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Ancient ornaments to enlighten modern architecture --- A fine record of nineteenth-century aristocratic taste and trends in architecture and design. First edition, complete. In his comparative visual study, Gagarin promotes the national character of Russian church art through a revival of its Byzantine roots. The artist's plates show details of masterpieces of Byzantine-style ecclesiastical architecture in Russia and Europe, from a 5th-century mausoleum in Ravenna to a 17th-century church in Yaroslavl. They also reproduce ornaments from medieval (mainly Greek) manuscripts held by the Bibliothèque nationale in Paris and libraries in Venice and Siena. The plates are arranged so as to compare and contrast Byzantine and Russian design. The author was born in 1810 to the princely Gagarin family (of Rurikid lineage). He did not receive a formal artistic education, but took private lessons from the famous Russian painter Karl Briullov in Rome, where Gagarin's father was stationed as a diplomat. Upon returning to Russia after a childhood spent in Italy and France, Prince Gagarin made the acquaintance of Pushkin, whose 'Queen of Spades' and 'Tale of Tsar Saltan' he illustrated. He also became close to the poet Mikhail Lermontov, with whom he fought in the Caucasus. A man of many talents and a gifted artist, Gagarin (1810-93) became vice-president of the Academy of Arts after a couple of major (and now famous) publications on the Caucasus. Gagarin sought out interconnections between Russian and Byzantine art. He thus begins his preface with a syllogism: that art in Russia should "take on a completely national character", that the root of Russian art is in Christianity; and, therefore, that to become more national, it must return to its Byzantine source. The architectural fruits of Gagarin's labours are visible in the Russian Revival in the last quarter of the nineteenth century, which built on the distinct Byzantine-influenced style of the medieval period, added influences from the gothic and baroque, and arrived at a synthesis "which was a modern but nostalgic interpretation of Byzantine style and pre-Petrine Russian design" (Jiang). Gagarin was instrumental in promoting this 'Byzantine Style', and built the museum of early Christian art at the Academy of Arts. He was the first to apply encaustic way of painting frescos in Byzantine style, at the Zion Cathedral in Tiflis (now Tbilisi). This Neo-Byzantine style can also be seen in Western Europe, beginning in the 1840s. Publication of this volume (which the already ageing but still active Gagarin dedicates to "the artistic industry") was supported by the St. Petersburg School of Technical Drawing, founded by philanthropist Baron Alexander von Stieglitz, first governor of the State Bank of the Russian Empire. Provenance: Georgii Plautin (inscriptions to front endpapers; perhaps Georgii Nikolaevich Plautin (1898-1942), a descendent of Lomonosov, from a branch of the family that emigrated during the Russian Civil War). Physical description:Folio (32.5 x 24.5 cm). [8] pp. including dedication, title, bibliography and introduction, and 50 chromolithograph plates, some with gilt highlighting, all captioned in Russian, German, French and English. Brown half sheep over brown pebble-grained cloth boards, smooth spine with gilt lettering. Condition:Boards a bit stained and rubbed at extremities; occasional light marginal soiling or staining, a few lower corners with small tears with marginal loss, scribbling and colouring to some plates, pages starting in places. Bibliography:Jiang, M. The Urban Imagination: From Medieval Moscow to the Russian Revival (HUM 54 The Urban Imagination: Moscow Exhibits 2015, Harvard University).
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