A Rational, National Architecture: Viollet-le-Duc's Modest Proposal for Russia

Lauren M. O'Connell

The Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians, Vol. 52, No. 4. (Dec., 1993), pp. 436-452.

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A Rational, National Architecture: Viollet-le-Duc's Modest P r o ~ o s a l for Russia

LAUREN M. O'CONNELL I t h a c a College

Viollet-le-Duc earned a privileged place in the annals of modern

architecture by elaborating a general theory that could respondflexibly to a

variety of local traditions, cultural practices, and material resources. In

1877 he undertook to test this theory by applying it to an unfamiliar

case-the architecture ofRussia. Thefirst study ofits type to appear in the

West, L'Art russe chronicled Russia's architectural past and predicted its

future. T h e book touched a nationalist nerve in the Russian audience and

engendered a heated debate in Russia about the nation's ethnic identity and

architectural destiny. Analysis of the text and its critical reception will

demonstrate the political timeliness of Viollet-le-DucJs argument for the

eminent rationality ofallowing national traditions, tastes, and resources to

inspire the architect's design choices.

JUST TWO YEARS BEFORE his death in 1879, Viollet-le-Duc

produced a visually stunning monograph on Russian art, which

bore the ambitious title L'Art russe: ses origines, ses e'le'ments

constitutij, son apoge'e, son avenir (Russian art: its origins, its

constituent elements, its apogee, and its future), (Fig. 1). Its

principal thesis was that Russia had labored too long under the

artistic legacy of an eighteenth-century monarch with European

yearnings. To Viollet-le-Duc, Petrine culture, as embodied by the

classicizing architecture of Peter the Great's eponymous capital,

was a western virus that had contaminated the pure body of

Russia. To reclaim its integrity and self-respect, the country

would have to purge itself of the infecting influences planted by

Peter, and reclaim an earlier, putatively native, past. Although

often regarded as an exotic addendum to Viollet-le-Duc's career,

this work provides fresh insight into his otherwise well-studied

arguments. Equally important, close scrutiny of the critical storm

This anicle is adapted in part from a paper delivered at the annual conference of the College Art Association in Chicago in 1992. I am grateful to John Archer, chair ofthe CAA session on modern architecture, and to Christian Otto for valuable questions and suggestions. Initial research was conducted at Cornell University under the direction of Anatole Senkevitch, Jr., whom I thank for his guidance. I appreciate the assistance of Judith Holliday, who provided access to L'Art rtrsse, and Margaret Webster, who offered photographic support. All translations from French and Russian sources are mine.

it provoked in Russia illuminates the political implications of his

theoretical positions.'

The book was written at the behest of a group of Russian

scholars with Slavophile leanings who were eager to promote

abroad their politically motivated readings of the history and

future course of Russian art. Familiar with Viollet's advocacy of

the French Gothic as the one true path to a national architecture

for France, the Russian promoters knew that they could count on

the famous Frenchman to make the case for Russia. Author and

sponsors were in complete sympathy on one key point-the only

legitimate course available to Russian artists of the nineteenth

century was to plumb the depths of the Muscovite, not the

Petrine, past. All agreed that in the Muscovite artistic tradition,

exemplified in Barma and Postnik's Church of St. Basil the

Blessed of 1555 (Fig. 2), would be found native sources of

inspiration that might begin to repair the damage that two

centuries of dependence on western ideas had done to the

national ego and creative spirit, as revealed in Montferrand's

Cathedral of St. Isaac in St. Petersburg of 1818-58 (Fig. 3).2 For the Russian sponsors, whose central figure was Viktor

Butovsky, director of the newly founded Stroganov School of

1. Eugene Emmanuel Viollet-le-Duc, L'Art russe: ses origines, ses iliments ionstitut$, son apogie, son avenir (Paris, 1877), hereafter cited as L X r t rrrsse. Philippe Ozouf opened the subject o f L I A r t rrrsse with an overview of the critical reaction it provoked in "Controverse autour de 'L'Art russe' de Viollet-le-Duc," Monuments historiques 11 (1965): 99-102. The book was discussed within the context of contemporary Russian theoretical debates by Evgeniia Kirichenko in "Problema natsional'nogo stilia v arkhitekture Rossii 70-kh gg. XDC v," Arkhitekturnoe nasledstvo 25 (1976): 131-35, hereafter cited as "Problema natsional'nogo;" and by T . A. Slavina in Issledovateli rtrsskogo zodchestva: Russkaia istoriko-arkhitekturnaia nauka X V I I I - nachala X X veka (Leningrad, 1983), 77-79, hereafter cited as Issledovateli. Tatiana F. Savarenskaia evaluated the content of the book in light of later findings in Russian architectural history in "Le Livre de Viollet le Duc 'L'Art russe,' " in Actes du colloque international Viollet-le-Dui: Paris 1980 (Paris, 1982), 329-33. Catherine Cooke characterized L'Art russe as "trivial and panisan," as against the more influential Entretiens, in "Russian Perspectives," in Eugkne Emmanuel Viollet-le-Duc: 1814-1879 (New York, 1980), 60-63; in a similar vein, Robin Middleton termed it "bizarre and naive" in "Viollet-le-Ducsky?" Arihiteitrrral Design 40 (1970): 67-68.

2. For a richly documented discussion of the historical pull between the two capitals, see Sidney Monas, "St. Petersburg and Moscow as Cultural Symbols," in Art and Culture in Nineteenth Century Russia, ed. Theofanis G. Stavrou (Bloomington, 1983), 26-39.

J S A H 5 2 : 4 3 6 - 4 5 2 , DECEMBER 1 9 9 3

O'CONNELL: VIOLLET-LE-DUC AND RUSSIA 437

Fig. 2. Barma and Postnik, Church of St. Basil the Blessed, Moscow, begun 1555. Exterior. a. Bottin)

~ l l l ~ l ~ i l l l l l ~ l ~ l ~ ~ ~ - ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ book sheds light on the national component of Viollet's rational-

Fig. 1. Viollet-le-Duc, L'Art russe, frontispiece.

Industrial Design in Moscow, the celebration of Moscow as crucible and emblem of native originality was unabashedly political. Intent upon endowing Russian industry with what he termed the "independent" artistic elements that would ensure commercial success and nationalistic pride, Butovsky identified

pre-Mongol Moscow as the source of inspiration least tainted by what he regarded as foreign influence. This patriotic purpose colored both the conception and the reception of the book in Russia.

Viollet-le-Duc seized upon the project as an ideal opportunity to apply his theory of rational architecture to an entirely unex- plored set of circumstances. The uncharted waters of Russian art and architecture would serve as a test case, allowing him to validate positions elaborated upon within the familiar context of French and Western European ar~hitecture.~ The content of the

3. Most influentially in the pages of Viollet-le-Duc's Dutionnaire raisonne' de l'architecturefiangaise du X l e au XVIe si?cle (1854-68), and in his

ism and yields an intriguing new definition of originality crafted

to support the notion of borrowing from one's own past rather than someone else's. When that content is explored within the larger context of the book's commission and reception, the broader historical significance ofViollet's project can be measured.

Inserting itself into hotly debated, soul-searching questions about the proper direction for Russian architecture in the

nineteenth century, L'Art russe prompted a flurry of critical response from prominent members of the Russian architectural c~mmuni ty .~ Among Viollet's influential critics were Lev Dal', history editor of the leading architectural journal of the day; Ivan Zabelin, respected historian of early Russian architecture; Fedor Buslaev, acknowledged expert on Russian manuscripts; and celebrated art critic, Vladimir Stasov. "It has been extolled and reproached," Buslaev wrote of L'Art russe in 1879, "put on a

Entretiens sur l'architecture, 2 vols. (Paris, 1863-72), hereafter cited as Entretiens.

4. L'Art russe was translated into Russian as Russkoe iskusstvo, ego istochniki, ego sostavnye elementy, ego ysshee razvitie, ego budushchnost', trans. N . N . Sultanov, introduction by Viktor Butovsky (Moscow, 1879).

