the procession as if it were part of some outdated superstition. It was for this canvas that the artist needed the “pagan” image of the archdeacon. The procession itself is pageant, more reminiscent of rural mummers than of a serious ritual act.
The second version of the picture, which Repin began later and completed in 1883, was destined to become the more popular of the two. It was called Religious Procession in Kursk Province (1880–1883). The story told in the work has been slightly altered: in a time of drought a crowd of people is moving across the parched earth. They are carrying a miracle-working icon to a nearby church or monastery, carrying it in such a way as to observe at least the outward forms of the ritual procession. It is not a homogeneous gathering – the viewer will immediately detect a great variety of social types and characters. Depicted here is not just a stream of people but the flow of life itself, a life bereft of joy, full of profound contradictions, social hostility and inequality, but a life which never stops moving for a moment. By placing rough peasant clothes and colourful holiday caftans next to a range of city attire, Repin precisely illustrates the differences in class and wealth between those participating in the procession. The behaviour of the people and their attitudes to what is happening around them, suggests equally vividly another “hierarchy” within the crowd: from the sanctimonious piety of the gentry to the impetuous absorption of the hunchback.
One aspect of the setting is very important, as has often been pointed out. In the first version the crowd is passing through leafy woodland; in the second it is moving along a dusty hillside covered with bare tree stumps. This image of wasteland was a significant sign of the times; when Repin returned home to Chuguyev after his trip abroad, he wrote in distress: “Houses and fences seem to have sunk into the earth as if in a deep sleep, roofs have sagged… Only the exploiters of the land, the kulaks, are not sleeping. They have cut down my beloved woods, so full of childhood memories.”[6]
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