Vasili Yermolin is known to have been a merchant, contractor, and head of an artel of the Muscovite builders.
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 (Вознесенский монастырь) 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.