Iconography appeared in Russia in the 10th century, after in 988 Russia adopted a new religion from Byzantium – Christianity. By this time, in Byzantium itself, iconography had finally turned into a strictly legal, recognized canonical image system. Worship icon became an integral part of Christian doctrine and worship. Thus, Russia received the icon as one of the “foundations” of the new religion.
Symbolism of the temples: 4 walls of the temple, united by one head – 4 directions of the world under the authority of a single universal church; the altar in all the churches was located in the east: according to the Bible, in the east there was a paradise earth – Eden; according to the gospel, in the east the ascension of Christ took place. And so on, so on. On the whole, the painting system of the Christian church was a strictly thought-out whole.
The extreme expression of freethinking in Russia in the 14th century. in Novgorod and Pskov, the heresy of the strigolis began: p. was taught that religion is an internal matter of everyone, and everyone has the right to be a teacher of faith; they denied the church, the clergy, church rites and sacraments, urged the people not to confess to the priests, but to repent of the sins of “mother of the raw earth.” The art of Novgorod and Pskov in the 14th century in general clearly reflects the growing freethinking. Artists tend to images more lively and dynamic than before. There is an interest in dramatic subjects, an interest in the inner world of man is awakened. The artistic quest of 14th century masters explains why Novgorod could become the site of one of the most rebellious artists of the Middle Ages – the Byzantine Theophanes the Greek.
Theophanes came to Novgorod, obviously, in the 70s of the 14th century. Prior to that, he worked in Constantinople and nearby cities to the capital, then moved to Kaffa, from which he was probably invited to Novgorod. In 1378, Theophanes performed his first work in Novgorod – the Church of the Transfiguration of the Savior was frescoed.
It is enough to compare the old man Melchizedek from this church with Jonah from the Skovorodsky monastery to understand how a stunning impression Feofan’s art should have made on his Russian contemporaries. The characters of Theophanes not only outwardly do not resemble each other, they live, manifest themselves in different ways. Each character of Theophanes is an unforgettable human image. Through movement, posture, gesture, the artist knows how to make the “inner man” visible. Gray-bearded Melchizedek majestic movement, worthy of a descendant of the Greeks, holds the scroll with the prophecy. In his posture there is no Christian obedience and piety.
Theophanes thinks the figure three-dimensional, plastic. He clearly understands how the body is located in space, therefore, despite the conditional background, his figures seem to be surrounded by space, living in it. Theophanes attached great importance to the transfer in painting volume. His way of modeling is spectacular, although at first glance it seems sketchy and even careless. The basic tone of the face and clothing Feofan puts wide, free strokes.
On top of the main tone in some places – above the eyebrows, on the bridge of the nose, under the eyes – with sharp, well-aimed strokes of the brush, he causes light glares and spaces. With the help of glare, the artist not only accurately conveys the volume, but also achieves the impression of a convexity of form, which the master did not reach at an earlier time. Illuminated with flashes of glare, the figures of the saints at Theophan become especially trembling and mobile.
A miracle is always invisibly present in Theophanes art. Melchizedek cloak so quickly covers the figure, as if he had the energy or was electrified.
The icons of Theophanes have hardly reached our days. In addition to the icons from the iconostasis of the Annunciation Cathedral in the Moscow Kremlin, we do not know reliably any of his easel work. However, with great probability Theophanus can be attributed to the remarkable “Assumption“, written on the reverse side of the icon “The Mother of God of the Don”.
The “Assumption” depicts what is usually depicted in the icons on this plot. At the burial bed of Mary are the apostles. The shining gold figure of Christ with a snow-white baby — the soul of Our Lady in hands — goes up. Christ is surrounded by a dark blue mandorla. On the sides of it are two tall buildings, vaguely resembling two-story towers with mourners in the icon of the Assumption.
The apostles of Theophanes are not like the strict Greek men. They huddled around the bed without any order. Not a joint enlightened grief, but the personal feeling of everyone — confusion, surprise, despair, sad reflection on death is read on their simple faces. Many seem to be unable to look at the dead Mary. One peeks out slightly from behind the neighbor’s shoulder, ready to lower his head at any moment. The other, huddled in the far corner, with one eye watching what is happening. John the Theologian almost hid behind a high bed, staring in despair and horror because of him.
