The presented paintings belong to the brush of different artists from different countries … We are, of course, very interested in the reasons for the destruction of these structures, but no less interesting is the process of sprinkling them …
Williams Grecian. (1773-1829). Scottish artist. Goodrich Castle (England). On the right, you can see that the sand is right inside the structure at a decent height.
The artist Giovanni Batista Piranesi has an engraving "View of the tomb of Gaius Cestius" made by the artist in 1755, which depicts the pyramid of Cestius in Rome. But the most remarkable thing in the picture is the frozen mud or clay. Where did so much wealth come from in Rome ???? Let's also take a closer look at the extension to the pyramid on the right - and see the period of its complete destruction.
Lebedev Mikhail Ivanovich. "The grave of Princess P. P. Vyazemskaya in Rome", 1835 - the remains of an extension, a view of the pyramid 80 years later from a different angle. Actually, I want to note that following my observations from the paintings, damaged castles and structures are decaying very quickly … Therefore, Rome turned into complete ruins in less than 70-80, and if you take into account the constant clay deposits, then probably in 50 years.
Matveev Fyodor "Italian City" 1790s.
Promotional video:
Socrat Maksimovich Vorobiev (1817-1888). Castle by the sea. For some reason, castles, as well as our monasteries-fortresses, were especially unlucky. However, maybe the artists just liked to draw them, even in the most unsightly form … Judging by the picture, a substance of a very indecent type flies in the sky, which falls out in the most natural way, covering everything in the area …
Yazep Drozdovich (Belarusian artist) 1888 - 1954. Novograd castle:
Yazep Drozdovich (Belarusian artist) 1888 - 1954. North-western wall of the Krevo castle.
Yazep Drozdovich (Belarusian artist) 1888 - 1954. Entrance to the underground tunnel on Mount Bakshat in Vilna.
Bogaevsky Konstantin Fedorovich. The gate in the tower. 1902.
Bogaevsky Konstantin Fedorovich. Walls and towers of Soldai. 1904.
Vasily Vereshchagin. Mausoleum of Gur-Emir. Samarkand. 1869-1870. The process of formation of the "cultural" layer is clearly expressed. The structure was almost drowned in it.
Vasily Vereshchagin "Mausoleum of Shah-i-Zinda", 1869, Turkestan. The impact on the dome is from above !!!
Last time we looked into Europe and Russia, considered the consequences of the impact of an unknown phenomenon, such as clay fall, sand sprinkling and rock-breaking of structures from the air. And what about the countries neighboring Russia? I liked a number of paintings from Belarus … I’ll call them the ruins of antique Belarus, otherwise if they are antique, then Rome or Greece, and antique Belarus sounds no worse:
Jozef Peshka. Ruins of the White Koval castle. Smolyany (Belarus), late 18th century, sand inside the castle.
Napoleon Mikhailovich Orda (1807 - 1883) is a famous artist, composer and pianist, whose life and work are associated with Belarus. Born in the village of Vorotsevichi in the Pinsk district of the Minsk province (now the Ivanovo district of the Brest region) in the family of an engineer-fortifier Mikhail Orda. What wonderful names were given in those days - here Socrat Maksimovich Vorobyov, among Belarusians - Napoleon Mikhailovich Orda. I don't even know which is more prestigious Napoleon or Socrates …))) Novogrudok castle.
Kanut Rusetsky. Mir Castle, 1844 (this artist still has the remains of roofs).
Napoleon Mikhailovich Orda. Mir Castle, apparently, 10 years later (the sand dumps are impressive, and in the sky of Belarus Saharan sand storms rage and carry away the remains of the roof).
Napoleon Mikhailovich Orda (1807 - 1883). Kalozha.
Napoleon Mikhailovich Orda (1807 - 1883). Ruzhany.
Napoleon Mikhailovich Orda (1807 - 1883). Kamenets-Litovsk, Kamenets tower in the Brest region.
Napoleon Mikhailovich Orda (1807 - 1883). Novogrudok. Ruins of the castle and the Farny church.
