries, they were charged with the duty to look for masters of various specialties to work in Moscow. In November

1499 Ivan III's ambassadors Dmitry Ralev and Mitrofan Karacharov crossed the border of the Republic of Venice. According to Italian sources, one can trace their route: on November 18, they stopped in Bassano and at the end of the month, on the way to Padua, they arrived in Venice, where they stayed until the end of February. Having profitably sold a batch of leather, they left for Rome. On April 12, the ambassadors returned to Venice and in May

1500 went home. On this way they passed the cities of Ferrara, Brendol, Longino, where at that time the architect and sculptor Aloisio (in Russian transcription - Aleviz) Lamberti da Montagnana worked. Ralev and Karacharov, wishing to fulfill the mission entrusted to them, could meet with Aloisio and invite him to work in Moscow. On this basis, as well as comparing the work signed by the master - the sculptural tombstone of Thomasina Graumonte in the church of St. Andrei in Ferrara - with what Aleviz later did in Moscow, Italian scientists identify Aleviz the New with Aloisio Lamberti da Montagnana. Here, in fact, is the little that can be reported as an assumption about the works of Aleviz Novy in the Italian period of his life. In any case, in 1500 he joined the Russian embassy and went to Moscow.

Three years written sources they are silent about the fate of Aleviz Novy and his companions. And suddenly, in June 1503, the Crimean Khan Mengli-Girey, in a letter to Ivan III, reports: “Nonecha, thank God, I took Dmitry Larev and Mitrofap Fedorov Karacharov into my arms; and your masters came to us in June and hit us with their foreheads. and with wives, and with children, and with girls, they came to us. Ambassador Zabolotsky at the Khan's court specifies the date of arrival of the Russians and Italians: "two weeks before Petrov Zagovenya", that is, no later than the first days of June. The embassy stayed in Bakhchisarai until September 1504. There were no special reasons for such a long stay at the khan's residence. It was just that Mengli-Giray wanted to take advantage of the Italian architect's stay with him to build his palace in Bakhchisarai, which later became famous. Aleviz Novy built it in fifteen months. But time did not spare the palace. Only its portal has survived to this day, by which we can judge the richness and splendor of the entire structure.

Finally, after the urgent demands of Ivan III, Mengli-Giray releases Aleviz Novy and his companions to Moscow. Moreover, in the accompanying letter he gives an enthusiastic review of the art of the Italian: "Aleviz is a kind master, not like other masters, a very great master."

On November 23, 1504, as chronicles report, four years after leaving Italy, Aleviz Novy arrives in Moscow.

The activities of Aleviz Novy in Moscow are very diverse. All the architects who worked before him concentrated their efforts mainly in the Kremlin. Aleviz Novy is building not only there, but also in the suburbs, in different places of the expanded and economically strengthened city.

Obviously, Aleviz Novy had great organizational skills. In a short time he built a huge palace in Bakhchisarai; only four construction seasons - from 1505 to 1508 - he needed to build the second largest cathedral in Moscow. In 1508, he arranges ponds and lays out a ditch 34 meters wide and 10 meters deep with white stone. This ditch, erroneously attributed to Aleviz the Old, ran along Red Square and closed the water ring around the Kremlin citadel, which had become even more impregnable. From 1514 to 1519 he builds eleven churches in different parts of the city. Aleviz Novy becomes the chief architect of Moscow. The churches built by him contributed to the formation of the silhouette of the city and its architectural and spatial composition. On a steep hill at the end of Ivanovsky Lane stands the Church of Vladimir "in the Old Gardens" - one of the eleven built by Alevi-z. This area was built up in the 16th century, and this church towered over low wooden houses.

The 15th and 16th centuries did not yet know the three-part axial compositions typical of later times - the bell tower, the refectory and the church itself. During the time of Aleviz, stone churches were built in one rectangular volume with a portal on the western and apses on the eastern facades. Instead of a bell tower, there was a belfry: either directly assembled into the volume, as in the church of Tryphon in Naprudny, or a separate device for hanging bells. The laconic silhouette, white stone or red brick, which after Fioravanti is firmly established in the practice of Russian builders, a very precisely found place in the space of the city - all this made the churches inseparable from the picturesque landscape of Moscow at the beginning of the 16th century.

