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Strangely enough but among the very first
icon collectors and connoisseurs were the Old-Believers, often considered to be
backward people. It was among them that Dmitrii Alexandrovich Rovinskii,
1824-1895, did the research for his "History of Russian Schools of
Iconography" published in the eighteen-fifties. About ten years earlier
appeared the first known written essays, first by N.Ivanchin-Pisarev and then
by I. P.Sakharov. Then came the works of F.I.Buslaev, N. P.Kondakov, N.
P.Likachev, N. V.Pokrovshii, V. N.Shchepkin, and the most important of all, The
History of Russian Art under the editorship of Igor Grabar, containing chapters
contributed by several well known artists, art critics and scholars. Its volume
six deals with Russian art until Peter the Great.
There were also a few foreigners in Russian iconography, but primarily as
part of the their studies of Byzantine art. Goethe, the famous German poet, was
an exception. He bewildered many high ranking Russian officials, including the
minister of the interior, when he requested information about Suzdal School of
Iconography. Unable to find a reply, in Suzdal or elsewhere the officials
turned for help to the well known historian Karamzin, who after a thorough
search responded that "There are no iconographers in Suzdal. . . "And
that he could not find any information about the subject matter in the
historical documents. Both the question and the answer were left open to any
interpretation. After the revolution many icons and frescoes perished or were
confiscated and then neglected or sold to foreigners as a result of the
official policy of the Soviets to liquidate the religious life of the country.
Today their artistic value as an important part of the national heritage has
been recognized, though their religious content still hurts the eyes of some
top communist officials. Art critics now generally refer to icons as
"Paintings" and to iconographers as "Artists" or
"Painters," despite the sacerdotal status of many of them, a notion
which was questioned and hardly accepted by most pre-revolutionary art critics
and historians. They erroneously argued that iconography (ikonopis) in Russian,
comprising icons, frescoes, miniatures, must be distinguished from painting -
(zhivopis), although nobody in the west ever intended to draw a distinction
between artists who painted frescoes or pictures with religious subjects and
those who did non-religious painting. In Russia as well as throughout the world
in the early Middle Ages not only the painters but most of the educated and the
literati were ecclesiastics anyhow. The situation changed after the second
world war when ancient icons and frescos reproductions started to travel and to
be exhibited in several western countries, as part of what the Soviets call
"Ancient Art of Russia or Treasuries of Russian Art. "These
bewitching examples of hardly known medieval art have delighted most of those
who have seen them. Their simple lines and pastel colors, unpretentiously put
on canvas or wood boards by Russian monks, produce gratifying effects.
Sometimes they remind us of designs and pictures on ancient Greek vases with
which they have certain features in common.
Though weaned on Byzantine forms and limited by ecclesiastic requirements,
by the end of the 12th century Russian icon painters started to introduce in
their work the ingredients of their traditional folk art. Their colors became
softer, the personages more animated and the background often looked taken from
naive countryside. Traditional decorative motifs of each region and often
distinctive coloring contributed to the evolution of several quasi-independent
local schools of iconography, among which the most important were
Vladimir-Suzdal, Yaroslavl, Rostov, Novgorod and finally Moscow. Foreign
artists, primarily from Byzantium, continued to be occasionally invited by
Russian princes. This practice lasted until the Tatars invaded Russia and put
an end to its independence. Novgorod was an exception; it was here that Russian
religious art continued to survive.
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