438 JSAH 52:4, DECEMBER 1993

Fig. 3. Auguste Montferrand, Cathedral of St. Isaac of Dalmatia, St. Petersburg, 1818-58. Exterior. (Thames and Hudson)

pedestal as a revelation of truth, and dismissed as a frivolous L'Art msse was Viollet-le-Duc's third foray into the world of parnphlet."5Analysis of the Russian reaction reveals the unwitting Russian art. Entrance into that world had been provided as early timeliness ofviollet-le-Duc's call for a rational, national architec- as 1872 by French economist Natalie Rondot (1821-1902), who ture in Russia. For, at the crux of the architectural debate of the served as commercial and cultural emissary to the French 1870s in Russia was this very opposition-was Russia to pursue a em bass^.^ A great enthusiast of art and its application to industrial revivalist path and thus celebrate her national distinctiveness, or design, Rondot had participated in the creation of the industrial should she embrace the rational, technology-based trends of the arts museums of Lyon and Vienna. These credentials led him to future, in concert with the international community? Examina- Moscow, where he presided over the founding in 1868 of the

tion of the book's reception will disclose a surprising blind spot Museum of Art and Industry, whose mission it was to dissemi-

on the part of Viollet's Russian readers, each of whom produced nate knowledge about the industrial arts throughout R~ss ia .~ It his own array of meanings according to his own artistic and

political agendas.

5. "Ee prevoznosiat' i poritsaiut', staviat' na ped'estal', kak' otkrovenie istiny, i tonchut' v' griaz, kak' legkomyslennyi pamflet."' Fedor I. Buslaw, "Russkoe iskusstvo v otsenke frantsuzskago uchenago" (Russian art in the estimation of a French scholar), Kriticheskoe obozrenie 2 and 5 (1879), reprinted in Istoricheskie ocherki F. I. Buslaeva po russkomu omamentu v rukopisakh (Historical essays of F. I. Buslaw on Russian manuscript ornament), (Petrograd, 1917), 2, hereafter cited as Istoricheskie ocherki.

6. The encounters that would culminate in the L'Art msse project are described in "Russie," by Philippe Ozouf et. al., one of a series of accounts ofviollet-le-Duc's influence abroad included at the end of the exhibition catalogue, Eug&e-Emmanuel Viollet-le-Duc, ed. Pierre-Marie Auzas (Paris, 1979), 24347, hereafter cited as "Russie."

7. Pierre Larousse, Grand dictionnaire universe1 du XrXe si?c& (Paris, 1875), 13:1,369. Rondot's peripatetic career in commercial diplomacy (he represented the French wool and silk industries throughout Europe and Asia) and his fascination with the artistic dimension of manufacturing processes, yielded a lengthy list of publications of economic and art

was in this capacity that Rondot met Viktor Ivanovich Butovsky

(1815-81), director of the newly formed museum and of the

related Stroganov School of Industrial Arts, and the figure who

would loom so large in Viollet-le-Duc's Russian f u t ~ r e . ~ Rondot

had agreed to supervise the publication in France of a lush set of

volumes documenting the history of Russian ornament authored

by B ~ t o v s k y . ~ O n 14 March 1872, Rondot approached Viollet-le-

Duc with a request that he review the new book for the

Encyclopidie d'architecture. "You are one of the few scholars and

architects capable of appreciating its true value," he wrote,

appealing at once to his colleague's pride and to his sense of

obligation to the French scholarly c o m m ~ n i t y . ' ~ The resulting

article, entitled "Du mouvement d'art en Russie," used the book

review format as a pretext for discussing the emergence of a

so-called national artistic consciousness in Russia as part of a

general trend that encompassed the entire European continent."

In that same year the topic reappeared in a brief passage in

Volume Two of the Entretiens rur l'architecture. l2 The two pieces set

the thematic stage for L'Art russe.

As its full title suggests, the book is both history and theory. It is

at once an account of Russia's artistic past and a program for its

future development. The two-fold emphasis is revealed in

Viollet-le-Duc's concluding statement: 'We have therefore at-

tempted, in these chapters, to bring out the value of Russia's arts,

the origins and nature of these arts and how they took shape and

historical interest. He chronicles his travels and accomplishments in Natalis Rondot, Publications de M. Natalis Rondot (Lyon, 1893), 5-12. See also E o n Galle, Natalis Rondot, sa vieet ses travaux 1821-1900 (Lyon, 1902).

8. Ozouf, et. al., "Russie," 243. The Stroganov School of Industrial Design was formed in 1860 by the fusion of two existing institutions, an earlier Stroganov School founded in 1825 by the wealthy art patron, Count Sergei Stroganov, and the Moscow School of Drawing. The earlier Stroganov School stressed practical design and handicrafts, in direct contrast with the academic approach pursued at the Moscow School of Painting, Sculpture, and Architecture. N . Moleva and E. Beliutin, Russkaia khudozhestvennaia shkola vtoroi poloviny XIX-nachala XX veka (Russian art schools in the late-nineteenth-early-twentieth centuries), (Moscow: Iskusstvo, l967), 172.

9. Victor de Boutovsky [sic], Histoire de I'Oruement russe: du X e au X l i l e siPcle dlapr?s les manuscrits, 2 vols. (Paris, 1870), hereafter cited as Histoire de lJOrnement russe.

10. "Vous Ctes du petit nombre de savants et d'anistes qui I'appricierez i sa valeur," unpublished letter from Butovsky to Viollet-le-Duc, 14 March 1872 (Fonds Viollet-le-Duc). I am grateful to Mme. GeneviPve Viollet-le-Duc for providing access to this source. A brief summary of the correspondence between Viollet-le-Duc, Butovsky, and Rondot can be found in Ozouf et. al., "Russie." A few of the relevant letters have been published in Lettres inMites de Viollet-le-Dur, receuillies et annoties par sonfils (Paris, 1902), hereafter cited as Lettres. Viollet-le-Duc's interest in Russian culture was piqued as well by writer Prosper Merimke, a family friend and later colleague at the Commission des Monuments Historiques, who had an abiding interest in Russian literature and history.

11. EncyclopMie d'architerture: revue mensuelle des travaux publics et partiru- liers, 2e s i r ~ e (1872), 1:74-76.

12. Viollet-le-Duc, Entretiem, 2:395.

O'CONNELL: VIOLLET-LE-DUC AND RUSSIA 439

developed, and to define the goals that they should strive for."13

Past and future are given nearly equal weight: origns, constituent

elements, and apogee are accomplished in some 150 pages, and

the future is accorded a full 100. History and theory are

thoroughly intertwined here, as elsewhere in Viollet's work. This

is an instrumental history, assembled as background and justifica-

tion for a theoretical program to be enacted in the present.14

Here the critical role taken by Viollet's sponsors is immediately

evident. Viollet never went to Russia, nor did he speak or read

Russian. Information was fed to him principally by Butovsky, in

part through the agency of Viollet-le-Duc's son-in-law, Maurice

Ouradou, who toured Russia and met with Butovsky on his

father-in-law's behalf.I5 Butovsky, whose Stroganov School was

dedicated to "investigat[ing], on behalf of Russian industry, the

sources of a truly national artistic style,"I6 had followed the same

history-as-prelude-to-theory format in L'Histoire de I'Ornement

russe, the book Viollet had reviewed five years earlier. Viollet-le-

Duc's debt to the Butovsky publication was not limited to

organizational parallels; several of the strilung color plates in L'Art

rurre were redrawn directly from the Russian compendium. (Figs.

4 and 5).

Viollet's history, assembled within the contours of sources

selected by Butovsky, was necessarily biased. That bias was in

favor of the so-called Slavic-Asiatic component of Russia's artistic

past and against anything that might be construed as remotely

western in inspiration. In keeping with the Slavophile tradition,

Butovsky rejected the humiliating imitation of things western that

had been Russia's fate since Peter. H e saw the return to

13. "Nous avons donc essayi, dans ces chapitres, de faire ressortir la valeur des arts que possede la Russie, les origines et la nature de ces arts, comment ils ont procede, se sont d6velopp6s, et de preciser le but oh ils doivent tendre," Viollet-le-Duc, L'Art russe, 261.

