Nikolay Lanceray
Encyclopedia
Nikolay Lanceray was a Russia
Russia
Russia or , officially known as both Russia and the Russian Federation , is a country in northern Eurasia. It is a federal semi-presidential republic, comprising 83 federal subjects...

n architect, preservationist, illustrator of books and historian of neoclassical
Neoclassicism
Neoclassicism is the name given to Western movements in the decorative and visual arts, literature, theatre, music, and architecture that draw inspiration from the "classical" art and culture of Ancient Greece or Ancient Rome...

 art, biographer of Charles Cameron
Charles Cameron (architect)
Charles Cameron was a Scottish architect who made an illustrious career at the court of Catherine II of Russia. Cameron, practitioner of early neoclassical architecture, was the chief architect of Tsarskoye Selo and Pavlovsk palaces and the adjacent new town of Sophia from his arrival in Russia in...

, Vincenzo Brenna
Vincenzo Brenna
Vincenzo Brenna was an Italian architect and painter who was the house architect of Paul I of Russia. Brenna was hired by Paul and his spouse Maria Fyodorovna as interior decorator in 1781 and by the end of 1780s became the couple's leading architect...

 and Andreyan Zakharov
Andreyan Zakharov
Andreyan Zakharov was a Russian architect and representative of the Empire style. His designs also alternated neoclassicism with eclecticism. He was born to a family that was employed by the Admiralty board, and his greatest work was his renovation and expansion of the Admiralty building...

. Lanceray was associated with Mir Iskusstva
Mir iskusstva
Mir iskusstva was a Russian magazine and the artistic movement it inspired and embodied, which was a major influence on the Russians who helped revolutionize European art during the first decade of the 20th century. From 1909, many of the miriskusniki also contributed to the Ballets Russes...

 art circle and was a proponent of Russian neoclassical revival
Russian neoclassical revival
Russian neoclassical revival was a trend in Russian culture, mostly pronounced in architecture, that briefly replaced eclecticism and Art Nouveau as the leading architectural style between the Revolution of 1905 and the outbreak of World War I, coexisting with the Silver Age of Russian Poetry...

 school.

Biography

Nikolay Lanceray was a son of sculptor Eugene Lanceray
Eugene Lanceray
Yevgeny Yevgenyevich Lansere , also spelled Eugene Lanceray , was a Russian graphic artist, painter, sculptor, mosaicist, and illustrator, associated stylistically with Mir iskusstva ....

 (senior, 1848–1886) and Yekaterina Benois (daughter of architect Nikolay Benois
Nicholas Benois
Nicholas Benois was a Russian architect who worked in Peterhof and other suburbs of St Petersburg.Benois was born of French parents in Russia and studied at the Imperial Academy of Arts from 1827 to 1836...

). Father died when Nikolay was six; he and five his siblings were raised by the Benois family
Benois family
The Benois family was a family of prominent 19th and 20th Century Russian artists, musicians, and architects, descended from French confectioner Louis Jules Benois, who came to Russia in 1794 after the French Revolution.-Prominent family members:...

 and lived most of their childhood at grandfather's Saint Petersburg
Saint Petersburg
Saint Petersburg is a city and a federal subject of Russia located on the Neva River at the head of the Gulf of Finland on the Baltic Sea...

 place. Lanceray completed high school in 1898 and joined the Imperial Academy of Arts
Imperial Academy of Arts
The Russian Academy of Arts, informally known as the St. Petersburg Academy of Arts, was founded in 1757 by Ivan Shuvalov under the name Academy of the Three Noblest Arts. Catherine the Great renamed it the Imperial Academy of Arts and commissioned a new building, completed 25 years later in 1789...

, where his illustrious uncle Leon Benois
Leon Benois
Leon Benois was a Russian architect. He was the son of architect Nicholas Benois, the brother of artists Alexandre Benois and Albert Benois, and the grandfather of the actor Sir Peter Ustinov...

 chaired one of three architectural workshops. Lanceray graduated from the Academy in 1904.