Above Mary’s odrome, above the figures of the apostles and saints stands Christ shining with gold with the soul of Our Lady in hands. The apostles do not see Christ, his mandorla is already a sphere of a wonderful, inaccessible to human sight. The apostles see only the dead body of Mary, and this sight fills them with the horror of death. They, “earthly people”, are not given to know the secret of the “eternal life” of Mary. The only one who knows this mystery is Christ, for he belongs to two worlds at once: the divine and the human.
Christ is full of determination and strength, the apostles are sorrows and inner turmoil. The harsh sounding of the colors of the Assumption reveals, as it were, the extreme degree of emotional tension in which the apostles are. Not an abstract, dogmatic view of the afterlife bliss and not a pagan fear of earthly, physical destruction, but an intense reflection on death, a “clever feeling”, as such a state was called in the fourteenth century, is the content of the wonderful icon of Theophanes.
There is a detail in Theophan’s The Assumption, which seems to be concentrating in itself the drama of the scene. This candle is burning by the bed of Our Lady. She was not in the Tithean Assumption, or in Paromenskoye. In the Desyatinny Assumption, Mary’s red shoes are depicted on a stand next to the bed, and the precious vessel is a naive and touching detail that connects Mary to the earthly world. Placed in the center, on the same axis as the figure of Christ and the cherub, the candle in Theophan’s icon It seems to have a special meaning.
According to the apocryphal tradition, Maria lit it before she learned about her death from an angel. A candle is a symbol of the soul of the Mother of God shining to the world. But for Theophanes it is more than an abstract symbol. silence in mourning, feel the coldness, immobility of Mary’s dead body. A dead body is like a burned down, cooled wax, from which the fire has disappeared forever – the soul of a man. The candle burns out, it means that the time of the earth’s farewell to Mary ends. his mandorla, fastened, like a locking stone, by a fiery cherub. In world art there are not many works that with such force would allow to feel movement, the transience of time, indifferent to what it counts, inexorably leading everything to ntsu.
Andrei Rublev
Little is known about the life of Andrei Rublev, the famous artist in Moscow. Chronicles indicate the cities in which he worked, and the church, which he decorated with icons and frescoes. They report that Rublev died in “old age in the Andronik monastery in Moscow, of which he was a monk. Essentially, information about the life of a great artist is exhausted. Sources indicate that Rublev’s art was famous and recognized during his lifetime. Contemporaries called him” a wonderful painter, “a husband in virtue eaten away.” In memory of the people, Rublev remained as an ideal Russian artist. It was not by chance that the Stoblavy Cathedral of 1551 ordered the icon painters to “paint icons from the ancients and samples like Greek Kie painters wrote, and as Andrei Rublev wrote. ”
The question of the ownership of a work by Rublev is now the subject of lively scientific discussions. Reliable only holding the artist – the icon “Trinity”. All other works with a greater or lesser degree of probability are attributed to the renowned master. The high craftsmanship of the icons of the Zvenigorod Order, their stylistic closeness to the Trinity, make it possible to recognize in them one more genuine work of the artist. It is documented that the icons in the Kremlin Blagoveshchensk and Zagorsk Trinity Cathedrals, as well as the icons and frescoes in the Assumption Cathedral in Vladimir, are executed by Rublev in collaboration with other masters.
Rublev continued the best traditions of modern Russian and Byzantine art. A strong influence on him, of course, had the work of Theophanes the Greek. (Under the leadership of Feofan, Rublev in 1405 painted the Annunciation Cathedral of the Moscow Kremlin). Perhaps, Rublev was familiar with the Novgorod paintings of Theophanes and his students. He inherits not only high technical mastery – for him, as well as for Theophanes, icon painting is a “clever doing”. Both Theophanes and Rublev seek to express the “wisdom of life” in art.
However, in the works of the Moscow artist the pictorial concept of the 14th century underwent fundamental processing. Feofanov’s “individualistic” beginning is a free, broad stroke, the sketch of a performance is not typical of Rublev’s painting.
