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Stepan Demyanovich Kovnir, (Ukrainian: [/kovːˈnir stɛːˈpɔn dɛmːˈjanːoːˌvɪtʃ/] Ковнір Степан Дем'янович; Russian: Ковнир Степан Демьянович ), who was born in 1695 and died in 1786, was a Ukrainian builder and master mason in Kyiv. His nearly sixty years of labor brought aesthetic unity to the ancient, sprawling center of Ukrainian culture and education, the Kyiv Pechersk Lavra, which is now a UNESCO World Heritage Site. A serf without any formal education, he became an early master of Ukrainian baroque architecture as well as organizing a school for masons.

Birth and background

Stepan Demyanovich Kovnir
Ковнір Степан Дем'янович
Memorial plaque to Stepan Kovnir on the exterior of the Church of St. Anthony and St. Theodosius, Vasylkiv, Ukraine
Born	1695 Hvozdiv, Ukraine
Died	1786 Kyiv, Ukraine
Citizenship	Ukrainian/Russian
Occupation(s)	Master Builder, Architect
Years active	1721 - 1777
Buildings	Trinity Church, Kytayiv Church of St. Anthony and St. Theodosius, Vasylkiv St. Andrew's church, Kyiv Kyiv Bratsky monastery bell tower
Projects	Kyiv Pechersk Lavra Complex Kovnir's Building Bell tower of the Far Caves Bell tower of the Near Caves Great Bell Tower Assumption Cathedral, pediments Klov Palace
Design	Ukrainian baroque

Stepan Kovnir was born in 1695 in Hvozdiv, a village on Ros River south of Kyiv, owned by St. Michael's Hermitage, a wealthy monastery in the Kyivskoi subdistrict of the Kyivskoho administrative district under Cossack Bohdan Khmelnytsky's hetman state. Today the village is in the Vasylkiv district. The family he was born into were poor peasants who had come there after the destruction of Hvozdiv which had completely depopulated the village. Though they were peasants they were not serfs. This meant he was not bound to the hermitage and thus, after his family had died, he was able to travel to Kyiv in 1718.

Kovnir, the builder

Kyiv Pechersk monastery, foremost center of Ukrainian religion and culture for centuries, suffered a devastating fire that year which destroyed most of the buildings in the monastic compound. For some unknown reason Kovnir entered into serfdom under that very wealthy Lavra and worked for nearly the next half-century. Monastic duties were not required of him however. Instead he joined brick masons H. Teslenko and Iosyf Rubashevsky and engineers S. Chelakayev and N. Vladimirov in the rebuilding efforts. He learned the trade under his first teacher, Moscow architect Ivan Kalandin, beginning with humble projects: warehouses, storerooms, a bakery and a locksmith's shop. Over the succeeding decades he would work and rework these buildings following repeated fires from 1727 to 1773, incorporating folk motifs into the structure and stucco facings.

Eventually the largest one came to be called Kovnir's Building in honor of his efforts there to develop the Ukrainian baroque architectural style that celebrates the region's ancient, distinct culture. That building began as a bakery built immediately east of the monastery's cathedral. Later, a print shop was added to the north side of the bakery, but Kovnir gave the assemblage a unified facade that makes it appear as a single building. This facade features six gables ornamented with carved pillars and curving bands of opulent plant motifs. In 1729 he collaborated with Yuriy Belinsky to create the volutes, pediments and gold disks for the roof of the Assumption Cathedral at Pechersk Lavra. Unfortunately, this cathedral was reduced to rubble by the German army during World War II and the restored pediments are not faithful reproductions.

Kovnir deepened his skills from 1741 to 1745 when Gottfried Johann Schädel consulted with him to replace the monastery's old, wooden bell tower with the Great Bell Tower, built of brick, plaster and ceramic in a classical style. The top three tiers of the 4-story structure have Doric, Ionic and Corinthian columns, successively. The capitals of the columns are cast ceramic and no two of the Corinthian capitals, with their lush acanthus leaves, are alike. In contributing to all of this, Kovnir was developing a very high level of ability. In 1749 he participated in the construction of St. Andrew's church, Kyiv, working under Ivan Michurin on a European baroque design by Francesco Bartolomeo Rastrelli. In subsequent decades, he would also work with engineers Daniel de Bosquet, S. Chelakayev and N. Vladimirov, and architects Pyotr Neelov, F. Vasiliev and Ivan Hryhorovych-Barskyi.