In 1903 Lanceray, Vladimir Shchuko and Ludwig Shroeter settled on a long survey tour of Pskov
Pskov
Pskov is an ancient city and the administrative center of Pskov Oblast, Russia, located in the northwest of Russia about east from the Estonian border, on the Velikaya River. Population: -Early history:...

 and Novgorod regions; Mir Iskusstva
Mir iskusstva
Mir iskusstva was a Russian magazine and the artistic movement it inspired and embodied, which was a major influence on the Russians who helped revolutionize European art during the first decade of the 20th century. From 1909, many of the miriskusniki also contributed to the Ballets Russes...

published Vandalism in Novgorod and Pskov governorates (Вандализм в Новгородской и Псковской губерниях) by Lanceray and Schuko in 1907. He worked as a practical architect in Moscow and as restorator
Building restoration
Building restoration describes a particular treatment approach and philosophy within the field of architectural conservation. According the U.S...

 in Saint Petersburg. Soon, however, he quit construction for historical studies of Russian Enlightenment
Russian Enlightenment
The Russian Age of Enlightenment was a period in the eighteenth century in which the government began to actively encourage the proliferation of arts and sciences. This time gave birth to the first Russian university, library, theatre, public museum, and relatively independent press...

, and co-authored Tsarskoye Selo
Tsarskoye Selo
Tsarskoye Selo is the town containing a former Russian residence of the imperial family and visiting nobility, located south from the center of St. Petersburg. It is now part of the town of Pushkin and of the World Heritage Site Saint Petersburg and Related Groups of Monuments.-History:In...

 in the reigh of Elizabeth
, contributing over 200 graphical sheets. He was a regular author of Starye Gody magazine that published his 1911 biography of Andreyan Zakharov
Andreyan Zakharov
Andreyan Zakharov was a Russian architect and representative of the Empire style. His designs also alternated neoclassicism with eclecticism. He was born to a family that was employed by the Admiralty board, and his greatest work was his renovation and expansion of the Admiralty building...

 and 1912-1913 essays on Gatchina Palace
Gatchina Palace
The Great Gatchina Palace was built in 1766–1781 in Gatchina town by Antonio Rinaldi for Count Grigori Grigoryevich Orlov who was a favourite of Ekaterina II. The Gatchina Palace is located on the hill above Lake Serebryannoe. It combines themes of a medieval castle and a country residence....

 and Tsarskoye Selo
Tsarskoye Selo
Tsarskoye Selo is the town containing a former Russian residence of the imperial family and visiting nobility, located south from the center of St. Petersburg. It is now part of the town of Pushkin and of the World Heritage Site Saint Petersburg and Related Groups of Monuments.-History:In...

. Lanceray continued collecting material on neoclassical architects, primarily Brenna, Cameron and Zakharov, until his arrest in 1931.

In 1925-1928 Lanceray and French architect Jessel worked on redesigning ship interiors at Northern Wharf
Severnaya Verf
Severnaya Verf is a shipyard in Saint Petersburg and major shipyard producing both naval and civilian ships. Originally was founded exclusively for military shipbuilding....

. This collaboration was used by OGPU as a pretext for arresting both artists. Lanceray was arrested on
March 2, 1931, charged with "espionage
Espionage
Espionage or spying involves an individual obtaining information that is considered secret or confidential without the permission of the holder of the information. Espionage is inherently clandestine, lest the legitimate holder of the information change plans or take other countermeasures once it...

 for France
France
The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...

" and sentenced to death, commuted to 10 years of hard labor. Instead of GULAG
Gulag
The Gulag was the government agency that administered the main Soviet forced labor camp systems. While the camps housed a wide range of convicts, from petty criminals to political prisoners, large numbers were convicted by simplified procedures, such as NKVD troikas and other instruments of...

 camps, he ended up in a Leningrad
Leningrad
Leningrad is the former name of Saint Petersburg, Russia.Leningrad may also refer to:- Places :* Leningrad Oblast, a federal subject of Russia, around Saint Petersburg* Leningrad, Tajikistan, capital of Muminobod district in Khatlon Province...

