And, most strikingly, in the 19th century. In comparison with the labor-intensive in terms of construction objects of the Baroque and Rococo styles, the objects in the Classicism style were built easier and faster, but at the same time they looked no less monumental, their appearance emphasized the power and might of the country. Distinctive features of the style are the clarity of geometry and the simplicity of forms, impressiveness and, at the same time, some elegance inherent in the objects of ancient architecture.
At the end of the 18th century in the construction of many objects, clear features of the Baroque can still be traced. By the 19th century, the architects who stood at the origins of classicism in Russia began to use exclusively classical elements in the design and construction of objects. The founders of Russian classicism include such architects as M. Kazakov, V. Bazhenov, I. Starov. With their light hand in the style of classicism, both landlord estates and city palaces began to be built.
In our country, classicism, which came from the West, acquired its own distinctive features. Thanks to this, such a thing as Russian classicism appeared. In parallel with the pure classics in Russia of that period, both in large cities and in the provinces, a combination of different styles (eclecticism) was used, therefore Russian palace complexes and estates of that period are rightfully considered world heritage.
The most famous objects of the early classicism era are located in Moscow and St. Petersburg. These are Pashkov's house on Vagankovsky Hill opposite the Kremlin, Yushkov's house in Moscow on the corner of Myasnitskaya Street, Mikhailovsky Castle by Bazhenov, the Senate building in the Kremlin, Kazakov's Petrovsky Palace, Starov's Tauride Palace in St. Petersburg. The buildings of the Academy of Sciences, as well as the Smolny Institute in St. Petersburg, designed by the architect J. Quarnega, the Nevsky Gates of the Peter and Paul Church, the Holy Trinity Church, the Derzhavin House on the Fontanka and some other works of the architect N. Lvov were built in the classicism style. In the same period, under the guidance of the architect C. Cameron in Tsarskoye Selo, a whole complex in the classicist style was added to the palace, consisting of a hanging garden, the Cameron Gallery and the Agate Rooms, according to his project, a palace and park complex was also built in Pavlovsk.
In addition to architecture, the principles of rational classicism were also transferred to the rules of urban planning, which was the reason for the redevelopment of many county and provincial cities in Russia. In this regard, in almost every of them you can find preserved objects of that era. Most educational institutions, hospitals, administrative buildings and cultural institutions of that period were built in the style of Russian classicism. The central streets of cities were occupied by simple architecture, but at the same time majestic and monumental buildings, usually close to each other. Of the decorations on their front part, there were only window trims. In provincial cities, such buildings were usually erected with one or two floors, while in Moscow and St. Petersburg they reached four floors.
In parallel with the building in the style of classicism in Moscow and St. Petersburg, the historical part of such cities as Kiev, Tver, Poltava, Kostroma, Nizhny Novgorod, Yaroslavl, Arkhangelsk, Odoev, Bogoroditsk, modern Lomonosov and Pushkin, as well as about 400 others, was formed and completed in this style cities of the Russian Empire. The period of classicism also included the period of foundation of such cities as Yekaterinburg, Petrozavodsk and Taganrog and some others. The latest classicism came to the cities of Siberia.
Propylaea by the Bavarian architect Leo von Klenze (1784-1864) - the Athenian Parthenon is taken as the basis. This is the entrance gate of the Königsplatz square, designed according to the antique model. Königsplatz, Munich, Bavaria.
Classicism begins its reckoning from the 16th century in the Renaissance, partially returns to the 17th century, actively develops and gains positions in architecture in the 18th and early 19th centuries. Between early classicism and late, the dominant positions were occupied by the baroque and rococo styles. The return to ancient traditions, as an ideal model, occurred against the backdrop of a change in the philosophy of society, as well as technical capabilities. Despite the fact that the emergence of classicism is associated with archaeological finds that were made in Italy, and the monuments of antiquity were located mainly in Rome, the main political processes in the 18th century took place mainly in France and England. Here the influence of the bourgeoisie increased, the ideological basis of which was the philosophy of enlightenment, which led to the search for a style that reflects the ideals of the new class. Ancient forms and organization of space corresponded to the ideas of the bourgeoisie about the order and the correct structure of the world, which contributed to the appearance of features of classicism in architecture. The ideological mentor of the new style was Winckelmann, who wrote in the 1750s-1760s. works "Thoughts on the imitation of Greek art" and "History of the arts of antiquity". In them, he spoke of Greek art, filled with noble simplicity, calm majesty, and his vision formed the basis of admiration for ancient beauty. The European educator Gotthold Ephraim Lessing (Lessing. 1729-1781) strengthened the attitude towards classicism by writing the work “Laocoon” (1766). which they considered baroque and rococo. They also opposed the academic classicism that dominated the Renaissance. In their opinion, the architecture of the era of classicism, true to the spirit of antiquity, should not have meant a simple repetition of ancient samples, but be filled with new content that reflects the spirit of the times. Thus, the features of classicism in the architecture of the 18-19 centuries. consisted in the use of ancient shaping systems in architecture as a way of expressing the worldview of the new class of the bourgeoisie and, at the same time, supporting the absolutism of the monarchy. As a result, France during the Napoleonic period was at the forefront of the development of classicist architecture. Then - Germany and England, as well as Russia. Rome became one of the main theoretical centers of classicism.
The residence of the kings in Munich. Residenz Munich. Architect Leo von Klenze.
The philosophy of architecture of the era of classicism was supported by archaeological research, discoveries in the field of development and culture of ancient civilizations. The results of the excavations, set out in scientific works, albums with images, laid the foundations of a style whose adherents considered antiquity to be the height of perfection, a model of beauty.
Features of classicism in architecture
In the history of art, the term "classic" means the culture of the ancient Greeks of the 4th-6th centuries. BC. In a broader sense, it is used to refer to the art of Ancient Greece and Ancient Rome. The features of classicism in architecture draw their motifs from the traditions of antiquity, which was personified by the facade of a Greek temple or a Roman building with a portico, colonnades, a triangular pediment, partitioning the walls with pilasters, cornices - elements of the order system. The facades are decorated with garlands, urns, rosettes, palmettes and meanders, beads and ionics. Plans and facades are symmetrical with respect to the main entrance. The color of the facades is dominated by a light palette, while the white color serves to focus attention on architectural elements: columns, porticos, etc., which emphasize the tectonics of the building.
Tauride Palace. St. Petersburg. Architect I. Starov. 1780s
Characteristic features of classicism in architecture: harmony, orderliness and simplicity of forms, geometrically correct volumes; rhythm; balanced layout, clear and calm proportions; the use of elements of the order of ancient architecture: porticoes, colonnades, statues and reliefs on the surface of the walls. A feature of classicism in the architecture of different countries was the combination of ancient and national traditions.
Osterley's London mansion is a classicist park. It combines the order system traditional for antiquity and echoes of Gothic, which the British considered the national style. Architect Robert Adam. Start of construction - 1761
The architecture of the Classical era was based on norms brought into a strict system, which made it possible to build according to the drawings and descriptions of famous architects not only in the center, but also in the provinces, where local craftsmen purchased engraved copies of exemplary projects created by great masters and built houses according to them. . Marina Kalabukhova
Classicism (French classicisme, from Latin classicus - exemplary) is an artistic style and aesthetic trend in European art of the 17th-19th centuries.
