SACRED TOPICS OF RUSSIAN CITIES (3). SEMANTICS OF THE INTERIOR OF THE SAINT SOPHIA CATHEDRAL
DOI: 10.23951/2312-7899-2017-2-30-78
In this article, I continue the study of sacred topics of Russian cities. The difference between the concepts of the “new Jerusalem” and the “new Rome” with reference to the early Russian city (on the example of Kiev) is substantiates in the article. The analogy between David, Constantine and Vladimir, on the one hand, and Solomon, Justinian and Yaroslav, on the other hand, as organizers of the sacred city space, is considered and argued. The continuity of architectural dominants in the process of implementation of the Constantinople / Jerusalem’s spatial topics in Kiev (Church of the Tithes – St. Sophia Cathedral) shows in this paper. Semiotic analysis of the image of the Virgin in the apse of Kiev Sophia in the context of the cathedral interior was made by the author. The conducted research allows to make the following conclusions. First, in the syntactic aspect, the picture of the Virgin Oranta is compositionally incorporated into a single visual system with the image of Christ Pantocrator in the dome of the cathedral; this system produces communicative internal temple space. Secondly, the semantics of the image of the Virgin includes such Her meanings as the Queen (the level of denotation), the Church, the Temple, the Eucharist and the City, or the “Indestructible Wall” (the level of connotation). Thirdly, in the pragmatic aspect, the Virgin-Oranta acts as the initiator and mediator of the collective prayerful performative action oriented towards Jesus Christ as Divine Wisdom, that is, Sophia. It is this altar image that is the semantic center and visual core of the city space of Kiev as the “new Jerusalem” and, consequently, the semantic center of the space of the entire Russian state.
Keywords: visual semiotics, Eastern Christianity, city, sacred architecture, visual organization of space, cultural semiotic transfer, St. Sophia Cathedral, syntax, semantics, pragmatics, iconography, performative image
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Issue: 2, 2017
Series of issue: Issue 2
Rubric: ARTICLES
Pages: 30 — 78
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