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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 on plaster on wood, 106 × 79 cm.

The State Russian Museum, St. Petersburg.

Besides this, the setting, although it only had the same two words, paláty – buildings, and górki – hills, to express its two main kinds, also changed in character. The buildings were at first painted in accordance with the Greek custom, two porticoes joined by a wall or by a curtain making a conventional, pseudo-classical scene for the action to take place. But even in the Nóvgorod style the buildings are different; churches appear and often have local views. More permanent was the vogue of the background in the shape of two mountains, one to the right supposed to be towards the east and illuminated by the rosy light of the sunset, the other to the west overspread with the on-coming darkness expressed by the complementary lilac or bluish reflexion. Usually these two mountains make up the desert as the Greeks understood it; they placed there hermits, prophets, and holy men and made it the scene of the deaths of martyrs. But we shall see that even at Nóvgorod, they drew the saints standing upon marble floors or on carpets, following Italian models; later come fields with flowers; as the buildings give place to views of the city, so the mountains become rounded hills. All these points serve to mark the various manners distinguished by the modern icon-painters.

Be this as it may, the main thing is the actual drawing and the essence of this is the power to make the sketch or outline of the figure and face. Icon-painters have from early times, it seems, divided this into the drawing of the face (lichnoe from lik or litsó ‘face’) and the preliminary drawing that comes before the face (dolíchnoe), i.e. the backgrounds and figures. The mere pupil (dolíchnik) who paints the preliminary part leaves the faces to be put in and the work finished by the skilled craftsman or face-painter (lichnik) even in detailed and many-figured icons, much more so in icons with only one figure[43].

Moreover, from the sixteenth century on, the free painting which executed icons on wood and schemes of wall decoration, gave way to a certain extent to mechanical reproduction by means of tracings from icons pierced, with soot which transferred the main lines of the drawing to the damp gesso. Such tracings, stencils, or patterns were collected by the painters and formed the basis of the Litsevye Pódlinniki, of which the best was found in the remote monastery of Siysk near Archangel. The pattern here illustrated is the work of Basil Kondakov of Usolye, who collected many others. This represents the composition called the New Testament Trinity and also Paternity and bears both titles[44]. It is copied from a design by the great icon-painter Simon Ushakóv which appeared as the first Russian etching. Characteristically in tracing it has been reversed, God the Father should have Christ on his right, and the cross is clearly the wrong way round. It was probably traced from the centre of a great composition of the Creed or the Last Judgement. These patterns often have indications of the colours to be used on different parts. The design is originally western, and the representation of the dove is most peculiar[45]. It is possible that that such a mechanical copy gave no scope for change, and of course in these reproductions the Greek design preserves its general character. But the human hand has to go over the whole of the mechanical copy and in course of time the copy or reproduction suffers change.

We see in the wall-paintings of Kiev, Pskov, Nóvgorod and Ládoga how different the types, costumes, and trappings are from the true Byzantine originals, and we are right in seeking their originals – not in the monuments of Constantinople but in the work on the Balkan Peninsula, in Asia Minor, and even in the productions of Greco-Oriental icon-painting. Evidently, the earliest Russian icon-painting worked in two manners; one a severe, definite, and plastic manner close to Byzantine (Constantinopolitan) art in its refined style of the tenth to twelfth centuries, and another broad and simple with straight vertical folds of the drapery and coarse patches of red upon the pale cheeks of the faces.