Classicism is based on the ideas of rationalism, which were formed simultaneously with those in the philosophy of Descartes. A work of art, from the point of view of classicism, should be built on the basis of strict canons, thereby revealing the harmony and logic of the universe itself. Interest for classicism is only eternal, unchanging - in each phenomenon, he seeks to recognize only essential, typological features, discarding random individual features. The aesthetics of classicism attaches great importance to the social and educational function of art. Classicism takes many architectural rules and canons from ancient art.
The main feature of the architecture of classicism was the appeal to the forms of ancient architecture as the standard of harmony, simplicity, rigor, logical clarity and monumentality. The architecture of classicism as a whole is characterized by the regularity of planning and the clarity of volumetric form. The basis of the architectural language of classicism was, in proportions and forms close to antiquity. Classicism is characterized by symmetrical axial compositions, restraint of decorative decoration, and a regular system of city planning.
The architectural language of classicism was formulated at the end of the Renaissance by the great Venetian master and his follower Scamozzi. The Venetians absolutized the principles of ancient temple architecture so much that they used them even in the construction of private mansions. Palladianism took root in England, and local architects followed the precepts of Palladio with varying degrees of fidelity until the middle of the 18th century.
By that time, the surfeit of the "whipped cream" of the late Baroque and Rococo began to accumulate among the intellectuals of continental Europe. Born by the Roman architects Bernini and Borromini, the baroque thinned into rococo, a predominantly chamber style with an emphasis on interior decoration and arts and crafts. For solving major urban problems, this aesthetics was of little use. Already under Louis XV (1715-74) urban planning ensembles in the “ancient Roman” style were being built in Paris, such as Place de la Concorde (architect Jacques-Ange Gabriel) and the Church of Saint-Sulpice, and under Louis XVI (1774-92) a similar “noble laconicism" is already becoming the main architectural trend.
The most significant interiors in the style of classicism were designed by the Scot Robert Adam, who returned to his homeland from Rome in 1758. On his return to his homeland, he was made royal architect in 1762, but in 1768 he left this position because he was elected to Parliament and took up architecture and building with his brother James. He was greatly impressed by the archaeological research of Italian scientists. In the interpretation of Adam, classicism was a style that was hardly inferior to rococo in terms of sophistication of interiors, which gained him popularity not only among democratic-minded circles of society, but also among the aristocracy. Like his French colleagues, Adam preached a complete rejection of details devoid of a constructive function. This returned to the architectural stucco decoration (and architectural elements in general) the rigor of lines and the alignment of proportions.
The Frenchman Jacques-Germain Soufflot, during the construction of the Saint-Genevieve church in Paris, demonstrated the ability of classicism to organize vast urban spaces. The massive grandeur of his designs foreshadowed the megalomania of Napoleonic Empire and late Classicism. In Russia, Vasily Ivanovich Bazhenov was moving in the same direction as Soufflet. The Frenchmen Claude-Nicolas Ledoux and Etienne-Louis Boulet went even further towards the development of a radical visionary style with an emphasis on the abstract geometrization of forms. In revolutionary France, the ascetic civic pathos of their projects was of little use; Ledoux's innovation was fully appreciated only by modernists of the 20th century.
The architects of Napoleonic France drew inspiration from the majestic images of military glory left by imperial Rome, such as the triumphal arch of Septimius Severus and Trajan's Column. By order of Napoleon, these images were transferred to Paris in the form of the triumphal arch of Carruzel and the Vendôme column. In relation to the monuments of military greatness of the era of the Napoleonic wars, the term "imperial style" is used - empire style. In Russia, Karl Rossi, Andrey Voronikhin and Andrey Zakharov showed themselves to be outstanding masters of the Empire style. In Britain, the Empire corresponds to the so-called. "Regency style" (the largest representative is John Nash).
The aesthetics of classicism favored large-scale urban development projects and led to the ordering of urban development on the scale of entire cities. In Russia, almost all provincial and many county towns were replanned in accordance with the principles of classic rationalism. Such cities as St. Petersburg, Helsinki, Warsaw, Dublin, Edinburgh and a number of others have turned into genuine open-air museums of classicism. Throughout the space from Minusinsk to Philadelphia, a single architectural language, dating back to Palladio, dominated. Ordinary building was carried out in accordance with the albums of standard projects.
In the period following the Napoleonic Wars, classicism had to get along with romantically colored eclecticism, in particular, with the return of interest in the Middle Ages and the fashion for architectural neo-Gothic.
Brief description of the architectural style classicism
Character traits: A style that turned to the ancient heritage as a norm and an ideal model. Restrained decor and expensive high-quality materials (natural wood, stone, silk, etc.) are characteristic. Most often there are decorations with sculptures and stucco moldings.
Dominant colors: saturated colors; green, pink, magenta with a gold accent, sky blue.
lines: strict repeating vertical and horizontal lines; bas-relief in a round medallion; smooth generalized drawing; symmetry.
At the forefront of the development of classicism was Napoleonic France, followed by Germany, England and Italy. Later this direction came to Russia. Classicism in architecture became a kind of expression of rationalistic philosophy and, accordingly, was characterized by a desire for a harmonious, rational order of life.
Classicism style in architecture
The era of classicism fell on a very important period in European urban planning. At that time, not only residential units were massively laid down, but also non-residential facilities and public places that required architectural design: hospitals, museums, schools, parks, etc.
The emergence of classicism
Although classicism originated in the Renaissance, it began to develop actively in the 17th century, and by the 18th century it was already quite firmly entrenched in European architecture. The concept of classicism was to form all architectural forms in the likeness of antique ones. The architecture of the era of classicism is characterized by a return to such ancient standards as monumentality, rigor, simplicity and harmony.
Classicism in architecture appeared thanks to the bourgeoisie - it became its art and ideology, since it was antiquity that bourgeois society associated with the correct order of things and the structure of the universe. The bourgeoisie opposed itself to the aristocracy of the Renaissance and, as a result, opposed classicism to "decadent art". She attributed such styles in architecture as rococo and baroque to such art - they were considered too intricate, non-strict, non-linear.
Johann Winkelmann, a German art critic, is considered the founder and inspirer of the aesthetics of the classicism style, who is the founder of the history of art as a science, as well as the current ideas about the art of antiquity. The theory of classicism is confirmed and strengthened in his work "Laocoon" by the German critic-educator Gotthold Lessing.
Classicism in the architecture of Western Europe
French classicism developed much later than English. The rapid development of this style was hindered by following the architectural forms of the Renaissance, in particular, the late Gothic baroque, but soon the French architects gave up before the onset of reforms in architecture, paving the way for classicism.
The development of classicism in Germany took place rather undulating: it was characterized either by strict adherence to the architectural forms of antiquity, or by their mixing with the forms of the Baroque style. With all this, German classicism was very similar to classicism in France, so pretty soon the leading role in the spread of this style in Western Europe went to Germany and its architectural school.
Due to the difficult political situation, classicism came to Italy even later, but soon after that, it was Rome that became the international center of classicist architecture. Classicism also reached a high level in England as a style of country house decoration.
Features of classicism in architecture
The main features of the classicism style in architecture are:
- simple and geometric shapes and volumes;
- alternation of horizontal and vertical lines;
- balanced layout of the room;
- restrained proportions;
- symmetrical decoration of the house;
- monumental arched and rectangular structures.
Following the order system of antiquity, elements such as colonnades, rotundas, porticos, reliefs on the wall surface, and statues on the roof are used in the design of houses and plots in the style of classicism. The main color scheme for the design of buildings in the style of classicism is light, pastel colors.
Windows in the style of classicism, as a rule, are elongated upwards, rectangular in shape, without flashy decoration. The doors are most often paneled, sometimes decorated with statues in the form of lions, sphinxes, etc. The roof in the house, on the contrary, is of a rather intricate shape, covered with tiles.
