Often you look at the "overseas" sights, admire them and do not know that in your country there are no less interesting, beautiful and valuable architectural monuments. See for example:
The Church of the Sign of the Most Holy Theotokos in the Dubrovitsy estate of the Podolsk district of the Moscow region is one of the most extraordinary monuments of church architecture at the turn of the 17th – 18th centuries. No other temple near Moscow is as mysterious as this one. We do not know for certain neither the author of this masterpiece, nor the masters who worked here. We can only say with confidence that both foreign and Russian craftsmen worked on the creation of the temple in Dubrovitsy.
Let's find out more about this architectural monument …
The construction of the Church of the Sign dates back to the times when the Dubrovitsy estate was owned by the educator of Peter I, Prince Boris Alekseevich Golitsyn. In 1689 he was slandered before the king and he ordered him to retire to his village. The sovereign's anger passed rather quickly, and already in 1690 Boris Alekseevich was summoned to Moscow and he was granted the boyar dignity. It is believed that it was as a sign of reconciliation with Peter I that the prince decided to erect a new white-stone church in Dubrovitsy.
Originally on the site of the Church of the Sign stood a wooden church in the name of the prophet Elijah. It was erected in 1662, and in 1690 was moved to the village of Lemeshevo, adjacent to Dubrovitsy.
The Church of the Sign of the Most Holy Theotokos was built from local white stone, found everywhere in the Podolsk region. This material, on the one hand, is easy to work with, and on the other hand, it is strong enough to work out delicate details, such as fine carvings of the decoration of the temple.
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There is no doubt that the construction of the temple was completed by 1699, and maybe even earlier. However, five more years passed before its consecration. Probably, this was caused by the intention of Prince B. A. Golitsyn to invite Peter I to Dubrovitsy for the consecration of the Church of the Sign, which was impossible until 1704, since the Tsar hardly visited Moscow at that time. But, first of all, the prince had to get permission to consecrate such an unusual temple, built in the Baroque style and decorated in a European manner, from Patriarch Adrian. It is possible that during the construction process, changes were made to the original plan, and it took the craftsmen several more years to build the white-stone gallery of the temple.
After the death of Patriarch Adrian, Metropolitan Stefan (Yavorsky) of Ryazan and Murom became the locum tenens of the Moscow Patriarchal Throne. On February 11 (old style), 1704, the locum tenens consecrated a new church in Dubrovitsy. The service on that day was attended by Tsar Peter I himself and his son Tsarevich Alexei. The celebrations on this occasion lasted a whole week and all local residents were invited to them. After that, Peter I, apparently, did not visit Dubrovitsy any more.
In the plan, the church is a centric structure: an equal-pointed cross with rounded blades. The height of the temple with a dome is about 42.3 m. Around the temple, repeating the contour of its plan, there is a narrow gallery, towering ten steps above the ground and fenced with a high parapet. The basement of the building and the parapet are covered with a whole network of ornaments.
The entire temple is richly decorated with a round white stone sculpture - an unprecedented thing for that time. Near the western doors are the figures of two saints: Gregory the Theologian and John Chrysostom. The statue of St. Basil the Great is located above the western door of the church. The sculptures depict tall elders dressed in robes.
Statues of four evangelists are installed in the entrance corners of the basement, at the base of the octahedral tower there are figures of eight apostles, in addition, the facade is decorated with many different images of Angels.
The spherical vault of the pillar of the Church of the Sign is closed with eight spiked arcs of a gilded metal crown. This crown-shaped completion of the temple is quite original. In another estate near Moscow B. A. Golitsyn, Bolshoy Vyazem, the prince also decorated the church with a crown. However, it differed from the Dubrovitsky crown in shape and was made of white stone.
The interior of the Dubrovitsky temple also has abundant sculptural decoration. Relief compositions take up a significant part of the space. The plots of sculptures made using the stucco technique are very diverse, but they have one thing in common: they are all made according to biblical motives and are located in a certain system. The sculptures were made on site using a metal frame and a base consisting of broken brick and mortar. The base was coated with a special mixture, then the contour was cut through the wet solution and the figures were finally modeled.
The largest sculptural composition in the interior of the church is "The Crucifixion" - the central plot in the cycle "The Passion of the Lord". To the right of the "Crucifixion" is an inscription, which is indicated by two seated Angels. Similar texts accompany other scenes and are located in cartouches decorated with a shell, acanthus leaves and garlands. Initially, the inscriptions were made in Latin, but during the restoration of the 19th century. at the request of the Metropolitan of Moscow Filaret (Drozdov), they were replaced with Church Slavonic quotations from the Gospel. During the restoration work carried out in 2004, the Latin texts were restored to their original form.
