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Alexander Andreyevich Ivanov, 1806-1858, was
interested in painting from his early childhood. His father, Andrei Ivanov, was
professor at the Academy of Art and one of the faithful advocates of the
neo-classical traditions. The young Ivanov won several awards, graduated with
honors and was awarded a scholarship to Italy from the Society for the
Encouragement of Artists for his painting, "Joseph in Dungeon." His
trip to Italy was jeopardized when the members of the Society discovered that
some details of the painting alluded to the recent jailing of Decembrist
revolutionaries, with whom the young Ivanov sympathized. To clear himself of
suspicion, he agreed to paint a new picture, "The Bellerophon," a
favorite subject in ancient art about the hero of Greek mythology who killed
the fire-breathing monster Chimaera by flying on Pegasus. However, the members
did not show much interest in it, because they found that the subject was much
too complicated for the people to understand its political meaning and
associate it with Emperor Nicholas' liquidation of the revolutionary movement.
Nevertheless, A. L. Olenin, President of the Academy and an influential man,
helped Ivanov undertake his trip. He left St. Petersburg in 1830 and stayed in
Rome until 1857. The subjects for Ivanov's first paintings in Rome were
borrowed from the mythology. A mystic by nature, deeply religious and haunted
by the sufferings and miseries of humanity, Ivanov decided to drop everything
else and dedicate all his life to the salvation of mankind. Social injustice
was his prime concern, and it was through his art that he expressed the hope
that the world could recover from the existing social dilemma in which he
himself was also involved. His idea was to include all his philosophy in one
large painting. For inspiration he turned to the Bible and found that the most
effective way to fulfil his dream would be to paint "The Appearance of the
Messiah to the People." In the opinion of Ivanov "the bright day of
mankind has begun with Christ," and to show him with the people would
raise the hopes of those who suffered. Ivanov was much impressed with the old
Italian masters and spent a lot of time studying them. Then, to get an idea of
how the major picture would look, he first painted "Christ Appearing to
Mary Magdalene," completed in 1835. It earned him an appointment as
academician, but he continued to live in Rome. Then in 1837 he started to paint
his major work, "The Appearance of Christ," a huge canvas almost 25
feet long and 19 feet high. Obviously, he did not expect that he would work on
it for twenty years; yet still, the picture was left incomplete. During these
long years Ivanov made some three hundred sketches. A few were made as the
result of discussions that he had in Rome with the author of "Dead
Souls," who also lived there for many years, and Gogol hoped that the two
works, Ivanov's painting and his poem, would be presented to the public at the
same time. However, this did not happen and the famous "Dead Souls"
was published in St. Petersburg in 1842.
While the subjects and the personages for the main picture and the sketches
were borrowed from the Bible and from mythology, Ivanov did his best to paint
them from nature, using the Italian landscape and most often the country side
around the Franciscan monastery near the lake Albano in the Campagna for the
background to replace Palestine and making drawings of people he knew for the
heads of Christ and the saints. In an effort to perfect the composition of the
painting and to fully transmit his ideas in visual terms, Ivanov started to
make corrections, but often dissatisfied with his new results, he only got into
endless changes. It appears that the composition of the picture alone was
changed about twenty times. In these circumstances it was not suppressing that
he lost the initial spark and the benefit of inspiration, which disappeared and
was replaced by painstaking efforts to finish the picture. He tried hard again
and again and finally he clearly saw that further changes would not bring the
desired results; in 1857 he decided to return to St. Petersburg and exhibit his
work. When the following year "The Appearance of the Messiah to the
People" was shown to the people for the first time, very few showed an
interest in it. Ivanov was even more disappointed when he saw that even his
lovely sketches received the cold shoulder. Obviously, the Russian public was
not yet ready for a change in taste and their admiration was reserved for the
masterpiece of the Russian academic school, for Briullov's "Last Days of
Pompeii," the kind of painting they best understood. The Church was the
only authority which praised Ivanov and found that his Messiah was an
outstanding work of art and an expression of his deep religious feelings. Later
critics evoked praise for the painting, then for a while it was considered a
sensational piece of art of limited value which would get into history but not
as a masterpiece; finally, the Soviet critics have reserved the highest
compliments for it. Some of them have found that Ivanov's rebellion against
academic style, his introduction of simple and naked people, bathed in sunshine
and surrounded by beautiful nature in his Messiah and sketches, was Ivanov's
way of showing his opposition to the existing regime. This sounds more like a
political appraisal not of the painter but of Ivanov the man, who indeed began
his life as a devout Christian, then was hounded by mysticism, came under
strong influence by the German idealist philosopher D. Straus and his book
"The Life of Jesus," and at the end witnessed the revolutionary
period of eighteen-forties.
More important is Ivanov's evolution as a painter. He started as a disciple of
the Academy, but this soon evaporated under the Italian sun and her great
artistic treasury. More important was his own observation of nature ans search
for realistic expression in his art. His Italian scenes show Ivanov as a gifted
landscape painter and an original colorist. Along with routine work on his
major painting, or rather as part of that work, came few hundreds of entirely
differently painted sketches, full of light and sunshine, of freshness and
life, as if an entirely different hand had painted them. This is one of those
curious caprices in art that are hard to understand or explain. Ivanov's truly
exceptional collection of sketches depict moments from the entire life of Jesus
Christ, and religious prophesies based on the Old and New Testaments, presented
with judicious accuracy and deep understanding. His mystic nature could not
find a better subject medium to express itself. Even more important are his
colors and style, and the fact that Ivanov became the leader of the romantic
movement in Russian art and his work influenced several young painters of the
following generation. To a certain degree he also started what, several decades
later, the impressionists and Cezanne continued. Ivanov died of cholera in
1858.
Here we see Ivanov's mythological painting - Priam pleading with Achilles for
the return of Hector's body, painted in 1824. For two of Ivanov's landscapes
please go to landscapes.
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