Mower County transcript. [volume] (Lansing, Minn.) 1868-1915, 1874-03-12

~ il Il
WARD NONE WITH CHART
----------------- $50 -
|TY, MINNESOTA, TIL
MOSCOW.
\ Wilderness III Domc~-Ilow The, Appear
AxgreguteIy umd In Detail.
From Atkinsons Art Tour.
Moscow is the best colored city I
know-the finest Of all cities when seen
in distant perspective, with her thou
sand and ono golden domcs glittering
in the sun against the sky. Carlo viewed
from the citadel, and Constantinople
from the tower of G.lata, are COMPARE
lively grey and colorless. Moscow
when illumincd under sunset shines
with Oriental splcndor the eve is daz-
lied rs by brilliant stage scene, more
like enchantment than reality. Not
that the color is refined or i'll strict
harmony; often, indeed, all that can lie
said is that the painter has used his
paint-pot generously, that yellow
ochres, reds, blue and gold are laid on
thickly. But anything that may be
wanting on the part of the artist is sup
piled by the hand of nature: time
brings the barshest of pigments into
tone atmosphere casts = delicate. veil
over the perspective vision distance in
short, lends enchantment. It often
happens in semi-barbaric structures
that what the artist intended may be
commonplace anu coarse, but that what
he did not intend, that is, unforeseen
accidents, or combinations which will
out by the happy change of circum-
stances, proves most effective. Such
are the panoramas which arrest the
travellers steps as the eye sweeps over
the house-tops, cllimneys, tow
ers, trees, gilded and many-colored
domes which stretch from foreground
to horizon. There are cities which the
stranger should never enter, there are
buildings which the critic can scarcely
dare approach. But magnitude and
multitude move the imagination. One
minaret may be mean, one dome may
insignificant, but the moment the unit
becomes thousand, and as soon as
space sufficiently expands for atmos-
phere to suggest magnitude ormystery,
then literal facts give place to phantoms,
and poems and pictures are wrought
out of even the commonest materials.
Yet these colored domes, though they
float as a thing of beauty between earth
and sky, are rather dubious in character;
indeed, sometimes they bore themselves
upward and outward as excrescences,
The construction, too, is rather grim
crack in the Kremlin I examined
several cupolas under repair then the
outer covering is removed, ribs, as of
an umbrella or of a lady's crinoline, are
laid bare. A makeup thus flimsy and
sight admits of more easy adaptation
than bricks and mortar to the many
varied forms which fancy may suggest.
The curves and outlines assumed are
graceful, often fantastic; in some
directions the eye seems to look on a
number of giant gourtls, in others
gested, while the smaller domes may be
mistaken for pepper-boxes, decanters,
or castors familiar OH the dinner-tables.
In short the variety of forms already in
existence is all but infinite, and others
might readily be invented. Specially
grateful is a common type, not larger
in diameter than minaret, bearing a
golden dome ut it's crown. One pretty
effect I observed within the Kremlin.
The newly wrought cupolas of highly
FURNISHED surface serve as Claude
Lorraih mirrors to reflect the moving
clouds, the trees and encircling land
scape. 1t may we'll be imagined how
gay and glittering city looks thus set
with jewels and shining with patens of
bright gold. The colors, too, are
scarcely less varied than the forms
besides gold there is silver, often blue
and green and red, and sometimes, also
a green ground is set with gold stars;
inscriptions with letters of gold may
likewise he seen as friezes around
towers. So much, indeed, is Moscow a
city of colors, that the walls even of
ordinary dwellings, are illuminated
brightly with red and yellow, and the
roofs are green. The climax is, of
course, reached by the Kremlin, which
dominates over the city lying beneath
as a church, palace, and citadel.
This stronghold, the acropolis of
Moscow, is fanked by massive and
picturesque towers, surmOunted by
rough steep roofs, masked and colored
like the scales of serpents also over
gateways and at angles are many other
towers, which group like domes and
pointed pinnacles and golden crosses
into ever-varying panoramas as the
spectator makes the circuitof the walls,
or as the sun, travelling from east to
west, altemates light and shade the
scale is sufficiently extented to gain
changeful play of atmospheric effect.
One of the towers, that of the "Spaski"
gate, was erected by an EngGshman,
Christopher Galloway, in 1926. The
"Troitski tower was also built by
him. While the Easements are heavy
and gloomy, after the Oriental fashion,
the upper stories, or sky outlines in
infinite fantasy, play with cloud-land
and seem so to hold themselves aloof
from earth as to become creatures of
elements. The Kremlin should be seen
by sunset, twilight and moonlight-no
building has sucl, varied moods.
RVD