a bird’s-eye view of the 15th century fortified monastery on the Solovetsky Islands in the White Sea off Archangel, with title and key to 28 points of interest below. One of the largest christian citadels in northern Russia, it is described as Stavropygial because it owed its canonical allegiance directly to the Patriarch of Constantinople rather than a local bishop. In the sky above are the figures of Our Lady of the Sign, depicted in a keeled kokoshnik-shaped cartouche, flanked on either side by the saints Zosima and Savvaty, who are credited with founding the monastery around 1436. Most of the site depicted dates from the 16th century when it expanded under Filip Kolychev, Saint Philip II of Moscow, (1507-1569), who was Metropolitan of Moscow under Ivan the Terrible, but whose criticism of the Tsar led to his assassination. Outside the main monastic complex can be seen the St Petersburg Hotel on the left, a dry dock, power station and a cemetery to the right, with Cape Seldya and a biological station in the foreground. After the Russian Revolution, the monastery was closed down, and converted for use as a labour camp in the 1920s. It thus became a prototype for the notorious Gulag system, and it housed many dissident writers. The main activity was logging, until the area became deforested and it was converted to a naval cadet college, in the 1930s. Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, a small religious community has sprung up within its walls once more,
chromolithograph, 450 x 600 mm. (17 3/4 x 23 5/8 in), occasional slight spotting and faint browning,