Art History Today

Origins of Russian Art (7)

The School of Novgorod.

During the eleventh and twelfth centuries the art in Kiev, Vladimir and Novgorod could be labelled “Byzantine-Greek.” Truly Byzantine icons do not exist inside Russia; those which may have shown the characteristics of Byzantine purity are difficult to identify because they are buried underneath recent re-painting.[1] Examples of those which have been restored are the famous Our Lady of Vladimir, brought from Constantinople to Kiev in the early twelfth century and the Vernicle image of the Saviour, both of which in pre-revolution times were the treasured possessions of the Uspenski Sobor, Moscow. As Bunt observes these are different from subsequent Russian icons which show “stylistic abstraction” because they betray “a tentative seeking after what may be called naturalistic effect.”[2] They are also less coloured, more monochromatic which sets them apart from the icons produced by the so-called “School of Novgorod” painters and later artistic movements. The Novgorod School commenced at the start of the fourteenth-century and flowered in the following two centuries. Novgorod had its share of Greek artists working for the city; these would pass on their knowledge and skill to Russian artists who though initially copied Greek models eventually produced a national style. Russian icon painting takes on a style and character of its own with the appearance of the monk Andrei Rublëv (1360s- 1427/30) in the late fourteenth-century. Now considered to be Russia’s greatest icon painter, Rublëv works are shrouded in mystery. But the work that is confidently attributed to Rublëv is the icon of the Trinity ( above) which shows a blending of asceticism and Byzantine mannerism. To understand the stylistic characteristics of the Novgorod School it may help to quote the summary by the Russian art historian Rovinski: “The design is clear-cut, the lines are long and straight; the figure is usually short- seven to seven and a half heads in height; the face long; the nose drooping a little over the mouth; the robes painted in two colours- or their various parts outlined in thick lines of black and white; the ozhiviki, or fine white lines round the eyes, on the forehead and nose and also on the joints of the hands and feet are one of the outstanding attributes.”[3]

Next week we shall look at icons in more detail: their origins, their manufacture and technique, their spread to Russia, and the iconography of Christ, Mary and the saints.

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[1] Bunt, Russian Art, 81.

[2] Ibid.

[3] Ruvinski, quoted in Bunt, Russian Art, 83.

Origins of Russian Art (6)

