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Many art students consider the old frescoes
inside the cathedral of the Virgin of Smolensk to be the best examples of
Moscow iconography. Particularly remarkable are those painted on the pillars.
The cathedral is The oldest building of the Novodevichii Convent in Moscow,
founded in 1524 by Vasili III to
commemorate the reannexation of the city of Smolensk to his realm. Though it is
nowhere specifically stated, it is generally assumed that its architect was the
same Italian Alevis' Novi, who earlier had built the cathedral of the Archangel
Michael in the Kremlin. The new cathedral repeats the main features of the
Kremlin's cathedral of the Assumption, though to make it slightly different,
Novi raised it on a basement and put the cupolas closer to each other, which
gave the new edifice a slimmer look. There is no information about the painters
who decorated the cathedral after it's completion, nor about those who
repainted them Boris Godunov restored the cathedral in 1598 and ordered new
icons for its iconostasis. Before that, Boris had lived for a while in the
Monastery, and it was here that Patriarch Job asked his consent to become tsar
of all Russia after the Zemskii Sobor, an assembly of representatives of
various social groups, had offered him the throne a few days earlier. These
frescoes were cleaned in 1900 and some of them "renovated," a bad
habit that some restorers cannot help. The cathedral was damaged during the
revolution, then pillaged and neglected for many years and , of course the
monastery was closed. The convent is currently part of the museum of History.
Until the revolution the convent had many old icons that tsars and members of
their families donated to its churches. Those that we see today in the
iconostasis of the cathedral were mostly painted by 17 The century artists, and
the iconostasis itself, made of gilded carved wood, is one of the most
remarkable examples of Russian decorative art. It was designed by K. Mikhailov,
the same architect who built the famous wooden palace in the town of
Kolomenskoye for tsar Alexei.
According to legend the Novodevichii Convent received its name form the
"Devichee Pole" - Girls' Field - on which it was built. The field got
its name from the Russian girls who were brought there during the Tatar regime,
to be taken to the Golden Horde as live tribute for the khan's harems. A more
sober version says that the convent got its name "Novo" because it
was "new" and "Devichii" because it was for the
"Girls." At any rate, not all the "Girls" entered the
monastery voluntarily. Yulianiya, sister in law of Ivan the Terrible, and his
daughter-in-law tsarina Irina Fedorovna, then Yevdokia Fedorovna, wife of Peter
the Great, to mention just a few of the most important, were forcefully sent
there. So was Peter 's sister, Tsarina Sophia, after she failed to eliminate
her brother and send him to a monastery. Sophia, while ruling the country for
seven years in the name of her two minor brothers, contributed much to the
erection of several new edifices and the embellishment of the convent, as if
she sensed that she would end her life there. After she entered the convent and
became sister Susanna, an improbable story says that Peter ordered about three
hundred of her supporters, Streltsi, to be hanged in front of her windows; a
hand of her chief supporter, Prince Khovanskii, remained suspended in front of
her window in the Novodevichii monastery for a long time. Please visit
Novodevichi convent fortress -
to read more text and view extensive photography.
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