The materials most commonly used to create classicist houses are wood, brick, and natural stone. When decorating, gilding, bronze, carving, mother-of-pearl and inlay are used.
Russian classicism
Classicism in architecture Russia of the 18th century differs quite significantly from European classicism, since it abandoned the models of France and followed its own path of development. Although Russian architects relied on the knowledge of Renaissance architects, they still sought to apply traditional techniques and motifs in the architecture of Russian classicism. Unlike European, Russian classicism of the 19th century, and later Russian Empire, used military and patriotic themes in their design (wall decor, stucco, selection of statues) against the backdrop of the war of 1812.
Russian architects Ivan Starov, Matvey Kazakov and Vasily Bazhenov are considered the founders of classicism in Russia. Russian classicism is conditionally divided into three periods:
- early - a period when the features of baroque and rococo had not yet been completely ousted from Russian architecture;
- mature - strict imitation of the architecture of antiquity;
- late, or high (Russian Empire) - characterized by the influence of romanticism.
Russian classicism is also distinguished from European by the scale of construction: it was planned to create entire districts and cities in this style, while new classical buildings had to be combined with the old Russian architecture of the city.
A striking example of Russian classicism is the famous Pashkov House, or Pashkov House - now the Russian State Library. The building follows a balanced, U-shaped layout of classicism: it consists of a central building and side wings (wings). The outbuildings are made as a portico with a pediment. On the roof of the house there is a belvedere in the form of a cylinder.
Other examples of buildings in the style of classicism in the architecture of Russia are the Main Admiralty, the Anichkov Palace, the Kazan Cathedral in St. Petersburg, St. Sophia Cathedral in Pushkin and others.
You can learn all the secrets of the classicism style in architecture and interior in the following video:
ARCHITECTURE OF RUSSIAN CLASSICISM
The works of Russian classicism constitute not only the most important chapter in the history of Russian and European architecture, but also our living artistic heritage. This heritage continues to live not as a museum value, but also as an essential element of the modern city. It is almost impossible to apply the name of architectural monuments to buildings and ensembles created in the 18th and early 19th centuries - they so firmly preserve their creative freshness, free from signs of old age.
The movement that began in Russian architecture around the 60s of the 18th century very quickly showed an inclination towards a grand style that sought to cover all branches of construction activity and establish itself as a single system of architectural laws.
For a number of decades - from the beginning of the 60s of the XVIII to the 30s of the next, XIX century - this idea of a single and, moreover, universal style did not cease to dominate the minds and creative searches of Russian architects. Deviations from a single architectural system based on the ideals of the classics do not change the essence of the matter: no matter how diverse were the individual architectural trends that changed throughout this period, no matter how diverse the manners of individual masters differ, architecture as a whole acts throughout this great historical era. as a single national school.
In the process of its development, architectural classicism managed to cover all areas of architectural and construction activity and everyday art culture with a system of compositional, building and plastic techniques: from the grandiose ensembles of the capital to an ordinary provincial mansion; from (a complex complex of a country palace and park residence to a modest landowner's estate; from a unique palace building to typical industrial and administrative buildings; from a monumental architectural image to details of household decoration and housing furnishings. All the complexity and inconsistency of Russian life and Russian culture of the 18th and early 19th centuries, architecturally embraced by the techniques and forms of that style, which began with a timid interpretation of ancient and Western European models and ended with the creation of a huge national artistic movement.
Starting from its earliest manifestations, the process of formation of architectural classicism took place simultaneously, as it were, in two opposite directions: the formation of style was carried out both “from above” and “from below”.
FORMATION OF CLASSICISM
There is no doubt that the most important factor in the development of all Russian architecture in this era was the construction of St. Petersburg, the new capital, a Russian city of a new type, founded at the time of the great historical turning point. It was at the construction site of St. Petersburg that the new school of Russian architecture matured and gained strength.
But at the same time, the formation of a new architecture was also carried out “below”: in countless estates, in provincial towns, built up, rebuilt and re-emerged in the new lands of the Russian south; in a variety of wooden construction - urban and rural; in boundless wooden Rus', in all parts of which the techniques and forms of the same “new style” were assimilated with amazing speed. This movement spreads both in breadth and depth, penetrating through the thickness of the nameless rural small estate and provincial construction to folk architecture. In the 18th-19th centuries, works and types were created that connected a Russian hut with an Empire mansion, a log of a traditional log house with a classical column, a gable roof of the same hut with an antique pediment, folk woodcarving with plastic architectural relief.
This second, “out-of-the-capital” line of development of Russian classicism, as if in focus, is refracted in the architecture of Moscow in the 18th and early 19th centuries. Moscow at this time is, as it were, a synthesis of all non-capital Russian culture: both in the development of the city, which is so unlike the regular layout of St. associated with the Russian estate and the Russian province. We will see how essential this counter process of the formation of style was for the entire development of Russian architecture; it was thanks to him that the architecture of classicism so soon acquired the character not of some kind of apical, alluvial, and even more so of a borrowed trend, but became a national movement expressing the most diverse and profound aspirations of Russian culture.
CONSTRUCTION OF PETERSBURG
The construction of a new capital for the 18th century was not only a huge political, military and national economic enterprise, but also a great nationwide cause, in the same sense in which in the 16th century the national affair of the Russian people was the creation and strengthening of Moscow. In architectural terms, the construction of St. Petersburg meant the rarest case in modern history of planning and building a huge city on a site free from the building burden of the past. It is no coincidence that from the very first years of his life, all kinds of schemes and plans of “ideal cities” began to be applied to this new city, intending to realize here, on the deserted banks of the Neva, that ideal of “regularity”, which owned the minds of many generations of architects, philosophers, politicians, utopians. - from the late Middle Ages to the time of French absolutism. The plans for St. Petersburg, proposed starting in 1714 and culminating in the general plan of Leblon, are, in essence, different versions of the same ideal scheme of a “regular city”; it reflected both the long-standing dreams of the theorists of the Renaissance, and the distant echoes of Campanella's utopia, and the rationalistically sober, but no less abstract and conditional urban planning plans of the French and English theorists of the 17th century.
The entire subsequent urban history of St. Petersburg is, in essence, the history of a gradual but persistent overcoming of the abstract geometric scheme of the “regular city”, which its first planners, brought up on the models and ideals of Versailles, tried to impose on the new capital. But this overcoming was carried out not in the form of a return to pre-Petrine traditions and patterns, but as the creation of a new urban planning and architectural ideal, imbued with deep national traditions and multilaterally associated with world architectural development. The painstaking and strenuous work of architect-planners of the middle decades of the 18th century, a work that is still very little studied, is aimed at preserving the original principle of regularity and creating a living architectural organism on the banks of the Neva. This organism was least of all conceived by its builders as a conditional combination of direct perspectives, rectangular squares, closed palace arrays, street highways intersecting at a mandatory right angle; Leblon's plan was just such a combination, and that is why the new city did not comply with this plan. The relocation of the city center from Vasilyevsky Island to the Admiralteyskaya side was the first deviation from the basic scheme of the Leblon plan. The main arrays of new buildings began to be grouped not inside the water loop, as Leblon had planned, but along the river, so that the Neva became not only a protective boundary and water artery of the city, but also the main axis of the city plan. Gravity towards the river was the main force that determined the nature of the building of the early Petrine Petersburg. Moreover, this force moved the development of the city not spontaneously, but quite consistently, being reflected and consolidated in the planning compositions that replaced one another. These compositions are the creation of Russian urban planning and architectural thought. Peter Eropkin, Mikhail Zemtsov and Alexei Kvasov can be considered its main and most prolific spokesmen.
