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There practically was no school of native painters until the 12th century. The teachers in the schools were Greek masters and the Russians who studied with them only copied the Greek style. Soon, however, as early as the 13th century, Novgorod, one of the centres of inconography, began to produce painters who showed ability and originality. The Russians, however, never reached any great distinction in this art, being hindered in their development by the restrictions imposed by the Orthodox church. Despite the efforts of the ecclesiastical authorities to keep this art within the limits of tradition, the schools of Moscow and Taroslav began from the 17th century onward to be influenced by Western tendencies. The school of Pskov showed Italian influence already in the 16th century. Iconography lost much of its national character. The style of the Novgorodian school, the leading style until far into the 15th century, which was remarkable for its vividness and touch of naturalism, and that of the Pskov school, which differed only in peculiarities of coloring, lost many of their good qualities with the ascendency of Moscow. The art of iconography became poor and remained undeveloped.

The decorative art on the whole dates from very early ages. At first it was only an imitation of the Byzantine but later in the 16th and 17th centuries, under foreign influence, it formed a peculiar style of its own, marked by an astounding originality, diversity and beauty. It combined West-European, Asiatic, Byzantine and national elements. The most characteristic Russian designs are geometrical patterns and fanciful representations of birds, animals and floral motifs. A very common style is that of climbing plants, such as vine, or ribbon-like strips interlacing in fanciful ways, forming different angles and ending with griffons and other fantastical animals and even human faces. Usually more than one color is used.

In the beginning of the 18th century due to the reforms of Peter I, Russian art assumed distinctly foreign character. Peter I, believing in the usefulness of art, sent a good many men for training abroad and also invited to Russia foreign masters, such as Trezzini, Brandt and K. V. Rastrelli, Sr. Though Elizabeth was patriotic and preferred everything Russian, she was compelled to invite foreign artists, such as De Rotarri, for there were yet no prominent Russian artists, due to inadequate means for good training. Later in 1757, at the suggestion of Shuvalov, an academy of art for the training of native artists was established. However, Russian art continued to be imitative in character, for the teachers at the academy were foreign artists. Moreover, the most gifted pupils of the academy were sent abroad for six years to complete their studies there.

The history of modern Russian painting dates from the establishment of the Russian school of painting which practically begins with A. Losenko. He received his training in France, and as professor and, later, director of the academy, he is greatly responsible for the foreign direction which Russian art took and preserved for a long time. The close imitation of ancient forms and Italian art of

the times of the eclectics, conventionality in colors and observation of prescribed rules made Russian work of art of those days betray poor fancy and routine. The artistic productions of Losenko's followers lack originality and national character. They treat themes from holy history, ancient history, mythology or allegory, represented on the French or Italian style. Rarely were themes taken from Russian history. G. Ugriumov and A. Ivanov, the teacher of Brullov, rank as the first prominent Russian historical painters.

The first to part with the traditions of the academy was Brullov, whose picture 'Last Days of Pompeii' appeared while the pupils of Ugriumov still strictly adhered to academic classicism. Though the 'Last Days of Pompei' combined classicism and romanticism, then prevalent in western Europe, it threw off the shackles of academic routine and first opened the way to free creation. Next to Brullov the path of freedom in artistic production was entered upon by P. Basin and Th. Bruni. Russian art became more successful with the artists' disposal of ancient gods and heroes for the sake of episodes from ancient Russian history, which they treated in a simple and natural way. This change marks the beginning of the "National Historical Genre.» The originators of genre were graduates of the academy during the years following 1860. The most famous of these were P. Chistyakov, G. Myasoyedov, N. Shustov, K. Flavitzki, H. Litovchenko, K. Makovski, V. Shvartz, N. Ge, V. Jacobi, V. Perov, U. Rilpin. The first to attempt genre was A. Venetianov. The subject matter of the genre style were pictures from everyday life, such as 'Evening-Meetings,' 'A Hunter with his Flock, "Travelers Caught in a Storm,' (Scenes of Provincial Life. In the 18th century portrait painting became very prominent and there was almost no painter of genre who did not paint portraits also. At a time of growth of wealth, followed by vanity on one hand and servility on the other, there was a great demand for portraits. And such artists as Kozlov, Ugriumov and A. Rimov responded. After Brullov's death Zarianko and Nakarov ranked as first portrait painters. Though after Venetianov the realistic painters began to produce portraits depicting Italian and Eastern life, nationalistic ideas had penetrated the public and they demanded the representation of the real life of their native country. The realization of this ideal in art was made possible by the reforms achieved by Alexander II. The first to respond to this public demand was P. Fedatov, a fine observer and witty satirist, who very successfully represented both the funny and the sad sides of contemporary Russian life. The realism of genre assumed a journalistic character. Its purpose was to attack and correct social defects. Art of the genre style, just as well as literature and politics of that time, was to play a part in bringing about reforms. The interest of the public backed this tendency. Famous artists of this group formed in 1872 a "Society of Movable Artistic Expositions" to bring to the attention of the public the existing social and political evils.

