Читать книгу Russian Painting - Peter Leek - Страница 2

1. Anonymous, The Virgin of Vladimir, 11th – early 12th century. Tempera with eggs on lime-panel, 100 × 76 cm, Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow.

The sublime imagery of the great icon painters, the portraiture of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the paintings of sea, snow and forest, the scenes of peasant life and the historical works of the Itinerants, the stylishness of the World of Art movement, the bold experimentation of the artists of the early twentieth century… To anyone unfamiliar with Russian painting, its richness and diversity may well come as a surprise or at least an exciting revelation. Indeed, the creative energy of Russian artists over the past two and a half centuries has been such that a book of this size cannot hope to offer a comprehensive overview of their output. Its aim is therefore to provide a representative selection of Russian painting from the eighteenth century to the start of the post-Revolutionary period (plus some glimpses of more recent work), but without attempting to do more than briefly allude to Russia’s rich heritage of icon painting or giving in-depth coverage of Soviet era art.