14. The term is borrowed from the lexicon developed by M. H . Abrams to categorize critical approaches to works of art. He terms "pragmatic" a work that serves as "an instrument for getting something done," and whose value isjudged according to its success in achieving that aim." See M. H. Abrams, 7'he Mirror and the Lamp: Romantic 7'heory and the Critical Tradition (New York, 1953), 15. Viollet-le-Duc makes clear that the value of the history presented in L'Art russe might be judged by its success in achieving the primary aim of the book, the enunciation of a theory about the making of Russian architecture in the future.

15. Architect Maurice Ouradou (1822-84), Viollet-le-Duc's student, then son-in-law, assisted in the restorations of Notre Dame and Pierre- fonds, and succeeded his father-in-law at the Commission des Monu- ments Historiques on Viollet's death in 1879 (Ozouf et. al., "Russie," 211). Ouradou's role is summarized in a letter from Butovsky to Viollet-le-Duc, in which Butovsky requests that the young man's contribution be acknowledged in the pages of L'Art russe. "Amon avis," writes Butovsky, "c'est de rigeur qu'il s'y trouve. I1 a fait une grande tournee et il a vu tout ce qui est de plus remarquables i Petersbourg, i Moscou, i Kiev. Sans doute il vous a communique le resultat de son voyage." Unpublished letter of 12 April 1877, Fonds Viollet-le-Duc.

16. "De rechercher, au profit des industriels russes, les sources d'un style artistique vraiment national," Boutovsky [sic] , Histoire de l 'oruement russe, 5.

440 JSAH 52:4, DECEMBER 1993

pre-Petrine artistic traditions as a moral imperative for a country

in the cultural shadow of Europe, and as an economic necessity

for a Russia that would wish to offer something unique to

international markets." This position suited both Butovsky's

political leanings and Viollet's theoretical inclinations.

In the theoretical portion of the book, Viollet laid out a

comprehensive program for a truly Russian artistic future,

buttressed by the historical prolegomena. Today's artist need only

steep himself or herself in the methods and principles that inform

native traditions, he suggested, and then create, as it were, his or

her own contemporary permutation. H e recommended such

models as the decorative patterns of native folk costumes, arguing,

as his Russian colleagues had, that these were inspired by the

"harmony of tones" of Persian art, rather than strong color

contrasts of western art.18

Viollet-le-Duc proposed a new reading of the concept of

originality for the Russian occasion. Anticipating perhaps that

Russian artists, like those in France, might reject the historicist

tack and prefer to invent something of their own, Viollet

suggested that to be original in art is to be true to one's national

origins. In a curious inversion, originality was to be measured by

fidelity to the past, rather than by novelty or innovation. As elsewhere in his writing, of course, Viollet drew a sharp distinction

between slavish imitation, which he abhorred, and judicious

emulation, the key to a productive relationship with the past.19

Within this format-an ethnic and artistic history as the preface

to and underpinning of a theoretical program-the relationship

between nationality and rationality in art was elaborated. For the

Russian audience Viollet grafted nationality onto his already

well-established theories of rationality. Viollet's conception of the

rational relationship of structure to decoration in the Gothic

17. For an examination of the roots and varieties of nineteenth-century Russian nationalism, see Edward C. Thaden, Comewative Nationalism in Nineteenth Century Russia (Seattle, 1964); for discussions of the Slavophile and westernizing currents in nineteenth-century political discourse, see Nicholas Riasanovsky, Russia and the West in the Teaching ofthe Slavophiles: A Study ofRomantic Ideology (Cambridge, Mass., 1952); and Abbott Gleason, Young Russia: The Genesis of Russian Radicalism in the 1860s (New York, 1980). For the cultural ramifications of nationalist ideology, see Dmitri Sarabianov, Russian Art: From Neoclassicism to the Avant-garde (New York, 1990); and Elizabeth Valkenier's several works on Russian Realist painting, most recently, The Wanderers: Masters of 19th Century Russian Painting: an Exhibition fiom the Soviet Union, ed. Elizabeth Valkenier (Dallas, 1990), hereafter cited as Wanderers.

18. Viollet-le-Duc's primary source of information about the character and derivation of folk motifs was Vladimir Stasov's L'Ornement national russelRucrkii narodnyi ornament' (St. Petersburg, 1872), with parallel texts in French and Russian. Stasov would emerge as one of Viollet-le-Duc's harshest critics, as discussed below.

19. Viollet-le-Duc's theoretical prescriptions, in L'Art ruse and else- where, are "generative" rather than "utopian," according to the distinc- tions drawn by Fran~oise Choay in La rigle et le modile (Paris, 1980), 6, 14-15. Choay distinguishes two types of theoretical writing, each of which makes use of history in a characteristic way. The treatise uses history to generate nonspecific principles or rules for the making of architecture, while the utopian tradition proffers models to be copied.

Fig. 4. L'Art russe, pl. V. "Ornamentation of a thirteenth-century Russian manuscript." The two motifs, extracted from a thirteenth-century text at the Cathedral of St. Michael in Moscow, illustrate Viollet-le-Duc's argument for the Asian sources of early Russian art. The upper motif, he argues, displays a "harmony of tones" peculiar to the "yellow races," while the lower one combines Persian contours with Turanian coloration (L'Art russe, 55).

cathedral, referred to by historians as his structural rationalism,

was a cornerstone of his theory and informed his approach to the

study of architecture in generaL20 Drawing upon the Cartesian

20. Pol Abraham's emphasis in 1934 on the structural component of Viollet-le-Duc's rationalism helped to set the tone for subsequent scholarship, despite the disparaging tenor of his analysis and conclusions. (Abraham took issue with the functional and structural rationales Viollet- le-Duc proposed for Gothic pinnacles, colonnettes, ribs, etc.) See Pol Abraham, Viollet-le-Duc et le rationalisme miditval (Paris, 1934). For a taxonomy of French rationalist thought, distinguishing classical and structural strands, see Peter Collins, Changing Ideals in Modem Architecture (Montreal, 1965), 198-217.

Fig. 5. Viktor Butovsky, Histoire de l'omement russe, pl. XXX "13th century Russian ornament." These redrawn fragments, culled from diverse sources and reassembled by chronological proximity and formal affinity, formed the core of the study collection at Butovsky's Museum of Art and Industry.

emphasis on reason as an epistemological approach, and the Enlightenment appreciation of reason as a unifjring principle in the natural and cultural spheres, Viollet had argued throughout his oeuvre that each part of the Gothic cathedral, for example, performed a necessary function, be it structural or aesthetic. Thus the Gothic cathedral was governed by the same rational (read logical, reasonable) system as the natural organism, in which every form has a purpose.21

Echoing his advice in the Entretiens, Viollet exhorted Russian architects to design rationally, that is, in accordance with their own resources, needs, and tradition^.^^ It is to this latter compo-

21. The biological analogy signals Viollet-le-Duc's debt to the scien- tific research of the day; for example, George Cuvier's Lecon d'anatomie of 1835, which Viollet had in his library; see Cafalogue des livres composant la biblioth?que de feu M . E. Viollet-le-Duc, architecte, dont la vente aura lieu du mardi 18 au lundi 31 mai 1880 . . . (Paris, 1880). Robert Mark's research into the statics of French Gothic cathedrals has confirmed Viollet's intuitive grasp of the structural utility of such seemingly frivolous appointments as the Gothic pinnacle; see Robert Mark, Experiments in Gothic Structure (Cambridge, Mass., 1984). John Summerson's essay of 1949, entitled "Viollet le Duc and the Rational Point ofview," in Heavenly Mansions and Other Essays on Architecture (NewYork, 1963), 135-58, is still one of the most lucid presentations of the concept. For an illuminating recent consideration ofviollet's sources, see Barry Bergdoll, Introduction to Eug?ne-Emmanuel Viollet-le-Duc: The Foundations $Architecture: Selections

from the 'Dictionnaire raisonnt', trans. Kenneth D. Whitehead (New York, 1990), 18-22.