In the northwestern pylon of the temple there is a small door leading to a staircase leading to the two-tiered choir, which occupies the entire top of the western ledge. A stone staircase from a pylon leads to the lower tier, which is a balcony that follows the contour of the wall of the western vestibule of the church. Light carved pillars support the second tier of the choir, which looks like a bridge. It was here that during the consecration of the church in 1704 Peter I prayed. The carving of the iconostasis and the two-tiered choirs is remarkable.
The icons are in perfect harmony with the carved part of the iconostasis. Their creation is credited to the masters of the Armory Chamber of the Moscow Kremlin. There is no doubt that the images, as well as the decoration of the temple, were influenced by Western European iconography.
During its three-hundred-year history, the Dubrovitskaya Church has gone through three major restorations, and only one of them was completed. It dates back to the time when Count Matvey Alexandrovich Dmitriev-Mamonov owned Dubrovitsy.
Restoration of the temple in 1848-1850 was entrusted to Academician Fyodor Fedorovich Richter. Up to 300 craftsmen were involved in the work in Dubrovitsy.
In 1781, the estate was bought by Grigory Aleksandrovich Potemkin (1739-1791) from lieutenant Sergei Golitsyn, who owed a large sum of money. But soon Catherine II herself wanted to acquire this estate, who visited Dubrovitsy on her way back from Crimea on June 23, 1787. Catherine II noticed Dubrovitsy not for herself. Among the persons accompanying her was a new favorite, aide-de-camp Alexander Matveyevich Dmitriev-Mamonov (1758-1803), whom I wanted to distinguish with special grace, even at the expense of the faithful Potemkin.
In December 1788 Dmitriev-Mamonov became the owner of the estate. He, like most of the noble children of that time, began his service in the guard and soon became Potemkin's adjutant, who introduced Alexander to the Empress. Mamonov charmed her. According to the testimony of contemporaries, the young man was smart, educated, honest, modest, well-bred, and almost everyone treated him with great sympathy. Mamonov is the only one among Catherine's favorites who did not use his influence to settle personal accounts. Graces poured down on him continuously. He became chamberlain, adjutant general, knight of various orders and, finally, count of the Holy Roman Empire. The young count almost did not interfere in state affairs, limiting himself to participating in Catherine's literary court circle.
But prosperity did not last long. The reason for the break with Catherine was the favorite's love for the maid of honor of the Empress Princess Daria Fyodorovna Shcherbatova (1762-1802), granddaughter of the famous Prince Alexander Bekovich-Cherkassky. She was 33 years younger than Catherine. The Empress in this difficult situation behaved with dignity: at first she cried for a long time, shutting herself up from everyone, and then, apparently, she pulled herself together and assigned all her gifts to Mamonov. Then she arranged a magnificent wedding for the young, she herself cleaned the bride to the crown. The wedding took place on June 1, 1789.
Soon the couple left for Moscow, promising never to appear at court. Their marriage was unsuccessful. The count soon retired and lived without a break in Moscow, then in Dubrovitsy, devoting himself to raising his son Matthew. The new owner conceived and carried out a major overhaul of the facades and interior of the main house in accordance with the new fashion for manor construction.
The temple, which previously occupied a central position, has receded into the background since the 18th century, submitting to the main house in terms of composition and art. The fashion for baroque decoration is a thing of the past. New palaces are being built in the style of classicism. It was difficult to completely rebuild the house, so they only decided to replace the exterior. The central part of the building on the south side was decorated with a six-column portico. A wide white-stone staircase now led to the main entrance, the railings of which and the loggias were decorated with lattice in the Empire style. There are two marble lions on high stone pedestals. An unknown architect attached wide open terraces to the ends of the main house (later they were closed and glazed). The most spectacular part of them is the white stone front porch with circular staircases.
A flower garden and a fountain were set up at the central entrance to the palace. From the side of the Desna River, the building received the main decoration - a semi-rotunda terrace with ten columns of the Corinthian order.
At the end of the 18th century, another compositional axis appeared in Dubrovitsy: a regular linden park was laid out in the western part of the estate, separating the palace zone from the complex of service buildings.
Significant alterations were also carried out in the interior of the palace. Small rooms disappeared, instead of them there appeared a suite of large rooms leading to the central hall (area about 200 m2), which has an elongated shape. To give the elongated hall a more oval appearance, its walls were painted from floor to ceiling with a special technique - perspective painting of a landscape-architectural type: repeating images of a multifaceted perspective of Gothic architectural motifs (arcades, loggias, decorative compositions). The shades of pink in deep perspective turn into brown, which is used for the columns of the foreground. The columns depict repeating designs of coats of arms, one of which belongs to the family of counts Dmitriev-Mamonovs. The painting of the hall was restored in 1968-1970. Now it is the meeting room of the Academic Council of the All-Russian Scientific Research Institute of Livestock.
