Вестник Екатеринбургской духовной семинарии (Jul 2024)
MIKHAIL EMELYANOVICH EMELYANOV, THE FIRST ARCHITECT OF THE HOLY TRINITY CATHEDRAL OF EKATERINBURG. TO THE QUESTION OF ATTRIBUTION
Abstract
The researchers’ interest in the architectural monument of the Classical era of the 1st quarter of the 19th century, the Holy Trinity Cathedral, which in the past was called the Old Believer prayer house, and later Edinoverie Church of the Life-Giving Trinity, has not weakened throughout its history. During the lifetime of the patron of this church, merchant of the first guild Yakim Merkuryevich Ryazanov (c. 1775–1849), the unofficial name of the temple —Ryazanovskaya Church — took root. Ryazanov was the man whose energy, efforts and finances became the reason for the appearance of the temple. At the beginning of the 21st century, after the restoration of the building and the painting of its interiors in the fresco technique, a new attention to the object arises. There is an extensive literature describing the monument. However, the name of the author of the first draft still remains unknown. This circumstance prompted the authors of the article to turn again to the materials of the State Archive of the Sverdlovsk region (GASO). The study of primary sources unexpectedly turned the research vector in a new direction. The discovered documents allowed to put forward a version of the authorship of the first temple project. This publication contains the texts of the correspondence in a sequence that allows the reader to reconstruct the course of events. Presented are quotes from letters of the first guild merchant Ya. M. Ryazanov to Emperor Alexander I. Merchant Ryazanov, who had high authority not only in trade circles, but also among government representatives, was Mayor of Ekaterinburg (1811–1813), elected for the mayor position three times and led the Ural-Siberian Old Believer community. All this allowed him to become a customer for the construction of a new stone Old Believer prayer house. In the process of studying the primary sources, special attention was directed to the letters from the Ekaterinburg Deanery Board and reports from the Main Office of the Ekaterinburg Factories, which repeatedly mention the name of the architect of the drawings of the Prayer House — Mikhail Yemelyanovich Yemelyanov, an architect from the city of Kazan. It is important to note the results of a comparative analysis of the spatial planning and design features of the Cathedral of the Kazan Icon of the Mother of God of the Bogoroditsky Monastery in Kazan (architects: I. E. Starov, M. E. Yemelyanov) and drawings of the Ekaterinburg Old Believer prayer house. A comparison of the biographies of the main figures in this study gave rise to a hypothesis: the design of two temples may probably belong to one architect, Mikhail Yemelyanovich Yemelyanov (1761 — after 1820).
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