Description of the attraction
The Church of St. Nicholas in Tolmachi is active, also has the status of a temple-museum at the State Tretyakov Gallery, in fact it is one of its halls. Separate exhibits from the Tretyakov Gallery are kept within the walls of the church, including items of church utensils and icons of the Vladimir Mother of God, "The Descent of the Holy Spirit on the Apostles", the image of St. Nicholas. In addition to them, the most famous icon of the master Andrei Rublev "Trinity" is transferred from the gallery to the church on the feast of the Trinity. It was painted in the first half of the 15th century and has been kept in the Tretyakov Gallery since 1929.
The first building of the church was wooden; it has been mentioned since 1625 as the Church of St. Nicholas the Wonderworker in Tolmachi - or Tolmatskaya Sloboda, in which the translators of the Ambassador Prikaz lived. The name of the settlement also gave rise to the names of some streets in the capital, for example, Tolmachevsky lane. At the end of the 17th century, the church was rebuilt in stone; history has preserved the name of the person who donated money for the construction. It was Longin Dobrynin, he was a parishioner of another church - the Resurrection in Kadashi, but, nevertheless, he helped the parish of St. Nicholas Church in Tolmachi. The temple in Kadashi was also built with the money of the father and son of the Dobrynins two years earlier.
The main altar of the renovated St. Nicholas Church was consecrated in honor of the Descent of the Holy Spirit, therefore the temple was also called Soeshestsky. In honor of Saint Nicholas, a throne was consecrated and transferred to the refectory. In the second half of the 18th century, another side-altar appeared near the temple - Pokrovsky, also arranged with donations made by the merchant widow Ekaterina Demidova.
In the 19th century, the temple was renovated twice: in the 30s, with the participation of the architect Fyodor Shestakov, a bell tower and a new refectory were built, and in the 50s at the expense of Alexandra Tretyakova, mother of the most famous representatives of this family - Sergei and Pavel Tretyakov, and other merchants the quadrangle of the temple and the main altar were renewed.
Pavel Mikhailovich Tretyakov, who founded the Tretyakov Gallery, was himself a zealous parishioner of the church, and demanded the same diligence from the employees of the gallery. Almost immediately after the revolution, in 1918, the gallery was declared the property of the Soviet Republic. The Nikolskaya Church in Tolmachi was closed in 1929, four years later its building was transferred to the Tretyakov Gallery and adapted for storing paintings and sculptures. Later, the storehouse in the former church was connected to the gallery by a two-storey building. Divine services in the church were resumed only in the 90s.