Art in Novgorod

With the fall of Kiev in 1240 during the Mongol occupation, the Metropolitan Maximus moved to Vladimir in 1299, though his successor Peter moved the Church’s residence to Moscow in 1325 where it would stay permanently. These geographical shifts in the Russian Church’s history were significant for the art since it tended to follow the power, and indeed the money. So, famous icons produced in Constantinople like Our Lady of Vladimir left that city for Kiev, then Vladimir and finally Moscow which became the capital of Russia. Another consequence of Kiev and Vladimir’s decline in importance was the rise of another city- Novgorod. This also became the most important city in medieval Russia because it lay on the route connecting Moscow and St Petersburg, though the latter would not be built until the seventeenth-century.[1] Novgorod was a republican city state like Venice; it traded with German factories, and belonged to the Hanseatic League. Its archbishop was chosen by election of the people, not subject to confirmation to Byzantium. In 1222 the Mongols led by Genghis Khan seized the Crimea in the south; in 1237 the Tartars entered Northern Russia sacking and destroying Ryazan, Vladimir, and Moscow followed by Chernigov and Kiev in 1240. However, Novgorod was never captured by the Mongols; the invaders turned back about 120 miles from the city, probably due to the marshlands upon which the city is built. However, some Khans of the “Golden Hoard” demanded taxes in 1259 leading to the famed Russian hero Alexander Nevsky (1221-63) repulsing them, though he would eventually agree to pay tribute to the Mongols while fighting the German and Swedish invaders. Novgorod’s cultural and religious significance is proved by the fact that between 1228 and 1462 no less than 150 churches were built in the city. Among the most important were Snetgorsky Convent (near Pskov), the Church of the Dormition and the Church of the Nativity. Perhaps the most impressive is the Cathedral of St Sophia built by Vladimir of Novgorod between 1045 and 1050 which again was modelled on the more famous Byzantine Hagia Sophia in Constantinople, which always seems to have been in the minds of these early city-builders. Amongst the many art treasures inside the Russian St Sophia is the Our Lady of the Sign credited with saving the city from capture in 1169. Unlike Kiev Cathedral, Novgorod St Sophia is more austere in decoration. Apart from the art, there are two sets of doors of which the most impressive is the Plock or Magdeburg Gates which I am tempted to call Russia’s version of the Florentine doors, though of course these pre-date the “Doors of Paradise.” In fact the Magdeburg Gates may have been looted from the Swedish town of Sigtuna in 1187; they were probably manufactured by Magdeburg masters for Archbishop Plock in Poland. Though some art can be seen in these buildings, like the Korsun icons, most Russian and Byzantine art has been transferred to the Tretyakov Museum in Moscow including some of the icons associated with the so-called “Novgorod School” of painters- see below. Things stayed calm until 1570 when St Sophia was looted by the oprichnina, or political police of Ivan the Terrible, Ivan IV, (1530-1584) (above) who thought the city was planning to defect to Lithuania. Ivan regarded himself as the rightful heir of the Roman and Byzantine empires; hence he crowned himself as “Czar” which means Ceasar which allowed the clergy to “invent an ideology which placed the Czars of Moscow at the head of the new world State.”[2] The paranoid Ivan earned his name by destroying Novgorod, killing most of its inhabitants and ravaging the countryside thus ensuring its economic doom. The Siege of Novgorod marked the decline of the city from a cultural beacon into a dull provincial town. This decline is symbolised by Ivan dismissing the Archbishop of Novgorod and telling him to make his living with a bear and some bagpipes that the monarch bestowed upon the prelate as a form of sarcastic parting gift. With Ivan’s destruction- both physical and economic- of Novgorod, the Republic of Novgorod (1136-1478) ceased to exist. Novgorod had a revenge of sorts on the fearsome Russian Tsar many centuries later. In 1862, two sculptors were commissioned to design the massive monument “The Millenium of Russia,” a sort of Russian history in bronze, which contains such luminaries from Russian history such as Pushkin, Gogol, Vladimir the Great, Peter the Great, but not – for obvious reasons- Ivan the Terrible whose crimes against Novgorod could not be forgotten nor forgiven.

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[1] Novgorod means in English “new town” as the prefix nov = new, and gorod = town. Though Byzantium hierarchs representing the Russian church signed a union with the pope at the Council of Florence in 1439, the act was rejected by a Moscow prince in 1441. Moscow began to see itself as “the third Rome.” There wouldn’t be a “fourth Rome” on earth after the Czars.

[2] Leicht, History of World Art, 191.

Origins of Russian Art (5)