When in 1737 the newly established “Commission on the St. Petersburg Construction” developed detailed plans for the construction and development of individual parts of the capital, they were primarily affected by the results of a careful study of the natural features of the new city and those complex requirements that were set by the state authorities before the new center of the empire. On the other hand, the old traditions of Russian urban planning did not cease to manifest themselves in this work. These latter were expressed in that deep fidelity to nature, which forced the builders of St. Petersburg to subordinate the entire layout of the city to its most powerful natural factor - the full-flowing river, and firmly connected the very grid of city streets with the landscapes of the Neva delta. The river not only entered the planning of the city with its numerous canals, channels, islands of the mouth - it later determined the entire architectural appearance of the capital, it gave its own scale to the squares and avenues of St. Petersburg, it dictated the architectural and spatial construction of the city center and the interconnection of its main supporting parts and architectural arrays. The new city introduced a purely Russian sense of boundless space into the geometric scheme of the regular plan, and, perhaps, it is this combination of St. Petersburg open spaces with the geometric clarity of the main building lines that constitutes the most characteristic feature of the new capital.
THE FIGHT FOR STYLE IN THE ARCHITECTURE OF PETROVSK TIME
The overcoming of the urban planning schemes of Western European absolutism was accompanied by another equally important process. The history of building and architectural development of St. Petersburg is marked by the struggle for the city's own architectural face. If the main ideas of the general plan had their origin in the urban development of European absolutism, then the types and forms of the first significant buildings in Peter's Petersburg were guided by other Western European models. The prototypes of a significant number of the first palace, government and public buildings in St. Petersburg were mainly architectural samples of the Scandinavian countries and Holland.
The geographical proximity and the relative proximity of climatic and other natural conditions predetermined this close relationship of the early buildings of St. Petersburg with the architecture of the cities of Scandinavia and Holland. A very large number of early St. Petersburg buildings reveals a gravitation towards the peculiar "Baroque Gothic" that dominated in the 17th and early 18th centuries in these countries of North-Western Europe.
Moreover, the general appearance of Peter's Petersburg, since it can be recreated from old engravings and descriptions, is reminiscent of the coastal cities of these countries. The historical and cultural inconsistency of this phenomenon was revealed very quickly. Architectural motifs and images, by nature alien to Russian culture, could not take any deep roots in the architecture of the new capital. In addition, the very character of the new city, the great historical aspirations associated with it, least of all corresponded to this rapprochement of its appearance with the architecture of a European province.
Petersburg from the first decades of its life declared itself as a world-class city. This city could not be satisfied with architectural prototypes, which were to face Holland, Sweden, Denmark and other nearby countries of the northwestern periphery of Europe. A remarkable feature of the entire subsequent history of St. Petersburg is not the fact that these samples were originally used by him, but the speed with which they were overcome and then almost completely disappeared from the architectural arsenal of the Russian capital. It is no coincidence that out of the many church and government buildings in Petrovsky St. Petersburg, crowned with high spiers and other baroque-Gothic details characteristic of the cities of North-Western Europe, only two such architectural examples survived for the future life of the capital: the bell tower of the Peter and Paul Fortress Cathedral and the central tower of the Admiralty. At the same time, the first of these samples is only formally associated with Western European tower and church buildings of the 17th century, but in essence, the architectural role of the Peter and Paul Bell Tower and its giant spire goes back, of course, to the traditional Russian image of a pillar-like vertical dominating all urban development and affirming the idea of power. and the "capital" of the city. In other words, the Peter and Paul Bell Tower is a Petersburg analogue of the Moscow Bell Tower of Ivan the Great.
It was precisely as such an analogy that Peter conceived this vertical dominating the city, and it is precisely for this reason that the builder of the new capital attached such importance to its rapid implementation.
PETERSBURG IN THE MIDDLE OF THE 18TH CENTURY
The middle of the XVIII century marks a new stage in the architectural development of St. Petersburg. This stage - let's conditionally call it the Elizabethan - is inextricably linked with the activities of Rastrelli, who left the imperious stamp of his tastes and his ingenious skill on the architecture of the middle decades. The development of architecture in its highest manifestations was concentrated at this time mainly on palace construction. Rastrelli creates giant palace complexes both in the city itself and in country residences. The baroque richness of architectural decoration, architectural plasticity, color, and relief is combined in Rastrelli's works with strict compactness of plans. Despite their sometimes gigantic size, Rastrelli's palace buildings always have the character of strictly rectilinear blocks and in this sense are internally consistent with the regular character of the city itself. However, at this time, architecture is directed, in its most complex designs, to the theme of the palace, the palace and park ensemble, the country palace residence. In the capital itself, a palace-estate type of building is cultivated. "Elizabeth Petersburg" architecturally marked primarily by buildings of this order. Planning, town-planning creativity in the proper sense of the word noticeably narrows after such an intensive and rich in ideas activities of the “Commission on the St. Petersburg Structure”. In 1724, this commission actually stops its work, and this break lasts for twenty whole years. The surviving buildings of the Elizabethan time, and even more remarkable perspective drawings-plans of Saint-Hilaire Petersburg, recreate the picture of the main quarters of the capital at that time. On the already established lines of the main highways and embankments of the city, separate pieces of palace, estate and mansion buildings are strung. Along the avenues in the depths of the quarters there are small (and sometimes quite extensive) ensembles of residential buildings closed in themselves with gardens adjoining them, ensembles of palaces with wide front courtyards and parks, and these ensembles are interspersed with a mass of ordinary, mostly wooden, city buildings. Saint-Hilaire's engravings reproduce this baroque Petersburg - a city that almost disappeared in the following decades, just as the early Peter's Petersburg disappeared.
The beginning of classicism, with all its deep internal repulsion from Rastrelli and from the baroque system in general, however, retains for a certain time the same method of building up the city, in separate blocks or complexes, almost independent of the structure of the urban plan. So Delamotte builds a block of the building of the Academy of Arts, closed in itself, a huge square of buildings with a circle inscribed in it; so Ivan Starov, one of the first masters of Russian classicism, erects the Tauride Palace in the form of a vast residence of a sovereign prince with widely spread outbuildings and a front courtyard between them, with a magnificent park, inextricably linked with the configuration and plan of the palace block itself; so Rinaldi creates exquisite country villas in the capital, like the Marble Palace; so Quarenghi, this complete classic and one of the pillars of the new school, continues, however, to cultivate the principle of an architectural block, almost independent of the urban environment, and, relying on Palladian models, develops this principle, creating an extraordinary variety of types: from the huge horseshoe-shaped block of the State Bank , placed among the city highways, but completely independent of them, through the simplest rectangular block of the Catherine Institute, also little connected with the urban environment, to the Horse Guards Manege and the Academy of Sciences with their monumental architectural forms, so characteristic of the work of this master.
The last “island” building of the 18th century is the Mikhailovsky Castle, which turned out to be a kind of anachronism even at its very appearance, this secluded palace of a powerful feudal lord, separated from the urban environment by all architectural means and signifying rather a dream of the past than the affirmation of modernity. This building was erected at the turn of the century. Together with the end of the 18th century, that period in the history of St. Petersburg and in the development of Russian classicism ends, which is connected equally with the idea of the city and with the idea of a closed palace ensemble. Together with the advent of the new century, the idea of the city decisively wins in architecture.