Napoleon Mikhailovich Orda (1807 - 1883). Svisloch.
Napoleon Mikhailovich Orda (1807 - 1883). Geranyon castle.
At the moment, only moats, earthen ramparts, small fragments of stone cylindrical towers have survived on the site of the castle. Everything was overgrown with bushes.
Napoleon Mikhailovich Orda (1807 - 1883). Golshany. Ruins of the Sapieha castle.
Napoleon Mikhailovich Orda (1807 - 1883). Kreva.
I came across a few paintings depicting the territories of modern Lithuania, Poland and Ukraine:
Yazep Drozdovich (Belarusian artist) 1888 - 1954. The ruins of a tower in the Krevo castle (Lithuania).
Lithuania. Trakai is a castle. Napoleon Mikhailovich Orda (1807 - 1883).
And this is how the castle looked in the middle of the 19th century. Painting by Wojciech Gerson, 1855. Apparently, 5-10 years later. The sad sight of the death of a once magnificent building.
Napoleon Orda. Exchanges (Lithuania). Lutheran church, ruins of the Radziwills castle and a church.
Napoleon Orda. Kazimierz nad Vistula (Poland). Castle ruins:
Napoleon Orda. Khotiny (Poland). Ruins of the castle. Lithograph according to Fig. N. Horde:
Ukraine. Fedor Solntsev. Cyril Monastery near the village of Kurenevka.
Watercolor. 1843. Monasteries, castles and other fortifications are favorite places for large amounts of substance.
Napoleon Mikhailovich Orda (1807 - 1883). Prison. Ostrog Castle. Ukraine.
Ekaterinoslav (Dnepropetrovsk), now Dnepr.
General view of the Assumption and Transfiguration Cathedrals.
Fragment of an engraving from the mid-19th century. Here, in general, the feeling of some kind of sandy quicksand … However, it seems to have nothing to do with our solid sediments.
Or has it? Polenov Vasily: "View of Feodosia from the side of Quarantine with the ruins of the Genoese fortress", 1912. A strange load of sand … if you build something on this, then …
Here I just remembered the Andreevsky descent in Kiev, it is also filled with some kind of structure:
Ruins of the Golden Gate in Kiev. Drawing by Mikhail Sazhin, 1846
Ruins of the Church of St. Irina in Kiev. Drawing by Mikhail Sazhin, 1846
Well, and then, in no particular order, pictures and photographs are silent witnesses of cataclysms:
Aleppo (Syria) (Poor, unhappy, tormented city … and now you have no peace and quiet!)
Photo 1842-44:
Paris, Thomas Guertin.
Rue Saint-Denis in Paris, 1775-1803.
William Turner. Canterbury, Kent, 1793. Wales Bridge at Shrewsbury.
In general, I have a feeling that Europe was crumbling gradually - at first they subjugated Rome and England (17th century), and then together gradually bit off pieces of All Russia and brought them to their knees. The war was constant …
Joseph Mallord William Turner is known for his landscape paintings, and in particular. those in which he used color for dramatic effect. He enjoyed portraying natural disasters - volcanic eruptions, storms at sea and avalanches. According to the official version, Turner often traveled to the Alps, and in the 1840s he visited the village of Goldau in Switzerland, which in 1806 was destroyed by a catastrophic landslide that killed 457 people. The dramatic sky is considered a symbol of the destruction of the village.
William Turner "Goldau" a settlement in Switzerland, in the canton of Schwyz, 1841-1843.
Turner doesn't seem inadequate to me. For example, the painting "Fire in the Parliament Building, October 16, 1834", but the Swiss "landslide" does not even look like a fire …..
Even when he wrote a semi-abstraction, it looked quite understandable. For example, in 1842 he creates A Snowstorm at Night:
On the other hand, what else can you paint in a small Swiss village if not a landslide or an avalanche? Perhaps I am already biased towards the names of the paintings and the interpretation of events by "experts", but, unfortunately, a huge number of paintings have been renamed and conspired in such a way that you will never guess about the author's real intention. "Landscape", "Castle", "View of the City", but the fact that this landscape, castle or city will cease to exist now has disappeared from the name of the picture in an unprecedented way.
