combined in one all the places in the Bible that tell of how Elijah took refuge in the desert from the wicked deeds and persecutions of Ahab and Jezebel, and represents him in a moment of pain and grief when he has turned round at a slight noise and sees the raven bringing him a small loaf. Between two lofty rocks in the mountains, at the mouth of a deep cave, the weary prophet has sits in deep dejection leaning his head on his hand. Suddenly he hears the noise of the raven’s wings, turns his head and sees the raven, but is not surprised at it and his left arm still rests quietly upon his knees.
Both the rocks and the clothes of the prophet are brightly coloured in shades of brown and only the slabs of rock are picked out with complementary pale green shadows and whitish highlights. In Nóvgorod painting these slabs with cleavage planes are preserved and are called ‘little heels’ (pyátochki). The pale blue lights on the edges of the folds of the chiton bring out the relief of the figure. Above the chiton is thrown a sheepskin fastened round the throat. Extremely characteristic is the rendering of the heavy massive body, the bony and muscular frame of the tall ascetic: his shaggy hair falling down to his shoulders and his beard spreading out on both sides, harmonising with his sunburnt brick-red face and small head. The general type can only be compared with the well-known type of S. John the Baptist in Greco-Russian icon-painting and perhaps also with S. Jerome in Leonardo’s picture, where he put on the first coat of brown for the anchorite’s body and then probably left the picture as it were purposely unfinished.
The comparison of a Greek original with its later copies will show much about the Russian style; in particular, will make clear to us the simplification of the original which comes about when a journeyman undertakes cheap work. Such is the case in the scheme of rocks and ledges, in the pose of the figure and the drawing of chiton and sheepskin, in the roughness of the face with the head scarcely indicated. But there is one new and characteristic point: the right arm is pressed closely to the breast. So we get a less remote, a more familiar figure of a pious abbot who, not without almost reckoning on it, is accepting the miracle of God’s gift. Vanished is the prophet, the great eremite, his moments of grief and despair, vanished too is the special mark of his deep faith and with it the artistic beauty of the icon.
Colouring and Pigments in Russian Icon-painting
Just as the philological way of studying remnants of antiquity has given way to the archaeological, so now in the history of painting the time has come for a full study, beginning with the theme and the drawing and ending up with the colours. Now that the technique of reproduction in colours has eliminated the hand and become entirely photographic and mechanical, the time has come for science can take into account the historical succession of colouring and pigments and accordingly to make, in icon-painting, a satisfactory distinction between different schools.
Russian icon-painters still distinguish in the history of their craft various schools – Nóvgorod, Pskov, Early Moscow and Stróganov. They base the distinctions upon the colouring; more exactly the flesh tints (in the language of icon-painting (v) okhrénie ‘ochre coat’), which are defined as bright, pale, red, or dark. Further, an icon-painter, after specifying the ochre-coat, pays attention to the tone of the sankir ‘flesh priming’, as he calls the ground coat under all bodies and faces, covered indeed by the ochre layer but appearing in places as a fundamental shadow tint. The reason for this is clear – being unable to study all the details of the drawing, the icon-painter fixes on the visible details of okhrénie, just as students of the history of Western painting traditionally paid special attention to fine shades of difference in the flesh tints. In both cases this method fails to furnish sufficient data, and in important cases connoisseurs study the drawing of hands and fingers, ears and such like to find proofs of their ascription of a painting or drawing to a particular artist. At this point we must recall what has already been said of how the basis of the icon is to be thought in a natural portrait painted for quickness’ sake by the encaustic or wax process. We know further that the progress of this form of painting was a striving for depth and richness of colouring as well as in an airy softness of tint in order to gain a life-like impression, its warmth of flesh tints, and the attractive force of the eyes with their look either penetrating or reflective. The contrasted shadows on the cheeks, brow, and nose, and the bright surfaces on the folds of the draperies gave wax-painting opportunity for rendering a close observation of nature. First, a dark tone was laid on, next the shadows put in with a contrasting light blue and the two patches with their different colours and values were softened by the hot iron, pressed out, to some extent mixed, and this very softening process did away with the sharp edges of the first laying on and blended the tones into a general harmony. The laws of icon-painting demand the same effects, but with the egg or tempera technique they can only be attained in a solid fashion by a long process of laying on one coat after another in gradually heightened tones[49].
43. Saint George (Double-sided icon), Kiev School, end of the 11th century to the beginning of the 12th century.
Egg tempera on lime wood, 174 × 122 cm.
The State Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow.
44. The Prophet Elias in the Desert, 14th century.
Egg tempera on plaster on wood, 35.5 × 28 cm.
The State Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg.
As early as the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, the well-known treatise by the monk Theophilus on various arts was available. It dealt with, in the first chapter, – the mixture of colours for the production of flesh tints, that is, the okhrenie, the colour comprised of white lead, vermilion (cinnabar), red ochre, black, etc., he calls membrana. In this complicated recipe, with its directions as to what should be mixed with which and what must be added later, the part which interests us most is the first coat, which is made of white lead burnt until it gives a yellow or greenish (prasinum) colour[50]. This is precisely the darkish, greenish-olive coat which, both in miniatures and in icon-painting of the Greco-Italian school, forms the first coat and underlies the flesh tint made of a mixture of white lead and vermilion, burnt red ochre, and red lead. The green shows at the edges round the oval of the face and along the nose and makes the shadow; it is for the tenth to thirteenth centuries the mark of Byzantinism in painting. The Greek Painters’ Guide of Dionysius of Fourna shows that the proplasmos of Panselinos might likewise be called okhrenie, being made of white lead, ochre, and green with an addition of black[51]. Flesh colour, when lighted, is made of white lead and red ochre; the region of the eyes beginning with the dark sinking of the orbit is done in black mixed with ochre or umber with red ochre. The Russian Painters’ Guide (Pódlinnik), under the heading ‘how to paint the faces of icons’, gives the following directions: ‘To make sankir, ochre and black: to make the first coat of ochre for faces, mix in white lead, vermilion and red: for the second coat make the ochre lighter: to make shadows mix in a little black and put the shadows in. The icon-painters distinguish, in various styles, sankir of various shades and compositions, but agree in denoting by it a dark tint serving as the ground colour for flesh, yet they do not know the origin and meaning of the word.
A second criterion of different schools the modern icon-painters themselves find in is the so-called ozhivki (from ozhivát, ‘to enliven’), a special kind of whitish highlight which, in the form of fine, curly or hooked lines of a pale mixture of colours or even actual white, ‘enlivens’ the light places by the eyes, on the forehead, nose, lips, and even on the joints of the fingers. Frequent use of these distinguishes the severe Greek manner of the old schools and their number decreases century by century from the fourteenth to the seventeenth, though they continue to survive right through the course of Russian icon-painting as an accepted convention. As a matter of fact, these ozhivki rarely add to the real effect of the painting by bringing out the appearance
It is hardly necessary to recall that the basis of the painting is a layer of gypsum and glue (gesso) spread upon the wood: Dionysius gives directions. Sometimes the wood is first covered with linen: cf. Theophilus, I. xix. See the editions by Hendrie (1847) and Ilg (1874), with English and German translations.
As I read it, the