The principle of regularity, embedded in the essence of St. Petersburg at its very birth, has undergone a number of significant changes over the course of a century. The idea of the city as a whole, the highest expression of this principle, was perceived and implemented in different ways in different periods of the formation of the urban organism. This idea was confronted and opposed primarily by the "estate" principle - the desire for isolation and independence of individual palace-mansion plots from the regular lines of the city plan. But, although this desire was clearly manifested in the development of the capital throughout the 18th century, in the end the principle of architectural unity prevails, and it is this principle that is affirmed by the school of classicism. The old Peter's idea of regularity comes to life in a new way in the first decades of the 19th century, when the ensemble of classical Petersburg receives its architectural completion. It was at this time, at the time of the activities of Zakharov, Voronikhin, Tom de Thomon, Rossi, Stasov, Bryullov, that St. Petersburg architecture consistently carried out the integral development of large complexes, subordinating individual structures-compositions of the street, square, embankment.
FROM THE REGULAR PLAN TO THE SPATIAL COMPOSITION OF THE CITY
It was during this period that architects with unusual clarity stand up with what today we call the architectural image of the city and which dominates the image of an individual building. The idea of the city as an architectural whole, already present in the earliest search for a regular plan, now finds its new expression. This idea, still internally alien to Quarenghi and, perhaps, at times contradicting his creative method, already completely permeates the work of Voronikhin, is expressed with tremendous force in the monumental work of Zakharov and, finally, finds its multifaceted embodiment in all the activities of Carlo Rossi and his associates. The regular plan in the true sense of the word, that is, the ordering of the development of individual parts of the city, based on the geometric correctness of the street network, the continuity of the front of the street and other standards, is now acquiring a more complex and architecturally developed content. From the proper regular plan, architecture moves on to the spatial composition of the city, to the creation of large architectural organisms. This spatial plan for the development of the main, supporting parts of the city makes it possible to include various elements of the old building in the newly created ensembles, and not only to include, but also to subordinate these old forms to the new ones. So the Winter Palace, despite all the Rastrelli brilliance of its forms and the undeniably dominant significance of this building in the center of the capital, turned out to be architecturally subordinate to the General Staff building. Not because the classical (or “Empire”) forms of this latter are “stronger” than the baroque forms of the palace, but because Rossi built not only some new large building opposite the Winter Palace, but also created a new architectural whole, a new ensemble, a new architectural unity. In this new unity, organized according to the laws of Russia, and not Rastrelli, the work of the latter turned out to be included in the new composition and, as a result, subordinated to the building of Rossi, and not vice versa, although there is no need to talk about any formal “superiority” of Rossi over Rastrelli, the Chief headquarters over the Winter Palace. Thus, the Zakharovsky Admiralty began to "hold" in its monumental hands the entire spatial organism of the central St. Petersburg squares. Thus, the relatively low building of the Stock Exchange attracted the nodal point of this center, which was previously located in the high-rise volume of the Peter and Paul Fortress. So, further, the monumental buildings of Quarenghi turned out to be included in the new ensembles and subordinated to them: the State Bank - in the orbit of the architectural influence of the Kazan Cathedral, the Horse Guards Manege - in the Senate Square ensemble created by Zakharov, Rossi and Montferrand; The Academy of Sciences, the Catherine Institute, the Maltese Chapel are also completely subordinated to the new architectural environment. This happened, again, not because all these buildings, built by outstanding masters of large classical form, are less significant than what was created earlier or later in their neighborhood, but because, by their architectural nature, they were not designed for organizing role in the ensemble and on the ensemble in general. Comparison of the Stock Exchange, designed by Quarenghi, with the Stock Exchange, built by Thomon, clearly demonstrates the difference between these two architectural approaches to the problem of the city: in one case, a self-sufficient architectural composition of the building, which almost does not take into account its future environment, in the other, a building that composes an urban ensemble .
BUILDING-FUNCTION OF THE CITY
The development of Russian classicism means at the same time the development of town-planning principles in architectural creativity. A separate building begins to be interpreted as a function of the city. As we have seen, Quarenghi still did not want to reckon with this, but it has already become a law for the next generation - for the generation of Voronikhin, Zakharov, Rossi, Stasov. In the Kazan Cathedral of Andrey Voronikhin, the outer space, in this case the space of the city square, open to the avenue, determines the entire compositional design of the architect; the very building of the cathedral plays a secondary role in relation to the outer colonnade, framing the square and creating its architectural expression - a technique opposite to that of the composition of the cathedral and the square of St. Peter in Rome, where the square is only a function of the monumental building of the cathedral itself, as if extended outside with the help of external colonnades.
During the completion of the spatial composition of the main parts of St. Petersburg, during the first decades of the 19th century, the architectural searches of the entire 18th century were synthesized, as it were, synthesized and submitted to new forms, a new style, imperiously imposing its imprint on the entire appearance of the city. By this time, Petersburg acquires its "strict, slender appearance", in the words of Pushkin. And no matter how we assess the achievements of late St. Petersburg classicism in terms of quality and formality in comparison with the achievements of Rastrelli, or Quarenghi, or Rinaldi, we must recognize the importance of the most important urban planning stage in the development of St. Petersburg precisely in this final period.
CLASSICAL PETERSBURG AT THE BEGINNING OF THE 19TH CENTURY
At this time, the importance of the river as the main compositional axis of the urban plan was fixed. The construction of the central squares with exceptional force emphasized the axial significance of the Neva in the architecture of the city. The system of three squares, passing one into another and forming a single main square along the coast - the square to which the main radial highways of the city converge - created the center of the capital, exceptional in its architectural and scale strength. The construction of this center with the largest monumental buildings (the Admiralty, St. Isaac's Cathedral, the Senate and Synod, the General Staff, the Exchange) did not reduce the compositional role of natural elements (and, above all, the water surface of the widest Neva), but, on the contrary, increased their significance. The river was not only the axis of the central ensemble, but also the most important element of the urban landscape, its integral part, sometimes the background for large architectural perspectives, sometimes the foreground for extensive landscape panoramas. The scale of this widest waterway also determined the scale of urban development - the size of huge central squares, wide embankments, and the longest straight avenues. But this is not enough: the river, the direction of its fairway, the vast open spaces it creates in the center of the city, had a direct impact on the very forms of the central architectural ensemble of St. Petersburg. The triple square, which we mentioned - the square stretching from the Winter Palace to the building of the Senate and the Synod - represents in its outline and scale, as it were, the bed of a deep river repeated on the shore. This square, unparalleled in any other city in the world, could be formed only under the direct influence of the "sovereign Neva". Along the perimeter of this square, around it and in the immediate vicinity of it, buildings of exceptional monumental strength and architectural significance were concentrated. This combination of a powerful natural factor with the utmost concentration of architectural forms created in St. Petersburg an architectural array of the city center that is exceptional in its power.
The Zakharov Admiralty, with its 400-meter facade stretching parallel to the Neva coastline, and with its tower, placed at the vanishing point of the radial avenues, was the basis for the architectural organization of this ensemble. It is the Admiralty, this huge extended array located in the middle part of the square, that holds the whole system of "three squares", uniting the embankment, Palace and Senate squares and radial highways of avenues. The stock exchange, towering on the opposite bank, on a spit washed from three sides by water, includes a vast expanse of water in this ensemble. The main headquarters and the double building of the Senate and the Synod define the spatial boundaries of the ensemble, and, finally, the Cathedral of St. Isaac creates with his powerful granite array, as it were, the second spatial plan of a grandiose architectural panorama.
