‘Circular’: how the Church of St Martin the Confessor was built

The Church of St Martin the Confessor in Taganka, on Aleksandra Solzhenitsyna Street, has a rounded eastern end. On the opposite side, a narrow passage links the main body of the church to the bell tower. Between the curve and the soaring tower lies the story of its construction: the eastern outline took shape in response to a condition set down before the previous church was dismantled.

In 1791, the Moscow merchant Vasily Zhigarev commissioned a design for a new church. Researchers attribute it to the architect Rodion Kazakov. The merchant provided the funds and sought permission; the architect had to reconcile an ambitious design with a brief stipulation from the ecclesiastical authorities. Fifteen years passed between the commission and the consecration of the high altar.

St Martin’s Church in Alekseyevskaya Novaya Sloboda already stood on this site. Seventeenth-century documents also call it the church ‘in Khlebniki’. The nearby road led from the Tagannye Gates to the Andronikov Monastery. The new building was to replace a parish church whose name long predated Zhigarev and Kazakov; alongside replacing its walls, a decision had to be made about its dedications.

The Old Church and a New Petition

One of these dedications came at the parishioners’ own request. In 1708, nineteen people petitioned for a side chapel dedicated to the Georgian Icon of the Mother of God: in winter, the stone church without a side chapel was too cramped for them. Permission was granted the following year. By the end of the century, St Martin’s Church comprised more than a single space: an inventory of 1775 lists the main, unheated church, a refectory and the vaulted Georgian Icon side chapel.

Zhigarev’s petition of January 1792 therefore concerned a building familiar to the parish. The merchant wrote to the Synod that the church was ‘falling into some disrepair’ and requested permission to dismantle it. On the same site, he intended to build a Church of the Ascension of the Lord, with side chapels dedicated to the Georgian Icon and St Martin the Confessor. The old names would remain, but the high altar of the future church would receive a new dedication.

The Synod replied that same month. The submitted plan was approved on one condition: the main sanctuary was to be ‘round in shape’. This was no instruction about wall colour or decoration. The fundamental layout was changing. In 1792, the old church was dismantled and construction of the new one began; a word in the document granting permission had become an architectural challenge.

According to the Orthodox Encyclopaedia, the original plan was intended to be almost square. When the eastern end was made semicircular, a semicircular narthex was added to the west to preserve the symmetry. A passage led from it to the bell tower. Thus, a requirement concerning one sanctuary was reflected on the opposite side of the building. Today, the two curves read as parts of a single design, although only the eastern one had prompted the change.

Walls Before Worship

Who built the Church of St Martin the Confessor? Zhigarev and Kazakov answer different parts of that question. Zhigarev commissioned and funded the building. Kazakov’s authorship became established in church records and later research; the researcher Irina Bezrukova does not cite an original contract bearing his signature. Such caution also matters because Rodion Rodionovich Kazakov can easily be confused with his teacher, Matvey Fyodorovich Kazakov, who shared his surname.

The architect of the Church of St Martin the Confessor gave this parish building an unusually grand scale. Deep, eight-column loggias occupied its northern and southern sides. A tall, windowed drum crowned by a dome rose above the main body, while a passage linked the western narthex to the three-tier bell tower. Columns recur throughout the building, uniting the curved walls, projecting wings and soaring bell tower.

The plan is elongated from east to west. Loggias project on either side of this axis, with rounded forms at its ends. The spacious main body has none of the refectory space familiar from many parish churches — a feature the encyclopaedia notes alongside its four-pier structure. The Synod’s permission concerned the sanctuary, but in the completed building that individual condition is almost impossible to separate from the overall composition.

A book on Moscow’s churches published in 1796 already reported that St Martin’s Church was being rebuilt with Zhigarev’s funds. By 1798, Bezrukova concludes from parish documents, the main building had been erected. Its exterior form may have been complete before the space within. The researcher links the delay in consecration to the interior decoration: completing the masonry and preparing the church for worship proved to be separate milestones.

