The Kazan Cathedral was built in ten years from 1801 to 1811 by the architect Voronikhin, but eleven years before its construction it was painted by Benjamin Patterson, "View of the Kazan Cathedral from the Nevsky Prospect", the picture hangs in the Pushkin Museum in Moscow.
When asked how he painted it from the past, official historians give the answer that he painted before the construction of the Kazan Cathedral, focusing on the project.
And alternative researchers suggest that it was built much earlier. And Montferrand, who was engaged in the decoration of the cathedral, only restored it, in the same period Montfferand also built St. Isaac's Cathedral, isn't it too much work for him, just like the stone-maker Sukhanov, who made perfectly even balls, cut off everything that was superfluous and he got two ideal balls, but besides the balls, Samson built the colonnades of the Kazan and St. Isaac's Cathedrals, the basement of the exchange building, the lining of the banks, the Baabol bath, a huge basin, that is, it is not clear how he managed all this.
If you go to Wikipedia, you can see a similar picture drawn from a drawing by Patterson, it is called "View of the Kazan Cathedral in 1821", it was copied from a drawing by Patterson, which was no longer there in those years.
These drawings are very similar, but at the same time, you can find differences, since they copied everything down to the smallest detail, and could be called an exact copy if some details had not been removed, precisely because for some reason they made small differences, it seems did it on purpose and not in order to play the game find the ten differences.
Some groups of people are missing, but the gestures of the direction of pointing hands, dogs, horse carriages are all identical.
Promotional video:
On the domes of the cathedral, the cross is turned in different directions; on the obelisk, the same cross looks like an Orthodox one, on the first one is an equilateral cross. We redrawn the shadows, they are opposite and also removed the military, which differ in shape from other military ones.
Shadows and highlights are the basis of the image and no one will ever change them just like that.
In the 1800 original, the sun's shadows fall correctly, from west to east, but the crosses are turned north and south. In Bazheryanov's drawing of 1821, shadows fall from north to south, which is absolutely impossible. And the crosses are in the correct position as it should be in the church canon.
The shadows changed not only the direction, they became shorter, which is not typical for this direction, simply not early morning, the sun has already overcome the distance in the sky and is in a slightly different place, and the correct image is just in the original picture, the evening is approaching.
It seems that the French were removed from the picture, because there was to be a war with them at that time.
Also, according to Voronikhin's plan, pedestals were made that were supposed to decorate the figures of archangels, according to alternative historians, the sculptures were already standing and dismantled, perhaps because they did not correspond to the official concept and it was easier to remove them than to redo the details, although according to the official version they say that there were plaster statues that they wanted to replace with bronze ones, but for some reason they were not replaced.
In the paintings before 1830, there are two winged angels kneeling on pedestals with their palms pressed to each other in prayer.