LANDSCAPE BEGINNING IN ARCHITECTURAL ENSEMBLE
The center of the city is expressed in St. Petersburg with extraordinary clarity and architectural strength. This center is not a closed ensemble of buildings and squares, but a monumental architectural landscape.
The most significant buildings of the capital are concentrated along the perimeter of the central square: the imperial palace, the cathedral, the headquarters of the army, the administration of the fleet, and the highest government institutions. The concentration of buildings, representing not only the capital, but the whole country, only emphasizes the importance attached in St. Petersburg to the architectural center of the city. In its own architectural respect, of course, this concentration is not important in itself, but that it accompanies the spatial construction of exceptional strength and expressiveness. It operates a long-distance architecture befitting a world city. The free reservoirs of the architectural space - the Field of Mars, the embankments and the spit of the Neva - fill the panorama of the St. Petersburg center with that breadth of scale, which is known only to a few of the largest cities in the world. This panorama of the world city combines two active principles of long-distance architecture: the silhouette of buildings and their voluminous plasticity.
SILHOUETTE AND PLASTIC
The silhouette is designed for perception and impact from afar. First of all, high-rise parts of structures are perceived in this way - the bell tower of the Peter and Paul Fortress, the Admiralty Tower, the rostral columns near the Stock Exchange, the dome of St. Isaac's Cathedral. The plasticity of architectural volumes is sustained in forms so large and strong that it also affects a long distance outside. Such is the huge double arch of the General Staff, the same dome of St. Isaac's Cathedral, the Alexander Column with a bronze statue crowning it, the powerful peripter of the Stock Exchange. The plasticity of large architectural forms is continued in the outlines of large massif structures, forming either a smooth semicircle covering part of the area, or a clear rectangular frame of the latter, or a compact block. The plastic beginning develops in the decorative decoration of individual buildings with their various sculptural compositions characteristic of Russian classicism (figures, groups and bas-reliefs of the Admiralty, the triumphal chariot of the General Staff, the high reliefs of the tympanums of St. Isaac's Cathedral, the bronze angel of the Alexander Column, the sculptural decoration of the Senate and Synod, seated figures at the columns of the Stock Exchange). The silhouette and plastic complement each other, sometimes passing one into the other: for example, the dome of the Cathedral of St. Isaac is read from afar as a silhouette crowning space, and close up as a powerful plastic form; the same applies to the monumental peripter of the Stock Exchange.
However, the main influence in this huge architectural structure is purely landscape perspectives. A person is always inside a vast panorama, revealing either one distant plan (view of the spit of Vasilyevsky Island from the embankment and bridges), or several plans with extremely strong rear "backstage" (view of Senatskaya Square and St. Isaac's Cathedral from the opposite bank of the Neva) , then as a direct perspective, focused on a certain architectural array (view of the Peter and Paul Fortress from the embankments, view of the Admiralty Tower from the central avenues). The vast expanse of the Field of Mars, with its diverse purely landscape perspectives on the Engineer's Castle, on the Mikhailovsky and Summer Gardens, is characterized by its architectural organization; it is, in the full sense of the word, a landscape created by architecture.
NEVSKY AVENUE
If the construction of the St. Petersburg center has a pronounced spatial and landscape character, then the ensemble of the main street of the city - Nevsky Prospekt - was built according to the same basic principle. Separate squares, as it were, are strung on the straight route of this highway, forming spatial intervals of the facade front of the street. This façade front itself is generally neutral in character: the building of the street, united only by more or less common height dimensions (strongly disturbed at the end of the 19th and at the beginning of the 20th century), consists mainly of ordinary residential buildings, little individualized and little architecturally remarkable. Spatial intervals are perceived with all the greater force, alternating as you move along the street: Anichkov Bridge with a view of the Fontanka and the elegant colonnade of the Cabinet building, the Alexandrinsky Theater and the garden square in front of it, the Mikhailovsky Palace, Gostiny Dvor, finally, as the final and most powerful chord - Kazan Cathedral with a semi-oval area formed by its monumental colonnade. Each of these intervals-ensembles has an independent character and, what is very important, each one is sharply different from the following: a bridge decorated with equestrian sculptural groups and a winding narrow river, a front square in front of the theater facade, a strict portico of the palace, visible in the perspective of a short street, a solemn cathedral colonnade. All these ensembles, interrupting the facade front of the street and filling the path along it with such panoramic richness, are, in turn, links of more extensive architectural constructions. So, through the Alexandrinsky Theater, the ensemble of Rossi Street connects with Nevsky, through Mikhailovskaya Street - a large complex of the Mikhailovsky Palace and its surroundings, through the Kazan Cathedral - the prospect of the State Bank building and the embankment of the Griboedov Canal, etc. An important feature of Nevsky Prospekt as an architectural whole is the Admiralty Tower, which closes one end, is a vertical, visible from distant points of the street, a spatial landmark, announcing the completion of a long straight highway and, as it were, indicating the final goal of the path.
Like the system of central squares in St. Petersburg, the architectural construction of Nevsky Prospekt was completed in the first third of the 19th century. It was at this time, when the architectural thinking of Russian classicism moved from the concept of regularity to the concept of a spatial ensemble, that the appearance of the main thoroughfare of the city, which we spoke about, took shape. Just as the system of "three squares" received its true architectural meaning only after the construction of the new Admiralty, the Stock Exchange, the General Staff Building, the Senate-Synod, St. the main street in the first decades of the life of the city, became an architectural organism only when the Kazan Cathedral, the Alexandria Theater, the Mikhailovsky Palace were built.
Russian classicism revealed a strong and conscious will to create large urban organisms. And this will did not die out, but, on the contrary, flared up at a late time in the development of the school, at a time when all over the world town-planning principles had already fallen into decay. The construction of the central part of St. Petersburg and Nevsky Prospekt are just a few examples of the manifestation of this will.
This is how the ensemble of the world city took shape in St. Petersburg, and classicism minted a new national style, operating with large architectural massifs, vast spaces, monumental forms of the largest buildings. In the guise of "European" Petersburg, the features characteristic of Russian architecture were not lost, but received a new development. In the concentrated creativity of the new, which was the northern capital, the deepest aspirations of Russian culture found many-sided expression.
CLASSICISM IN MOSCOW
But classicism developed in a different direction. If the basis of St. Petersburg architecture was synthesizing urban ensembles, then in Moscow, classicism manifested itself primarily in the “small world”, in the world of a separate residential building, mansion, city estate. Here, the main theme of architectural research was the manor house and the plot of land associated with it. During the 18th century, new types of city houses and city estates were formed. While in St. Petersburg a new organism of the city is being formed and the development of all architectural forms is ultimately subordinated to this process, in Moscow the theme of a separate house remains primary. The structure of the city changes relatively little during the 18th century. On the other hand, the plan of a typical Moscow estate and a typical Moscow residential building is undergoing profound changes. The "regularity" that controlled the development of St. Petersburg did not dominate Moscow as a city. But the idea of regularity penetrated into a separate estate, and here, in this "small world", there were processes of renewal of architectural forms. If in St. Petersburg the house became, in the urban sense, a function of the city, then in Moscow, on the contrary, a separate estate remained primary: the city as a whole was, as it were, a function of this latter. The appearance of Moscow in the 18th century largely consisted of a combination of countless manor estates, and the “picturesque”, “chaotic” nature of the city plan and the architectural landscape of Moscow is primarily due to this.
