Вопрос 8. St Isaac's Cathedral. Interior decoration.

The cathedral is richly decorated with sculptures. They are empty inside. They were made by the new method of electroplated technique (galvano-plastic). The Russian Yakoby produced this technique. All in all there more than 15 statues and reliefs in the cathedral. The upper part of the walls is decorated with the statues of aposlfes, prophets and angels. All plastic forms represented subjects taken from the bible. Nearly all the statues were designed by Vittaly and executed under the supervision of Yakoby.

In the central nave of the cathedral on the welts there are works by Fedor Bruny "The flood ", "The last Judgment", "The Vision of the prophet Ezekiel", '' the sun, the Moon and Stars". The ceiling painting was created to the design of Carl Brulove. The area of the ceiling painting is about 800 square meters. "Virgins of Glory". Among the figures surrounding virgin we can see distinguish St. Isaac of Dalmatian, St. John the Baptism, St. loan Theologian, St. Alexander Nevsky and Apostles Peter and Paul. In the very center of the ceiling there is a silver dove, which represents the Holy Spirit. It is a compositional center of the cathedral's interior. The original dove was created by the craftsman Dulef.

Iconostas

It is one of the most rare iconostas in Russia because its decoration with malachite and lapis lazuli columns and mosaics. The iconostas itself is made of white carara marble and is decorated with 10 malachite columns (diameter meter and high is 10 meters) and 2 lapis lazuli columns (diameter is about 0,5 meter and high is 5 meters) on the both sides of the Holy gates. The columns are not solid. They are made in a special technique, which is known as a Russian mosaics method. The stone or metal base cylinder is tiled with thin peaces of malachite or others rare stones. The pasting mixture was made of wax and resin. The pattern of the peaces of stone facing each column looks like a whole one. The work was done at the Petergof lapidary works. During the construction of the cathedral it was decided to replace all canvases with mosaics. Now there are 62 mosaics in he cathedral and over 12 thousand sheds were used for them. In the main iconostas there are 23 mosaics. The 1st and the 2nd rows and the last supper are above the Holy gates. The 1st row of mosaics was made to the originals of the Russian artist Neff, the 2n row to the design of Fedor Brulov and the 3rd row to the design of Zhivago. The 1st row shows images of patrons saints of the Russian empresses during whose reigns the 4 churches of St. Isaac were being built: Apostle Paul, St. Catharine the Mature, St. Alexander Nevsky, Virgin Mary, Christ the Savior,; St. Isaac of Dalmatian, St. Nicolas the wonder worker and Apostle Peter. The 2nd row shows images of patron's saints of the imperial family and the 3rd row all testament anophets and tsars. The sculptors group above the Holy gates in Christ in Glory executed by the sculptor Peter Clodt.

The stained glass was executed in the beginning of the 1840ies in Munich. The fragments of it are held together with metal bars. It's area is 28,5 square meters. The standing figure of Reseractive Christ is draped in purple robe against the blue yellow sky (the catholic feature).

On both sides of the main iconostas there are 2 small iconostas. The left one is devoted to St. Catharine and the right one to Alexander Nevsky (left- Resurrecticn-Пиминов, right-Transfiguration).

The porticos toped with pediments decorated with relieves: the southern one the Adoration of Magy-Vitally, the western- St. Isaac blesses emperor Theodosive the northern- Resurrection of Our Lord- Lemer, the eastern- St. Isaac of Daimanan meets emperor Valens.

Date: 2015-12-24; view: 1196