And yet, the Archangel Cathedral in the Kremlin remains the most significant work of Aleviz the New.

Three cathedrals on the Kremlin Square divided among themselves duties in the religious life of the Russian tsars: Blagoveshchensky, once connected by a covered passage with the Terem Palace, served as a house church; Uspensky is the main shrine of the Moekovsky state, where Russian tsars were crowned kings and patriarchs were buried; Arkhangelsk - until the end of the 17th century served as the royal tomb. Thus, the Assumption Cathedral represented spiritual authority, while the Archangel Cathedral represented secular. This to some extent influenced its architecture.

A year after the arrival of Aleviz Novy in Moscow, he begins the construction of the Archangel Cathedral on the site where the small white-stone church of the Archangel Michael, built under Ivan Kalita, stood. By the beginning of the 16th century, it fell into disrepair, and in 1505 it was demolished.

We will not describe in detail the Archangel Cathedral, which has come down to us with great losses and alterations. Let us try only in general terms to restore its composition, conceived by Aleviz Novy, and pay attention to the features that distinguish this cathedral from the Assumption Cathedral.

The Archangel Cathedral is smaller and more archaic in interior design. Instead of round pillars (as in the Assumption Cathedral), which do not clutter up the interior space, Aleviz uses massive square pillars, moreover, raised on high pedestals and supporting flat cylindrical vaults. Six pillars divide the interior into three naves of different widths, and they are separated from each other by unequal distances. In addition, the architect needed to highlight special place for the female half of the grand-ducal family so that, without mixing with the crowd, it was possible to follow the church service. To do this, Aleviz adds a narrow room to the main volume of the cathedral, open to the hall with a large arch-window. As a result, the northern and southern (longitudinal) facades are divided into five unequal parts according to the internal articulation of the interior.

Thus, in the composition of the facades and the general masses, the Archangel Cathedral turned out to be closer to its primary sources - the Vladimir-Suzdal temples, than the Cathedral of Aristotle Fioravanti. Obviously, Aleviz Novy visited Vladimir and carefully studied the Assumption Cathedral, otherwise it is difficult to explain such a consistent appeal to his scheme.

Aleviz Novy found the Assumption Cathedral in Vladimir after its refurbishment in 1185–1189. a gallery that brought its plan closer to a square (without altar apses). The main core of the six-pillared temple surrounds Aleviz with a gallery, but gives it a completely different character.

The Archangel Cathedral was covered with a roof right along the vaults, and the domes, due to unequal divisions of the interior, turned out to be unequal in diameter. True, this is hardly noticeable to the eye, but it nevertheless violated the harmony of the whole. The addition to the western façade moved all the domes further to the east, thus emphasizing the asymmetric design of the temple.

The Cathedral of the Archangel was conceived from the very beginning as the tomb of the great princes and kings of "All Russia", which required pomp and solemn representativeness. The Spartan severity and monumentality of the Assumption Cathedral of the Kremlin did not correspond to this content. Aleviz dressed the three-dimensional composition of the 12th-century cathedral in Vladimir in the decorative clothes of the Italian Renaissance of the 16th century. And she dresses very lavishly. There is a whole range of architectural details here. The loosened cornice rests on strongly protruding pilasters with Corinthian capitals. Repeated twice, the cornice seems to divide the building into two floors, while this is not the case in the interior: the interior of the cathedral from the floor to the vaults is unified and not divided.

Zakomar Aleviz fills the tympanums with shells masterfully made of white stone. According to the drawing, they are close to the already mentioned marble shells of the gravestone of Graumonte in Ferrara. The walls between the pilasters up to the middle cornice are decorated with archivolts of blind arches, and at the top of the arc of each zakomara there was a carved pyramid. And all this is made of white stone against a red brick wall.

