Rules · Theory · Plans · Façades
Build the principal cathedral after an honoured prototype: study the old cathedral that is to be the model and keep its form (five domes, walls divided into bays each crowned with a rounded gable, three apses to the east) while building it with the best new craft.
When the Dormition cathedral in the Moscow Kremlin collapsed during building in 1474, Ivan III brought the Bolognese engineer Aristotele Fioravanti to rebuild it. The chronicle says he was first sent to Vladimir to see the twelfth-century Dormition cathedral there, which was to be his model. He kept its type (five domes and a façade of arched bays) but built with Italian methods: deep foundations, well-fired brick, iron tie-rods and a clear, hall-like interior.
Building “after the model” of a venerated church was the normal Russian way to give a new building authority, and the Moscow Dormition became in turn the model for cathedrals across Muscovy.
Lift the dome on a cylindrical or polygonal drum pierced with windows between the ring of the pendentives and the springing of the dome, to light the centre of the church and to make the dome visible from afar.
drum height ≈ ⅓–1 × its radius (Byzantine); much taller in Russian churches
Divide a square naos into nine bays: dome the central one on a drum over four columns, barrel-vault the four arms of the cross, and cover the four corner bays lower; add three apses to the east and a narthex to the west.
arms = central bay width; corners lower; dome on pendentives over four columns
Crown the four corner bays of a cross-in-square with smaller domes on drums around the great central dome, making a five-domed quincunx.
Divide each wall into bays with pilaster strips and end each bay in a semicircular gable, the zakomara, that follows the curve of the barrel vault behind it; shape the roof to the gables.
usually 3 zakomary per façade, one per bay
Mount from the walls to the drum in stepped tiers of decorative gables with pointed ogee heads, the kokoshniki, each tier set back and narrower than the one below, so that the body of the church rises into its domes in a pyramid of arches.
Instead of a dome, crown the church with a tall octagonal pyramid of masonry (the shatyor, or tent) set on an octagon over the square body, with kokoshniki at the transitions and a small cupola at the top.
Ascension, Kolomenskoye (1532): ≈ 62 m high; cube → octagon → tent → cupola
Cite this page Chris Paton, “Build after the model”, The Textbook of Architecture, https://textbookofarchitecture.com/rule/dormition-model. Text, drawings and models licensed under CC BY-NC 4.0.