The Moscow Museum houses a white stone frieze block from the Epiphany Cathedral of the Epiphany Monastery which was found during archaeological excavations and dates back to the 14th century.
The carved pattern of the white stone block is dominated by circles. Paired circles make up the lower part of the pattern, while the upper part consists of diagonal trefoils joining at the center, from which two shoots stretch to the middle of the upper edge, forming a heart-shaped element. A heart of two petals in the center is a rare motif in Moscow carving. The technique is characterized by a trimmed surface that is unpolished in the convex areas.
The Epiphany Monastery, which was established in the second half of the 13th century, is considered one of Moscow’s oldest monasteries. Its first buildings were made of wood. In the 14th century, representatives of Moscow nobility began to be buried there. At the turn of the 15th century, a small four-cupola white-stone church in the style of early Moscow architecture was constructed at the Epiphany Monastery. The church was decorated with a three-row carved frieze and painted with frescoes. The construction of the cathedral was funded by the Velyaminov family, the boyars with high social status who were related to the Moscow princes. Near the western façade of the refectory, constructed in the late 15th and early 16th centuries, a necropolis was built for members of the Velyaminov family.
At the end of the 17th century with the blessing of Adrian, Patriarch of Moscow and All Russia, a new Epiphany Cathedral was built in the style that is often called Naryshkin style. Nowadays, it is located on Epiphany Lane in Kitay-gorod. The construction was financed by Princes Dolgorukov and Golitsyn, as well as by Natalya Naryshkina, the mother of the future Emperor Peter I. The foundations of the Epiphany Cathedral’s walls were constructed in Kitay-gorod in the 1690s, using the stones collected during the dismantling of an earlier 14th-century building. During the archaeological excavations, a number of blocks were found bearing the remains of archaic fresco painting, and several blocks decorated with the typical Early Moscow Style carving.
