Beautiful Surb Astvatsatsin (Mother of God Church), part of Noravank monastic complex in Vayots Dzor province of Armenia, belongs among gems of Armenian medieval ecclesiastic architecture.
The Surb Astvatsatsin, the grandest church of Noravank, is also called Burtelashen (“Burtel-built”) in honor of its financer Prince Burtel Orbelian. The church, completed in 1339, is masterpiece and also the last work of the talented Armenian sculptor and miniaturist Momik, who designed. Near the church there is his tomb khachkar, small and modestly decorated, dated the same year.
Surb Astvatsatsin is a highly artistic monument reminiscent of the tower-like burial structures of the first years of Christianity in Armenia. It is a memorial church. Its ground floor, rectangular in the plan, was a family burial vault, and the first floor, cross-shaped in the plan, was a memorial temple crownedwith a multi-column rotunda. The church is the architecturally dominant structure of Noravank. An original three-tier composition of the building is based on the increasing height of the tiers and the combination of the heavy bottom with the divided middle and the semi-open top. Accordingly, decoration is more modest at the bottom and richer at the top. Employed here as elements of interior decoration are columns, small arches, profiled braces forming crosses of various shapes, medallions, window and door platbands.
The western portal is decorated with special splendor. An important role in its decoration is played by cantilever stairs leading to the first storey across the ground-storey facade, with profiled butts of the steps. The doors are framed in broad rectangular platbands, with ledges in the upper part, with columns, fillets and strips of various, mostly geometrical, fine and intricate patterns. Between the outer plathand and the arched framing of the openings there are representations of doves and sirens with women's crowned heads. Such heraldic reliefs were widely used in 14th-century Armenian art and in earlier times in architecture, miniatures and works of applied art, on various vessels and bowls. The door tyrnpanums are decorated with high reliefs showing, in the ground storey, Virgin Mary with Infant Jesus and Archangels Gabriel and Michael at her sides and, in the upper storey, a half-length representation of Christ and figures of the Apostles Peter and Paul. As distinct from the reliefs of Noravank's vestry, these ones are carved on a plain surface, which gives them greater independence. The figures are distinguished by plasticity of form, softness of modeling and accentuation of certain details of clothing.
A group of the founders of the church is depicted on three columns of the western part of its rotunda. The relief depicting figures of Virgin Mary with Infant Jesus, sitting on a throne, and two standing men in rich attire, one of them holding a model of the temple.
[excerpted and adapted from Armeniapedia]