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The last and most exciting monument of the
Vladimir-Suzdal architecture is the Cathedral of Saint George at Yuriev-Polski.
After he founded a new town on the river Koloksha, some forty miles north-west
from Vladimir, Prince Yurii Dolgoruky built a church there in 1152. His
grandson, Svyatoslav Vsyevolodovich, considered the church modest and decided
in 1230-1234 to erect a new one in its place whose facades were completely
covered with carved stone reliefs. Women, masks, princes, soldiers, saints and
all sorts of birds, beasts and monsters were all interwoven in a gorgeous
carpet of fantastic floral ornaments. The prominent space was reserved to
glorify Jesus, the Virgin, and show important religious events, such as Deisus,
Trinity, Transfiguration etc. Indeed it is as if an extraordinary iconostasis
was carved in stone and brought outside the church. The prince himself is also
depicted on the wall, and of course Saint George, the patron saint whose figure
we see above the north porch. In this left hand he holds a shield decorated
with a snow leopard, emblem of the Vladimir-Suzdal dynasty. The chronicler says
that the prince was himself a master stone carver and that he took an active
part in the building of the church. It was his idea to add a small chapel
between the northern porch and the apse, to serve as a burial place for him and
his family; he was buried there in 1252. The chronicler mentions too that
Svyatoslav carved the Crucifixion, known for centuries a "Svyatoslav's
cross. "Though rather small in size, this church with its three apses,
four pillars and single cupola was considered from its very construction to be
a most remarkable monument. It was for this reason that Archbishop Peter, when
he moved his see from Vladimir to Moscow, advised Grand Duke Ivan I Kalita to
send his masters to see the cathedral of Saint George in order to use it as a
model, before they started , in 1327, to build the first stone cathedral of the
Assumption in the Moscow Kremlin. In the 15th century the church collapsed, and
in 1471 Ivan III sent one of his best architects and stone carvers, Vasilii D.
Yermolin, to rebuild it. Yermolin tried hard to put each stone at its original
place, but was not fully successful and at the end found himself with more
stone than he needed to finish the church. Only at that time he realized that
many stones were misplaced and that several figures do not relate to each
other. It is of interest to note that most of the beasts and monsters that we
see on the facades of Vladimir-Suzdal churches and cathedrals are less
ferocious-looking than the rather demoniac creatures that decorate the churches
in Western Europe. Some historians see in these tamer beasts evidence that the
carvers were Russian: There is also a similarity between the beasts that we see
on the church facades and those that the Russians traditionally carved in wood.
The already squat silhouette of the cathedral is rendered even more so by its
unusually large drum and cupola crowned with an elaborately embellished cross.
Soviet literature is completely silent on its lost internal decoration, and
even from outside the cathedral looks old and dilapidated.
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