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During the reign of Mikhail Romanov
iconography underwent slight changes. With former Stroganov painters leading
the artistic policy in the Kremlin, it became difficult to distinguish their
style from the one that came to be considered as typical of Moscow masters. The
icons they painted, known as "Tsarskie" (tsar's), in most cases
differed from "Stroganov's" only in that the painters used more gold.
At the same time the first signs of deviation from Novgorod traditions and from
its Moscow variation of the 16th century started to appear. The reason for the
change was contact with the West through imported miniatures, engravings,
designs etc. Former Stroganov painters were the first to be lured by the
features of western art. Their style was the closest to that of foreign artists
and craftsmen, who decorated all sorts of household and personal items which
reached the Russian market by way of Poland, White Russia and Ukraine, or were
directly imported to Moscow from Germany and Holland. Imported engravings
particularly impressed Russian painters, who were thrilled with the variety of
subjects, colors and new genres. A decorative frenzy swept through Moscow's
palaces and mansions, and the Tsar's private quarters were not spared. After he
visited a few newly annexed cities in the West, he was finally won over to the
"German model" of house decorating. Paintings and decorative designs
covered not only the walls, ceilings, doors, windows and cupboards, but also
tables and chairs, book-cases, toys, and wooden kitchen utensils, including
ladles and spoons.
The middle of the 17th century marked a breaking point in Russian iconography.
It coincided with the accession to the Russian throne of Tsar Aleksei in 1645,
at the age of sixteen. He received a good education, but became very pious and
in certain things very conservative, probably not without the influence of his
tutor, the powerful boyar Boris Ivanovich Morozov, who married the young tsar
to a daughter of dvorianin Ilia Danilovich Miloslavskii and took her sister for
his wife. The Chroniclers called Aleksei "The most silent tsar in the
sense of being very gentle," (Tishaishii). Surprisingly it was during the
reign of the rigid conservative Tsar Aleksei that western painters, musicians,
actors etc., were invited to Moscow in continuously increasing numbers. Russian
iconographers, particularly those in Moscow, came under their influence, and
history repeated itself. As the Greeks had done centuries before, in Kiev and
Novgorod, Western painters were in Moscow not only to paint portraits of the
prominent people and landscapes for their palaces, but also to teach young
Russian art students how to use oil colors, until then unknown to them, and
give them basic lessons in western art. This entire period could be best
characterized as very contradictory. Traditions in painting, architecture,
literature, religion, education and even the basic concept of the state
structure were called into question and had to undergo certain modifications.
It was at this time that additional lands were unified with Russia, which
became a multinational state. Under the new conditions, in which several creeds
and traditions were intermixed, some of them already strongly influenced by the
West, the old Moscow was unable to escape the contamination of liberal and
progressive ideas that had already penetrated its recently acquired western
regions. Soon Russian artists went through for the first time the exciting
experience of painting scenes from everyday life, landscapes, narrative
subjects taken from literature and finally, portraits. Here is biography of
Alexei Mikhailovich.
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