39. Angelos, Christ Pantocrator Enthroned, end of the 15th century. Teutonic Cemetery, Vatican.

40. The Crucifixion, 12th century. National Museum of History and Ethnography of Svaneti, Mestia, Georgia.

By the end of the fourteenth century the Russian icon had reached its full stature and, at the same time, took on such different characteristics that we can distinguish them clearly, guiding ourselves by a certain basis common to the different branches and then marking off the more definite types and establishing their models. The Byzantine drawing had by now fallen to pieces and with its exaggerated refinements it had become unintelligible to the craftsmen and beyond their execution. However, it just happened that the early Greco-Oriental models had simplified the design and worked out a new scheme; how far this was the case we can see by comparing the complicated folds of the Apostles’ clothing, chiton and himation, in Byzantine icons and the same in Russian icons of the fourteenth to sixteenth centuries. A whole series of half-figures of Christ preserves the Byzantine type but has changed the ordinary drawing of the drapery: on Christ’s left shoulder there hangs down in the form of a triangle a corner of the himation thrown under that shoulder when the cloak was draped round the body from behind, whereas that angle should have been covered in its turn by the last end of the cloak thrown round over the shoulder: the natural order has been disregarded for the sake of effect. Further, at the edge of the right arm a saint’s himation makes a tiny segment which ought either to go to the left shoulder or be thrown under the arm and pass across the chest, but it is not clear quite how it falls. We shall see what new and complicated difficulties arose from Byzantine drawing of drapery as remodelled by Rublëv in imitation of the Greek Theophanes. But the drawing of the Nóvgorod icons of the fifteenth century is quite different and comparatively crude: to compare it with the magnificent, if contorted, figures of the wall-paintings is to bring us from an artistic world to one of journeymen.

Let us take the half-length of S. Thomas which at first sight looks Byzantine in style, so much are the chiton and himation ‘broken up’ by a series of folds, angular, tight and dry, and so much are these folds covered with bright planes and these planes emphasized by highlights of white lead. Further, the hand, painted as in the Greek icons in the act of blessing, the sturdy broad-shouldered body, the youthful head with its sharp oval, and the line round the eyes, everything is Greek. But this is set against what appears to be pupils’ work, the figure has clearly no chest, the drapery is, as it were, hung on the back of a chair or cut out of tin-plates, some of the folds quite unintelligible, and the head is too small for the body.

What a difference there is in the figure and drapery of the Archangel Gabriel in the State Russian Museum, which, however, belongs to the early fifteenth century and is part of the Deesis tier of the old iconostas in the Súzdal’ Cathedral. The body has delicately sloped shoulders, unlike the ordinary Byzantine type; the face keeps the characteristic Attic oval, but is bent downwards in deep thought. Unlike the Byzantine, the drapery is all soft with wide folds. Clearly we have before us a new style using the forms of the Greek iconography, the style of the Italian trecento; hence the feminine look of the Archangel, with his hair done in thick locks like a woman’s. The technique of the actual painting is quite different, the lighted planes are few and not sharp, fine gradations of half-tones model the folds and the whole manner is already ‘fused’ as it will be in the sixteenth century.

These are one or two examples of transitional manners of the late fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries: there is no need for the moment to go through the different varieties of Byzantine, Russo-Byzantine, or Greco-Oriental icons, nor yet the local Russian schools of Nóvgorod and Súzdal’, nor to touch on the special points of drawing in the icons of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. When we come to these groups in their historical order their varieties will appear of themselves. Now we only wish to show that in judging of the drawing in icons we must fix our attention not on what it has in common with the Byzantine, but on the historical distinctions and changes.

Artistic drawing is not only the expression of its epoch and the influences dominant therein, but also of its nation and place. The history of art which puts before us in historical development Italian, French, and German drawing shows us that drawing must be national and likewise individual; it is however significantly more complicated than, say, handwriting, in that we can often do no more than observe the national type in a drawing. When we come to the icon with the knowledge that there is a mechanical copy underlying every considerable drawing, we might expect to have to give up all search for national character, whereas even in the drawing we do perceive national traits and this opens to us a very special side of the craft which brings it into very close connection with a true art.

The Russian icon-painter set himself the task, before everything else, of precisely imitating his Greek model; giving no play either to his pupil or to himself, he tried to make an exact copy. From the sixteenth century on we hear how the icon-painters sought this model; it made them buy old icons, it forbade any venture to paint even small details in their own fashion instead of the Greek – for instance the contour of the eyes – they were afraid to begin any innovation lest it should be a ground of accusation against them. Yet, all the while, the icon was getting a national tinge, and often it was the head and face which showed it first, next the figure, and only towards the end in a period of decline is there any change in the clothing, the ancient conventional raiment being modified by new influences. The changes of course affect the less prominent details: for instance, while the curly hair of S. George survives as a characteristic point of the saint, the slight wave in that of S. Nicholas may be gradually lost.

