The Lotus-Shape Applique with a Dragon Image from Nerevsky Site in Veliky Novgorod

Abstract

The material culture of Veliky Novgorod of XIII–XIV centuries shows a pronounced influence of Eastern fine art, brought by new contacts with the vast art world of the Golden Horde. Along with mass-scale artefacts distinguished artistic objects come across. One of them is the horn lotus-shaped applique with a dragon image from the Nerevsky site in Veliky Novgorod. This image has a number of stylistic analogies among archaeological artefacts of Golden Horde cities. The main problem of the article deals with the analysis of the origin of this image. The Golden Horde art was formed by strong influence of China. This process was reflected in some artistic objects, which were decorated with dragon images with typical style and iconography. Veliky Novgorod dragon, like other similar images, doesn’t find absolute analogies among the Golden Horde items, inspired by the Yuan Dynasty. These features demonstrate the hybrid nature of the artistic image from Veliky Novgorod.

Keywords

• archaeology
• applied art
• bone carved
• golden horde
• veliky novgorod
• old rus art
• mongol conquest