For example, Quarenghi (according to his designs, all the imperial and princely palaces, estates, banks, institutes, hospitals in Moscow and St. Petersburg at that time were erected) a project of the St. Petersburg Stock Exchange was developed, construction began in 1783. But in 1787 (this is the year the painting was painted), the building completely built under the roof was demolished due to the fact that it did not correspond to the appearance of the city and urban planning tasks. As always, a nice and logical official version … … The artist Travers, apparently, was one of the last who saw this structure … The words flood or storm, and even more so, flood were removed from the name …
Jean Balthazar de la Travers. Exchange designed by Quarenghi. 1787.
The same with photos:
Scotland (Edinburgh), 1843 Official version: the monument to Walter Scott is still under construction J))))) Well, who would doubt it? I just want to ask: what stage of construction is this. ????
Dryberg Abbey (Scotland), 1844, the grave of Walter Scott (note - even the ruins are not present in the name) - the burial is far from where the monument is. Is it just the writer who is unlucky in his posthumous life, or is the whole of Scotland unlucky in hail?
At the end of my story, I would like to briefly introduce you to the work of two people - a poet and an artist-poet, who were friends and, sometimes, the creations of one were supplemented by the incarnations of the second.
Bogaevsky Konstantin Fedorovich (1872-1943). Corona Astralis. 1908 or Star Crown. And below there may be a fortress-star. So understand as you want. Unfortunately, we don’t understand even one hundredth of what the artists and poets of the late 19th and early 20th centuries knew.
Corona Astralis. 1908. The title of the picture coincides with a poem by Maximilian Voloshin, a poet who was born in 1877 in Christian Russia and believed in the transmigration of souls, in the fact that there are people who remember their past lives … and also that our souls strive for the stars but imprisoned by someone on Earth.
Before reading the poem, explanations are needed: Leta is a source and one of the underground rivers in ancient Greek mythology.
RIVER OF OBLIVION.
Upon arrival in the underworld, the dead drank from this river and received oblivion of all the past; on the contrary, those who appeared back to earth had to drink water from the underground river once more.
Below is just an excerpt from the poem Corona Astralis:
Midnight Suns beckon to us lights.
Ah, not baptized in the deep waters of Lethe
Our bitter spirit, and our memory torments us.
The pain of non-life grievances smolders in us
Exiles, wanderers and poets!
To the one who sees, but is blinded by the light of day, To the one who is alive and thrown into a dark crypt, To whom the earth is the sacred land of exile, Who dreams and remembers names
To those in love, not the joy of meeting is given, And the dark delights of parting!
Bogaevsky Konstantin Fedorovich. Stars.
And, if the soul of the poet Maximilian Voloshin strives for such unattainable stars, then he has a very hostile attitude towards the moon:
Lunaria. A wreath of sonnets (excerpt)….
M. Voloshin
You are a cry of longing, frozen in a block of ice!
A plexus of anger, pride and pain
The wingless sweep of one boundless will
In the midst of convulsions, an extinguished star
A bridle is put on the spirits of will, The grail of combating the sacrament of bitter salt.
You will remain a calvary of souls until
Earthly times will not end.
Dead, learn the word of Hell:
I decompose with the slowness of poison
Bodies are in the earth, and souls are in the moon."
Around the earth, drawing vampire circles
And the currents of life drinking in a dream -
You are the greedy corpse of a rejected world!
1913
How often our ancestors turned their gaze to the sky with hope, and how at times they were afraid of what might fall from it onto our sinful earth….
"The Star of Wormwood" by Konstantin Bogoevsky is an apocalyptic plot, the personified symbol of horror. The artist's "wormwood" pours a mortifying horror on the ground. Time stopped, as if a star appeared from timeless space and scorched the stone houses of the modern city with sharp rays. A painful immobility of the magic light of Wormwood has been established in the world.