Kovnir's career moved from strength to strength. From 1754 to 1761 he fulfilled his dream to supervise construction of a church and belfry in the town of Vasylkiv, just a few miles from the village of his birth: the Church of St. Anthony and St. Theodosius. With its molded, square Corinthian half-columns that support the double cornice under the roof and with its curved, tipped roof gables, it resembles the Cathedral of the Nativity of the Blessed Virgin in Kozelets. The Kozelets cathedral was built in the Chernihiv region during the same period this Vasylkiv church was built near Kyiv and Hryhorovych-Barskyi was the cathedral's architect. However, the Vasylkiv church forgoes the cathedral's roman mock pediments above each window in favor of curving volute ornaments. Its ground floor windows are larger and the church's overall proportions are more harmonious. It bears a memorial plaque expressing the gratitude of the community for the building of the church.

In 1755 he was released from serfdom, became a master mason, was made a burgher and given a manor in the general area of his birthplace, what is now the Holosiiv region, in exchange for finishing Klov Palace, a hostelry intended for noble and royal guests of Pechersk Lavra and which had been begun by Neelov. This allowed him to enter into a contract on his own behalf with Manasiy Maksymovich, the rector of Kyiv-Mohyla Academy and archimandrite of its neighboring Kyiv Bratsky Monastery, to erect the bell tower of that monastery in 1756. The tower was square, three stories high and topped with a baroque dome and cross. Its style, visible in architectural plans still in existence, indicates the architect could have been Hryhorovych-Barsky. The delineation between the stories was subtle and the bottom story was an arched gateway, flanked with staircases. It dominated Podil's visual landscape as the main gate between the ecclesiastic compound and the area's main market to its west until it burned down in 1811.

In 1757 he built a book bindery south of Kovnir's Building and east of Assumption Cathedral. From 1754 to 1761 Kovnir supervised the building of the bell tower for the Church of the Nativity of the Theotokos in the Far Caves at the Pechersk Lavra, based on sketches by Hryhorovych-Barsky. Built mostly after his release from serfdom, this has been called his masterpiece for the delicate and innovative plaster motifs Kovnir used above the archivolt of the first tier and between the arches of the second. They combine the roses and trefoils of baroque aesthetic with the delicacy of rococo, all while expressing this using motifs from traditional Ukrainian embroidery. Kovnir finished the final major architectural element at the Pechersk Lavra when he erected the bell tower for the Church of the Annunciation at the Near Caves in 1759 to 1763, thus bringing aesthetic unity to the monastic complex. In 1767 he completed building Trinity Church for the hermitage in Kytayiv, ornamented with Ukrainian baroque motifs in stucco. In 1772 and 1773 Kovnir built a second book bindery at Pechersk Lavra after Charles de Chardone changed the architectural style of the one he built in 1757 from Ukrainian baroque to Renaissance when he remodeled it and added a second story.

Kovnir, the man

Kovnir was bound to the Kyiv Pechersk monastery which had great independence from the civil and political control of either Pechersk or Kyiv. There is a story that, having learned that the mayor of Pechersk was selling favors and influence, he executed his own form of swift and decisive justice right where the activity was occurring. The mayor later complained, "Kovnir threw off his wolfskin coat, grabbed me by the hair, and bending me almost to the ground, punched me mercilessly in the face. If everyone had not dispersed, he would have beaten me even more."

