The Italians Who Built the Third Rome

Long ago, in the 1470s, a new age dawned in Rus. The medieval past, benighted by its endless feuds, was being left behind; a new Russia was being born. Yesterday had ended, but tomorrow could not yet begin, and Muscovites had very little certainty of their future. Prince Ivan III of Moscow (“Ivan the Great”), decided to set the bar high: he married a Byzantine princess and then surrounded himself with Greek and Italian thinkers. The goal? To strengthen and adorn the new capital of the new realm: the future Third Rome.

During Ivan’s rule, Muscovy not only shed the Mongol yoke, but it also subjugated all the other major rival cities, from Yaroslavl to Novgorod, thereby earning Ivan III the moniker “gatherer of the Russian lands.” Naturally, this meant that the capital of the new Rus needed to present a new and distinguished architectural visage.

In 1472, Ivan married Sophia Paleologue, niece of the last Byzantine emperor. Her dowry included the glory of the “Second Rome,” the city of Constantinople, which had fallen to the Ottoman Turks 20 years before. Immediately after the wedding, work began on the Cathedral of the Dormition.

Nothing on such a scale had been built in Rus since before the Mongol invasion in the early thirteenth century. Construction was begun by two Russian craftsmen, Krivtsov and Myshkin. By May of 1474 the structure, featuring elaborate wood carving, had been built all the way up to the arches, but then it suddenly collapsed. This was interpreted as an alarming omen from the heavens, the more so since matters with the Golden Horde and with Novgorod had yet to be settled and Moscow’s position remained precarious. To make matters worse, two ominous comets were searing across the sky, “stretching out like the tail of a great bird...”

Cathedral of the Dormition

Prince Ivan, now married to Sophia, made the best he could of the bad omens. In 1475, he again marched on Novgorod. However, this time the purpose was not to continue the war, but to “set a feast for all” and to administer justice. Novgorod was pacified neither immediately nor entirely, but the omens helped Moscow to take this decisive step against its rival. Upon returning home after peace negotiations, Ivan III began construction of a new Dormition Cathedral. On the advice of his wise wife, the prince this time called on a professional – someone who was not only accomplished in engineering, but also familiar with the traditions of Rome. In 1475 the master architect Aristotele (whose name means “best hope”) Fioravante arrived in Moscow from Milan. He came from a long line of architects (the Fioravanti dynasty was famous for building the Palazzo Comunale in Bologna) and was a specialist in technically complicated engineering projects, erecting and moving bell towers, building bridges and canals, etc.

What sort of Moscow did the foreign master see? As described by the authors of a book on Aristotele published in 1985, “Moscow in 1475, as seen by the 60-year-old engineer from Bologna, was a strikingly novel spectacle: a wide panorama of dark houses and fences wrapped around a hill, and the Kremlin wall, beyond which only a few of the churches were tall enough to be seen.” Before the bell tower of Ivan the Great was constructed, Moscow was an entirely horizontal city.

Upon entering the service of the Muscovite prince, Aristotele was given the handsome compensation of “ten rubles per month” and “a house next to the Grand Prince’s palace, which was very fine” (this is near the site of the current Palace of Congresses, inside the Kremlin).

At first glance, Aristotele’s Dormition Cathedral is an understated and perfectly traditional Russian church with five cupolas, imitating the exterior shape of the famous twelfth-century cathedral in Vladimir. Yet despite general similarities, the Kremlin church is quite innovative in its details, including certain aspects of its structure. The cathedral’s interior is open and engaging, with its round columns and equally proportioned spans of incomparably light arches. The exterior produces a similarly monolithic impression: Aristotele Fioravanti took such care to make the building appear seamless that he hid the apses – which are canonically required but hindered his artistic vision – behind stone “screens” on the sides of the east façade. Aristotele’s essentially conservative design managed to become one of the most celebrated in the history of Russian architecture.

The Dormition Cathedral was completed in 1479, just one year before Moscow was spared from an expected attack from Khan Akhmat, who decided not to battle the assembled Russian forces, leaving for home after the famous “Great Standoff at the Ugra River.” It was a historical watershed: the Golden Horde never again returned and indeed soon disintegrated through internal strife. The comets left the heavens above Moscow, the prince paused to catch his breath, then six years later undertook reconstruction of the city walls.

By that time, Aristotele was an artillery specialist in the prince’s military campaigns, and the new construction project was in the hands of his successor, Anton Fryazin (originally Antonio Gislardi; the adopted Russian name is from an old Russian expression for a person from southern Europe). In another version of the story, Anton might actually have been Aristotele’s predecessor: an Italian diplomat with the name Anton frequented the Moscow court in 1469 and was instrumental in arranging Ivan’s marriage to Sophia. It has traditionally been thought that these were two distinct individuals with different professions, yet we must also remember that this was the Renaissance: an advisor to the prince might well have been something of a polymath, able to provide wise counsel not only in matters of matrimony, but also in the creation of the capital city’s new visage.

Looking out over the Kremlin Wall toward Savior’s Cathedral.

