The aesthetics of Russian Orthodox Church architecture: A philosophical, historical, and critical investigation

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IMAGE: Icon from
Novgorod (1450s)

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Though the subject of iconography has historically dominated the Orthodox discourse on aesthetics in terms of both the dogmas and philosophical reflections devoted to it, suggesting a certain “privileging” of the visual, church ritual engages all five of the senses.  Pavel Florenskii highlighted the comprehensive nature of the aesthetic experience of the Orthodox liturgy in his 1922 article “The Church Ritual as a Synthesis of the Arts.”  The ritual, as he pointed out, combines visual, audial, tactile, and olfactory phenomena to produce “the highest synthesis of heterogeneous artistic activities.”[1] The embroidered liturgical robes of the clergy, along with the smell of incense and the sound of the priest’s chanting or the singing of the choir, also form an essential part of the aesthetics of Orthodox ritual.  Less attention has been paid, however, to the role of church architecture in producing the total aesthetic effect of a service.  Aside from the work of architectural historians, this aspect of Orthodoxy has largely been overlooked.  The present study proposes to take up the question of architecture’s contribution to the aesthetics of Orthodoxy more generally, and then provide an historical account of the more traditional Russian style specifically.  Finally, it will critically engage the thoughts of one prominent 20th-century Russian writer whose work touched on this topic, Evgenii Trubetskoi.

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