My friend, Prince Alexander Trubetskoy, once slipped me the writings…
My friend, Prince Alexander Trubetskoy, once slipped me the writings of his grandfather, Prince Evgeny Trubetskoy — and man, did that light a fire in my head! This wasn’t just dry philosophy. This was a soul-stirring, heart-pounding dive into the mystical language of Russian sacred art.
Trubetskoy wasn’t just any thinker. He was the first to crack open the hidden code of the ancient Russian icon and our church architecture, pulling back the curtain on what those onion domes are really whispering to the skies.
Forget the textbook tales about snow sliding off the dome. Trubetskoy burned that myth to ashes. He showed us the onion dome is not about weather — it’s about prayer set on fire. Where the Gothic spire shoots straight to heaven like an arrow, the Byzantine dome covers the earth like a celestial tent, our Russian dome? It’s pure flame. It burns. It glows. It aches skyward like the soul in prayer.
He looked at the towers of Ivan the Great and saw not stone, but a candle blazing over Moscow. The cathedrals of the Kremlin — giant candelabras flickering against the eternal snow. To the eye of faith, these domes are not architecture. They’re a vision. A promise. A glimmer of the Heavenly City calling across the white fields of our world.
And the beauty of it? It’s not just about the outside spectacle. Trubetskoy tells us the true fire is inside — the church as the cosmic hearth where all creation gathers under the hand of God, pulling the broken shards of the world back into unity.
That’s the hidden Russia he speaks of. Not the one of borders and banners, but the one that blazes in gold and flame, in icons and domes, in the yearning of every soul for a world made whole again.
Explore the original essay — Prince Evgeny Trubetskoy. Contemplation in Colors. Three Essays on the Russian Icon Moscow: InfoArt, 1991.
First photo – Cathedral of the Annunciation in Kremlin, second – me and Prince Trubetskoy.
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