-based architectural sharashka
Sharashka
Sharashka was an informal name for secret research and development laboratories in the Soviet Gulag labor camp system...

. From July 1931 to June 1935 Lanceray was involved in numerous NKVD
NKVD
The People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs was the public and secret police organization of the Soviet Union that directly executed the rule of power of the Soviets, including political repression, during the era of Joseph Stalin....

-sponsored projects; he is credited with designing interiors of coast guard
Coast guard
A coast guard or coastguard is a national organization responsible for various services at sea. However the term implies widely different responsibilities in different countries, from being a heavily armed military force with customs and security duties to being a volunteer organization tasked with...

 ships, Moscow Kremlin
Moscow Kremlin
The Moscow Kremlin , sometimes referred to as simply The Kremlin, is a historic fortified complex at the heart of Moscow, overlooking the Moskva River , Saint Basil's Cathedral and Red Square and the Alexander Garden...

 offices, aluminum smelters
Smelting
Smelting is a form of extractive metallurgy; its main use is to produce a metal from its ore. This includes iron extraction from iron ore, and copper extraction and other base metals from their ores...

 and apartment blocks in Moscow and Leningrad. Lanceray's prison drafts, signed in his own name, participated in public architectural contests, as if the architect was still free.

Isaac Brodsky, Ivan Fomin
Ivan Fomin
Ivan Aleksandrovich Fomin was a Russian architect and educator. He began his career in 1899 in Moscow, working in the Art Nouveau style. After relocating to Saint Petersburg in 1905, he became an established master of the Neoclassical Revival movement...

, Alexey Shchusev
Alexey Shchusev
Alexey Viktorovich Shchusev ), 1873, Chişinău—24 May 1949, Moscow) was an acclaimed Russian and Soviet architect whose works may be regarded as a bridge connecting Revivalist architecture of Imperial Russia with Stalin's Empire Style....

, Vladimir Shchuko and other influential artists pleaded in favor of Lanceray, and he was released in August 1935. Freedom spelled bitter dissatisfaction to Lanceray: while he was behind bars, the Academy of Architecture commissioned biographies of Cameron and Zakharov to other writers. He still managed to sign a contract for a biography of Vincenzo Brenna
Vincenzo Brenna
Vincenzo Brenna was an Italian architect and painter who was the house architect of Paul I of Russia. Brenna was hired by Paul and his spouse Maria Fyodorovna as interior decorator in 1781 and by the end of 1780s became the couple's leading architect...

.

For three following years Lanceray chaired an architectural workshop on site of Experimental Medicine Institute (Leningrad), collecting pieces of information for his book on Brenna. He was regularly harassed by NKVD
NKVD
The People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs was the public and secret police organization of the Soviet Union that directly executed the rule of power of the Soviets, including political repression, during the era of Joseph Stalin....

 searches and interrogations. In May 1938 Lanceray sent the final version of Vincenzo Brenna to the publisher; ten days later he was arrested, again for espionage charges. Lanceray broke down under torture and pleaded guilty; this time, he was sentenced for five years in Kotlas
Kotlas
Kotlas is a town in the southeast of Arkhangelsk Oblast, Russia, situated at the confluence of the Northern Dvina and Vychegda Rivers. Administratively, it is incorporated as a town of oblast significance . It also serves as the administrative center of Kotlassky District, by which it is...

. In 1941 the Kotlas camp was herded, on foot, to Moscow; fellow inmates carried ailing Lanceray on their shoulders. The foot march was followed with rail transport to Saratov
Saratov
-Modern Saratov:The Saratov region is highly industrialized, due in part to the rich in natural and industrial resources of the area. The region is also one of the more important and largest cultural and scientific centres in Russia...

; there, Lanceray suffered a heart attack and died on May 6, 1942.

Espionage sentences against Lanceray were lifted posthumously in 1957; first edition of Vincenzo Brenna was published in 2006.

Sources

  • Vityazeva, V. A., Modzalevskaya, M. A. (2006, in Russian) Istorik russkoy arhitektury Nikolay Lanceray (Историк русской культуры Николай Лансере)
    • in:
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