Genre was followed by landscape painting. At the head of a great number of landscape

painters stands Schedrue whose influence on this phase of painting would have been still greater, if he had not spent a great part of his short life abroad painting Italian sceneries of the Neapolitan coast. A famous contemporary of his was M. Ivanov. The most prominent landscape painter, however, was Th. Aleksyexev whose specialty was perspective views of large cities. Russian landscape painting was at first, in the 18th century, only an imitation of foreign models. Following the foreign artist, the Russian painters did not depict nature as it actually is, but represented it perfectly lifeless, depriving it of all its contingencies and defects and giving it an artificial coloring. The Russian landscape painting, however, gradually lost its conventional traits, and during the reign of Alexander II assumed a national character. I. Shishkin reproduced the native forests; V. Onlovski painted Russian fields, seas and groves; M. K. Klodt depicted his native villages. However, Russian landscape painters did not escape the influence of decadence and impressionism of western Europe, which of late made itself felt in the Russian landscape.

Engraving sprang up together with the introduction of printing in the middle of the 16th century. At first wood engraving was not a separate art, wood cuts being used merely for the illustration of prayer books and other religious books, but later, in the 17th and 18th centuries, it developed into xylography. Though this art was practised in Russia for 150 years, no great artistic work was produced, and it later degenerated into plain factory work.

Metal engraving began in Russia as early as the 12th century, when it was first used for the decoration of evangelic books, cases of ikons and of different articles for church and home use. Copper plates, however, were first used in Moscow only in 1647, the engraving being made after the drawing by Gregory Blagoushin. The art of engraving was studied in Orouzhenaya Palata (school of the Orouzhenaya Palace), and the graduates of the school, artists like A. Gerkov, G. Kachalov, E. Vinogradov, were masters of their profession who in the excellence of their work could easily compete with the best foreign engravers. The most famous Russian engraver was E. Chemessov, a pupil of Schmidt. The art of engraving was already declining when Peter I, who liked to see his heroic deeds and accomplishments perpetuated, called to Russia foreign masters to train Russian engravers, and in the 18th century a great many engravings were produced, which were pictures of court life or portraits of high personages. In the beginning of the 20th century the themes of the Russian engravers were also historical subjects and landscapes. With the invention of photography and the revival of wood cuts in 1840, metal engraving went out of existence. Only eaux-fortes was continued in which Russian artists had become interested in the 19th century when water-coloring was much appreciated in western Europe.

Sculpture practically did not exist until the time of Peter I. for statues of religious personages with the exception of that of Saint Nicholas were forbidden by the Orthodox Church. In modern times it has been only an imitation of Greek sculpture deprived of all

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national characteristics. Within the last century there has been a tendency to rid it of the classical traditions, but with little success. Even in the works of prominent sculptors like Antokolski who reproduced mainly Russian historical persons and episodes of Russian history, the classical element is quite prominent.