22. Throughout his written oeuvre Viollet-le-Duc equated rationality with truth. A rational architecture would be true (consistent with, directly reflective of) to the functional requirements it was called upon to fulfill, to the manners and customs of the sponsoring culture, and to the materials and constructional methods available to the designer. His plea for

nent, truth to tradition, that he assigned priority among the Russian architect's obligations. The rational Russian architect should take care to respond not only to the customs, climate, and functional needs of his people, but also to its so-called national genius. A true Renaissance (his word, ironically) in Russian art

would come about only if Russian artists were to perform this further operation, which had to do with the correct, as it were,

exploitation of ideas drawn from history. First, he insisted, draw only from the period before Peter the Great, whose mindless imitation of western works arrested Slavic art in its progress. Second, and here the rationality of drawing from national sources is laid out: "choose from among these elements those most capable of improvement, those which derive from the most pure

architectural authenticity resonates with such late-eighteenth-century forbears as Jean-Baptiste Rondelet, whose popular multi-volume Trait4 thbrique etpratique de l'art de bitir of 1802-17 was replete with references to the "surprising" (p. xx) and "unheard of' (p. xviii) effects attained by Gothic architects, with their genius for "recognizing and assigning to each material" (p. xx) the role appropriate to its capacities, to yield the most durable result. Like Viollet, Rondelet prized truth at both constructional and cultural levels; in his words, "one cannot help but be saddened to see abandoned today a constructional system that was so well suited to the resources and nature of our climate" (p. xx). See Jean-Baptiste Rondelet, Trait4 thtorique et pratique de l'art de bitir, 7th ed. (Paris, 1864). Rondelet's treatise is listed in the posthumous inventory of Viollet's encyclopedic library. For a prCcis of Rondelet's theory and career, see L. O'Connell, "Jean-Baptiste Rondelet," in International Dictionary $Architects and Architec- ture (Detroit, 1993).

442 J S A H 5 2 : 4 , DECEMBER 1993

and original sources, the sources that conform most closely to the

national genius."23

The notion had been implicit in the Entretiens and the

Dictionnaire, in which he argued that Gothic was good because it

was both rational and French. It had been broached head-on

more recently in his Histoire de l'habitation h u m a i n e of 1875,which

matched ethnicity to constructional taste. In a discussion of the

origins of architecture in that work, Viollet had claimed that

structures built by primitive peoples were the rational expression

of their needs and of the material and constructional materials

available to them. Those born on wooded territory built in wood,

for example. In this model, the earth was inhabited originally by geographically distinct racial groups, each producing structures

reflective of their needs and capabilities. However, after the first generation, a new wrinkle is factored into the equation. Subse-

quent generations behave slightly differently. They do not build

strictly in accordance with their needs and resources. They inherit the artistic tendencies and preferences acquired by their ancestors.

If a community originating in wooded territory and thus accus-

tomed to wood construction should migrate to a land devoid of

trees, it will make the necessary constructional adaptation to

mortar and masonry, but will retain the what Viollet-le-Duc

called the "forms and appearances" of wood construction despite

their rational inconsistency with the new material.24 In Lamarck-

ian fashion, the artistic tendencies and predilections acquired by

the original progenitors in response to their environment will

have been transmitted, as though through the blood, to later

generations. This, then, becomes the racial signature of that

particular group. Future nations composed of numerous racial subgroups forge, of their various contributions, their own distinc-

tive national genius, as Viollet termed it.25

23. "Choisir parmi ces elements ceux qui permettent une application perfectionnte, ceux qui proviennent des sources les plus pures, les plus originales, les plus conformes au gtnie national," L'Art russe, 178. By appealing to a halcyon Petrine golden age, and suggesting that to return to this tradition is simply to pick up a dropped stitch in the national fabric, Viollet-le-Duc deployed a strategy that would come to characterize nationalist image-making in the twentieth century. As Lawrence Vale has shown, architecture would become a potent instrument of national identity formation as colonial powers sought to found new entities on the fundaments of fictitious former ones; see Lawrence Vale, Architecture, Power and National Identity (Cambridge, 1983), 14.

24. E. E. Viollet-le-Duc, Histoire de l'habitation hurr~aine (Paris, 1875), 358.

25. The relationship between race and artistic development received its fullest theoretical elaboration at the time in the writings of Hippolyte Taine (1828-93), who identified "la race, le milieu, et le moment," as the three principle "determinants" of works of art. See, for example, his explication of Greek sculpture in La philosophie de l'art (Paris, 1882), 2:86-219. It is tempting to surmise that Viollet's racial theory might have been influenced by his friendship with the ethnographer Count Arthur de Gobineau (1816-82), author of the Essai rur I'inigalitl der races humaines (1863), who maintained that race was the most influential factor in determining the character of a civilization. Gobineau's unpublished letters to Viollet-le-Duc, however, are more anecdotal than philosphical in tone. For a recent treatment of the biological determinism that framed

Having worked out the mechanism for incorporating what he

thought of as "racial tendencies" and "national character" into the

rational architecture theory in the Histoire d e l'habitation humaine ,

he proceeded to test it on the Russian case. T o plot the proper

course for future Russian art, he had first to define the Russian

national genius. The history portion of the book, thus, necessarily

consisted of a complicated discourse on the ethnographic compo-

sition of the Russian population. An accurate and detailed

ethnographic profile would yield, unequivocally, the most "pure

and original" artistic sources. Not an ethnographer himself,

Viollet relied entirely on a few sources supplied by Viktor

Butovsky. One conspicuously undigested mass of ethnographic

erudition in Viollet's text (L'Art russe, 10) was transcribed, I

believe, directly from a map published in Karamsin's Histoire d e

[ 'Empire de Russie of 1819.The battle oncejoined, however, Viollet

found himself embroiled in the complicated question of the

relationship between race, ethnicity, and nationality that distin-

guished the historiography of the time.2h He satisfied himself,

though not all of his critics, with the argument laid out above on

the interactions between material conditions and racial predilec-

tions in the gradual formation of national taste.27

Even by the prejudiced standards of his Russian critics,

however, the theory cracked under the weight of the Slavic case.

Somehow, in his eagerness to downplay the relevance ofwestern

sources to the formation of a national Russian art, Viollet found himself arguing that Russia was an essentially Asiatic nation, with

strong doses of Aryan and Slavic ancestry. A summary chart

provided at the end of his ethnographic analysis captured the

significance of this conclusion to his history of Russian art, and to

nineteenth-century historical discourse, see Richard M. Lerner, Final Solutions: Biology, Prejudice, and Genocide (University Park, Pa., 1992). Modern science, of course, refutes Gobineau's position. As explained by James King, races are "merely partially differentiated pieces of one continuous unit, the species. N o system of classification, no matter how clever, can give them a specificity and a separateness that they do not have;" see James C. King, The Biology ofRace, rev, ed. (Berkeley, 1981), 10.

26. The same equation between ethnography and architectural practice plagues, for example James Fergusson's History of Indian and Eastern Architecture (London. 1876), as discussed by Thomas Metcalf inAn Inzperial Virion: Indian Architecture and Britain's Raj (Berkeley, 1989). Likeviollet-le- Duc, Fergusson relies upon race to explain differences in constructional taste among peoples. Differences between north and south Indian Hindu architecture demonstrate, he argues, "how little we can understand the causes of such contrasts unless we take affinities or differences of race into consideration." See, Fergusson, History o f Ind ian and Eastern Architecture, quoted in Metcalf, 32. I am grateful to John Archer for directing me to this source.