If then we are asked the source and cause of such a change in the characteristic Greek types, we can point, first of all, to the series of miraculous and specially revered icons. You might think that these were the ones which would be most exactly copied, but as a matter of fact it is in these in which we find most frequently and most clearly a change in type. It is evident that, in accordance with a custom which early gained acceptance, patrons were almost always inclined to choose for their own devotion some miraculous icon that they specially revered and knew very well. Such icons would be copied more often than others, and more often than in the case of others would a copy serve as a model for further copying, and, as a result, the process of modification was especially swift. The human hand, as it follows the stencil mechanically traced from the original, tends to modify its lines after its national character and even after a definite manner of icon-painting which suggested to the painter definite features of the iconic type. If we take the type of S. Nicholas Thaumaturgus, whose innumerable Russian icons show evident signs of Greek tradition, this tradition can be exemplified and confirmed by a whole series of early Byzantine pictures in wall mosaic (Daphni, S. Luke in Phocis, S. Sophia at Kiev), and portable mosaic (Stavro-Nikita[46], Kiev Theological Academy, replicas in the Khanenko Collection at Kiev (xi-xii c) and also at Burtscheid near Aachen).

The points that distinguish the type of S. Nicholas make him sturdy of build, with sparse flesh, grey but still virile. His head is rather square, his face a broad oval, short hair with a wave in it, a small round beard, a high open forehead, a severe but restful expression. He is vested in a felón’: in later examples he wears the sakkos with crosses upon it and the omofór. Nóvgorod icons follow the miraculous copy honoured in the cathedral of Nicholas-in-the-Court (na dvómitse) at Nóvgorod and vest the saint in felón’. The Moscow icons apparently go back to the miraculous image of Nicholas of Zaráysk, which, according to tradition, was brought from Korsún’ in A. D. 1224, and shows the saint in a sakkos.[47] The former icon is Greek, the latter a Russian copy from the Greek. The main type has been preserved, but the face; in this area Russian icons have been Russianised and, in some cases, show the Nóvgorod type. Further, in the older icons the folds are stricter and most correct, in later ones they get confused and tightened. Evidently the painter entirely fails to understand the folds of the light woollen stuffs of which the felón’ was made: further he does not distinguish between the felón’ and the himation and makes the folds of the felón’ vertical in accordance with his scheme for the himation.

41. Saint Nicholas, beginning of the 16th century.

Icon Museum, Recklinghausen, Germany.

42. Saint George Slaying the Dragon, 15th century.

Egg tempera on wood, 114 × 79 cm. From the Church of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross, Lviv region.

National Art Museum of Ukraine, Kiev.

Russian icon-painting, however, passed through certain periods when its schools had few models to follow, or had no other icon craftsmanship but that of bands of journeymen either wandering on their own account or specially invited to execute the wall-painting of a church, and, that done, to make the iconostas. How, in such times, did the local craftsmen with no models and no schooling progress? This was the position of Nóvgorod in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries when it had to content itself almost exclusively with its own craftsmanship; it was only at the end of the fifteenth century that it could develop it by means of models from outside. We can see the impact of this in two icons in the State Russian Museum representing two Fathers of the Church, Ss. Athanasius and Cyril of Alexandria, who have festivals on the same day (18 Jan.) and are, therefore, portrayed together. Both icons date from the end of the fifteenth century, but one is of Greek origin, the other a Nóvgorod copy of an original almost similar to the former. True, the Russian copyist has put both patriarchs into the sakkos (polistávri) instead of the felón’ of the original, and simplified the adornments of the omofór, stole, and epigonation, but he has painted the under vestment after the Greek model and preserved perfectly the shape of the heads and features, though changing the position of the figures about. A curious detail is that the Russian icon-painter has kept the ancient two-fingered position of the saints’ right hands in blessing, whereas the Greek has followed Byzantine iconography which, except in the case of the Saviour, avoids the three-fingered form and adopts the position of the fingers which expresses the name of Christ. This preservation of the ancient attitude of blessing in the Russian Church is very important historically, the testimony of icons being a support to the schismatics who refused to accept this among other innovations of the Patriarch Nicon[48].