The highest creative achievement Rublev – icon “Trinity”, created by him shortly before his death (between 1411-1422 gg.).
According to Christian doctrine, God, being one in essence, is threefold in faces. The first person of the Trinity is the god-father, who created heaven and earth, all that is visible and invisible. Her second face is God the Son, Jesus Christ, who took the image of a man and descended from heaven to earth for the salvation of people. The third person is the god-spirit of the holy, giving life to all things. The human mind is incomprehensible, as one exists in three persons, therefore the doctrine of the Trinity is one of the main tenets of the Christian religion and as such is objects of faith, and not the subject of reflection.
The deity, being the unity of three persons, is everywhere and has no definite appearance. The true kind of deity is unknown to man “God is not seen as anyone” (John 1.18). However, sometimes, as the Christian tradition says, God appeared to people, assuming the appearance available to man. The first who saw God was the righteous elder Abraham. God appeared to him in the guise of three angels. Abraham guessed that under the guise of three wanderers he accepts the three faces of the Trinity. Filled with joy, he set them under the shade of Mamvriysky oak, ordered his wife Sarah to bake unleavened bread from the best flour, and to slave the servant to slaughter a tender body.
It was this biblical story that formed the basis for the iconography of the Trinity. She is depicted as three angels with stranger staffs in their hands. Angels solemnly seated at a table laden with food. In the distance you can see the chambers of Abraham and the legendary oak of Mumbre. The pious Abraham and Sarah offer food to the winged wanderers. Thus, the Trinity is depicted on the fresco of Theophanes the Greek in the Church of the Transfiguration of the Savior and on many Moscow, Novgorod, Pskov icons of the 14th-15th centuries.
In the icon of Rublev the extraordinary simplicity, the “few words”, with which the biblical event is reproduced, are striking. From the Old Testament story, the artist chose only those details that give an idea of where and how the action took place: the mountain (a symbol of the desert), the Chambers of Abraham and the Mamre oak. Such courage in relation to the sacred text is in vain to look for in the earlier icons. Old Russian painting, without reasoning above, followed the sacred text, which set itself the task of giving a visible image of everything the Bible and the Gospel narrated, in the person of Rublev neglected the letter of Scripture, and tried to reveal its philosophical meaning. From the art of illustrating iconography turned into the art of the knower.
Three winged angels are seated around the table on which the cup with the head of the sacrificial calf stands. The Mortal Cup is the compositional and semantic center of the icon of Rublev; depending on what the image means by the victim gets a different meaning.
The first meaning of the sacrifice is the calf, with whom Abraham treated the divine wanderers. In this case, the icon depicts the feast of Abraham, and its action takes place on earth. However, for the earthly feast the image is too sad and the food is scanty. The icon, no doubt, has a deeper meaning. The mortal cup with the head of a calf has long been perceived as a symbol of the redemptive mission of Christ, who sacrificed himself for the salvation of people. In this interpretation, the meal of the three angels takes on a symbolic meaning. It means sending a son to the father-god to accomplish the feat in the name of the people, the son’s readiness to sacrifice himself and the blessing of this sacrifice by the comforter spirit. In this case, the “Trinity” is not earthly action, but heavenly. festive table – a type of sacrificial altar. The gestures of angels are filled with special symbolic meaning. The oak, the chambers and the mountain are transformed into emblems denoting the eternity of the god-father, the inspiration of the god-son, the sublime selflessness of the spirit-comforter.
The genius of Rublev, the artist, was manifested in the fact that the complex, deep philosophical content of the “Trinity” is organically revealed by means of painting — the language of plastics, rhythm, color.
In Russia, between the 14th and 15th centuries, the doctrine of a trinity deity, representing “one force, one power, one domination,” became a religious symbol of the country’s political unity. It was not by chance that the motto of Moscow at the turn of the century was: “We live by the Trinity, we are moving and the Eesmas”. The “Trinity” of Rublev, which became, as it were, the moral symbol of the new Russia, is imbued with the same idea.