However, the regulating power of classicism had its definite effect in Moscow as well. It had relatively little effect on purely urban complexes (insufficiently expressed and unfinished attempts at large ensemble constructions in the center of the city), but, we repeat, it deeply penetrated the organism of the city estate and city house. "Regularity" and the principles of classical composition were expressed primarily in the general construction of the manor house with its main building and symmetrical outbuildings, in the location of services, outbuildings and small buildings on a limited area of urban ownership. The regularity was manifested to an even greater extent in a peculiar selection of types of urban residential buildings - a characteristic phenomenon of Russian architecture of the late 18th and early 19th centuries. The typical beginning had deep roots in the entire construction practice of that time. The province, rebuilding its residential buildings and government buildings in a new way, needed not only "planning" for the cities themselves, but also exemplary designs for individual houses. In Moscow itself, the development of residential quarters of the center, outskirts and Zamoskvorechye could not do without standard samples developed by the "architect team" of Ukhtomsky (in the middle of the 18th century), or by the "Commission on the stone structure of capital cities" (in the 70-80s of this century) , or, finally, individual Moscow architects of the early 19th century.
This peculiar typification was based on a whole interweaving of economic and cultural factors. The desire of the provincial nobility to imitate the metropolitan way of life and the metropolitan "style" in the architecture and decoration of houses played an important role here. The government wanted to have in the provincial cities not only buildings of official places designed in a certain “state” style (special instructions were given in this regard under Catherine and later), but also to influence “philistine” construction in the same spirit. But the influence of these moments would be completely insufficient if the "New Architecture", that is, classicism, did not essentially respond to some deeper needs of the time and the tastes of vast social strata.
Flexibility in the use of local, familiar and cheap materials, especially wood, moreover, in its original technique - log cabin; strict economy of architectural solutions, compact, very practical plans that met the most diverse requirements and possibilities - from vast manor houses to miniature one-story mansions with a mezzanine; the same cost-effectiveness of artistic techniques, the simplicity of the overall composition of the house, the modesty of the exterior decoration, which was content with a few and the same type of stucco details - these and similar features ensured the wide and very organic distribution and development of classicism in ordinary Moscow and provincial construction.
Moscow classicism of the last decades of the 18th century develops various types of "manor in the city" as the main theme. In the activities of Kazakov, this topic occupies a central place. Kazakov's projects and buildings crystallize the main types of the Moscow city estate. The house is equally connected with the street and with its yard. The plan of the whole complex is strictly adapted to the peculiarities of the place.
Sometimes the body of the house is separated from the street by a front yard, and the house itself is located in “peace”; sometimes it goes directly to the street line with its entire facade front (Gubin's house); in other cases, the house grows almost to the size of a country estate and has street and park facades of equal value (the Gagarin house, the Golitsyn house); finally, a specific scheme of a "coal" house is developed, overlooking two streets and forming an angle between them.
Kazakov's buildings always bear strictly local characteristics: they are firmly attached to the site, they flexibly respond to the peculiarities of the place, its topography, its position in the city; this is a characteristic, very vital feature of the work of an outstanding Moscow master. But at the same time, Kazakov makes a sort of selection of the main types of urban estate, and we can talk about the "type of Razumovsky's house", about the "type of Rumyantsev's house"; the individual features of these buildings are at the same time a fixation of certain typical variants of the architectural theme of the Moscow "city estate".
SAVING ART FACILITIES
This selection of architectural types was facilitated by that artistic self-limitation in compositional and decorative techniques, which is an important feature of Russian classicism. Self-restraint - not from a lack or "poverty", but as a law of architectural classics, combining a wise economy of artistic means with an equally wise practical economy. Classicism turned this general law into an obligatory norm of architectural skill and into an architectural feature of style. A composition built on very simple combinations of architectural volumes arranged according to clear axial plans; large forms of classical porticoes, which make up the volumetric and plastic center of the entire structure; wings-wings subordinate to the central volume, directly adjacent to the center or connected to it by galleries; an elongated rectangle or an elongated semi-oval of the front yard formed by this three-dimensional three-dimensional structure of the building; an even more simplified composition - in small mansion buildings, where the matter is limited to one volume with a miniature portico - all the compositional types created by Moscow classicism are concentrated around these typical techniques.
With the development of classicism, these basic compositional schemes also change. The plans of a city estate are becoming more urban: the estate plot has become more cramped, sometimes narrowing to the size of a miniature front garden in front of the street facade and a small courtyard area behind the house. The facade front of the street has become more rigid and straightforward, it puts pressure on the location of the "urban estate" - this also affected the configuration of the house. And yet the latter remained, in principle, a manor, although it reduced its size and acquired the appearance of an empire-style mansion.
TYPICAL RECEPTIONS IN THE COMPOSITION OF THE BUILDING
Typical beginnings are now also transferred to the processing of the facade, to its plastic and decorative decoration. This is one of the features of the late stage of Moscow classicism, usually referred to as the Moscow Empire style. At this time (10-30s of the 19th century), new motifs and plastic techniques of facade decoration were developed, endowing residential and public buildings with such a characteristic "empire" appearance. Here the typical beginning appears with even greater consistency. Gilardi and Grigoriev, the most prominent Moscow architects and practitioners of this period, strictly adhere to the compositional schemes of facade decoration developed by them, as well as typical details in this latter. Depending on the nature of the building, its scale, its position in the city, the same strictly limited "set" of these details, as well as the entire compositional scheme, varies. It usually includes: a smoothly rusticated ground floor with windows decorated with a triple keystone, sometimes with a large stucco mask, then - a smooth wall of the second floor with high windows without platbands at all, separated along the entire length of the facade by a horizontal rod from the third floor, the windows of which, usually much lower, sometimes square, have two ledges protruding at the lower corners instead of a clypeus; the surface of the facade plane is enlivened by large stucco details (wreaths, masks, etc.) placed over the windows of the third floor. If we are talking about a two-story building, then the same scheme is applied with corresponding changes, and in this case, the windows of the second (above-ground) floor are usually decorated with keystones. This is one of the simplest and most common facade decoration schemes. The same craftsmen (as well as Beauvais, Tyurin and others) willingly use as a decorative technique an arched window, divided by columns or blades into three parts under a common wide archivolt with a depressed stucco frieze, usually divided into trapezoidal segments. Variants of this motif, beloved by Moscow craftsmen, are used in a variety of cases: both to decorate the side risalits of the main house (the Lunin house on Nikitsky Boulevard - Gilardi, i-th Gradskaya hospital - Beauvais), and for the portal of the garden pavilion (Naidenov's house - Gilardi) , and as a decorative solution for the central part of the facade of the mansion (the house of the former Horse Breeding-Gilardi); it even goes into church buildings (the Church of All Who Sorrow on Ordynka-Bova).
The very composition of the facade is extremely simplified. The combination of a large portico (four-column in small mansions, six- and eight-column in larger residential and public buildings, in some cases even twelve-column) with smooth walls, not vertically divided at all, but divided into horizontal stripes by floor rods, determines the appearance of the Moscow "Empire " Houses. The following are the characteristic features and details of this appearance. If the portico starts from the height of the second floor, then it is placed on the basement arcade advanced forward. The surface of the wall is emphasized by the rustication of the basement and is usually not disturbed by the architraves, so that the windows seem to be "cut" into the wall. In general, a smooth wall plays a significant role in the architectural aesthetics of late classicism, and it is the beauty of this undivided wall surface, which forms an expressive background for large plastic forms of the portico and for the relief of stucco details, that is carefully preserved and emphasized in the composition of the facade.
