en repudiating her origin
and traditions, she tried to become Western, in spite of her own
genius.

In the first place, the oldest religious edifices of Russia affect
slender forms, in elevation, which distinguishes them from the
purely Byzantine buildings.

Evidently, the Russians, from the Twelfth Century on, employed
in their religious edifices a geometrical plan that was different
from that employed by the Byzantine architects, but one very close
to that admitted by the architects of Greece during the early years
of the Middle Ages.

In Georgia and Armenia, a number of ancient churches, the majority
of which are very small, are also of this character. But, while
submitting to these dispositions, as soon as they adopted masonry
instead of wood for building, the Russians gave quite individual
proportions to their religious edifices.

By the Fifteenth Century, Russia had combined all the various elements
by the aid of which a national art should be constituted. To
recapitulate these origins: We find already among the Scythians
some elements of art fairly well developed, foreign to Greek art
and derived from Oriental tradition. Byzantium, in constant contact
with the people of Southern Russia, made its arts felt there; but in
the North, some slight Finnish influences and then some Scandinavian
ones, make themselves felt. From Persia likewise, Russia received
impulses in art, on account of her commercial relations with that
country through Georgia and Armenia. In the Thirteenth Century,
the Tartar-Mongol domination was imposed upon Russia, employed
her artists and craftsmen, and thus placed her in direct contact
with that Mediaeval Orient that was so mighty and so brilliant in
all its art productions.

At length left to herself, in the Fifteenth Century, Russia constituted
her own art from these various sources. But this variety of sources
is more apparent than real. It is enough to examine Scythian
ornamentation to recognize that it is of a pronounced Indo-Oriental
character. Byzantine taste has exerted a preponderating influence
upon Russia. But it has been recognized that this Byzantine style
is itself composed of very varied elements among which figure most
largely the art of Eastern Asia, and that from this Byzantine art
Russia likes to appropriate the Asiatic side in particular.

So that we may regard Russian art as composed of elements borrowed
from the Orient to the almost complete exclusion of all other