Between East and West, the sources of Romanesque art
Long considered a provincial school of Byzantine art, Armenian architecture was recognized at the beginning of the 20th century for its originality, richness and antiquity. There were even enthusiasts who, like the Viennese scholar J. Strzygowski, gave it a founding role in the genesis of Christian arts, at the origins of the Romanesque and Gothic, ensuring the link between the arts of the East and the West. The antiquity of some of its monuments has thus suggested that Armenia may have influenced those of the Christian West, such as the church of Germigny-des-Prés (9th century), whose plan is reminiscent of that of the cathedral of the Holy See in Etchmiadzine (5th century). With their conical domes and facades of volcanic stone, its churches are reminiscent of the Romanesque churches of Auvergne rather than the round-domed chapels of their Byzantine neighbours. Armenian architecture is at the crossroads of East and West. The earlier Armenian Middle Ages, as elsewhere in the Christian East, provided builders for pre-Roman and Romanesque Europe, which sent artists to Armenia, where Frankish painters decorated the Tatev Monastery in the 10th century. In the service of a national Church, architecture developed autonomously, but not autarkically: close to the school of Georgia, it provided it with its first models before being influenced by it. Little influenced by Byzantium, which Armenia has always distrusted, it was receptive to Islamic motifs.
Pagan foundations of a deeply Christian art
When it becomes Christian, Armenia claims a thousand-year-old architectural experience born in Ourartou. Enriched by the contributions of Persia, Greece and Rome, this experience constitutes the foundations of an architecture which will assert itself in Christianity, even if it is difficult to share this heritage in the genesis of national art. A survivor of the pagan period, the Hellenistic Temple of Garni, a peripatetic pedimented building from the 1st century AD, symbolizes the penetration of Roman art. There is a clear break with the Ourartou, whose remains at the citadel of Erebouni bear witness to a high level of mastery of construction and the art of decoration and frescoes, under the influence of Assyria. Decorative elements and the use of stone vaulting in Garni, on the other hand, provide a link between Roman and Christian art, as can be seen in the churches of Ererouk or Avan, close to the Syrian palaeochristian buildings, which reproduce the figure of the classical temple in the single- or three-nave basilicas. The stone vault will evolve very early towards the dome, and the plan of the cathedral of Etchmiadzine, which Gregory the Illuminator would have seen in a dream, already obeys the principle of a dome resting on 4 pillars. For 1,500 years and up to the present day (Grigor Lusavoritch Cathedral of Yerevan, 2001), Armenian builders have applied this principle in every way, as if to say that their art is the form best suited to their country. And in fact, it expresses this communion between the builder and his mineral environment. An art that resists monumental and decorative overbidding, expressing humility in the face of nature, but also a concern for discretion in a hostile political context; an art that combines basic figures - the square and the circle - or the dome at the intersection of the arms of the cross, from which an infinite number of variants can be derived. The anonymity of the builders maintains the mystery of the conception of this sacred art: with the exception of a few great masters(varpet), organized in "fraternities", such as Hovhan (Zvartnotz), Trdat (Ani, Sainte-Sophie) or Minas (Haghardzine, 13th century), the chronicles are discreet about the architects, who are less honoured than the clients, sometimes represented in bas-reliefs on the pediments, bearing the model of the building. The buildings, rarely exceeding 40 m in length, are designed to withstand earthquakes. The technical feat consists more in defying the earth than in approaching the sky, the illusion of which is created by the dome symbolizing the celestial vault that crowns the buildings, resting on engaged supports, sometimes on free pillars, which will then take the form of massive columns or composite pillars. Its permanence through the centuries has sometimes led to the criticism that this architecture has lacked innovation due to its attachment to tradition, especially since religious art has mobilized most of the creative energy; and there are few remains of civil architecture - bridges and fortifications - that are more vulnerable to war and invasion.