But in the Russian icon the figures have, as it were, deadened under the hand of the journeyman – all the free mastery of the Greek artist has vanished; no trace is left of the subtle expression of the saints’ sideways glance, nor of the variety in the way the hands are held up in blessing. The spirituality and intelligence shown in the faces of two of the greatest teachers of the Church have given way to a gloomy and parched asceticism. We cannot, however, deny a certain adaptation of the faces to the Russian type and a restrained simplicity about the whole in place of the Greek affectation. We might come to the conclusion that we have to do with a Russian copy of rude journeyman’s work, but this would be mistaken: the icon itself gives a definite indication that it comes from the best Nóvgorod painting-shop. We find this exemplified in the characteristic pattern of the field upon which the two figures stand: sprays, rods, and dots disposed in a regular order form a carpet pattern. Specifically, this kind of pattern occurs on a whole series of particularly well-painted icons in the State Russian Museum. They were copied from Italian icons which followed the religious pictures of the Italian masters of the quattrocento.

To judge how the drawing changes in a rough journeyman copy let us compare the remarkably artistic Greek icon of the Prophet Elias with the Russian icon of the Nóvgorod school. Of course, the Russian icon is only in a sense a distant copy of the Greek one; its immediate model was a journeyman Greek icon of which many were painted in the Greek Orient and in the Balkans, just as they were at Nóvgorod and in the north of Russia. The scene represented is the flight of the Prophet into the desert in accordance with the Word of the Lord (1 Kings xvii), and his being fed by ravens at the brook Cherith. The painter has combined in one all the places in the Bible that tell of how Elijah took refuge in the desert from the wicked deeds and persecutions of Ahab and Jezebel, and represents him in a moment of pain and grief when he has turned round at a slight noise and sees the raven bringing him a small loaf. Between two lofty rocks in the mountains, at the mouth of a deep cave, the weary prophet has sits in deep dejection leaning his head on his hand. Suddenly he hears the noise of the raven’s wings, turns his head and sees the raven, but is not surprised at it and his left arm still rests quietly upon his knees.

Both the rocks and the clothes of the prophet are brightly coloured in shades of brown and only the slabs of rock are picked out with complementary pale green shadows and whitish highlights. In Nóvgorod painting these slabs with cleavage planes are preserved and are called ‘little heels’ (pyátochki). The pale blue lights on the edges of the folds of the chiton bring out the relief of the figure. Above the chiton is thrown a sheepskin fastened round the throat. Extremely characteristic is the rendering of the heavy massive body, the bony and muscular frame of the tall ascetic: his shaggy hair falling down to his shoulders and his beard spreading out on both sides, harmonising with his sunburnt brick-red face and small head. The general type can only be compared with the well-known type of S. John the Baptist in Greco-Russian icon-painting and perhaps also with S. Jerome in Leonardo’s picture, where he put on the first coat of brown for the anchorite’s body and then probably left the picture as it were purposely unfinished.

The comparison of a Greek original with its later copies will show much about the Russian style; in particular, will make clear to us the simplification of the original which comes about when a journeyman undertakes cheap work. Such is the case in the scheme of rocks and ledges, in the pose of the figure and the drawing of chiton and sheepskin, in the roughness of the face with the head scarcely indicated. But there is one new and characteristic point: the right arm is pressed closely to the breast. So we get a less remote, a more familiar figure of a pious abbot who, not without almost reckoning on it, is accepting the miracle of God’s gift. Vanished is the prophet, the great eremite, his moments of grief and despair, vanished too is the special mark of his deep faith and with it the artistic beauty of the icon.