But the main thing that distinguished the Archangel Cathedral from other church buildings of the Kremlin was the external open gallery adjoining all the walls, with the exception of the eastern one. The galleries of the Archangel Cathedral have come down to us only in the measurement drawings of 1750, executed by the architect D. V. Ukhtomsky, apparently at the same time when he measured the Embankment Chamber of Marko Fryazin. These drawings, discovered by Soviet researchers A. V. Vorobyov and V. A. Smyslov, help us to imagine the original appearance of the Archangel Cathedral - without powerful buttresses and even later additions to the eastern facade. The rhythm of the gallery's open arches is subordinated to the divisions of the facades themselves, so wide arches coexist with narrow ones. But the whole character of the arcade (semi-columns of the Tuscan order), the very idea of ​​​​surrounding the cathedral with an open gallery was inspired by Italy, the courtyards of its palazzo. The architect found that measure of picturesque decorativeness, which, as it were, faces the surrounding space of the Cathedral Square, and does not close into the boundaries of a strict volume.

The Archangel Cathedral has experienced a lot during its existence. It was necessary to strengthen the walls with buttresses, destroy the galleries, change the shape of the middle dome, which was once the same as the side ones, add aisles, renovate the painting in the interior, plaster the outer walls, which is why the temple lost one of its best decorative qualities - the polychromy of the facades. And yet, when you stand in front of the building of the Archangel Cathedral, it seems that it has always been like this - white, elegant from the play of light and shadow on the many details that create its plasticity.

By its nature, the Archangel Cathedral is eclectic: its appearance combines the ancient traditions of Vladimir-Suzdal and modern elements of Italian architecture of the late Quattrocento era to Aleviz Novy. And when subsequently, in the second half of the 16th and especially in the 17th century, Russian masters turned to the heritage left by the Italians, they selected exactly what best suited their national traditions. For example, pillars placed on pedestals, the conditional division of the wall into two floors, did not take root in our country, but the polychromy of facades was adopted, which received further development in the works of Russian masters of the XVII century. The order in the work of Aleviz Novy retains the appearance of constructive justification (a cornice resting on pilasters), and in the architecture of the 17th century it receives a purely decorative purpose - it is used to decorate window openings (for example, Osip Startsev did this in the facade of the Faceted Chamber) or fixing the corners of the building bunch of columns.

Thus, the Archangel Cathedral entered the history of the development of Russian architecture not with a new, progressive understanding of the very essence of the art of architecture, as is inherent in the genius of Aristotle Fioravanti, but with a decorative side that suggested new motives for the commitment to pattern and color inherent in ancient Russian architecture from time immemorial. Reworked in their own way, Italian architectural and decorative motifs acquired a new sound and enriched Russian art.

The development of decorative forms in the work of Aleviz Novy can be traced, in particular, on the magnificent portals in the Bakhchisaray Palace, in the Archangel and Annunciation Cathedrals of the Kremlin. Let's focus on the last two.

The four portals of the Archangel Cathedral date back closer to 1508, when the construction of the building was completed. There are three of them on the western facade - corresponding to the division of the interior into three naves, on the northern facade - one (obviously, the same portal was on the opposite side, but disappeared with the next addition of aisles and buttresses). The main entrance to the cathedral is the middle portal of the western façade. It is placed in a deep loggia, which, together with the steps, forms the church porch. Two side portals frame the entrance in the form of an arch resting on two pilasters with Corinthian capitals and ornaments.

The main portal of the Archangel Cathedral is the next stage in the decorative work of Aleviz Novy, after the portal of the Bakhchisaray Palace. It belongs to the so-called promising portals. This form takes place in the Assumption and Dmitrovsky Cathedrals in Vladimir and was transferred by Aristotle Fioravanti to the facade of the Kremlin church. Aleviz the New had to reconcile this traditional ancient form with his understanding of Quattrocento architecture. From this difficult situation he came out with honor. Actually, the principle of the overall composition is preserved: a wide and high external outline gradually decreases in depth. The archivolt of the front arch rests on pilasters, then a bundle of leaves, intertwined with ribbons and forming a second arch, also rests on columns, and then sloping walls and the same vault lead directly to the entrance. Thus, Aleviz Novy replaced many arches and semi-columns forming a perspective portal with two walls beveled inside, richly decorating them with an ornament, the design of which was determined in the work on the entrance to the Bakhchisarai Palace.

The portal of the northern facade differs from the western one only in a slightly smaller size.

It is important to keep in mind that the architect is moving from the planar ornamental composition of the Crimean portal to three-dimensional solutions suggested by ancient Russian architecture and further developed in the decoration of the northern portal of the Annunciation Cathedral. Its exact dating has not yet been clarified, in any case - after 1508; there is no doubt that stylistically it belongs to the work of Aleviz Novy.

