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380 VOLODYMYR I. MEZENTSEVhalf-columns were composed of yellow brick, whereas the facades werebuilt up from red brick. This method of two-color brickwork was unusualfor Old Rus'. Marks on the bricks were made mainly by princely artisans.The church walls were adorned with an arched frieze. The interior and, evidently,also the exterior were decorated with carved whitestone details.Fragments of the walls with relief wattle ornamentation, similar to whitestonecarving on the churches of Vladimir-on-the-Kliaz'ma, have beenfound. Particularly handsome was the church's floor, which was coveredwith multicolored glazed ceramic tiles and slate slabs with smalt mosaicinlay. Preserved is a fragment of the floor with a colorful mosaic depictionof a peacock, a unique artistic work of Old Rus'. The interior wasdecorated with frescoes.The Cathedral of the Annunciation (including the galleries), in its dimensionsand rich decoration, rivaled Chernihiv's Cathedral of theTransfiguration and the other outstanding eleventh-century churches ofRus', and revived the traditions of that era's splendid church architecture.The closest analogues of the Annunciation church of 1186 in Chernihiv arethe main church of old Halych, the Cathedral of the Dormition built in 1187by Iaroslav Osmomysl, and the largest church of old Vladimir-on-the-Kliaz'ma, the Cathedral of the Dormition, completed in 1189 by VsevolodIII. 53 The similarity of these three outstanding churches of Chernihiv,Halych, and Vladimir-on-the-Kliaz'ma reflects the rivalry of these townsand the most powerful Rus' princes of the epoch recorded in the Lay ofIgor' 's Campaign—Sviatoslav Vsevolodovich, Iaroslav Osmomysl, andVsevolod III. Vsevolod Sviatoslavich, one of the heroes of the Lay, calledin the poem "Bui-Tur Vsevolod," the younger brother of Igor' and a participantin his campaign against the Cumans in 1185, was buried inChernihiv's Cathedral of the Annunciation in 1196. 54The Church of St. Paraskeva P"iatnytsia in the old market of Chernihivis considered a masterpiece of Old Rus' architecture The year of its foundationand the identity of its founder are unknown, but from its architectureand building techniques it can be assigned to the late twelfth or early thirteenthcentury. The church was greatly rebuilt in the seventeenth andeighteenth centuries in the style of the Ukrainian Baroque, in which aspectit was preserved until its destruction during World War II. In the late 1940sand early 1950s the church's ruins were studied, and by 1962 it had been5354Rybakov, "Drevnosti Chernigova," pp. 91-93.PSRL, vol. 2, col. 696.