Alexander Matveyevich Dmitriev-Mamonov, the only one of the favorites of Catherine II, managed to maintain good relations with Tsarevich Paul and after the latter's accession to the throne, on the day of his coronation on April 5, 1797, received the count of the Russian Empire. The count died suddenly in 1803 and was buried in the Donskoy monastery in Moscow.
The heir to Dubrovits is Mamonov's son Matvey (1790-1863), who at that time was only 13 years old. The grandchild was raised by his grandfather, Matvey Vasilievich. Soon the young man received the rank of chamber junker, and some time later, with the help of a distant relative - poet I. I. Dmitriev, the twenty-year-old count became chief prosecutor of one of the Senate departments. Service, however, Matvey Alexandrovich was of little interest, and he began to study history.
With the beginning of the war of 1812, the count entered military service, took part in the battles at Borodino, Tarutin, Maloyaroslavets and, most importantly, at his own expense formed a regiment, which received the official name "Moscow Cossack Count Dmitriev-Mamonov regiment". V. A. Zhukovsky, P. A. Vyazemsky and other famous people signed up for it.
During the Tarutino maneuver, a small detachment of our troops crossed the Pakhra and stopped at Dubrovitsy. Here is how General Nikolai Nikolayevich Muravyov (1794-1866) recalls this: “In Dubrovitsy, in the estate of Count Mamonov, in which we stayed from September 3 to 6, the steward Alexey … willingly treated the passing officers to breakfast. We were lucky and it was time to leave, and we made full use of his hospitality, where we had a decent rest, because we slept peacefully, had a good dinner and went to the bathhouse, which made my sick legs feel better.
The French also visited Dubrovitsy. A small detachment of Murat's cavalry left Dubrovitsy on October 10, 1812, robbing and burning nearby villages.
The owner Matvey Alexandrovich Dubrovits was awarded a golden saber "For Bravery" on December 21, 1812, and in March of the following year he was appointed chief of his regiment and promoted to major general. In 1816 he retired, and in 1817 he finally settled in Dubrovitsy. Here begins the "history" of the secret organization founded by Matvey Alexandrovich - the "Order of Russian Knights". The count himself wrote its charter - "A Brief Instruction to Russian Knights" and consulted on this issue with MF Orlov and MN Novikov.
In the document worked out by Orlov and Mamonov, along with the “abolition of slavery in Russia”, it was proposed to “hereditary peers”, that is, “Russian knights”, fortresses (“forteses”), estates and lands.
Dmitriev-Mamonov was no less interested in the idea of the fortification as the residence of the "peer" than in his reflections on the implementation of democratic, republican reforms. It was reflected in the construction unfolding in Dubrovitsy. By order of Dmitriev-Mamonov, an extended stone fence with medieval battlements was built around his estate, including the main house, a regular park, outbuildings and a horse yard, giving the estate the appearance of a castle.
The architect who carried out this unusual order has not been identified. It is possible that the project was developed by the count himself, who knew the fortification and was well versed in the drawings. The wall, which was of no architectural value, was finally dismantled in the 1930s.
Mamonov's desire to surround everything with an aura of secrecy could not but worry the government. The reason for the arrest was the beating of the valet by the count, in which he suspected the agent informing the Moscow governor-general, Prince D. V. Golitsyn. In July 1825, the bound Mamonov was taken to Moscow, where he strongly resisted the police. The medical commission formed at the direction of Golitsyn included four doctors who were supposed to officially certify the count's madness. The famous Moscow physician F. P. Gaaz, having examined the "patient", refused to give his opinion on the count's illness. However, Mamonov began to be "treated". His treatment was savage, coercive. He was required to obey the authorities. Finally, after the Count's refusal in 1826 to swear allegiance to the new Emperor Nicholas I, he was officially declared insane.and a guardianship was established over him.
A few years later, Dmitriev-Mamonov came to terms with his position. For almost four decades, until his death on June 11, 1863, the count lived in the Vasilievskoye estate on Vorobyovy Gory, which Muscovites called "Mamonova's Dacha". M. A. Dmitriev-Mamonov was buried on the territory of the Donskoy Monastery next to the graves of his father, mother and grandfather.
During the period when the count was under arrest in Moscow, the first restoration of the temple in Dubrovitsy (1848-1850) was undertaken, headed by the academician of architecture Fedor Fedorovich Richter (1808-1868). The architect received a classical education at the St. Petersburg Academy of Arts, went through a good school with O. Montferrand on the construction of St. Isaac's Cathedral.
After restoration “… it (the temple) can no longer be recognized,” writes the director of the Kremlin Armory AF Veltman in his book “Renewal of the Church of the Sign of the Most Holy Theotokos in the village of Dubrovitsy, Moscow district,” the golden cross and the golden crown of the dome brightly reflect the light again day and night; its patterned walls, all external statues are turned, cleaned with a chisel - there are no traces of time, no damage - the temple seems to be completely new, just created in imitation of the ancient, without the slightest change."
