Wooden Sculpture in the Moscow Kremlin's Fund

We bring to your attention a virtual display presenting a remarkable collection of monuments of wooden church sculpture from the Moscow Kremlin museums' funds. The collection includes works of various types of Old Russian plastic arts, i.e. statues of saints, relief icons, sculpture for iconostasis, small carved icons, crosses and icon with foldable side flaps of the period from the XVth to the early XXth century.

The main group of the exhibits, which are the monumental masterpieces, remarkable for their cultural and artistic characteristics, relates to the Moscow Kremlin. Most part of them dates back to the XVIIth century – to flourishing period of the Armoury Chamber and its collecting activities as it has become the largest artistic center of Russia at that time. The collection also includes carved works of various types from such distinguished cultural centers as Moscow, Novgorod, Rostov, and monasteries of the Northwest Russia.

The collection, numbering nearly 80 items, has been formed in the result of a long term purposeful collecting activity of the museum during a bit more than ten years - from 1918 till 1931. A great contribution to the development of the collection was made by Nikolai Pomerantsev (1891-1986), who has devoted his life to research work, restoration and preservation of the monuments of the Old Russian culture. In 1923 Nikolai Pomerantsev was appointed the Head of the scientific-preservation department of the Kremlin architectural monuments. Under his direction, in the refectory of the Saint Michael Maleinos’s church of the Ascension Monastery in the Kremlin, there has been organized an exposition dedicated to the Old Russian wooden sculpture. The presented exhibits included those from the already existed collections as well as items which were transferred to the Kremlin funds from the churches and monasteries, abolished in 1920s-1930s, some nationalized private collections and the State Museum fund of Russia. There were also special funds assigned for purchasing Old Russian carved artworks from the private collections and through the instrumentality of the N. Vostryakov's Old Russian icon store.

The late 1920s – early 1930s turned out to become one of the most dramatic periods in the history of Moscow, when many of the ancient Moscow churches and monasteries were abolished or even demolished. After the Kremlin Ascension Monastery has been destroyed the collection of the Old Russian wooden sculpture was moved to the museum's storerooms, and only in 1965, N. Pomerantsev managed to restore the very exhibition in the northern gallery of the Church of Laying of Our Lady's Holy Robe. The exposition was renewed and enlarged two times: in 1980 and in 1996.

This virtual display is based on the materials from the scientific catalogue "Russian wooden sculpture of the XVth-XVIIIth centuries", compiled by Irina Sokolova, the research scientist of the Moscow Kremlin museums, which was published in 2003 to present the museum’s collection in full.

Have a nice trip!