In the Apocalypse there is a prophecy about "Star - Wormwood".
The third angel sounded his trumpet, and a large star fell from heaven, burning like a lamp, and fell on a third of the rivers and on the sources of waters. The name of this star is "wormwood"; and the third part of the waters became wormwood, and many of the people died from the waters, because they became bitter (Rev.8: 10-11). It is clear from the text that this event should be attributed not to the present, but to the future eschatological time. Archbishop Averky (Taushev) explains this passage in the following way: “Some people think that this meteor will fall to the ground and poison the water sources on the ground, which will become poisonous. Or maybe this is also one of the newly invented methods of a terrible war."
Wormwood (Heb. Laana; Greek apsynthos) in the Bible is a symbol of the Lord's punishments: And the Lord said: Because they forsaken My law, which I decreed for them, and did not listen to My voice and did not act on it; but they walked according to the stubbornness of their hearts and in the footsteps of the Baals, as their fathers taught them. Therefore, thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel: behold, I will feed them, this people, with wormwood, and I will give them water and gall to drink (Jer. 9: 13-15).
Star Wormwood. 1908.
In general, we are not at all familiar with the legends about wormwood - a star … But in the late 19th and early 20th centuries - it was probably something very understandable …
Bogaevsky Konstantin Fedorovich. East altar. 1919. What ancient building was in the foreground before?
M. Voloshin to K. Bogaevsky
We, so different in soul, They took care of a single flame, And closely linked by longing
Some stones, one earth, Some sparkled for us in the distance
Constellations flaming discs, And wherever we roam, But the heart is hopelessly close
Feodosia Hills.
Voloshin M. A. "Friend" 1911.
Voloshin and Bogaevsky in the writer's studio. Koktebel. 1930 g.
Bogaevsky Konstantin Fedorovich. Old Crimea. 1903.
Bogaevsky Konstantin Fedorovich. Old baths in Karasubazar. Crimea. 1930s.
Bogaevsky Konstantin Fedorovich. Ancient fortress. 1902.
Maximilian Voloshin is a Cimmerian sorcerer, as he is called, a poet who has chosen as his motto: "You have given - you are rich in this."
Voloshin's ex-libris is a book sign certifying the owner of the book. The ex-libris is glued or stamped on the left endpaper.
Marina Tsvetaeva recalls her visit to the Crimea in 1914, when a fire started in the underground of the Voloshin house. While Tsvetaeva, her husband and sister ran to the sea for water and tried in vain to extinguish the flame, Voloshin was unperturbed. Having brought a bucket of water once again, Tsvetaeva sees: "And this time, running up - a lightning vision of Max, who stood up and with his hand raised - raised, something inaudibly and separately speaking into the fire." The fire is out.
To extinguish and ignite … Voloshin, the igniter of the manifested flame, remained in the memoirs of his contemporaries: “… at some moments of his intense concentration from him, from the ends of his fingers and the ends of his hair, a real, burning flame beat out. So, once behind him, while he was sitting and writing, the curtain came on. On a walk with friends in the mountains, he could easily collect dry moss and set it on fire just by focusing on the dry forest.
Eyewitnesses point out that he knew how to calm down, "speak" pain, read the palms of fate. Friends also remembered the case when, not denying anyone a shelter (during the civil war, the poet hid in his house reds from whites, whites from reds), Voloshin categorically refused to allow one stranger to spend the night in his house. The harshness with which Maximilian Alexandrovich drove this man out, amazed those around him. “Later it turned out that this man had just committed a horrific, monstrous murder.”
M. Voloshin near his house.
He was a passionate geologist and archaeologist. Geologists ordered him paintings to study the geological structure of the area.
Maximilian Voloshin.
"Kitezh" (excerpt)
Strife cut Rus with knives.
The Avaricious Children of Kalita
By lies, violence, robberies
She was collected with rags.
In the quiet of nights, starry and frosty, Like a fierce spider-cross
Moscow spun under the Dark and the Terrible
Its tight, hopeless circle.
