Muscovite Russia & the Early
Romanov Dynasty
 

Portrait of tsar Mikhail Fedorovich (1613-1645),
first of the Romanov dynasty.  From the
engraving by Benner
 

Portrait of Tsar Mikhail Fedorovich, 1672
 

Tsar Alexei Michailovich (r. 1645-1676)
Anonymous portrait, 1670's
 

Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich
 

Palace of Tsar Alexei at Kolomenskoe, near Moscow.  Lithograph by V. Timm,
from engraving after the drawing by Gilferding, late 1760s
 
 

Tsar Fedor Alekseevich (r. 1676-1682)
 

17th-century Strel'tsy Guard (Muskateers),
from a mid-19th Century Lithograph
 

Russian Boyar, from a mid-19th Century Lithograph
 

A 17th-century Merchant family, from a painting by Andrei Riabushkin, 1896
 

Portrait of Iakov Turgenev, 1690's. Unknown artist,
17th century
 
 

Russian Baron in fur, unknown woodcut: from Ocherki
russkoi kul'tury XVIII veka, chast' pervaia, ed. V. A. Aleksandrov,
et al, M. 1985
 
 


"Old Moscow" -- A Street at Kitai-Gorod in the early 17th Century,
from a painting in 1900 by Apollinary Vasnetsov
 
 


Church of St. Nicholas (1)
 
 


Church of St. Nicholas (2), 1766 (transported to Suzdal)

The small wooden church was moved from the village of Glotovo in the region of Yuriev-Polski in 1960 and transported near the Cathedral of the Nativity of the Virgin in Suzdal.  "The church, which harmonizes perfectly with the surrounding landscape, is one of the few monuments of old wooden architecture surviving in this part of central Russia.  It recalls the modest izbas (huts) of the region.  It has the same purity of line and is a product of the same fine worksmanship.  The origin of this form, at once simple and monumental, goes back to a very remote past.  The same forms appear in the seventeenth and eighteenth century stone architecture of the Vladimir-Suzdal region.  Entirely of wood, the church has a covered porch running around three sides.  On the east side is a small apse.  The roof and the onion-shaped dome are made of small overlapping boards reminiscent of fish scales."  M.W. Alpatov in Art Treasures of Russia (NY: Harry Abrams, Inc, undated).
 
 

The monastery of Kiril-Beloozersk (three images), early 17th century


 

(2)

(3)

The present buildings date from the early 17th century, although the monastery was founded in the 14th century by St. Kiril (Cyril), from the Simonov monastery in Moscow.  As part of the monastic migration to Northeastern Russia in the 14th century, Kiril followed St. Sergei of Radonezh (founder of Trinity Sergeis Monastery in current Zagorsk) in opening monasteries in the wilderness of the Northeastern regions.  As part of the eremitic monastic tradition, Kiril built the monastery with his own hands, containing a small church and monastic cells for the original inhabitants, from wood.  The buildings shown, from the 17th century (although with the architectural style of the 16th century) contain within the walls 23 towers with slit windows and more than 700 monastic cells.