27. The racial argument was roundly cr~ticized in the French press (which suggests that Viollet was not simply mirroring the prevailing paradigm). Archeologist Alfred Darcel, for example, endorsed Viollet-le- Duc's general assessment of the history and future of Russian art and architecture, while taking exception to the racial overlay: "all these theories about constructional systems differing according to race, theories dear to Mr. Viollet-le-Duc, should, in my view, be carefully controlled, and should not be so readily accepted." See Alfred Darcel, "L'Art russe," Gazette des BeauxArts 17 (1878): 285.

O'CONNELL: VIOLLET-LE-DUC AND RUSSIA 443

( .Asiatiqnc, Ar!.cn.. Scythrs.. .

1 Crrc.

Fig. 6. L'Art russe, 157. Viollet-le-Duc's ethnographic analysis of Russia's origins seeks to expose its overwhelmingly Asian roots. The chart minimizes the Byzantine contribution by assigning it equal weight with those of the Scythians and the Mongols, and by highlighting Byzantium's own Asiatic ancestry.

his program for its future (Fig. 6)?8 It had been generally assumed that the Christianization of Russian in the tenth century had laid a blanket of Byzantine artistic influence over preexisting traditions. The Church of Santa Sophia in Kiev (Fig. 7), for instance, was (and still is) read as an example of the almost immediate absorption of the Byzantine system on Russian soil. But Viollet's chart suggested that if Russians had Central Asian, and not western roots, Byzantium, too, had an Asiatic heritage. Those features of Russian architecture that seemed to prove borrowing from Byzantium could just as well have been drawn firsthand from some primeval, Asiatic source (for example, the bulbous domes of Persia). If that seemed implausible, and it did even to Viollet, could it not be argued that at the very least, in borrowing from Byzantium, Russians were not contravening their national genius, because Byzantine and Russian cultures shared common Asiatic roots?

He was most interested, however, in the less derivative aspects of Russian architecture, such as the striking twelfth-century churches of the Vladimir/Suzdal region, where a plausible case for a supposedly native originality could be made (Fig. 8). The Church of the Intercession on the Nerl, for instance, seemed to Viollet to draw only vague inspiration from the spatial layout of the Byzantine church, adding to it a decorative brocade of sculptural reliefs "clearly," as he thought, derived from Russia's Asiatic fringe-the Armenian and Georgian cultures of the

28. The notion of emphasizing the Asiatic component of Russian ethnic identity was not unique to Viollet, nor is it entirely discredited today. Ladis Kristof describes the tendency to emphasize the biological and cultural contribution of the Mongol Tatars to the formation of Russian ethnicity as the Eurasian reading of Russian identity. See Ladis K D. Kristof, "The Russian Image of Russia: An Applied Study in Geopolitical Methodology," in Essays in Political Geography, ed. Charles A Fisher (London, 1968), 350.

southern rim of the empireJ9 Its close twelfth-century relative, the Church of St. Dmitrii in Vladimir (Fig. 9), was richly rational-it incorporated the same national decorative motifs drawn from southern traditions, and it responded logically to its climate and material circumstances. For instance, Viollet explains the slight projection of the roof line as a means of protecting the sculptural plastered walls from inclement weather.

The structures that found greatest favor with Viollet on national grounds, though, were those of sixteenth-century Mus- covy, that charmed moment when Russia had, as he put it, thrown off the Tatar yoke (the common way of referring to the two-century-long domination of Russia by Mongol rulers), and had yet to fall under the numbing spell of the European West.30 The Church of St. Basil the Blessed of 1555, which remains today an icon of the Russian state, won particular praise. Not realizing that the church's present appearance, especially its brilliant coloration, reflects seventeenth-century reworkings (Fig. lo), Viollet found it both structurally rational and rationally expressive of the national genius in its deft interweaving of Byzantine precedent and local invention. Architects Barma and Postnik, he argued, started with the canonical, single-domed, cross-in- square, Byzantine plan as a point of departure, then modified it to suit local purposes. They multiplied and elevated its domes, evolving in the process an original structural system to effect the transition between the square cell below and the circular or polygonal drum above. They supported their domes on ranges of corbelled arches, which diminished in size and circumference as they neared the crowning element, a smooth onion dome or

faceted tower (Fig. 11). Viollet appreciated the structural logic of this system, wherein the true internal structure is visible on the exterior, and where the thrust of the tiered kokoshniki counteract one another efficiently. Even the onion dome was shown to be a rational response to a particular requirement, that of heightening

the artistic impact of the elevated dome on the horizon. What was national about the Church of St. Basil, other than the

presence of elements invented by native architects? Viollet read this church as an amalgam of correct sources, not western ones, but those from the Central Asian or greater Slavic orbit. He traced

29. Viollet was unduly certain of the source of this distinctive treatment. The subject was a focus of Russian scholarly research at the time, and remains so a century later. See, for example, G. K. Vagner, SkuP~tura Drevnei Rusi, X I vek: Vladimir, Bogoliubogo (Moskva, 1969), 464-67; N. N. Voronin, Zodchestvo Severo-Vostochnoi Rusi X I - X V vekov (Moskva, 1961), 1:484-86; and Oganes Kh. Khalpakhch'ian, Kul'turnye sviazi Vladimiro-Suzdal'skoi Rusi i Amzenii (Moskva, 1977), 29-56, who weigh the relative contributions of Romanesque, Slavic Russian, and Caucasian artistic traditions to the Vladimir carvings.

30. Hugh Seton-Watson refers to this Muscovite vision of Russian national identity as "the classical Russian doctrine," one of at least three competing interpretations of the historical record, along with the "Ukrai- nian nationalist" and the "official Soviet" views; see Hugh Seton-Watson, "Russian Nationalism in Historical Perspective," in The Last Empire: Nationality and the Soviet Future (Stanford, 1986), 15, hereafter cited as "Russian Nationalism."

444 JSAH 52:4, DECEMBER 1993

the corbelled arches to Hindu architecture, the bulbous domes

and pointed arches to Persia, and the faceted conical towers to

Georgia and Armenia.

This brings us to the link between history and program and to

Viollet's own modest proposals for a rational, national Russian

architecture. I borrow the phrase from Jonathan Swift's searingly

satirical pamphlet of 1729, "A Modcst Proposal," in which he

suggested that certain social inequities might be redressed by the

outrageous scheme of feeding poor Irish children to the rich.

Viollet's inventions were somewhat less drastic, although not

without a similar touch of the ludicrous. His "design for a

corbelled tower" is a tame variant of the sixteenth-century

Muscovite church (Fig. 12), and the "enamelled brick tower"

(Fig. 13) digresses little from its prototypes. But some suggested

that his theoretical zeal may have eclipsed his artistic eye, with the

onion dome on iron struts (Fig. 14) proposed as an ideal marriage

of modern materials and national forms. Critic Stasov dismissed

Viollet's design suggestions out of hand, calling them urodlivy (ugly) and chuzhdo (alien), and lumping them with, as he put it,

"the usual unsuccessful foreign variations on our themes."31

The same critic stated that the entire last 100 pages of the

book-the core of Viollet's artistic offerings-might well have

been expunged with no loss of value to the book whatsoever. But

Viollet saw the history and the program as inextricably linked-an

ethnographic definition of the Russian community to support an

artistic program expressive of its national identity. Russian critics,

however, responded generally to one or to the other, depending

on their own agendas as readers.

31. "Vsegdashnikh' neudachnykh' inostrannykh' variatsii na nashi temy." Vladimir Stasov, "Frantsuzskaia kniga o russkom' iskusstve" (A French book on Russian art), Novoe uremia (1878): 713-14, reprinted in Sobranie sochinenii V. V. Stasova, 1847-1886 (St. Petersburg, 1894), 2:397, hereafter cited as Sobranie sochinenii.

Fig. 7. Cathedral of St. Sophia, Kiev, ca. 1018-37. Elevation, reconstruction by K J. Conant.

Most took on Viollet's history, unfortunately his weakest point.

Response from scholars of Russian culture was lukewarm at best.