The portal of the Cathedral of the Annunciation differs from its predecessors in even greater splendor of decoration and complexity of the architectural composition. For example, the wide archivolt of the front arch rests on a strongly loosened entablature, which is supported by free-standing paired columns. Further, everything is done according to the scheme of the portals of the Archangel Cathedral, but with even greater saturation with ornament. In general, it should be noted that after the stone ornamentation of the Vladimir-Suzdal churches, only Pietro Antonio Solari in the Palace of Facets and Aleviz.

New in the Kremlin cathedrals were able to bring out the remarkable qualities of soft limestone in fine ornamental carvings.

And yet, with all the splendor and artistic merit of the Aleviz portals, they did not find a response in the subsequent work of Russian masters. The Romanesque perspective portal, combined with a purely Russian invention - the keeled arch - was closer to the feeling of the tectonics of the wall, its massiveness and reliability than the portals of Italian architects abounding in decorative conventionality. But the ornament as such was perceived by Russian carvers and, being modified in accordance with their tastes, richly decorated the iconostases of temples, the walls of towers and architectural details.

The Archangel Cathedral - the main work of Aloviz Novy - did not open a new page in the history of Russian architecture, but entered it only with the high art of architectural and ornamental decoration.

Aleviz Novy worked in Russia for a long time. He also built churches in the Kremlin: St. Lazar - by 1514, John of the Ladder - in 1518 (this church was then included in the lower tier of the Ivanovo bell tower), the Church of the Annunciation - in 1519, possibly the lower floors of the Terem Palace, etc.

Under 1531, the chronicle reports that during the explosion at the gunpowder factory, "Alevizov Dvor" took off into the air. This is the last mention of the name Aleviz Novy in Russian chronicles. Obviously, he died in this accident.

From 1505 to 1508 the Ivanovskaya bell tower was erected in the Kremlin. It is being built on the site of an old church in the name of John of the Ladder, "like under the bells", and in the year of its completion, the chronicle reports the name of the builder - the Italian architect Bon Fryazin, the most mysterious person of all the "Fryazins" who worked in Moscow in the XV and XVI centuries. None of the sources known to us say anything about the origin of the architect, about his work before coming to Russia and the time when he appeared in Moscow.

By the beginning of the 16th century, the Kremlin had already been built up with cathedrals, churches, and monasteries. Perhaps each of them had their own belfries, but the sound of their bells did not spread throughout the Kremlin. In addition, the idea of ​​the reunification of Russia into a single centralized state required some kind of architectural dominant that would dominate the entire Kremlin building.

Ivan the Great received its familiar appearance only 75 years after the laying, in 1600. The bell tower was built in two stages, and the construction of the first two octagonal towers fell to Bon Fryazin. Each of the tiers has an open arcade "for ringing". Even then, "Ivan the Great" reached a height of 60 meters and was clearly visible from the distant approaches to the city.

The architecture of the bell tower is very simple. Each facet of the octagon is underlined with a spatula, and the lower tier was completed with an under-eaves arcade and a cornice on croutons. The second tier is smaller in volume, seems to be strongly elongated and also has open arches for bells. The walls are sparingly cut through with slit-like windows, which emphasize their massiveness (the thickness of the walls of the first tier reaches 5 m, the second - 2.5 m).

The second stage of the construction of the bell tower dates back to the beginning of the 17th century, when the bell tower received its completion known to us and reached 81 m in height.

"Ivan the Great" is an amazing building. It would seem that construction in two stages, a large height with a relatively small volume should have made it difficult to search for proportionality, but harmony is not broken: a gradual decrease in tiers, a magnificent transition from an octagon to a round drum through two rows of keeled kokoshniks and, as the completion of this vertical composition, golden belts inscriptions and a golden dome.

The latest studies of "Ivan the Great", carried out in the 70s of the XX century, say that the builders, in search of the ratio of parts, adhered to the golden section, which achieved this impression of lightness.

But "Ivan the Great" surprises not only with its architectural merits, but also with the construction technique. In the first tiers of the bell tower, metal beams are laid, fastening the walls. Thanks to this, during the superstructure of the bell tower in the 17th century, there was no need for additional structures. And obviously, this is why the French failed to blow up the bell tower in 1812: a crack appeared in the head drum from the explosion, but the bell tower survived.

