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Soviet art historians consider that the
Novgorod school of painting had come into being at the end of the 12th century.
They find that by that time some of the saints portrayed had received certain
facial features of the native Novgorodians, that the palette had brightened and
that the contour lines had sharpened. They discovered all these characteristics
on the frescoes of the Church of the Savior at Nereditse, supposedly painted in
1199 and the only one of that period that had reached the 20th century. It was
since destroyed in 1941 during the second world war by the Spanish Blue
division. Soviet assumptions could be accepted without reservation if they
proved that Nereditse frescoes were those painted when the church was decorated
for the first time, a rather questionable conjecture in the absence of any
documents. It is true that the photographs of the frescoes show softer colors,
several saints with typical Russian faces and the half-portrait of the Church
benefactor, Prince Yaroslav Vsyevoldovich. The large frescos of the Virgin with
Jesus painted in a circle on her chest, looks very much as if a stocky peasant
woman and a Russian child served as models. But Nereditse frescoes also reveal
diversity of stroke, simplicity of execution, a variety of mastership, and
above all, their forms and patterns are basically Byzantine, giving sufficient
evidence that several painters of different training participated in the work.
The fact that they were painted on Novgorodian soil does not necessarily
qualify them as part of the Novgorod school which fully manifested itself
considerably later, in the second half of the 14th century. The same applies to
an increased number of icons which Soviet art critics rather hurriedly, and
sometimes just because of their size or some other detail, attribute to a
certain school or date from a certain century. As this was the case with the
formation of all other Russian schools of painting, the Novgorod school,
although it is the first known native school, owes most of its characteristics
to the existence of strong provincial traditions which needed time to
crystalize and earn the name of a school.
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