Fedor Buslaev (1818-97), a well-known specialist in the history

of the Russian language and its relationship to the evolution of

popular culture, rejected Viollet's thesis about the predominantly

Asian origins of Russian art, countering with his own disquisition

on the decidedly Romanesque character of Russian manuscript

illuminati0n.3~ Buslaev seized the opportunity of his review of

L'Art russe for the scholarly journal Kriticheskie obozrenie (Critical

review) in 1879 to display his considerable erudition in the field

of early Russian manuscript ornament.33 Not qualified to ques-

tion Viollet's architectural analyses, Buslaev trained his attack on

the least well-developed propositions in L'Art russe, those likening

the so-called harmony of tones, and the carpet-like, interlacing

patterns of Russian manuscripts to Persian or Central Asian

sources. Buslaev pounced, for example, on a misidentified

manuscript in Viollet's text, using it as evidence ofviollet's loose

grip on the historical f a ~ t s . 3 ~ T o prove his case for the overween-

ing importance of Romanesque sources to the development of

32. Bol'shaia sovetskaia entsiklopediia, ed. A. M. Prokhorov, 3rd edition (Moscow, 1971), 4:152. Buslaev's philological works include, 0 vlianii khristianstva na slavianskii iazik (On the influence of Christianity on Slavic language), (Moscow, 1848); and Istoricheskaia grammatika russkago iazika (Historical grammar of the Russian language), (Moscow, 1863).

33. Buslaev, in Istoricheskie ocherki, 1-74. 34. Buslaev, Istoricheskie ocherki, 3, in re Viollet-le-Duc's characteriza-

tion of a tenth-century Greek Byzantine headpiece as Slavic (L'Art ruse, 33). A bold turn, he called it, given that the Russian written language did not exist before the eleventh century, thus precluding thevery enstence of a tenth-century Russian manuscript. In a retaliatory article printed a month later, Viollet-le-Duc's advocate, Butovsky, rose to the Frenchman's defense, calling the mistake a typographical error and dismissing Buslaev's "petty details about capital letters and headpieces;" see Viktor Butovsky, "Zametka na stat'iu F. I. Buslaeva 'Russkoe iskusstvo v otsenke frant- suzskago uchenago"' (Notes on the article by F. I. Buslaev . . . ), Moskovskiia vedomosti 36 (1879): 5 , hereafter cited as "Zametka."

O'CONNELL: VIOLLET-LE-DUC AND RUSSIA 445

Fig. 8. L'Art russe, pl. VI. Church of the Intercession on the Nerl, Bogoliubovo, 1165. Elevation. Viollet-le-Duc appreciated its "svelte" proportions, which seemed to him to suggest medieval Greek, rather than "purely Byzantine" ancestry (L'Art russe, 59).

Russian art, Buslaev cited the style and technique of a fourteenth- century manuscript ornament illustrated in Viollet-le-Duc's book

(Fig. 15). Such ornamental details, he argued, reveal Romanesque sources filtered through the South Slavic regions of Serbia and the Bulgar Balkans, which enjoyed extensive relations with the Germanic emperors and Roman popes.35 Comparing the Russian ornament to an historiated initial from the .twelfth-century Corbie Gospels (Fig. 16), Buslaev observed that "the South Slavic manuscripts differed significantly from the Byzantine, with their composition of interwoven serpents and beasts . . . which likens them to the Romanesque style patterns of the West," rather than Asian sources favored by Viollet-le-Duc3'j

35. Buslaev, Istoricheskie ocherki, 25-26,35-39. 36. "Iuzhno-slavianskiia rukopisi znachitel'no otlichaiutsia ot' sob-

stvenno vizantiiskikh' svoim' ornamentom', sostavlennym' iz' spleteniia zmei i chudovishch', . . . i sblizhaiutsia one s' ornamentom' romanskago stilia na Zapad.' " Buslaev, Istoricheskie ocherki, 25.

e 2 3 , F I l

" P I

Fig. 9. L'art ruse, pl. VII. Cathedral of St. Dmitrii, Vladimir, 1193-97. Elevation, detail of blind arcades. Again, "there is no need to insist on the Asian character of these representations," Viollet contended (L'Art ruse, 61). In this case, the moulding profiles and carving technique recalled Syrian models.

Buslaev's criticisms were not politically disinterested. His own publications partook of the Slavophile tendency to search for evidence of what might be termed "Russianness" in Russian cultural artifacts and practices. More specifically, Buslaev's empha- sis on the importance of South Slavic culture to the development of Russian art signals his allegiance to the pan-Slavist movement, which sought to wrest the Balkan Slavs from Ottoman domina- tion and thus reunite all Slavic territories under Russian rule. A

sardonic reference to contemporary geo-political wranglings at the end of his review flags his pan-Slavist sympathies: "It is no wonder that the French architect, immersed in his own artistic specialty, should not have considered either Bulgaria or Serbia in this whole matter, when even the great diplomats of Western

446 JSAH 52:4, DECEMBER 1993

r---

Fig. 10. Church of St. Basil the Blessed, seventeenth-century engraving (from A. Olearius, Voyages and Travels ofthe Ambassadorsjom the Duke o f Holstein to the Great Duke ofMuscoty and the King ofPenia, 1633-39).

Europe, better versed than he in geography and ethnography,

could not, with the most sharply focused magnifying glass,

perceive the boundary of Bulgaria in deciding its fate at the Berlin

C~ngress."~' Buslaev's reference is to the failure of European

powers to recognize the Russianness of the Bulgar and Serbian Slavs at the Berlin Congress of 1878, convened to resolve Balkan

hostilities.

And yet there is a distinct westernizing cast to his insistence on the Romanesque, that is, Western European origins of Russian art. The westernizers tended to reject the purist, Slavophile

37. "Ne mudreno, shto fransuzskii arkhitektor', pogruzhennyi v' svoiu khudozhestvennuiu spetsial'nost', ne dosmotrel' vo vsem' etom' dele ni Bolgarii, ni Serbii, kogda i velikie diplomaty Zapadnoi Evropy, bolee ego svedushche v' geografii i etnografii, pri posredstve samykh' zorkikh' uvelichitel'nykh' stekol' ne mogli usmotret' granits' Bolgarii, reshaia eia sud'bu na Berlinskom' kongresse." Buslaev, Istoricheskie ocherki, 39. Evgeniia Kirichenko noted the tendentiousness of the passage in "Problema natsional'nogo," 149.

Fig. 11. L'Art russe, pl. XI. Church of St. Basil the Blessed. Details of the towers, elevation, and partial plan. Characteristically, Viollet-le-Duc's mode of graphic representation is calculated to support a theoretical proposition. The combined elevation and plan dramatizes the consistency between internal structure and external form.

position, favoring instead an emulation of the West that might - lead to direct competition among equals in the political, eco-

nomic, and cultural spheres. By rejecting Viollet's theory of the Asian origins of Russian art, Buslaev sought to plant Russia firmly

on European foundations. Viollet-le-Duc dismissed Buslaev's

criticisms out of hand, tinged as they were with "politics," as he

put it, in a letter to B u t ~ v s k y . ~ ~

A somewhat more complex reading came from Vladimir Stasov

(1824-1906), Russia's most prolific and prominent cultural critic

of the late-nineteenth century. Known especially for his ardent

promotion of the Russian Realist current in painting, Stasov's portrait (Fig. 17) was painted by its protagonist, Ilya Repin, whose

"Barge Haulers" of 1870-73 he praised as a powerfully empa-

38. "Si, i des Ctudes ethnographiques et archCologiques on mCle la politique, il n'y a pas possibilitk de renontrer la vkritt;" see Lettres, 172. Letter from Viollet-le-Duc to Butovsky, 14 May 1879.

