Anastasiya Shiryaeva
Moscow Theological Academy, Russia
The Dormition Cathedral of the Holy Trinity — St. Sergius Lavra was modeled after the Kremlin Dormition Cathedral in 1559–1585 but was bigger in size. There have been two iconostases in the history of this stately church. The first one was a tyablo iconostasis, which existed until late 17th — early 18th century (?) according to different sources. The second iconostasis — a frame one to which this research is devoted, has remained in the cathedral up to now.
The second iconostasis has always drawn attention of researchers. For example, the professors of Moscow Theological Academy of the 19th century E. E. Golubinsky and the archpriest Alexander Gorsky, Yu. A. Olsufyev, V. P. Zubov and others wrote about it. T. Yu. Tokareva has carried out the reconstruction of the first iconostasis, being guided by the inventories of the monastery from 1641 and 1701.
While working with archival materials, we revealed existence of the images in cartouches on curbstones under the local tier of the iconostasis, which have not been seen so far. There are two drawings of the plan of the iconostasis found in RGADA archive, which tell about these images. But there are no researchers who have ever mentioned these images on curbstones in their works about the iconostasis of the Dormition Cathedral of the Holy Trinity — St. Sergius Lavra.
The iconostasis of this Cathedral is a magnificent monument including examples of the most widespread schemes going back to the 16th–17th centuries. But unfortunately the names of the masters and their origin still have not been found out or documentarily certified. They are still in the area of assumptions. The same problem concerns the attribution of both separate icons and the iconostasis in general. Only some of the icons of the local tier have been precisely attributed. As for the opinions of researchers about the time of the creation of the second iconostasis, they differ because of the multitude of the remaining layers (coats of paint).