Vasili Yermolin

Who is Vasili Yermolin?

Vasili Dmitriyevich Yermolin was a Russian architect and sculptor.

Vasili Yermolin is known to have been a merchant, contractor, and head of an artel of the Muscovite builders. In 1462, he restored the old parts of the whitestone walls of the Moscow Kremlin from the Sviblov Tower to the Borovitskiye Gates. Also, Vasili Yermolin rebuilt the Frolovskiye Gates in 1462-1464 and decorated them with polychrome reliefs depicting St George and St. Demetrius, protectors of the Muscovite princes. A fragment of the St. George relief is now on display in the State Tretyakov Gallery. The second relief was lost. Judging by the looks of the surviving fragment, both of them represented the finest examples of the old Russian sculpture. During the reconstruction of the Spasskaya Tower by an Italian architect Pietro Antonio Solari, these reliefs were affixed onto it and remained there until they redesigned its top in 1624–1625. Vasili Yermolin restored a church of the Ascension Monastery in the Kremlin between 1467 and 1469. In 1469, he built a refectory for the Troitse-Sergiyeva Lavra which did not survive and renovated the church on top of the Golden Gate in Vladimir.