Church Of St.Theodore. Veliky Novgorod

The city claims to be the most ancient city of Russia. Veliky Novgorod is the "father" of Russian statehood and the first "window to Europe". Here Yaroslav the Wise and Alexander Nevsky reigned. This is the most cultural city of the Middle Ages - the streets of Novgorod began to pave much earlier than in Paris and London, and the townspeople conducted a lively correspondence between them on birch bark letters.

Veliky Novgorod is in fact one of the oldest cities in Russia, 859 is considered the official foundation year. Velikiy Novgorod is located on the banks of the Volkhov River, which divides it into 2 parts - the Sofia and the Trade. The Sofia side was the center of spiritual and political life, and the Trading side corresponded to its name. Residents constantly competed with each other. Now this division is conditional.

At the end of the 10th century, Christianity was adopted in Novgorod and the monumental thirteen-headed wooden Cathedral of St. Sophia the Wisdom of God was laid. Veliky Novgorod became a powerful spiritual center of Ancient Russia, and for ten years Novgorod was also the actual capital of the Russian lands. It is here where the great Yaroslav the Wise rules and from here rules.

Veliky Novgorod is one of the few Russian cities that escaped immediate ruin during the Tatar-Mongol invasion. Novgorod will play a significant role in protecting the northwestern borders during the Swedish and German expansion. On the ice of Lake Peipsi during the famous Ice Slaughter, it was the Novgorodians, led by Prince Alexander Nevsky, together with the Vladimir team to crush the knights of the Teutonic Order.

One of the outstanding monuments of Novgorod architecture is the Church of Saint Theodore Stratelates on the Brook, built in 1360 - 1361 by the mayor Semyon Andreevich. The bed of the ancient Fedorovsky brook, on the bank of which the temple stood, was recently filled up, and the highway of the Moscow-Leningrad highway was laid along the road.

The fresco painting of the church of Fedor Stratilat, apparently executed in the late 60s or even in the 70s of the XIV century, was cleared from under the whitewash in 1910. The painting was preserved on almost all the walls, on the pillars, arches and arches of the temple, but fragmentary, with great losses. Despite this, the artistic value of the painting is exceptional. In the frescoes of the temple, a monochrome solution of the whole mural painting in red-brown tones was applied with a complete rejection of the bright, sonorous polychrome of other 14th-century Novgorod paintings.

This feature brings together the painting of the church of Fyodor Stratelates with the painting of The Church of the Savior on Ilyina Street, performed by Theophan the Greek. The painting of Fyodor Stratilat was considered by some researchers as an earlier work of this illustrious artist, by others, on the contrary, as a later work of some Novgorod master, who experienced the strong influence of Theophanes Grek's manner. In the painting of Fyodor Stratilat, a characteristic love of the fourteenth century to the narrative theme, on the one hand, and a deeply emotional interpretation of human suffering, turning into pathetics, on the other, is prominent. The compositions and individual figures of the painting of Fyodor Stratilat bear the undoubted imprint of Byzantine art of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries.

The Church of Saint Theodore Stratelates on the Brook is a four-column one-domed building of cubic type. The facade of the building is lavishly decorated with decorative elements, especially the drum and the apse. The niches of the facade during the construction were painted with frescoes. According to the posadnik Semen Andreevich, the church building was supposed to be also a stone chest-safe. A bell tower and an extension, which appeared in the 17th century, are adjacent to the building from the west. The Church of Theodore Stratelates on Brook has long been considered the benchmark for subsequent generations of Novgorod architects.

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