O'CONNELL: VIOLLET-LE-DUC AND RUSSIA 447

Fig. 12. L'art russe, pl. X X N . Design for a "dome with corbelled arches and windows." In keeping with the Muscovite system of architectural design, as analyzed by Viollet, the complex formal rhythm of alternating angles and curves is generated by the vaulting scheme.

thetic portrayal of the Russian peasant's plight. Stasov's critical

yardstick was native originality-he rued Russia's historical

reliance on imported culture, rejected the academic education

that fostered such dependence, and hailed artists w h o sought to

express their own distinct heritage in their w o r k I n other words,

Stasov's critical stance virtually mirrored that of V io l l e t - l e -D~c .~~

39. Irina Shuvalova describes Stasov as the protagonist of the new criticism of the late-nineteenth century, characterized by a "way of looking at pictures through their content," which emerged in tandem with the ideological realism of Repin and the Wanderers. The ideological component was purportedly democratic or Populist, advocating for the common folk, the narod', whose oppression could be measured in poverty and political disenfranchisement; see Irina Nikolaevna Shuvalova, "Rus- sian Art Criticism of Ideological Realism," in Valkenier, ed., The Wanderers, 183. See also Michael W. Curran, "Vladimir Stasov and the Development of Russian National Art. 1850-1906," Ph.D. diss., Univer- sity ofWisconsin, 1965; and E. I. Kirichenko, Arkhitekturnye teoriiXIX veka v Rossii (Moskva, 1986), 210-27. On Stasov's volatile relationship with

Fig. 13. L'Art russe, pl. XXVI. Design for an "enamelled brick tower." The projecting cornice is meant to recall the rational practice of providing wooden towers with protective eaves in early Russian architecture. Translation from wood to enamelled brick in the seventeenth century gave rise to new decorative treatments, emulated here in Viollet-le-Duc's brilliantly colored confection.

But instead of appreciating Viollet's advocacy of a Russian

national art, Stasov found the very idea o f the book highly

insulting. This key figure o f Russian art criticism took Viollet-le-

Duc to task for committing the very sin Viollet exposed in the

book, that o f Russians calling upon Europeans to show them the

artistic way. "It is not surprising that the Stroganov Institute,

according to the time-honored tradition, proposed that a for-

eigner of the sort who know nothing about Russian art, undertake

Repin, see Elizabeth Valkenier, Ilya Repin and the World ofRussian Art (New York 1990).

448 JSAH 52:4, DECEMBER 1993

Fig. 14. L'Art msse, Fig. 77. Design for a twelve-sided hall w t h masonry vault supported on slanted iron columns. Similar marriages of modern materials and historically inspired forms and structural systems were proposed in the Entretiens; see, for example the billowng domes of the Assembly Hall presented In Lecture XII, which like- wise come to rest on inclined iron braces.

to investigate it, since we are not in a position to figure it out for had never visited, contenting himself with redrawn images from ourselves," Stasov sulked.40 He was particularly offended that loaned books. (Viollet-le-Duc's analyses of the peasant cottage, or Viollet should presume to write the artistic history of a country he dacha, for instance, are based on images from Kiprianoff s Histoire

40. "Nichego udivitel'nago net', shto Moskovskoe Stroganovskoe uchilishche, po starinnym' russkim' predaniiam', predozhilo inostrantsu, zaniat'sia im', tak' kak' my, mol', sami nichego ne v' sostoianii v' nem' ot' rodu nichego do tekh' por' ne znavshemu o russkom' iskusstve, razobrat.'" Stasov, Sobraniesochinenii, 390.

O'CONNELL: VIOLLET-LE-DUC AND RUSSIA 449

Fig. 15. L'Art msse, Fig. 27. Motif from a fourteenth-century Russlan manuscript (manuscript of the sacristy of the Troitse-Sergiev Cohvent near Moscow). After Butovsky, Histoire de l'ornement russe, pl.XXXVII1. The seem- ingly Romanesque character of this Russian headpiece was due, Viollet-le- Duc argued, to a common Asiatic source, rather than to Russian borrow- ings from the West. His unorthodox suggestion that the motlfs "lndo- tatar" flavor could be traced dlrectly to the Mongol occupation (L'Art russe, 81) found no favor with Buslaev, who preferred a South Slavic source and bristled at the notion of crediting the ~nvading hordes with such an achievement.

pittoresque de l'architecture en Russie of 1864 [Figs. 18 and 191; his

illustration of the Persianesque character of Russian folk costume

is lifted directly from Stasov's own Russkii narodnyi ornament [Figs.

20 and 211). Accusing Viollet of both senility and lack of talent,

Stasov was particularly scathing about the Frenchman's design

proposals, suggesting that he stick to theory. Stasov did concur

with Viollet on one count, the brilliant, as he put it, argument

against the prevailing view that Russian art was but an imitation of

Byzantine art. Again, the reading reveals more about the reader

than the text, for Stasov's own critical bent was to deemphasize

Russia's borrowings from abroad, and to celebrate demonstrably

native developments.

The most sophisticated reading was made by Lev Vladimirov-

ich Dal' (1834-78), architect, theorist, teacher, and head of the

architectural history section of the influential journal Zodchii (The a r ~ h i t e c t ) . ~ ~ In his editorial capacity at Zodchii, Dal' played a

pivotal role in the architectural debates of the 1870s, publishing

scores of articles on historical, theoretical, and technical subjects.

Founded in 1872 by the Petersburg Society of Architects, Zodchii

provided an outlet for the latest research on Russian architectural

history and technology; it introduced the Russian audience to

European and American developments and provided a forum for

the discussion of contemporary issues.42 By training and critical

bent, Dal' was most favorably predisposed toward Viollet. Unlike

Buslaev and Stasov, Dal' brought to the study of historical

architecture the expertise and concerns of the practicing architect.

Like Viollet-le-Duc, he rejected the superficial recapitulation of

historical forms, seeking instead to glean their technical and

41. Slavina, Issledovateli, 102. 42. William Craft Bmmfield, The Origins of Modernism in Russian

Architecture (Berkeley, 1991), 47, n. 2, hereafter cited as Origins of Modernism. See also Jean-Louis Cohen, "Avant-gardes et revues d'architecture en Russie, 1917-1941," Revue de ?Art 89 (1990): 29.

Fig. 16. L'Art russe, Fig. 26. Initial from a twelfth-century French manuscript. (Bibliothtque d'hieqs, psalter from Corbie monastery)

450 JSAH 52:4, DECEMBER 1993

'r, ' I .

Fig. 17. Ilya Repin, portrait of Vladimir Stasov, 1883. (State Russian Museum)

functional essence, as he put it, in order to apply it to present

problems.43

In an article of 1872 on the study of Russian architectural

monuments, Dal' had congratulated Russian architects for their attempt to wean themselves from western influence, and encour-

aged their striving for an architecture of national character, which

would take' its inspiration directly from the national life. The

resemblance to Viollet-le-Duc's philosophy was not coincidental;

Dal' was an avid reader of the Frenchman's works-according to Butovsky he knew the Dictionnaire "perfe~t ly."~~ Indeed Dal'

credited Viollet-le-Duc's pre-Russian writings with dissuading

Russian architects from rushing uncritically to their own past.

The imitative, pseudo-Byzantine style of mid-century, he pointed

out, had taken shape at a time when "the fundamental research of

Viollet-le-Duc was still unknown."45 Dal' even used the familiar

43. Slavina, Issledovateli, 102. 44. Unpublished letter from Butovsky to Viollet-le-Duc, 27 October

1877, Fonds Viollet-le-Duc. Dal' was familiar with the Entretiens as well, excerpts of which had appeared in Zodchii in 1874, as he notes in the opening paragraph of his review of L'Art russe: 'We already know the views of this reformer of contemporary architecture from de Rochefor's translation." Lev Vladimirovich Dal', " 'L'Art russe, ses origines, ses ClCments constitutifs, son apogCe, et son avenir,' par Viollet le Duc," Zodchii 6 (1877): 95.

45. "Gde eshcho ne byli isvestny osnovatel'nyia izsledovaniia Viollet- le-Duc'a." Lev V. Dal', "Istoricheskoe izsledovanie pamiatnikov' russkago zodchestva,"Zodchii 1 (1872), 10.