COLOR AND PLASTER
The simpler the combination of the main elements of the architectural composition, the more important the color plays in it. Classicism develops its own attitude to color and its own range of colors, especially active in the architecture of the early 19th century. Rastrelli's polychromy, this stormy celebration of color, shimmering with turquoise walls, gold capitals and vases, the whiteness of countless columns, is long gone. But the "classical", more precisely, the Renaissance, monotony of Quarenghi's buildings has also been left. The artistic norm in the architecture of late classicism is two-color. This principle is organically connected with the compositional system. Two contrasting colors correspond to the combination of large architectural elements and details with large background planes. The white columns of the porticoes, the white relief of the stucco decorations - masks, wreaths, friezes - clearly stand out against the surface of the warm, ocher-yellow walls, and these two primary colors mutually enrich each other. The plaster plane of the wall, painted in a warm intense tone, acquires new plastic qualities.
The two-colored facades of classicism are connected not only with the peculiarities of the composition, but also with the material itself - plastered brick and wood. Plaster, as if masking the building material (be it brick or plank sheathing of a log house), acts as a carrier of original and independent plastic and color features of an architectural work. It should not be seen in the plaster technique only color imitation of materials (wood - like a stone, brick - like a natural cladding, etc.). Of course, in elementary architectural designs, there were also attempts to artificially replace one material with another. But the development of architecture, finishing techniques and artistic crafts led to the fact that plastered wood itself became a kind of new material with its own, quite original, qualities. A noteworthy page in the history of architecture is made up of these aristocratic mansions and landlord estates, which have a log house as their structural basis: porticos, the white columns of which turn out to be simple logs, placed upright and sheathed with plywood, sometimes with a canvas stretched over it, on which a layer of plaster is applied; entasis of these columns, also made with wood and plaster; basement rustication, made up of plastered boards; finally, the very surface of the walls, whose impeccable, purely "stone" surface, thanks to the same plaster, can be painted in an intense color.
Painted plaster is an essential element among the architectural features and expressive means of Russian classicism. It was thanks to this tool that such a wide penetration of the architectural types created by this school into ordinary provincial and estate construction became possible. Not only the penetration of typical samples, but also an independent "grassroots" (provincial, estate, with the widest participation of serf masters) architectural creativity - in the spirit and forms of a single style. Finally, it is thanks to this means that all the buildings of Russian classicism, regardless of their size and character, acquired those features of cheerful warmth that are so close to Russian national taste and have behind them such a long tradition in Russian architecture.
"WOODEN CLASSICISM"
From this widespread use of "wood in plaster" one step remained before the penetration of the architectural forms of classicism into the proper wooden construction. The so-called "wooden classicism" is a natural branch of style, by no means exhausted in its meaning by random provincialisms. Classicism became widespread in wooden manor construction. Through the estate (as well as through a provincial province), he penetrated even into the village. Its economical forms and details were easily assimilated by the carpenter and the rustic carver. His clear construction of plans met the practical needs of a small estate to the same extent as it met the needs of the capital, merchant and lordly Moscow, and a rich estate. Moreover, classicism opened the field for independent shaping in wood, and the basic principles of style found a clear response even in the most primitive, "home-grown" construction work of the provinces and villages. Here, that meeting of folk architecture with the manor-city "Empire" was carried out, which gave the works of wooden classics so characteristic of Russian architecture of the early 19th century. In these porches and gates, where the logs appear in the guise of a Tuscan order, in these mezzanines framed by a classical pediment, in these carved decorations that reproduce the wreaths, armature and metopes of classicism - in all these devices one should not see only an accidental, rather arbitrary amalgam of forms , just an eclectic mix. Folk architecture here imitated "urban" models; but in these samples he recognized features close to him.
There is no need to idealize this provincial and wooden classicism. This architecture was naive in its sometimes somewhat primitive and straightforward thrust towards the classics. It was truly provincial in many ways, but at the same time it was an essential link in the country's architectural culture, a link that mediated between the capital and the provinces, between the city and the estate, and, in some cases, between the estate and the countryside. "Wooden classicism" ennobled the life and appearance of a small estate, provincial and county towns, conveyed a reflection of classical beauty to ordinary provincial construction.
PLANNING OF PROVINCIAL CITIES
Let us return again to the idea of "regularity" - one of the main ideas of classicism. If, through the selection of architectural types and their distribution in the estate and the provinces, the architecture of classicism connected the capital and the periphery within the framework of a single large style and stretched the chain from the monumental ensembles of St. Petersburg to the wooden provincial mansion, then the planning of provincial cities was an equally important link. Planning creativity has received exceptionally wide dimensions since the 70s of the 18th century, when the period of new Russian urban planning began. This period is associated with the restructuring of many old cities and the emergence of new ones. The principle of regularity was transferred from the construction of St. Petersburg to the new layout of almost all provincial and numerous county towns. Petersburg was a grandiose embodiment of this principle. But it was not only in one metropolitan construction. There was a huge country that demanded the renewal of its cities, some of which were ancient organisms, including gray-haired kremlins, old settlements, monastic complexes, others were relatively late formations that did not yet have an established architectural appearance. Finally, new cities were built, just founded on the lands of Ukraine and Novorossia, re-emerging on the southern and eastern outskirts of the state, like Odessa, Novorossiysk, Yekaterinoslav, Yekaterinodar.
"Composing plans" for all new and for the vast majority of old urban centers is one of the most important aspects of the architectural activity of the era. State efforts were devoted to this activity, which found expression in the works of the “Commission for the Construction of Capital Cities”, in the creation of the institute of provincial architects, and in practical urban planning initiatives. Much of this activity has been studied and covered in the literature, and even more is waiting to be studied. A whole army of architects, surveyors, builders was busy with this town-planning work. Although many of the urban plans "composed" during this period remained only plans, an even greater number of them entered into life, leaving a clear imprint of urban planning ideas of classicism on the layout of Russian cities. For many cities, the layout of the 18th century still forms the basis of their construction: suffice it to name Odessa, Perm, Yekaterinoslav, ancient cities - Tver, Yaroslavl, Kostroma, small urban organisms - Ostashkov, Odoev and many others. For all these new and old cities, which received regular plans in the 18th century, a combination of a clear street network with free building is characteristic. This combination allowed each city to acquire signs of "Petersburg" regularity, while at the same time preserving the untouched natural landscape. And in ancient cities with a regular new plan, old architectural arrays freely combined - temples (as in Yaroslavl) and kremlins (as in Tula). Regular plans did not interfere with the manor type of building, which is why in all these newly planned cities the landscape character of the architectural appearance of the city was preserved. So, along with the "Petersburg" beginning of the regular plan lived the "Moscow" beginning of the picturesque manor development of the city.
Studying the development of Russian provincial cities in the 18th and 19th centuries, we note a number of weaknesses in urban culture, the backwardness of urban technology, landscaping, and the construction quality of the bulk of urban buildings. This limitation and backwardness of the urban culture of the Russian provinces throughout this period should not obscure from us a number of excellent features of the Russian city, and above all, the living sense of nature that it has not lost, the landscape that has not been lost, the abundance of greenery in its residential areas, the direct transition of architecture into natural landscape. Only the superficial and narrow-minded "urbanism" of modern times can define these features only as "village" survivals.
Now that the problem of the city and nature, the problem of nature in the city, has become the central idea of urban planning throughout the world, we can re-evaluate the features of the Russian urban heritage. Not only the grandiose architectural expanses of St. Petersburg, this great work of the Russian architectural genius, but also the modest urban and estate landscape of the Russian provinces will take their place in this legacy.