We do not know of any other structures by Bon Fryazin in Moscow. By building a bell tower in the Kremlin, he continued the ancient tradition of pillar-shaped churches, which was further developed in the 30s of the 16th century.

When Petrok Maly appeared in Moscow in 1522, he called himself the architect of the Pope. He agreed to work with the Grand Duke for a period of three or four years, but settled down for a long time, converted to Orthodoxy and got married. Italian sources do not say anything about his work before coming to Russia, and Russian chronicles and acts do not give any information about his work in Moscow in the first decade of his life in this city. And only in 1532 it is reported that under his leadership, from the northern side of Ivan the Great, they began to attach a four-tier belfry for hanging new bells, including the thousand-pound bell Blagovest. The church of John of Gostunsky, built by Aleviz the New in 1516, but then dismantled, was transferred to the third tier of the belfry. The belfry was completed in 1543 by Russian craftsmen, after the departure of Petrok Maly. In 1552, an external staircase was added to the third tier of the belfry, and it itself was completed with a massive drum and dome. And finally, in 1624, apprentice Vazhen Ogurtsov, on the instructions of Patriarch Filaret, built a new bell-tower with a hipped top, known as Filaret's extension, to the belfry. This is how this complex three-part complex was created, consisting of the bell tower of Ivan the Great, the belfry of 1532–1543. and the Filaret extension built in 1624. In 1812, the belfry and the extension were destroyed by an explosion, and then restored by the architect I. Gilardi according to the project of I. V. Egotov and L. Ruska. Therefore, it is very difficult to judge the true architecture of the facades of the belfry. It can be assumed that Petrok Maly, as a contemporary of Aleviz Novy and an accomplice in the work in the Kremlin, introduces decorative elements of the neighboring Archangel Cathedral into the facades of his building (shells in the arcs of window frames, division of wall planes by pilasters). We do not know the measured drawings of the belfry before its destruction, so it is impossible to say how accurately the architects of the early 19th century restored the architectural forms of the 16th century.

The versatility of the construction of the belfry of Petrok Maly and its subsequent restructuring affected the integrity of its architectural composition. It can be assumed that the original four-tiered volume was restored closest to its original and has a complete scheme of the Renaissance-classic facade. This façade can stand on its own as a well-proportioned finished building with beautifully rendered details. The arched superstructure "for ringing" in its character and articulations is not connected with the facade of Petrok Malyi. Flat, with gaps through arches, the superstructure is disproportionately large and cannot serve as an attic, which was used in the architecture of the Renaissance. And finally, everything is completed by a round massive high cylinder, decorated in the lower tiers with complex plasticity of decorative columns. The cylinder bears a helmet-shaped golden dome with a cross.

In this complex complex, only "Ivan the Great" strikes with the purity of the lines and proportionality, the laconicism of the silhouette. But in the ensemble of the Kremlin, both the belfry and the Filaret's extension play a significant architectural and spatial role, complementing the many domes of the cathedrals and the picturesqueness of the entire ensemble.

The most significant work of Petrok Maly was the erection of fortress walls and towers of Kitai-gorod, Veliky Posad, which by the 30s of the 16th century had grown so much that its population could no longer hide behind the walls of the Kremlin in the event of an enemy attack.

Posad spread to the east and reached the current Kitaysky passage. Back in 1394, for protection, a ditch was dug along the route of modern Bolshoy Cherkassky Lane and Vladimirov Passage, and they dug "between the yard", therefore, the yards were located east of the ditch. Perhaps it was at this time that the name Kitai-Gorod appeared from the Old Russian word "kita", which, apparently, means an earthen fortification with the use of wattle fences.

The construction of the Kitai-Gorod wall began in 1534, during the regency of the mother of the young Tsar Ivan IV, Elena Glinskaya, and a year later, after the construction of a new earthen rampart and ditch.

On May 16 (27), 1535, "Daniil the Metropolitan walked with a cross near the moat and sang a prayer service and consecrated the place and, according to a prayer service, Petrok Maly laid the newly baptized Fryazin archer, the gates of Sretensky on Nikolskaya Street, and another archer, the gates of Trinity, from the same street to To the cannon yard, and the third gate of Vsesvyadsky on Varvarskaya Street, and the fourth gate of Kozma Domiansky on Velikaya Street, "the Piskarevsky chronicler reported.