Fig. 18. L'Art russe, Fig. 56. Interior of a Great Russian village dwelling, Kostroma region. Kiprianoff is not credited as the source for this image (nor are other sources credited religiously), although Wollet-le-Duc does cite him elsewhere in the book.

Fig. 19. Kiprianoff, Histoirepittoresque de l'architecture en Russie, Fig. 35.

Viollet lexicon of architectural rationality, although historians

tend to assume that his use of it reflects not his reading ofviollet,

but the teachings of Russian theoretician, Apollinarii Kaetanovich Krasovskii (1816-75), whose Grazhdanskaia arkhitektura (Civil

architecture) of 1851 was read closely by a generation of Russian

architect^.^^ And here lies a mysterious lacuna in the Russian reception of

L'Art msse. Dal' was a follower of Viollet-le-Duc and a disciple of

Krasovskii. Krasovskii's fundamental contribution to architectural

thought in Russia was his concept of ratsional'nost' (rationality), which stressed the technical bases and functional requirements

46. A. K. Krasovskii, Grazhdanskaia arkhitektura (St. Petersburg, 1851). For an analysis of Krasovskii's writings and an assessment ofhis influence, see A. Punin, "Idei ratisionalisma v russkoi arkhitekture vtoroi poloviny XIXveka," Arkhitektura SSSR 11 (1962): 55-58.

Fig. 20. L'Art russe, pl. IV. Embroidery of a peasant tunic, chromolithograph - . after Stasov. Viollet-le-Duc's full- color presentation is meant to bring out its typically Persian "harmony of tones" (L'Art russe, 49).

that distinguish architecture from the purely aesthetic arts.

Krasovskii's was a technical rationalism that spoke of the need to

reflect the material and constructional origins of architectural

elements in their outward form; it lacked the national component

injected by Viollet-le-Duc.4' Indeed, Krasovskii's legacy tended to

polarize the architectural discourse of the 1870s into two oppo-

sing camps. The so-called historicists, such as Shervud, designer

of the Historical Museum on Red Square (1874-83) in Moscow,

sought to create a national style based on revived medieval motifs.

The rejuvenated remants of the nation's architectural past would

foster, it was hoped a "renewed Russian sense of identity."48 The

self-styled rationalists, among them Lev Dal', promoted an

architecture less rooted in tradition and more in tune with the

properties and constructional possibilities of available materials.

Evidence of the opposition is offered by William Brumfield, who

notes, for example, that in the 1870s a cadre of St. Petersburg

architects countered what they regarded as the ornamental

ecclecticism of Moscow's Russian Revival style with a rational

brick style. The Petersburg group promoted brick not for its

historical associations, but for technical and functional properties:

durability, ease of construction, and structural s0undness.4~

The beauty of Viollet's program, for that audience, was its deft

interweaving of the two seemingly opposite objectives. While Lev

Dal' seems to have fully digested Viollet's argument for architec-

tural rationality, he failed to remark upon the reconciliation it

offered with the nationalist position. Dal's review ofL'Art russe in

1877 focuses on the very propositions that demonstrated the

47. While Viollet-le-Duc and Krasovskii seem to have developed their theories independently (Krasovskii's treatise predates Viollet-le-Duc's major writings), some filiation is due to their common debt to the early-nineteenth-century French theoretical tradition of Durand and Rondelet.

48. Brumfield, Origins OfModernism, 11. 49. Viktor Shreter, "Obyvatel'skii dom i fabrika shelkovykh izdelii A. I.

Nissena," Zodchii 2 (1873): 2, quoted in Brumfield, Origins OfModernism, 14.

Fig. 21. Vladimir Stasov, L'Ornement national russe, pl. VI. Decorative motifs from handtowels and tunics of various regions. Stasov was a ready source of motifs to support Viollet-le-Duc's claims, as his own images were selected to demonstrate the Asian qualities of Russian folkart. While both found these fabrics to be unmistakably Persian in allure, Viollet-le- Duc focused on their coloration, and Stasov on their geometric patterning.

452 JSAH 5 2 4 . D E C E M B E R 1993

rationality of using national forms, for example, the structural

elegance of decorative kokostlniki, or the drainage advantages of

picturesquely overhanging roofs. And yet he does not point out

that in these arguments could be found the intersection between

the engineering-based Krasovslai tradition and the aesthetic

nationalism of the Russian Revival mode. When paired with

Viollet-le-Duc's own Innocence of the specific relevance of his

argument to the Russian situation (neither Viollet nor Dal'

mention Krasovskli), this interpretive omission certainly dimln-

ished the architectural impact ofLJArt russe.

Ultimately, it was only Viktor Butovsky who offered whole-

hearted praise for Vlollet-le-Duc's Russian effort. This is not

surprlslng-as instigator of the project, Butovsky had the most to

gain or lose by its outcome and reception. Butovsky's leadership

of two respected institutions, the Stroganov Institute and the

Museum of the Industrial Arts, had won him an influentlal role

within the artistic community; association with an ill-received

project could tarnish the luster of his own reputation. Butovsky's

assessment of the book took the form of counterattacks against

Buslaev's and Stasov's reviews, and an introduction to the Russian

edition of L'Avt ruse in 1879.Butovsky read L'art russe essentially

as program supported by history and found it unassailable by that

measure. In contrast with Stasov's wounded pride, Butovsky

seemed positively to crave the western seal of approval conferred

by Viollet. Thanks to L'Art r u m , he wrote, "one can now boldly

say that Russian art exlsted in the past and exists today."50 The

political subtext is barely submerged in his gratitude for Viollet's

potential contribution to the stimulation of industrial production

through a revlval of the native in art.

As these analyses suggest, the critical afterlife of L'art ruse is as

relevant as the text itself to an understanding of its meanings.

50 "Mozhno teper' smelo skazat' shto russkoe iskusstvo sushche stvovalo i nyne sushchestvuet.' " Butovsky, "Zametka," 5.

While Viollet-le-Duc's influence in Russia did not begin and end

with L'Art ruse (a Russian translation of the Entretiens would be

commissioned as late as the 1 9 3 0 ~ ) , ~ ' the rocky convergence it

provoked between architectural theory and political nationalism

assured this book a broad, extra-artistic impact.

For if Viollet-le-Duc's project was politically innocent in

intent, its program was inherently political in implication. As students of nationalism have shown, the modern nation is by no

means a foregone conclusion, natural, organic, and self-evident. It

is an artificial construct, willfully forged of heterogeneous compo-

nents.52 And the manipulation of culture is crucial to both its

fashioning and its survival. Efforts to draft the past into the service

of a new national identity necessarily emphasize selected portions,

and, deliberately or not, marginalize others. Viollet-le-Duc's

Slavlc-Asiatic model of Russian nationality was a case in point.

The Russia that he sought to capture in architectural form was not

a fixed, historical, ethnic, or geographic reality, but a political

aspiration in the process of realization. Appearing in the midst of

Russification campaigns in Central Asia, the Baltics, and the

Balkans, the book unwittingly buttressed imperial claims on

bordering territories.j3 While L'Avt russe proposed a promising

avenue for contemporay practitioners by demonstrating the

fundamental compatibility of the competing rationalist and nation-

alist positions, his theoretical contribution was eclipsed by its

political timeliness. The Russian audience, seelang to stabilize the

national image around partisan visions of cultural identity, largely

ignored the architectural message, preferring to make use of the

text as representational turf in a larger struggle to define Russia.

51. Ozoufet. al., "Russie," 246. 52. Eric Hobsbawm, "Introduction: Inventing Traditions," in Itrvetltitg

Traditions, ed. Eric Hobsbawm and Terence Ranger (Cambridge, 1983), 14.

53. See Seton-Watson, "Russian Nationalism," 22-29, on the Russifi- cation process, and the territorial contests that underpin nineteenth- century Russian nationalism.