Spiritual affinities of the Russian Baroque

This article offers a study in art history and spirituality devoted to Russian Baroque, considered from a comparative perspective encompassing both Catholic and Orthodox traditions, from Portugal and Brazil to Moscow and Saint Petersburg. The approach is that of a history of depths, combining architectural analysis, mystical sources, and Orthodox theology. The central idea is that Russian Baroque, far from being a mere Western import, constitutes an authentic expression of Orthodox spirituality: the seventeenth-century Muscovite Baroque embraces the tension between the sacred and humanism, while Rastrelli's Petrine Baroque transfigures Rococo forms into a vehicle for the mystical ecstasy inherited from Gregory of Nyssa and Gregory of Sinai. The theological contribution of the article is to demonstrate that Orthodoxy cannot be reduced solely to Byzantine hieraticism, and that the dynamic of epektasis was able to find, in the Baroque, a legitimate spiritual expression complementary to the Tradition.