Ani or the golden age of Armenian arts
After the cathedral of Etchmiadzin, domed buildings spread throughout Armenia during its first golden age, illustrated by the church of St Tripsimé (Etchmiadzin, 7th century). These models were developed after a less productive period due to the Arab occupation. From the 9th to the 11th century, the return to independence allowed a renaissance of architecture, marked by a clear tendency to elevate its lines, while a more secular art developed. The cathedral of Ani (989-1001), the capital of Bagratide Armenia (whose ruins are in Turkey), illustrates this vertical thrust enhanced by the fine arcatures running along its high façades and the drum of its dome, visible in the other churches of the Shirak. The sculptural and pictorial decoration testifies to the refinement of the Ani school, which had a great influence, the architect of Ani Cathedral, Trdat, having been called upon in 989 to restore Saint Sophia in Constantinople.
The influence of the monasteries
Coinciding with the decline of the cities destroyed by the Seljuk and Mongol raids (12th-14th centuries), monasteries developed in the north under the impetus of the Zakarids. The architectural traditions adapted to the spiritual and academic vocation of these high places of the spirit, where the monks lived entrenched behind walls enclosing churches, libraries, refectories and conventual buildings, all precious testimonies to civil architecture. It was then that the gavit or jamatoun appeared, attached to the western facade of the east-facing churches. A sort of narthex, this cubic building, half-religious and half-profane, used as a vestibule, a meeting room and even a mausoleum, is crowned by a dome, generally with a central skylight, borrowed from rural architecture, supported by four pillars or by pairs of intersecting arches around which the interior space, reminiscent of Western crypts, is articulated. The oldest narthex (1210) is found in the monastery of Haghbat, which saw the birth of another innovation, due to the West: the bell tower or campanile, a little apart from the churches, as in the neighbouring monastery of Sanahin, which reminds us of the two-storey museum-churches, topped with a rotunda (Noravank or Eghvard). If the Armenian Church has never anathematized the image, frescoes are rare and their art has developed under Georgian influence; one can admire them in Kobaïr, Akhtala or Tatev. For a long time limited to geometric figures and arcatures, ornamental sculpture developed in the 13th-14th centuries, with bas-reliefs showing Christ and the Virgin Mary on the tympanums of portals, animal or heraldic representations. Armenian statuary borrowed unreservedly from the ornamental themes of the Muslim world (which forbade any human or animal representation), such as the large interlacing, known as the "Seljuk chain", and above all, the stalactite decorations (in Arabic, muqarnas), as in Geghard or Harintch.
Renaissance in the respect of the tradition
After the disappearance of the Zakarid principality, it was not until the 17th century that architectural activity resumed, benefiting from the boom in Armenian trade and a relative peace under Persian rule, of which the Blue Mosque (Goy) in Yerevan is a fine example. The construction of bell towers with openwork columns became widespread, flanking ancient buildings, including the cathedral of Etchmiadzine. The sculptural repertoire was enriched with Persian, Ottoman and European motifs, in response to the eclectic tastes of the patrons, especially merchants. The Western influence is discreet and is reduced to floral motifs adorning the tympanum of some churches, such as that of Moughni, whose brightly coloured frescoes, like those covering the walls of the cathedral of Etchmiadzin, due to the Hovnatanian brothers (18th century), seem to have been inspired more by Persia. In the 19th century, Armenia was covered with buildings reproducing ancient models (churches of Shushi or Gavar), while the Russian presence was expressed by a few bulbous bell towers and above all by the promotion of civil architecture, with dachas rubbing shoulders with traditional houses with balconies and wooden verandas in the villages. Stone buildings replaced the mud houses, giving rise to an original architecture of which the centre of Gyumri and certain streets of Yerevan, with buildings and private mansions with elaborate facades where Russian imperial influences and traditional motifs mingle, give an idea. This first "bourgeois" art will be stopped by the sovietization. It was then necessary to build socialism by taking inspiration from national traditions and destroying part of this original heritage. The so-called national architecture adapts the elements of religious art to the "atheistic" watchwords of the high priests of the culture of Soviet Armenia, of which Yerevan was the field of experimentation, for better or for worse. After independence, the authorities set about removing the worst, but preserving the evidence of that pompous neo-Armenian Soviet architecture, exemplified by Yerevan's Republic Square. While they have not given in to the temptation of skyscrapers, developers and urban planners have not spared some of the vestiges of the Tsarist era in changing the appearance of the capital.