In 1798, a privately funded elementary school building was completed beside the church at Zhigarev’s expense. The Moscow Board of Public Welfare thanked him for its construction. Two buildings commissioned by the same patron now stood side by side; the church still awaited the consecration of its high altar.

Two Side Chapels and the High Altar

Records from October 1800 testify to the completion of the side chapels. The priest Fyodor Alekseyev reported that the chapels dedicated to the Georgian Icon of the Mother of God and St Martin the Confessor were finished, decorated and supplied with liturgical furnishings and vessels. Archival research dates their consecration to the same month. Both side chapels were ready before the high altar, marking another milestone between the start of work on the great building and its completion.

The part dedicated to the Ascension had to wait longer. The new building had walls, a dome and two consecrated side chapels, yet its main space remained unfinished. This changes how we view the construction years. A single date cannot convey the sequence of work: the architectural forms, decoration and consecrations followed one another at intervals.

In 1800–1801, Antonio Claudio worked on the interior paintings. The large oval icons for the main iconostasis are also attributed to him. Documents concerning the monument note the Italian character of its wall paintings; these were later renewed and restored. The oval icons offer an insight into the artist’s work, but the present interior cannot be regarded without qualification as an untouched survival from the early nineteenth century.

After Kazakov

Rodion Kazakov died in 1803. The high altar was consecrated later, so he did not live to see his project fully completed as a place of worship. The Orthodox Encyclopaedia notes unfinished details of the exterior decoration and the continuation of interior work after his death. His ambitious design lived on through the work of others, whose names the documents relating to this episode do not reveal.

The Ionic capitals of the smaller order of columns remained unfinished, as did the frieze of the crowning entablature. The overall appearance makes these details easy to overlook. The building’s graceful symmetry took shape over years and did not mean that every detail had been completed.

Rows of columns set a measured rhythm along the side façades, but the upper part of the building is more complex: a dome rises above the large central drum, with four smaller domes alongside it. To the west, the bell tower’s two upper tiers are circular, echoing the drum. From the eastern sanctuary to the top of the bell tower, Kazakov united the building’s different parts through repeated forms.

In 1806, the high altar dedicated to the Ascension was consecrated. The parish history names Metropolitan Platon as having performed the consecration. That year completed the sequence of ecclesiastical milestones begun with Zhigarev’s petition, although some exterior details remained unfinished. Between the original commission and the final consecration came the dismantling of the old church, the construction of the new one, two side chapels, the painter’s work and the architect’s death.

The church was repaired after the fire of 1812; its decoration and paintwork changed over the centuries that followed. During one of the repairs after the fire, the previously open passage to the bell tower was enclosed with masonry. The rounded apse, western narthex, loggias and soaring tower preserved the composition, although the surfaces visible today have undergone later work.

St Martin’s name did not disappear when the Ascension altar was consecrated. It remained the dedication of one side chapel and the familiar name of the whole church. These two dedications reveal the history of the Church of St Martin the Confessor without a complete break with the former parish: the high altar marked the new church, while St Martin’s name linked it to the one that had stood here before 1792.

On a Tour of Taganka the Church of St Martin the Confessor is recognisable by its dome and bell tower. Yet the visual story of its construction begins with the less conspicuous curve at the eastern end. Tracing it through to the western narthex makes the architect’s response to the Synod’s condition clear: a change at one end called for balance at the other.

The document setting out that condition is now needed by the researcher. From the street, it is unnecessary. The eastern wall still follows the prescribed line, answered on the opposite side by the western semicircle. Between them lie years of work that left the form visible long after the sequence in which it emerged had ceased to be obvious.

Sources

1. I. P. Bezrukova. ‘An Architectural Monument of the Late 18th Century — the Former Church of St Martin the Confessor in Moscow’
2. Orthodox Encyclopaedia. ‘Kazakov, Rodion Rodionovich’
3. State Historical and Cultural Expert Assessment Report on the Church at 15/2 Aleksandra Solzhenitsyna Street
4. Parish of the Church of St Martin the Confessor. ‘Pages from History’