Zolochenye dveri XVI veka: Sobory Moskovskogo Kremlia i Troitskii sobor Ipat'evskogo manastyria v Kostrome. By A.V. Chernetsov. Moscow: Nauka, 1992. 216 pp. Plates. Paper.

Abstract

A.V. Chernetsov has devoted the monograph under review to six gilded doors in the portals of three cathedrals from the Muscovite era. Two gilded doors are located in the Cathedral of the Annunciation within the Moscow Kremlin; one is found in the Cathedral of the Dormition, also within the Moscow Kremlin; and three others are in the Trinity Cathedral of the Ipat'ev Monastery at Kostroma. Chernetsov's monograph will interest Muscovite art historians and aficionados of cultural interchange between Muscovy and the west. Chernetsov has divided his monograph into three chapters. The first is largely concerned with the images and the inscriptions on the panels of the six gilded doors which depict New Testament personalities, Old Testament prophets and their prophecies together with sages of classical antiquity and sibyls. The images and the inscriptions on each door often have counterparts on the others. Chernetsov's analysis of the images and the inscriptions is supplemented by 102 photographs. In the second chapter he seeks to date the doors absolutely and relatively. He concludes that the doors of the Cathedral of the Annunciation are the oldest; he dates them to ca. 1508; the door of the Cathedral of the Dormition appeared between the second half of the 1560s and the beginning of the seventeenth century; the doors of the Trinity Cathedral are probably traceable to the 1590s. In the third chapter, Chernetsov attempts to broadly characterize the images on the panels, commenting upon their antecedents and the symbolism that they evoke. If Chernetsov's monograph helps to revive scholarly interest in the gilded doors, he has performed a useful service. While those of the Cathedrals of the Annunciation and the Dormition within the Moscow Kremlin were described in the nineteenthcentury works of I.M. Snegirev, those of the Trinity Cathedral at Kostroma were never studied before. Chernetsov has compared images and inscriptions with admirable care; unfortunately, however, he has not paid equal attention to some of the most important questions surrounding the doors. We learn little about what it meant to gild the doors of church portals in sixteenth-century Muscovy; nor do we discover why some doors were selected for gilding and not others. What caused the similarities Chernetsov establishes among the images and the inscriptions? If the similarities are inexplicable on present evidence, a clear statement to that effect would have been welcome. A particularly unsatisfying part of the monograph concerns the sources of the images of sages of classical antiquity and sibyls. Chernetsov affirms that Byzantine and south Slav art long combined images of "prophetic acts" with sibyls and sages of classical antiquity. Yet, could not the known penetration of westerners into Muscovy in the late fifteenth century have played a role? Finally, it is regrettable that the 102 photographs are in black-and-white and on low-quality paper. In sum, Chernetsov has made a worthwhile contribution but readers should approach his monograph with a health...