Lansquenets of Svyiazhsk: a case study of the Russian stove tiles iconography of the 17^th century

The general purpose of the paper is to investigate roots of the unusual composition at a stove tile from Svyiazhsk (the famous fortress of the mid 16th century nearby Kazan, the capital of Tatarstan). History of the dissemination of stove tiles and their decorative compositions all over the Muscovy territories has a rich tradition in the science. Recently it was intensified due to the new arguments in favor of their European origin. The architectural details of terracotta with low reliefs (plain or glazed) were introduced in Muscovy as early as the late 15 th century by Italian (mainly Lombard and Venetian) architects. There was also a contribution made by German master builders and especially in the 17th century by artisans of the Central Europe (the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth and Hungary). Meanwhile, the efforts to trace the compositions' origin at so-called Gothic style tiles, which were immensely popular since the 16th century up to the 17th century, were all in vain. Decorations of those tiles are often purely ornamental, though there is a cluster of figural depictions as well. The scenes of army movements, sieges of fortresses, gun fire and so forth were extremely widespread. Some of them such as pictures of Polish Hussars are easy to distinguish and to interpret as the results of Western connections. Some of the depictions had been not clearly read yet. As the result, archaeologists normally try to domesticize the composition. They describe it as local one and connected to a tradition of folklore. The depiction of unusual and strange musicians was interpreted in a similar way: they are described as local jesters. Actually they are not amusing, but rather frightening. We could see "portraits" of European free -lance warriors: engravings of those were popular since the late 15th till the late 17th centuries. One of the recognized genre specialists was a German-Austrian artist Daniel Hopfer and his family workshop. It is easy to compare the composition from Svyiazhsk with its prototype, that is a central group at the etching "The Five Lansquenets". The composition was attractive for Russians both by its exotic and habitual appearance. Since the early 17th century Muscovy was flooded by foreigners, especially military from Poland, Sweden and all over Europe. They were hired by Russian legitimate rulers and Impostors, and came as enemies as well. In fact, Muscovites got used to them much earlier: the army of Ivan the Terrible against the Kazan State included a bunch of European-trained engineers, gunners and arquebusiers. Probably they were not forgotten in Svyiazhsk, a fortress built just to storm Kazan in the campaign of 1551. Its garrison was also staffed by foreign specialists even in the late 17th century. A re-interpretation of the composition would help to identify not only a source of the "one-tile iconography". It helps to trace the path of penetration of the European iconography (including military fashion and a pattern of behavior) to Muscovy long before of the time of Peter the Great. It also could help to realize methods of acculturation of Western influences by local population far to the East from Moscow.

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