The wall, 2567 m long and up to 6 m thick, with 14 towers, including 5 passers-by, was completed in 1538. It took only four years to build the grandiose fortifications of the second belt of Moscow. An almost regular rectangle of the wall rested at the ends against the Beklemishevskaya tower from the side of the Moskva River and Sobakin (Arsenalnaya) from the Neglinnaya side and formed a single whole with the Kremlin.

Kitay-gorod occupied an area of ​​58 hectares and was a very strong fortress built according to the latest fortification technology of that time. The Kitaigorodskaya wall was lower than the Kremlin wall, but the width of its upper combat platform - 6 meters - provided more freedom for the defenders and made it possible for greater firepower. The merlons of the wall were straight, and each had three side slots: a large middle one and two side slots for squeakers. The gaps between the teeth also served for shooting. In addition, in the wall itself and in the towers extended beyond the wall, loopholes for middle and lower battles and machicolations for hanging battles were arranged.

The wall is made of large-sized bricks with many different marks, which indicates the increased production of bricks, which became the main building material in the 16th and subsequent centuries. The remains of the Kitaigorod wall on Sverdlov Square with a round corner tower behind the Metropol Hotel, a long stretch along Kitaisky Proyezd, despite the grown cultural layer, give the impression of power and impregnability. The sloping plinth is separated from the wall by a white stone roller. The same roller separates the loopholes of the hinged fight and the base of the teeth. The general character of heavy volumes of rectangular and round towers, a sharply defined straight line of battlements, the shape of loopholes - all these elements are more reminiscent of Genoese fortresses than the Lombard castles of Petrok Maly's predecessors.

In 1539, Petrok Maly was sent to the city of Sebezh, to the local governor. He was accompanied by translator Grigory Mistrabonov. Petrok Maly stayed in this city for three weeks and during this time he founded a fortress. Then he went to the Pskov-Caves Monastery, from where he was supposed to leave for Pskov, then to Moscow. But instead, Petrok Maly with his companions, among whom were the boyar children Andrei Laptev and Vasily Zemets, ended up abroad - in Livonian Novogrudok (Neuhausen). Here Petrok Maly declared that he did not intend to return to Russia, and tried to escape. The fugitive was caught and sent to Yuryev (Derit) to be judged by the bishop, who insisted on his extradition to the Grand Duke of Moscow. It is not known how this case ended. However, after 1539 Petrok Maly is no longer mentioned in Russian sources.

Petrok Maly was the last Italian architect in Russia in the first half of the 16th century. "Fryazins", as the Russian people called them, in contrast to the "German" - all other foreigners, did their job. New times have come. Simultaneously with the unification of Russia around Moscow, getting rid of the Tatar yoke and the creation of a centralized strong state, the national self-consciousness of the Russian people is also growing. From their midst come such luminaries of Russian architecture as Fyodor Savelyevich Kon, who decorated "Ivan the Great" with a golden head, who built the White City in Moscow and the Smolensk fortress; Barma and Postnik, who created a masterpiece of world architecture - St. Basil's Cathedral near the walls of the Kremlin, and many others. It was they who completed the formation of the center of Moscow, which we never cease to admire.

And among them, first of all, it is worth mentioning Marco Ruffo (Mark Fryazina) and Pietro Antonio Solari (Petra Antonova Fryazina) , according to the projects of which 7 towers of the Moscow Kremlin (and not only) were built.

Architects Pietro Antonio Solari and Marco Ruffo
(miniature from the Front Chronicle of 1568 - 1576):

The white-stone Kremlin, built under Dmitry Donskoy in the 60s of the XIV century, by the second half of the XV century was very dilapidated and did not correspond to Ivan III's idea of Moscow - as the center of the entire Orthodox world . In the 80s of the XV century, he conceived a large-scale restructuring of the Kremlin, more precisely, the construction of a new fortress, which was supposed to emphasize the greatness of the new Orthodox empire - the Third Rome.