Here the speaker and the earpiece ruled for everyone, And he was fierce and stern
Moscow prince - bed-man and club-maker
With the Lord - have mercy on God!
The nest of boyars, holy fools, humble women -
Palace, prison and monastery, Where is the stabbed baby twenty years old
I drew circles like a bat.
Breaking bone, pulling veins
Moscow throne was under construction, When the offspring of the Cat and the Mare
Pozharsky led to reign.
Peter III Fedorovich (née Karl Peter Ulrich (1728-1762) - Russian emperor, the first representative of the Holstein-Gottorp-Romanov dynasty on the Russian throne.
Antichrist-Peter steamed lump
Collected, pulled and rocked, Shaved, shaved and, having reared up, He taught book sciences.
Empire, leaving the hole as a melee, Hatched out of eggs
Under hot crowned flesh
His five empresses.
And Russia became German, decorous, vile.
Bayonets are illuminated with radiance, In a mixture of Holstein and Württemberg blood
The Russian throne was defended.
And escaped with a whistle from under the throne
Swirling flames
To the light from the darkness, to the free from the full -
Elements, passions, tribes.
Anathemas of the church, having overcome the chains, Resurrected from coffins
Mazepa, Razin and Pugachev -
Scarecrows of other centuries.
But even now, as in the days of past falls, All darkened, in blood
You remained a land of frenzy -
A land seeking love.
***
Pray, be patient, accept
On the shoulders of the cross, on the neck of the throne.
At the bottom of the soul, underwater Kitezh is buzzing -
Our impossible dream!
Notes:
For example, I don't understand this character:
Moscow spun under the Dark and the Terrible
Its tight, hopeless circle.
Here the speaker and the earpiece ruled for everyone, And he was fierce and stern
Moscow prince - bed-man and club-maker
With the Lord - have mercy on God!
Firstly, the poet clearly distinguishes between "Lord" and "God", and the housekeeper probably means that this Moscow prince served the Vatican.
And this, most likely, is not Ivan the Terrible (yes, in fact, he is a tsar, not a prince) whom he calls "conscientious" in another poem:
Further in the text, who does not know:
Breaking bone, pulling veins
Moscow throne was under construction, When the offspring of the Cat and the Mare
Pozharsky led to reign.
"The offspring of the Cat and the Mare …" - Maximilian Voloshin means the boyars of the Romanovs, whose ancestors were Fyodor Andreevich Koshka and Andrei Ivanovich Kobyla.
Pray, be patient, accept
On the shoulders of the cross, on the neck of the throne.
At the bottom of the soul, underwater Kitezh is buzzing -
Our impossible dream!
Vyya - neck, ridge. Kitezh is a city located, according to legend, in the northern part of the Nizhny Novgorod region, near the village of Vladimirskoye, on the shores of Lake Svetloyar. A city that appears and disappears. They say that only those who are pure in heart and soul will find their way to Kitezh. There are also rumors that in calm weather you can sometimes hear bells ringing and people singing from under the waters of Lake Svetloyara..
Svetloyar.
There is a strange belief that the wish made on the grave of Maximilian Voloshin will certainly come true if you put a stone there. So the burial of Max Voloshin and his wife Maria Voloshin became a “grave of desires”. Desires here are very varied, but quite decent. Otherwise, the sorcerer will not fulfill. Down on the stone: "I want a darn, I ate well" …
And there are requests of a different order: "Pray for us all." Well, and the monument. Who any ruler can envy, nature itself put the magician. But people gave the name Voloshin to this rock!
Voloshin's rock. Koktebel.
I think in the end it would be appropriate to get a little acquainted with the paintings of the sorcerer, mystic, scientist, poet, geologist, archaeologist and artist:
There was a sacred forest here. Divine messenger
I touched these glades with my winged foot.
There were no stones or ruins in place of the cities.
Herds of sheep crawl along the bronze slopes.
1907 Max Voloshin.
Is this how sand eats up cities?
Paris. Concord Square at night. 1914.