Archeologists have confirmed that, at that time, the Kremlin’s south wall was in better condition than the fortress’ other walls. Nevertheless, that was where the renovations began, because the wall facing the river was most important. To this day, the Moscow River Tower at the southeast corner retains traces of this very challenging renovation. Looking closely, one can see that the height of the main part of the rounded tower was increased by half during its construction. The walls, meanwhile, were modeled on the best northern Italian fortresses; the most similar example is generally thought to be Milan’s Sforza Castle. Initially, the towers did not have the tall, decorative pitched roofs we see today and would have been striking for their monumentalist style. Most impressive was the enormous Troitskaya Tower, whose oldest portion has six arched levels. After its reconstruction, the Moscow Kremlin became, according to specialists, the most formidable Renaissance citadel in fifteenth-century Europe.

Gislardi was soon joined by two more Mediterranean masters: Mark Fryazin (Marco Ruffo) and Pyotr Antony (Anany) Fryazin (also known as Pietro Antonio Solari), along with their apprentices. Solari, who had embarked on his career by helping build the famous Milan Cathedral, earned the title “architecton,” indicating that he was the chief architect of the court and the city. His name has been immortalized on the wall of the Spasskaya Tower, where above the arches on both sides hang plaques stating, among other things, “et statuit Petrus Antonius Solarius Mediolanensis” (“and made by Pietro Antonio Solari from Mediolanum”). Together with Marco, he built the eastern façade of walls and towers, thus beginning to shape Red Square. The two also started construction of a stone palace by erecting a throne room for the Grand Prince in the heart of the fortress. Today, the structure is known as the Palace of Facets. It initially had a different look, one more characteristic of the quattrocento as imported by the Italians –“Gothic” double lancet windows, faceted rustication as was common for a fifteenth-century palazzo, and a tiled roof. Attached to the Palace of Facets, the Red Porch served as a place for ceremonial appearances by the Grand Prince. To the south is the vestibule of the Annunciation Cathedral, through which ambassadors from Christian nations entered the palace. The attentive observer will notice the sophisticated European features of this vestibule: its walls are painted with frescoes depicting the sages of antiquity (including Aristotle and Virgil), while the Italianate portals are adorned by chimerae with the heads and even busts (!) of women.

Cathedral of the Annunciation

Construction of the palace was continued by the next in the series of Italian virtuosi, a native of Piedmont, Aloisio da Carezano. Moscow chronicles mention two master architects with the name Aleviz (Aloisio), the “Old” and the “New,” and until 1928 these were thought to be the same person. However, historians later differentiated Aloisio the Old, i.e. Aloisio da Carezano, and Aloisio the New, or Aloisio da Montagnano.

Upon arriving in 1494, da Carezano, a “master of walls and palaces,” received from the prince eight sets of clothing and the title “Architect of the Glorious Sovereign.” In his first five years in Moscow he apparently continued building the fortress structures started by his countrymen. During his tenure, the northwest Kremlin walls were erected, including the Troitsky Gate. However, in 1498 the Grand Prince made him responsible for his new stone palace. Examination of what remains of the palace confirms that it was a Renaissance mansion through and through. The palace was exceptionally rich in cornices and entryways observing classical order, the courtyard was enclosed by a two-tiered arcade, and the living rooms were topped with flat, coffered ceilings. In other words, this was not something built by foreign craftsmen to suit the tastes of a singular Russian prince, but rather a consciously and professionally created Third Rome. The palace architecture was reminiscent of Italian monasteries and palazzos, but experts also cite the Wawel Royal Palace in Warsaw as a close relative.

Troitskaya Tower, built during the tenure of Aloisio de Carezano.

The plaque commemorating Pietro Antonio Solari on the wall of Spasskaya Tower.

It took ten years to build the Moscow palace, and in that time the prince’s son, Vasily III, became co-ruler with his father, who soon fell ill and died. When the site was put into service, Aloisio was assigned “to make a moat round Moscow city of stone and brick and to build ponds.” The moat, which among the people came to be called “Aloisio’s Moat” (sometimes translated as “the Aloisius Moat”), was engineered to be remarkably strong. It passed along the east wall of the Kremlin from the Moscow River to the Neglinnaya River, dividing the fortress from the Market. It had three stone bridges, sloped eight-meter banks fortified by strong walls (a width equal to one-third of present-day Red Square), and a system of floodgates allowing the water to be lowered during winter and in peacetime. Floodgates were also constructed on the ponds along the Neglinnaya. Recent excavations at Manege Square have found that in the sixteenth century the dammed river flooded, covering more than half the current area of the square and the entire Middle Alexander Garden. For a time the Kremlin was an island.

Meanwhile, in 1504, another Aloisio, also called “Fryazin,” arrived in Moscow. This one was naturally called “Aloisio the New.” We know that he came to Russia from Venice through Crimea, where Mengli I Giray, Khan of the Crimean Tartars, detained him long enough to build a palace, among other duties. The famous iron gate at the Bakhchisarai Palace can still be seen today and is remarkably similar to the entrances of the Archangel and Annunciation Cathedrals in the Kremlin. Certain details of the Archangel Cathedral are starkly reminiscent of Venetian architecture. It is likely that the man behind the Fryazin pseudonym in this case was Alevisio Lamberti da Montagnano, better known in his homeland as a sculptor. Scholars presume that it was in Moscow that Alevisio was first given the chance to flourish as an architect working on a large scale, and the Italian acquitted himself well. It is also thought that the uniqueness of the cathedral, the first in Rus to apply an order typical of the Renaissance, came about because Prince Vasily took after his mother, who was raised “more like a European, according to Venetian and Byzantine ways.”