It is for this purpose that the Grand Duke of Moscow and the Sovereign of All Russia in 1485 year invites the Italian architect Marco Ruffo to Moscow (he worked in Moscow until 1495), and in 1490 - Pietro Antonio Solari (in Moscow until 1493).

These Italians - "Fryazins" in Moscow were built:

The Faceted Chamber (1487 - 1491, Ruffo and Solari):

beklemishevskaya tower,
she is Moskvoretskaya (1487 - 1488, Ruffo):

Borovitskaya tower (1490, Solari):

Spasskaya Tower (1491, Ruffo and Solari):

Constantino-Eleninskaya tower (1490, Solari):

Nikolskaya tower (1491, Ruffo and Solari):

Senate Tower (1491, Solari):

Corner Arsenal Tower,
she is Sobakina (1492, Solari):

In the 80s of the XV century, another Italian architect was working on the construction of the towers of the Moscow Kremlin - Antonio Gilardi of Vicenza (Anton Fryazin) which two towers were built:

The Tainitskaya tower, which became the first in the new Kremlin (1485):

and Vodovzvodnaya (Sviblova) tower (1488):

The walls of the Moscow Kremlin, as well as the defensive ditches near these walls, were also built by the Italian Alois da Caresano, known as Aleviz the Milanese or Aleviz Fryazin the Old . He also owns the authorship of the highest of the Kremlin towers - Trinity (Bogoyavlenskaya, Rizopolozhenskaya, Znamenskaya or Kuretnaya), which was built in 1495 - 1499 :

Successor of Ivan III, his son from Sophia Paleolog, Basil III Ivanovich continued the tradition of inviting architects from Italy. During the years of his reign (1505 - 1533) in Moscow worked Alois Lamberti da Montignana (?) or Aleviz Fryazin New , nicknamed so by Muscovites, since he arrived in Moscow 10 years later than Aleviz Milanets (Old), someone Bon Fryazin (his real name remains unknown) and Pietro Francesco Anibale , better known as Petrok Maly .

Aleviz Fryazin New best known for building the magnificent Archangel Cathedral Moscow Kremlin ( 1505 - 1508 ), which, by decree of Vasily III, became the tomb of the Moscow sovereigns (already in 1508, after the consecration of the cathedral, the remains of Ivan Kalita and his descendants were transferred to it; the last burial in the necropolis of the Archangel Cathedral took place in 1730, the 14-year-old grandson of Peter was buried here I, Emperor Peter II who died in Moscow.

But the Archangel Cathedral is far from the only building of Aleviz Fryazin Novy. In total, he built 17 buildings in Russia, 11 of which were in Moscow, as well as a complex of the Grand Duke's palace and temples in the Alexander Sloboda.

Church of the Beheading of John the Baptist near Bor,
built by Aleviz Novy around 1514 in Zamoskvorechye
(modern look after numerous alterations).

The most famous building Bonds of Fryazin and the only one that reliably belongs to his authorship - Ivan the Great belltower , which was the tallest building in Moscow until the 19th century:

Bon Fryazin 1505 - 1508 years, he built two lower octahedral tiers of the bell tower and part of the third (the modern look of the bell tower of Ivan the Great acquired almost a hundred years later, under Boris Godunov, about 1600 completed the "sovereign master" Fedor Savelich Horse , which, however, is an assumption).
Interestingly, it was thanks to Bon Fryazin that the bell tower of Ivan the Great survived in 1812, when Napoleonic soldiers retreating from Moscow tried to blow it up: at the base of the first tier, the Italian architect installed metal beams, which made the bell tower especially durable.

Pietro Francesco Anibale (Petrok the Small) was also invited to Russia Basil III. The most famous of its buildings, of those that have come down to our time, is a tent Church of the Ascension in Kolomenskoye built in 1528 - 1532 years:

Here is what remains of the Kitaigorod fortress at the present time:

In the second half of the 16th century, the tradition of inviting Italian architects to Russia was interrupted for some time, although the architectural trends laid down by them in the previous period are evident both in the style of “Russian patterning” that flourished in Russia in the 17th century and in the “Moscow baroque”.

But in early XVIII century, after Peter I founded a new capital - St. Petersburg, Italian architects were again in demand. However, that's another story that I'll write about. in the next part of our "Architectural educational program".

So that, to be continued...

Thank you for attention.
Sergei Vorobyov.