But inside, he became richer. The ancient iconostasis and choirs of magnificent carving could not remain without gilding, the yellow color of the leaves seemed to be a preparation for gilding; but no one thought about it until the restoration of the temple in 1850.
The renovated church was consecrated on August 27 (old style), 1850 by the Metropolitan of Moscow Filaret. In memory of his visit to the Dubrovitsk church, the saint left in it a gilded silver washstand and a dish, which were used in the performance of divine services.
Latin inscriptions and verses under the high-relief images have worn off; for them time has passed; they were replaced by text from the Holy Scriptures.
“Four rows of images of the iconostasis and the Royal Doors were crowned, and the choirs and two-tiered choirs seemed to be overgrown with golden grape leaves. The stucco work and all the sculptures at the height of the church separated and became more airy,”wrote AF Veltman.
In 1864, Sergei Mikhailovich Golitsyn became the owner of Dubrovits. He was born in 1843 and came from an old princely family. His father, Mikhail Alexandrovich Golitsyn (1804-1860), diplomat, bibliographer, collector, lived abroad for a long time. On the basis of the richest collection he had collected, his heir, S. M. Golitsyn, on January 26, 1865, opened the 14th Golitsyn Museum in Moscow on Volkhonka, which was housed in five rooms on the second floor of his house. The museum has become one of the centers of the cultural life of Moscow; more than three thousand visitors come to its halls annually. In 1886, the Golitsyn collection for 800 thousand rubles was purchased by S. M. Golitsyn made a lot of efforts to improve his beloved Dubrovitsy. This was done, first of all, with the expectation of wealthy summer residents. On the side of the Desna River and partially around the estate, a stone wall was dismantled by his order. On the plan of 1915, a poultry house is marked on the site of the north-eastern wing.
The Soviet period of our history turned out to be more cruel in relation to Dubrovitsky monuments than the time of the Napoleonic invasion. At the beginning of March 1930, according to the newspaper "Podolsky Rabochy", permission was obtained to close the church in Dubrovitsy, and on March 8 it was planned to remove the bells there. A year earlier, by a resolution of the Volost Executive Committee, all clergy and clergymen were evicted from their homes on the territory of Dubrovitsy, their housing and land were transferred to the Dubrovitsy state farm. This was the opening of a tragic page in the history of this magnificent temple.
The last rector of the Church of the Sign was priest Mikhail Andreevich Poretsky, who was exiled in 1930 to the city of Semipalatinsk, from where he did not return.
In the late 1950s. the temple passed into the jurisdiction of the All-Union Institute of Animal Husbandry, which is located in the Dubrovitsy estate. For 40 years the institute carried out restoration work in the church, which, unfortunately, was never completed.
From October 1989 to October 1990, believers fought for the return of the Dubrovitsky Church of the Russian Orthodox Church. On October 14, 1990, the first divine service was held in the Church of the Sign. It was headed by Bishop (now - Archbishop) of Mozhaisk Gregory.
Since that time, restoration work has been carried out in the church and on its territory by the efforts of the parish. In 2004, the Znamenskaya Church celebrated the 300th anniversary of its Great Consecration. On the eve of this event, unique high reliefs of the late 17th - early 18th centuries were renovated, the Royal Doors of the iconostasis were restored, and work was completed in the basement of the church.
In 1910 the architect Sergei Makovsky said about the Dubrovitsky temple: “… nothing like this can be found in Great Russia again; nothing more extravagant … just not more charming! These words, having gone through times of persecution and devastation, revival and restoration, have not lost their relevance. And today, everyone who comes to Dubrovitsy, the Church of the Sign of the Most Holy Theotokos fascinates the same way as centuries ago!
Features of the architectural decoration of the church were dictated by foreigners, which affected the abundance of sculpture, which is rarely found in Russian temple architecture.
The main building of the temple - an octagon on a quadrangle - in accordance with the Russian tradition, is raised on a high plinth, and at its level there is an open gulbische with four rounded staircase entrances. The rusticated monumental bottom ends with a carved cornice that covers the roof. The base of the octahedral tower is almost invisible. It has horizontal articulation and ends with a dome that bears a gilded crown. The entire facade of the church, from the steps of the stairs to the dome, is decorated with carvings (mostly floral designs).
In front of the western entrance from the side of the stairs, there are white-stone statues of saints - John the Theologian and Gregory Chrysostom, at the base of the octagon there are sculptures of the apostles, in the inner corners of the basement there are four evangelists: Mark, Luke, John and Matthew.
Stucco reliefs on evangelical themes stand out in the interior decoration of the church. High quality material and professional work have determined their durability. The two-tier carved choirs and the four-tiered iconostasis are well preserved.