"Running out onto the square, free

Became the semicircle of the colonnades, –

And the Lord’s temple spread out,

Like a light cross-shaped spider.

But the architect was not Italian,

But Russian in Rome, – so what!

You every time, like a foreigner,

Walk through the grove of porticos."

Osip Mandelstam

The history of the construction of the Kazan Cathedral is a major milestone in the history of St. Petersburg’s urban art. It was built on the site of Nevsky Prospect where a modest Church of the Nativity of the Virgin stood. This church housed one of St. Petersburg’s main shrines — the miraculous icon of the Kazan Mother of God. By the highest order of Emperor Paul I in 1800, it was decided to begin the construction of the Kazan Cathedral according to Voronikhin’s design specifically for this icon.

Emperor Paul I intended to transform the small Church of the Nativity of the Blessed Virgin on Nevsky Prospect into a huge cathedral that would resemble the main Catholic church in the world — St. Peter’s Basilica in the Vatican. As early as 1783, while heir to the throne, Paul Petrovich enthusiastically wrote from Rome to Metropolitan Platon about the grandeur of St. Peter’s Basilica.

In 1799, by imperial decree, a competition was announced for the design of the new cathedral. Architects Pietro Gonzago, Charles Cameron, Giacomo Trombara, and Jean Thomas de Thomon participated. Cameron’s project received the highest approval, but a few weeks later the emperor withdrew his decision. In the end, none of the submitted projects were approved.

A year later, Count Alexander Stroganov, who was president of the Imperial Academy of Arts and supervisor of the construction from 1800 to 1811, managed to have the work entrusted to his protégé, a former serf, then still young and inexperienced Andrey Voronikhin. Previously, Stroganov had sent his talented serf to Moscow to study architecture under Vasily Bazhenov, then, granting him freedom, sent him to study in Paris and Geneva (1786–1790). Voronikhin’s project was approved, and Count Stroganov, eager to enter history through his protégé by building a landmark temple, became chairman of the supervisory board for the cathedral’s construction. He regarded the building of the Kazan church as the main work of his life. As Stroganov hoped, the Kazan Cathedral would glorify his name as president of the Academy of Arts.

The foundation of the new temple took place on August 27 (September 8), 1801, in the presence of Emperor Alexander I. A large team of assistants worked under Voronikhin on the cathedral’s construction. Architect Andrey Mikhailov was responsible for executing the drawings. D. E. Filippov supervised all work and the quality of materials supplied and substituted for Voronikhin when he was absent. Masters M. Rudzhi and L. Ruska managed the stonework, M. Chizhov oversaw the earthworks. Assistance was also provided by one of Voronikhin’s favorite students, architect Ivan Kolodin. Another assistant was architect and engraver Nikolai Alfyorov. The difficulties of designing and building a large cathedral on a poorly suited site near Nevsky Prospect and the Catherine Canal forced the Academy Council to create a construction commission, which involved the experienced architect Ivan Starov as an expert and assistant to correct project flaws. The colonnade “in the form of outstretched arms” (Italian: in forma di mani tese), created by Giovanni Bernini for St. Peter’s Square in Rome (1656–1667), undoubtedly influenced Voronikhin’s project, but not literally. In solving the task, Voronikhin possibly used some of Bazhenov’s projects, including those for Gatchina. In one of Bazhenov’s drawings from the album of Fyodor Karzhavin, his assistant and friend, the “porch for the temple” almost completely matches the northern portico of Voronikhin’s cathedral. It is quite likely that the “transparent colonnades” of Charles Cameron and Pietro Gonzago in Pavlovsk also influenced the project’s development.

The question of the compositional prototype of the Kazan Cathedral remains unclear. Contrary to the original assignment, the St. Petersburg temple bears little resemblance to St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome. Voronikhin himself named as prototypes for his composition St. Paul’s Cathedral in London, the Church of Santa Maria delle Grazie in Milan, St. Mark’s Basilica in Venice, and the Church of Saint Genevieve (Pantheon) in Paris. However, all of these had significance not as compositional prototypes but as iconographic symbols. “St. Paul’s Cathedral pointed to the heavenly patron of the emperor — the founder of the new Kazan church. The Church of Santa Maria delle Grazie — a building by D. Bramante, whose works A. Palladio ranked among the best temples of antiquity. Its composition was sourced from another Milanese church — San Lorenzo — a well-known domed centralized early Christian temple.” The Venetian St. Mark’s Basilica of Byzantine architecture was considered in Russia a model of an Orthodox temple. The Parisian Church of Saint Genevieve was “the last unfinished church-building project of the French royal family, executed by revolutionaries.”

