St. Basil's Cathedral — engraving

Vassili-Blagennoy (Church of the Protection of Mary), Moscow.

Technique, Material: Woodcut / Paper
Artist: Alexandre de Bar,  Engraver: Adolphe-Francois Pannemaker
Date, Publisher: end of the 19th century.
Size: sheet 22x20, image 18.x14.5 cm.

This engraving depicts St. Basil's Cathedral—one of Russia's and Moscow's most recognizable symbols, located in the very heart of the capital, on Red Square . This unique architectural ensemble was built between 1555 and 1561 by order of Tsar Ivan the Terrible to commemorate the capture of the Khanate of Kazan . The cathedral's official name is the Cathedral of the Intercession of the Most Holy Theotokos on the Moat, but it became popularly known by the name of the Moscow holy fool, St. Basil the Blessed, who was buried within its walls.

The cathedral's architecture astonishes with its complexity and picturesqueness: nine separate churches on a single foundation, crowned with colorful onion domes, each with a unique shape and ornamentation. The central tented tower dominates the entire composition, while the surrounding chapels are dedicated to the saints on whose feast days the decisive battles of the Kazan campaign took place. Unlike strict Western European cathedrals, the interiors of St. Basil's form an ensemble of separate intimate spaces filled with ancient icons and frescoes.

According to a famous legend, Tsar Ivan the Terrible, captivated by the cathedral's beauty, ordered the architects Postnik and Barma to be blinded so they could never build anything comparable elsewhere . However, historical documents disprove this legend: Postnik Yakovlev subsequently participated in the construction of other churches, including the Annunciation Cathedral in the Kazan Kremlin.

In front of the cathedral stands a bronze monument to Kuzma Minin and Prince Dmitry Pozharsky—the leaders of the people's militia that liberated Moscow from Polish invaders in 1612 . This monument, created by sculptor Ivan Martos, was Moscow's first sculptural monument.

Your engraving likely belongs to a series of Moscow views published in Europe in the mid-19th century. It shows the cathedral before later restorations and alterations, in its historical appearance, surrounded by the low-rise buildings of old Kitay-gorod.