With the exception of sculpture all phases of art have been developing in Russia along nationalistic lines since Alexander II. In recent years a regeneration of Russian art took place, the religious aspect becoming in it very prominent. Art became permeated with ideals such as expressed by Tolstoi in his "What is Art," where he states that the task of the artist is to express in his creations his highest and best sensations; and sensations are highest and best only when they coincide with the religious conception of goodness. Not beauty but goodness is the underlying idea of art, and the purpose of the artist is to convey it to others. The ideals of great modern artists, such as the Jew Antokolski, the naturalist P. Troubetzkoi, and the realist Vereschagin coincide with Tolstoi's religious revelry. The later's war pictures agitate against war as anti-Christian.

Consult Benois, A., "The Russian School of Painting) (New York 1916); Duc, E. V. le, L'art russe, ses origines, etc.) (Paris 1877); Holme, C. (ed.), 'Peasant Art in Russia' (International Studio, special autumn number, 1912); id., Some Notes on Modern Russian Art (R. Newmarch, December 1903); id., 'Modern Russian Art: Some leading Painters of Moscow) (May 1904); ib., 'Russian Art and American (W. G. Peckham, June 1914); ib., "Three Russian Painters - Somoff, Grabar and Maliavine (V. Pica, December 1913); Martinoff, 'Anciens monuments des environs de Moscou (Moscow 1889); Newmarch, Mrs. Rosa, "The Russian Arts' (New York 1916); Ramesanov, 'Materialen Zur Geschichte der Kunst in Russland' (Moscow 1863); Rikliter, 'Monuments of Ancient Russian Architecture' (1850); Snow, F. H., Ten Centuries of Russian Art (Art World, November, December 1916); Sobko, N. P., Lexikon russischer Künstler des 11ten bis 19ten Jahrhundert' (Petrograd 1873). WOISLAV M. PETROVITCH, Chief of Slavonic Division, New York Public Library.

The

7. RUSSIAN ARCHITECTURE. most cursory survey of the history of Russia, as summarized in the article Russia (q.v.), should suffice to explain why Russian architecture is not comparable in extent and importance with that of western Europe, on the one hand, or of the great Moslem and Indian empires on the other. Not until the 9th century does Russia appear as a recognizable entity, and until the 16th the chaos of peoples and political institutions, the conquest by the Mongol Khans in the 13th, the incessant struggles of rival princes, kings or tsars against the Khans and against each other, the complete absence of any racial or national unity, the lack of roads and the dense ignorance of the masses, made impossible the development of any real civilization out of which alone a great architecture could spring. The first civilizing influence was the conver sion to Christianity in 988 of Saint Vladimir

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the Great, who made Kiev the seat of a metropolitan of the Greek faith, and brought the empire under the Byzantine influence. At the end of the 14th century, however, Moscow emerged as the political and religious capital of Russia, was enriched with churches and palaces of great splendor, especially in the citadel called the Kremlin, and remained the capital under the early Romanoffs until in 1703 Peter the Great built his new capital Saint Petersburg (now Petrograd) upon the Neva and began the imposition upon his empire of Western ideas and Western architecture.

We may accordingly divide Russian architecture into two main periods; the first from about 1389 to 1703, occupied chiefly with the erection of ecclesiastical buildings in a style derived from the Byzantine; and from 1703 to the present time, during which period the churches with some exceptions have continued to be built in the Russo-Byzantine style, while palaces and civic buildings generally have followed the modern neo-classic tendencies. Moscow is the important centre for examples of the first period, Petrograd for those of the second; but cities like Kiev, Nijni-Novgorod and Yaroslav also possess interesting examples of both.

In all Russian architecture there is an element of semi-barbaric Asiatic taste, which imparts a distinct character_alike to the older and the newer monuments. This is especially conspicuous in the Kremlin or citadel at Moscow, within whose nearly triangular enclosure is an extraordinary group of churches, cathedrals (for in Russia there may be any number of cathedrals in one city, dedicated to different names or saints), towers, convents, palaces, museums and an arsenal; the earliest buildings dating from the late 15th century, the latest from the middle of the 19th century. fantastic turrets, lanterns, bulbous domes, gilded and brilliantly colored roofs, and singular decorations suggest a mixture of Tartar, Byzantine and Italian Baroque influences, while in some churches the multiplied repetition of certain details suggests even the Brahman monuments of India.