The main difficulty was that according to church canon, the main facade and entrance to the temple should be on the west side, while the plan’s conditions — the orientation of the future building toward the city’s central artery, Nevsky Prospect — required the composition to open to the north. Voronikhin solved this problem by designing the square facing Nevsky Prospect with a semicircular Corinthian colonnade: 96 columns set in four rows made of Pudozh travertine (in Rome, 284 travertine columns are set in four rows). The pilasters on the drum of the Kazan Cathedral’s dome show Hellenistic influences. The colonnade ends with monumental portals serving as side passages. This was an original solution by Voronikhin[6]. However, erecting the side passage-portals was fraught with difficulties. Members of the construction commission headed by Starov doubted their strength. A test model was built and passed strength tests. After that, the expert commission approved Voronikhin’s solution.

Architectural historians associate the portals of the passages with symbolic “Old Testament gates.” The colonnade, as the vestibule of the New Testament temple, resembles both the Vatican’s and Bernini’s Parisian project for the eastern facade of the Louvre. Another allusion of the side passages with their typically Greek architrave covering is based on a specific prototype: the Arch of the Argentarii, attached to the Greek church of San Giorgio in Velabro on the former Bull Forum in Rome. This prototype linked the “new cathedral both with the Greek world of early Christian Rome and with the ancient heavenly patron of the rulers of Rus’, as well as the old Russian capital — Saint George.” Thus, mnemonic images, allusions of the “Greek project” of Empress Catherine, shared by Emperor Paul, together with the constructive necessity of passage gates created an unusual composition.

On January 1, 1811, the author of the Kazan Cathedral project, architect Andrey Voronikhin, was awarded the Order of St. Vladimir, 4th class. Construction was completed in 1811, costing 4.7 million rubles. The cathedral was built in the style of Russian classicism. On September 15 (27), 1811, in the presence of Emperor Alexander I, Metropolitan Ambrose consecrated the cathedral. The old church was dismantled the same year. Finishing works in the new temple took four years.

Voronikhin feared that the new emperor might halt construction, but Alexander I fully shared his father’s views on the importance of the new temple in the life of the capital. The temple was supposed to be built in three years, but due to Paul I’s death and irregular treasury allocations, construction stretched over 10 years. The completed cathedral was consecrated on the anniversary of the emperor’s coronation on September 15, 1811. This marked the beginning of the golden period of Russian architecture, and St. Petersburg finally took on the appearance of the capital of a great empire. Nevsky Prospect became more than just a "perspective."

Only domestic stone and the labor of Russian craftsmen were used in the construction of the Kazan Cathedral. “Only what Russia abounds in and is famous for was used for the construction of this temple. All materials were sourced from the Fatherland’s depths, and all craftsmanship was produced by the skill and hand of domestic artists,” emphasized the St. Petersburg magazine “Northern Post.”

In 1803, Voronikhin invited master stonemasons Samson Sukhanov and his brother-in-law Grigory Kopylov, who had previously successfully built his colonnades in Peterhof, to work on the Kazan Cathedral. Soon, Samson Sukhanov was appointed chief foreman “for stonemasonry.” In 1803–1804, his team, consisting of fellow countrymen, crafted a high plinth of two rows of gray Serdobol granite, and under the colonnades, a third row of pink “marine Finnish granite” was “laid under the Serdobol plinth.”

