THE PARALLEL TEXTS IN THE HISTORY OF RUSSIAN MEDIEVAL ART: THREE EKPHRASES IN THE NOVGOROD CHRONICLES OF THE SECOND QUARTER OF THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY
Bibliographic record
Abstract
The article analyses three texts from the second quarter of the 16th century, dedicated to works of ecclesiastical art and architecture, and contained in the Novgorod chronicles. These can be identifi ed as three precisely dated entries, in which individual objects and complexes created in Novgorod on the orders of the Novgorod Metropolitan Macarius and the abbot of the Novgorod Khutyn Monastery Theodosius are described in considerable detail. The first text, which represents a true ekphrasis, describes the royal gates of the iconostasis of the Novgorod St. Sophia Cathedral and the monumental painting adorning the western facade of the cathedral (1527/1528). The second text provides a detailed description in 1533. Finally, the third chronicle entry, dated 1535, discusses the Church of St. Gregory of Armenia in the Novgorod suburban monastery of the Transfi guration of the Savior at Khutyn. The architectural design of the church is notable for its octagonal shape, the presence of five entrances, the positioning of bells at the uppermost point, and the crowning of the structure with a solitary dome. The chronicle names the architect of this building - the Tver master Ermola - and emphasizes that there were no such buildings in the city before, although the church of 1535 was preceded by a small bell tower church from 1445, built at the request of the Novgorod Archbishop Euphemios II. The descriptions under consideration in this article are distinguished not only by literary processing, as evidenced by the use of elevated epithets and the highlighting of the unusualness of the objects and their sizes, but also by attention to detail. This attention enabled the author of the Novgorod ekphrases to “see” not only the number of corners, sculptures, or icon inserts, but also some features of the forms. These texts can be regarded as early manifestations of an inclination towards aesthetic form, which can be termed an interest in art in general. The descriptions are incomplete and fragmented, but they already reveal a historical and persistent view, characteristic of the scribes of the late Middle Ages.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.003 | 0.003 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.004 | 0.006 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.004 | 0.003 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.002 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.005 | 0.001 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".