to decorate icons with silver-gilt pendants, likewise in the symbolic form of crescents (the word in Russian is hanging tsáta) and to the haloes they began to add earrings and strings of pearls or beads.
As long ago as the fourteenth century, under Greek influence, the Russians began to cover even the figures with plates of silver showing in more or less relief the outlines and folds of the clothes and vestments. Such a plate is called à ríza, properly speaking a garment, especially a chasuble[39]; they were first applied to the large ‘fixed’ icons and afterwards to those which individuals received at baptism or on special occasions. The parts of the figures left unclothed, faces, hands, and the like, all the flesh tints, show through holes in the riza. This is how Paul of Aleppo describes the look of the icons in the Uspenski Cathedral at Moscow: ‘All round the church and about the four piers are set great icons of which you can see nothing but the hands and faces, hardly any of the clothing can be distinguished [i.e. the painting], the rest is thick repoussé silver with niello. The greater parts of the icons are Greek.’ Paul did not distinguish between true Greek icons and copies going back to Greek originals.
Naturally even more decoration was applied to the devotional icon in private hands: this came to stand not merely as a symbol or sign, but a kind of household protector and defender; against evil spirits and the invasion of the Devil, icons of the Martyr S. Nicetas, the vanquisher of evil spirits; against fiery conflagration, the figure of Elias the Prophet or his Ascent in a Fiery Chariot or else of Our Lady the Burning Bush; against murrain among cattle, the icon of S. Blaise (Vlási); from sickness, S. Panteleimon; from sudden death, S. Christopher.
Under Peter the Great the Russian bishops were carried away by his movement for reform and enlightenment in the direction of Protestantism and a purging of faith and ritual and gave the clergy directions to clear the icons of unnecessary ‘additions’. The result was a general reduction of ancient objects in churches, especially of icons valuable for their antiquity or for their mountings. Pearls taken off icons are (or were) shown by the bushel in rich monasteries.[40] At the same period, there came to an end the perpetual care which is necessary to keep icons from decay and universal destruction set in. An icon requires careful preservation; it must have a more or less steady temperature and suffers from variations in it and also from excessive moisture and dust. The thin layer of gesso that carries the paint swells up, cracks, and scales off, so that many places are left bare. Dust does significant damage, especially if an icon is horizontal, or if a dusty icon gets alternately damp and dry. In the old days the icons were looked after; in the palaces of Moscow there was an Office of Icons (obraznáya paláta, from obraz – icon) which collected old icons and contained shops for mending and cleaning them. Of course, it must be granted that this looking after icons and frequent cataloguing of them led to a general repainting in order to restore them and freshen up the colours, so that an old icon could be returned in a new style.
33. Our Lady Hodegetria, 10th to 17th century.
Gold, gilded silver, wood, enamels, pearls, precious and semi-precious stones, 32 × 33 cm.
Art Museum of Georgia, Tbilisi, Georgia.
34. Saint Luke the Evangelist, 1056–1057.
Miniature of the Ostromir Gospel.
The National Library of Russia, St. Petersburg.
35. The Synaxarium of the Three Hierarchs, 1073.
Miniature of the Sviatoslav Collection.
Museum of History of Moscow, Moscow.
The Technique
36. Saint Luke the Evangelist Painting the Icon of the Virgin, second half of the 16th century. 45 × 36 cm.
The State Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow.
Judged by strictly aesthetic standards the Russian icon, in its composition and drawing, lies in a special ‘sacred province’ outside the ordinary historical conditions to which secular painting answers. This province is not concerned with nature, the ultimate model of the secular painter, nor with perspective or anatomy. The iconic sphere provides a scheme which possesses a majesty consisting of the rejection of the world, of the painters’ illusion, the expression of feeling, the attraction of ideal types. The mere repetition of the same forms and types confers a certain sanctity upon icon-painting and gives all that it performs the character of a conscious service to the transcendental.
All these attributes of icon-painting are derived from the history of Byzantine art; they show the progress of this art in a series of glorious works in mosaic, illumination, ornamented walls of marvellous beauty, decorative objects, fine carving in ivory and in gold. In all these branches it reached high perfection. Is Russian icon-painting to be regarded as a repetition of Byzantine craftsmanship, or has it its own history, its own departures from the Byzantine original, its own national features? This is the problem before us when we try to characterize the Russian icon. Over the course of four centuries we find it in Rublëv’s drawing, the Novgorod manner, the drawing of Dionysius, that of the Stróganov school, the Frankish method and the like, and icon-painters distinguish a still greater number of so-called manners (pis’mo). However, these may be only variations of one style, and for this reason, before proceeding to a historical grouping, we must consider the characteristics of the drawing from the point of view of general art history[41].
Drawing is linked closely to composition, as the latter depends most directly upon drawing. But as Russian icon-painting took over the composition ready-made from the Greek, people are wrongly given to think that drawing in Russian icon-painting remained Greek all the while, as if right up to the end of the sixteenth century it was impossible to speak of Russian drawing. When we come to the icons of Nóvgorod we shall find ourselves unable to maintain that; in them we have nothing but Byzantine drawing. Exact comparison will prove that even the mechanical tracings of a head and shoulders figure of a saint led to confusion and changes of the Greek drawing. Only now that we have gained a real knowledge of Byzantine iconography[42] are we in a position to state that it is, in spite of all its faults of drawing and expression, not only complete but final, as all attempts on the part of painters to make new groupings have only led to want of clearness and characterisation of the subjects.
These compositions were developed over, and served their purpose for, centuries. Only in the seventeenth century do we hear of icon-painters at the Russian court who were also designers (známenshchik), kept to carry out commands in the artistic province, but these commands were for designs for vessels, household objects, and trappings, especially the emblematic designs then so fashionable about Europe. No one ever thought of developing new religious subjects; they all painted after the icon fashion, learning to draw from the icon models and within the limits of icon-painting. This made it possible for even poor craftsmen to draw and paint icons with elaborate detail and with many figures. None the less, they spoilt the figures to the last degree especially when towards the end the supremacy of the Frankish style introduced lively, free, and dramatic poses, and accordingly the human figure was painted in different manners at different times.
37. Andreas Pavias, Christ Pantocrator, end of the 15th century. Teutonic Cemetery, Vatican.
38. Christ Pantocrator, 1363. Egg tempera
I think the word must be Slavonic, but our author connects it with some sort of adornment of Imperial clothes, Codinus,
I hear that a similar stripping of
In particular, let me recommend both for exactness of observation and fullness of illustrations that admirable work of Gabriel Millet,