During his honeymoon in 1801 on the picturesque shores of the Gulf of Finland, Voronikhin decided to make the supporting columns inside the cathedral from durable and decorative “marine Finnish granite.” In 1803, at the granite quarry “Sorvali,” located on the estate of Baron Nikolaï near Vyborg, extraction, rough shaping, and delivery by barges of 56 columns “each solid and finished to a height of 12 and a half arshins” began. By 1805, all columns were delivered to the capital. After unloading at the Admiralty, they were moved on rollers made of logs to a workshop on Bolshaya Konyushennaya Street, where 340 stonemasons daily worked on “fine hammering,” then sanded and finally polished with ground emery. In 1806, all granite columns of “pink Finnish granite,” ½ sazhen in diameter and weighing 1500 poods, were finished and installed inside the cathedral in slender rows dividing the temple hall into three naves (a nave is an elongated space bounded by a row of columns separating it from adjacent ones). Sukhanov undertook to carve “in addition to each column from the same granite bases and capitals.” However, in 1806, Stroganov made changes to the column design, resulting in only granite bases being carved and hidden in bronze casings, while the Corinthian capitals were cast in bronze.

At the same time, starting in 1803, “pieces” of Pudost stone were quarried near the village of Pudost near Gatchina for the construction of the Kazan Cathedral’s outer colonnade and “the wall shell with all decorations.” The prolonged construction required a lot of funds, which the treasury lacked. Therefore, by special order of Count Stroganov, Samson Sukhanov with hired workers was commissioned to do a trial finishing of six Pudost columns. Each, including the capital, “with rough shaping and placement,” cost 150 rubles, which was half the price of other contractors. Finding this price reasonable, the count ordered Sukhanov to make all 138 columns and their capitals. The “fine finishing” of columns and capitals was done by stonemasons from September 1807 to May 1808. Each column, 14 and a half arshins high, was assembled from 16 “pieces” with “rolled lead” pads. The columns were carved with “spoons,” or flutes, vertical grooves on the column shaft. The solid Corinthian capitals were carved from a single piece of stone.

In 1809, the columns with capitals were completed and installed, and like a stone grove, a grand colonnade grew on Nevsky Prospect, semicircularly embracing the wide square in front of the cathedral. In 1808, the stonemasons began the interior finishing of the cathedral. Sukhanov signed contracts for the stone floor, including cutting, sanding, polishing, and “placement.” The mosaic floors in the form of carpets with complex geometric patterns were laid over two years from several thousand tiles of pink Tivid marble, gray and gray-green striped “Ruskol marble,” dark red “Shoksha stone,” and black “aspid stone.” Bulakh, who studied the decoration of the Kazan Cathedral, noted in a detailed description of the mosaic floor: “Especially impressive is the inlaid floor in the dome area of the cathedral. It consists of several concentric circles made from the same but differently sized stone selections, intersected by rays converging toward the center, and appears three-dimensional. In the center is an eight-pointed star of pink Tivid marble on a background of black aspid slate, with a circle of pink granite in the middle of the star. Along the outer edge of the large circle is a multicolored meander.”

In the autumn of 1808, Samson Sukhanov contracted to make from state marbles two “kliros” (kliros is the place for singers in a church on an elevated platform on both sides in front of the altar), the imperial and the preacher’s places, as well as the steps leading to them, from “Shoksha stone.” The imperial, or royal, place turned out exceptionally ornate. On both sides, it is decorated with two “brackets” (consoles) in the form of lush acanthus leaf scrolls made of gray slightly striped “Ruskol marble.” The pylon (large-section pillars supporting flat or vaulted ceilings) is faced with red-pink Kariostrov marble. Above it are a cornice with “cuts” and a frieze with “arabesques” (vegetal ornament) featuring two wonderful cherub figures with folded wings made of gray-white “Ruskol marble.” All marble decorations were completed by Sukhanov in 1810. One foreigner observing the cathedral’s construction wrote: “These simple men in torn sheepskin coats did not need to resort to various measuring instruments; looking inquisitively at the plan or model shown to them, they copied it precisely and elegantly. Their eye is extraordinarily accurate. The ability of even simple Russians in the technique of fine arts is astonishing.”

Samson Sukhanov worked on the construction of the Kazan Cathedral for eight years. For his special contribution to the cathedral’s construction, he was awarded in 1811 a gold neck medal on a red ribbon with the inscription “For Diligence.”

Sources:

http://kazansky-spb.ru/texts/stroitelstvo

https://к-я.рф/Portfolio/119/