With his wife Yevdokia Ivanovna, Kovnir was the parent of two sons, Vasyl and Matvyi. His childrens' surname was Kryshtalevsky (Кришталевські) indicating that this was his own surname at birth and it had been changed to Kovnir when he became a serf. The family lived in the Pechersk parish of the Church of the Saviour at Berestove, immediately north of the Lavra and part of its world heritage site. He was a founding patron of that church and his portrait would have been on the wall there, perhaps in fresco. As a patron he engaged in community activities to benefit his parishioners, most of whom were military. The relationships and network he built there are reflected in the fact that his son Vasyl would become a warrant officer in the Kyiv Reiter Command, an exclusive military unit with high social prestige. Kovnir had been able to educate his children because literacy was a requirement for membership. The way Vasyl was mentioned in the reiters' muster roll of 1772 indicates that he wasn't from a military, noble, clerical, peasant or laborer family. He was referred to as "Malorusian," the Russian term for Ukrainians, but his social class is not mentioned. Vasyl married Tatyana Efremivna, with whom he had a daughter named Iryna Vasylivna Kryshtalevska. She would go on to marry Serhii Frolovych Zhukov, a lieutenant of the 2nd Battalion. The Zhukovs were a family with a dedades-long tradition of reiter service. Kovnir's other son, Matvyi, married Kateryna Timofievna.

Kovnir had more interests than just building. Lavra architect Z. Valkevich was the landlord of a market in Podil, the commercial hub of the area, and Kovnir rented shops number 56 and 68 from him in the 1760s. He had a third shop in Bellman's Row in addition to a butcher shop. At some point Kovnir also organized a school for masons. At his death in 1786 he owned other property as well. When his son Vasyl's widow died in 1792, her will left their daughter Iryna the "Kovnir's courtyard with all the choirs, lying in the Kyiv-Pechersk fortress, not far from the market."

Kovnir's memory after his death

Kovnir was forgotten during the succeeding centuries of Russian rule of Ukraine, when it suppressed Kyiv Pechersk Lavra and Ukrainian language, culture and identity. Information about his life was rediscovered by B. A. Krytsky and published in his 1954 Ph.D. thesis, "Народные мастера архитектуры XVIII века на Украине: Степан Ковнир: Архитектурно-строительная деятельность" (People's masters of architecture in 18th century Ukraine: Stepan Kovnir: Architectural and construction activity).

Kovnir's creations were admired by Merited Architect of Ukraine, Professor Yuri Aseev, who wrote: "Kovner did for the Lavra what Sansovino did for St. Mark's Square in Venice - he completed the historical process of assembling a harmonious architectural complex."

In Vasylkiv, the exterior wall of the Church of Saint Anthony and St.Theodosius bears a gold-painted plaque, placed there in 1988, that reads,

From the depths of eternity
to deepest eternity
glory be to the name
of
Stepan Kovnir
1695 - 1786
Builder of this church
The beauty of our city
From his grateful friends
His countrymen
In the significant year of the
thousandth anniversary
of the founding of Vasylkiv.

Gallery

• 
  Bell tower at the Far Caves, Pechersk. (1754-61). Note the fine plaster work above the door and on the second level. 50.4319°N 30.5622°E / 50.4319; 30.5622
• 
  Cathedral of Anthony and Theodosius, Vasylkiv. (1756-58). Note the capitals of the columns. 50.1803°N 30.3205°E / 50.1803; 30.3205
• 
  Holy Trinity hermitage church, Kytayiv. (1763-67). Note the tracery above the door. 50.3668°N 30.5422°E / 50.3668; 30.5422
• 
  Kovnir's Building, Pechersk. (1721-73). Note the plaster work in the gables. 50.4356°N 30.5577°E / 50.4356; 30.5577
• 
  Klov Palace, Kyiv (1754-61). 50.4421°N 30.5326°E / 50.4421; 30.5326
• 
  Bell Tower of the Near Caves, Pechersk. (1759-62). 50.4339°N 30.5601°E / 50.4339; 30.5601
• 
  Great Bell Tower, Pechersk. (1731-45). Note the capitals of the Corinthian columns. They are cast ceramic and each is unique. 50.4347°N 30.5563°E / 50.4347; 30.5563
• 
  St. Andrews Church, Kyiv (1747-1754). 50.4588°N 30.5180°E / 50.4588; 30.5180
• 
  Pediments, Assumption Cathedral, Pechersk (1767-79). Originals destroyed by German military during World War II.
• 
  The second book bindery, Pechersk. (1767-71). The first, remodeled, one is the yellow building at the right edge of the photo. 50.4361°N 30.5576°E / 50.4361; 30.5576

See also

Kyivan Cave Monastery (Internet Encyclopedia of Ukraine)

Further Reading

Berlinskii, Maksim Fedorovich (1826). A Description of Kiev-Pechersk Lavra(in Russian)