The

The religious monuments of the First Period are best studied at Kiev and Moscow. The earliest churches, built of wood, are no longer standing; the first church of stone and brick, that of the Tithes at Kiev, built in 989, has also disappeared. While parts of some existing churches may date as far back as 1020-37, as in the cathedral of Saint Sophia at Kiev which has 15 domes and whose interior retains very ancient mosaics of Byzantine style, nearly all have been so often rebuilt entirely or greatly altered in much later years that little is to be seen that is older than the late 15th century. The churches are all built on a small scale of parts, often with four interior piers forming nine bays, each covered by a domical vault or a very lofty lantern or drum carrying a bulbous dome, or a spire tipped with a huge bulbous final. These lanterns are the extreme development of the late Byzantine dome on a drum seen in the churches of Salonika and Athens, and reach the extreme of fantastic extravagance of splendor in the cathedral of Saint Basil (Vasili Blajenoy) just outside the Spasskaia Gate of the Kremlin at Moscow, built 1554 by Ivan the Terrible, with eight lanterns and a huge central spire. The Uspensky Cathedral

at Moscow (cathedral of the Assumption) rebuilt in 1473 by Fioraventi of Bologna has five simpler domes; the church of the Devitchy convent in the Kremlin has five bulbous domes. Of secular buildings of this period the most striking at Moscow are the Ivan Veliki tower of Ivan the Great, finished in 1600 by Boris Godunov, the tower over the Spasskaia Gate, and the Granovitaia or lesser palace, 1473-90, by Italian architects in the Renaissance style, but restored in 1882, and now serving as a banquet hall.

Of the Second Period the chief examples are at Petrograd. The civic buildings comprise the Admiralty (1727-35), the famous Winter Palace by Rastrelle (1732), the Stroganov Palace by the same, the Tauride Palace by Starov (1783), the Imperial Library by Sokolov (1794-1830), the National Museum by Rossi (1819-25) and the Alexandra Theatre (Rossi, 1832); nearly all these in a Russianized version of the Italian Baroque, in many parts displaying, especially in the interior decorations, the mixed Russian inheritance of Byzantine and Asiatic taste for showy effects. The Hermitage, by von Klenze, is in the neoGreek style, more restrained in composition and detail. But the two most striking monuments are the two cathedrals: that of the Virgin of Kazan by Woronikine (1801-11) in classic style with a bronze dome and semi-circular colonnade, and the impressive cruciform cathedral of Saint Isaac by de Montferrand (181958) with a vast iron dome, and internally splendid in its finish of marble and malachite; it is in a strictly classical style, and is reputed to have cost $15,000,000. The cathedral of Saint Vladimir at Kiev is a more recent work in the Russo-Byzantine style, by Beretti and Bernhardt. Consult Monuments de l'architecture russe) (Saint Petersburg 1895-1900); Violletle-Duc, E., 'L'Art russe (Paris 1877).

A. D. F. HAMLIN, Professor of Architecture, Columbia University. 8. RUSSIAN MUSIC. The music produced by the Russian people, whether in the form of the primitive and spontaneous folksongs or in the various art forms developed by individual composers. It includes, in other words, all the music possessing sufficient Russian characteristics that has sprung up on Russian soil or that has been composed by Russian composers, whether in the strictly nationalist spirit of Glinka and Dargomyzhsky or in the more Western vein of Rubinstein and Tchaikovsky.

The historical development of Russian music reflects, in a large measure, the vicissitudes of Russia's general and cultural evolution. In her musical evolution, as in her general history, Russia has had her centuries of semi-Asiatic seclusion, her sporadic waves of Western influence, her periods of vigorous nationalism, and her days of cosmopolitanism or eclecticism. While it is manifestly impossible to draw exact parallels, it will greatly help the reader to grasp the general outlines of Russian musical history to bear this analogy in mind as he reads this article.

There are various ways of dividing and subdividing the periods composing Russia's musical history. Four general divisions are perhaps as logical as any. These may be desig