Vasily’s reign also saw the first appearance of one of Moscow’s major symbols, and the architectural center of the city: the Ivan the Great Bell Tower. In 1505 the Italian Bon Fryazin constructed an expanded model at a new site. The tower did not initially attain its current height; the upper tier was added only in the early seventeenth century. The belfry, which gave this site its final definition, was also not originally included. It was added in 1531 by yet another Fryazin, this one called Petrok Maly, Peter the Small (originally Pietro Francesco di Annibale), who also designed the Kitai-Gorod fortification and, probably, the Church of the Ascension in Kolomenskoye.

The Ascension Church, rising 62 meters above the upper bank of the Moscow River, was unlike anything else in Russian stone architecture. A persistent question in the history of architecture concerns what existed first: the stone spire of the Kolomenskoye church or the steeples of wooden cathedrals. In any case, all we can know is that no earlier wooden steepled churches have survived, we have no information about them, and the Renaissance Ascension Church must therefore be considered the archetype for a genre that forms the basis for St. Basil’s Cathedral, as well as dozens of other famous northern churches built in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.

It seems a safe assumption that the steeple had existed in the past, but there is no actual proof that steeples were used in church architecture before the Kolomenskoye church. Regardless, the Ascension Church takes this structure and turns it into an idea. It becomes a flight to heaven, a visual representation of the Ascension of Christ (and if one looks long and hard, it begins to seem as if there might even be a foreshadowing of Gagarin’s future journey into space). The steeple here does not merely crown the cathedral; it is the cathedral. The stair-step domes of earlier buildings (from Hagia Sophia in Kiev, to the Andronikov Monastery) shoot upward like the spires of European cathedrals.

Kolomenskoye’s Ascension Church.

The life stories of the Italian “Fryazin” architects were, in all likelihood, not simple ones, just as the fates of their masterpieces have not all been simple. Russians have always been wary of Europeans, and there are stories of foreigners expelled for looking too closely at the Kremlin’s features, particularly its fortifications. It is understandable that those who built the citadel and knew all of its secrets were barred from traveling.

Ivan III favored the Italians in his service, and they were initially given substantial freedom; Antonio Gislardi was in fact allowed to return to his native land in the early 1490s. But it seems as if this was the exception to the rule. When the city of Bologna requested the return of Aristotele, and the Italian expressed his desire to comply, the prince took offense and had him placed under arrest. In 1539, Petrok Maly tried to flee Russia but was captured at the Livonian border. He was accompanied by one Grisha Mistrobonov, perhaps a son of the “Maestro Bon” who built the Bell Tower of Ivan the Great.

After these events, their stories are lost, as are those of most Western Renaissance masters forced to Russianize. The only thing we know with certainty is that Solari passed away on November, 22, 1493. Aristotele may have had a family, as there are documents indicating that one Ivashka Aristotelev died during the 1552 siege of Kazan.

Ivan the Great Bell Tower

Another curious fragment survives in a letter from Aristotele to Ludovico Sforza, the Duke of Milan. Aristotele tells of his strange journey to the Russian North. There, he writes, one could find “hares as white as ermines that, when frightened, flee to the ocean and hide under water for 15-20 days, living there as if they were fish” (the architect was apparently mistaking seal pups for hares). The objective of Aristotele’s expedition was of the most unusual sort: to obtain for the Duke two white gyrfalcons. It is unlikely that the only purpose of this effort was to augment a menagerie. This was a much more serious matter, or the Russian prince would not have allowed his court artisan to leave in the midst of his work on a cathedral. We must remember that this was a time of alchemy and mysticism. Aristotele sent the Duke two gray gyrfalcons and assured him that they would turn white after molting. He was dissimulating, as only albino gyrfalcons are ever pure white.

The artistic legacy of the Italian masters was not copied “verbatim” by their Russian colleagues, but there would, over the years, be a number of responses, quotations, and repetitions, some of them quite idiosyncratic. For example, the Cathedral of St. Nicholas in Pyzhi, on Bolshaya Ordynka Street in Moscow, has an entryway lined by columns with identical capitals at the top and bottom. This theme would have been unthinkable in classical architecture, but was entirely possible and even logical in its seventeenth-century Russian iteration. Aristotele’s Dormition Cathedral was imitated countless times in the sixteenth century. The ornamental scalloping of the Archangel Cathedral became a symbol of aristocratic status in church architecture right up to the time of Peter the Great, and there are many other examples.

But the main achievement of the Italian masters is that they made Moscow into the Moscow we know today, creating the festive and joyous architectural look of the Russian capital, and building us the Kremlin. RL

Official celebrations are being held in Moscow in 2015 to mark the 600th anniversary of Aristotele Fioravanti’s birth and the 540th anniversary of his arrival in Moscow.