Art in Kiev

In order to understand Russian art it is also necessary to know something of the history of the Church in Russia because the evolution of early Russian painting is inseparable from religious matters. According to one tradition, Christianity was brought to Belarus, Russia and the Ukraine by St Andrew, a disciple of Christ. St Andrew is said to have travelled to Kiev where he uttered a prophecy that a great city would be erected there on the banks of the river Dnieper. However, the first Rus to embrace Christianity was Princess Olga of Kiev, though her grandson Vladimir the Great (958-1015) turned Kiev into a centre of the Eastern Orthodox Church. Initially a pagan chief, Vladimir was offered both invitations to convert to the Muslim and Jewish faiths but rejected both, the former on the grounds that Russians could not live without alcohol; instead, he joined the Christian faith in A.D. 988 by baptising himself and members of his family in a distant town. On returning to Kiev, Vladimir ordered its residents to bathe in the river Dnieper, indicating that those who did not would incur his displeasure; he then destroyed the statues of the pagan gods severing links with paganism completely. Cementing links with Christianity, Vladimir married Anne, the sister of Basil and Constantine, the joint Emperors of Byzantine. Vladimir’s wholesale conversion of his people signalled that Russian was now officially a Christian state, and with the country choosing to join the Christian faith the implications for art and architecture were profound. Inspired by his experience at the Cathedral of Hagia Sophia in Constantinople, Vladimir erected his first church in Kiev in 939 A.D. which would last until 1240 when it was destroyed by the Mongols who invaded Russia, installed the “Golden Horde” and forced the natives to pay tributes. Eventually with the appearance of Ivan the Great the Russians would refuse to pay tributes to the Mongols. The Mongol tribes were further weakened by further internecine fighting, with a new Mongol warlord, Tamerlane, conquering much of the original Mongol Empire in Russia in 1395. After Tamerlane’s death, his empire was broken into four independent khanates: Astrakhan, Kazan, Crimea, and Sibir. Thinking much like his father, Vladimir’s son, Yaroslav, built the Church of Holy Wisdom in Kiev to rival Constantinople and this church was immediately constituted the Metropolitan Church of Russia. Its art provides some of the most important examples of what is called Kievan art (above) which appeared in Rus at the time which is worth remembering first appeared in Russia at a time when in Europe the northern Romanesque style was entering its final phase, early Gothic was establishing itself on the Ile de France, and the first stirrings of the renaissance could be felt in Italy. Kiev became known as “the Byzantine of Asia” and its art was Byzantine influenced, though marked by less formality in the figures; it also showed more humanity in the faces. In the words of Auty and Obolensky: “High Byzantine monumentality and serenity remain[ed] [in Kievan art], invigorated by new flexibility and variegation.”[1] Kiev burned bright as an artistic city though it would be eclipsed by the city of Vladimir which was adopted as the seat of government until it too slid into historical oblivion. The epoch of Kievan Rus lasted from 882 to 1240 when the invasion of the Mongols effectively ended this first phase of Byzanto-Russo art.

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[1] Robert Auty, Dimitri Obolensky (eds), An Introduction to Russian Art and Architecture, (CUP, 1980), 16.

Origins of Russian Art (4)

A Note on Russian Church Architecture.

Builders and architects of medieval Russian churches looked towards Byzantium, though churches erected in Russia can be seen to betray a distinctive architectural flavour. For example, St Sophia of Kiev boasts no less than thirteen domes, which according to Auty and Obolensky is “a number unequalled in any other surviving building of the Byzantine world.”[1] Initially the pyramidal effect was more pronounced, but there have been additions which have detracted from the original intentions of the eleventh-century architects. This external effect achieved not only through the configuration and the “picturesque disposal” of the domes, but also through its polychrome masonry and its short naves are typical of the Russian style in architecture. And what is also distinct from Byzantine art is the cycle of mosaics with fresco paintings on the dome and main apse in Kiev St Sophia; such a scheme within one church is rare within the surviving monuments of Byzantium. This kind of architectural and painted scheme became prevalent in Russia. It can be seen in the Hagia Sophia at Novgorod, save that the proportions there are taller and narrower; overall there is no intention to overwhelm with ornament. Generally, Novgorod churches can be stylistically differentiated from Kiev churches by their “cragginess” and this would have been emphasised in their heyday by the stonework and pink, smoothed mortar. Today, Novgorod Cathedral (above) is stuccoed and whitewashed. One feature of Russian ecclesiastical architecture is the external “onion dome,” but its origins lie in obscurity. It is thought to have evolved in Novgorod in the pre-Tatar days; and one theory (unsubstantiated) is that the feature may owe something to the native wooden architecture of the Russian north. The symbolism of the onion dome has been much discussed. Interpretations range from the domes representing burning candles to abstract representation of the divine, though some scholars believe that the architectural feature cannot be explained rationally. We should also note the importance of colour symbolism of onion domes which will become more apparent when we examine structures such St Basil’s Cathedral in Moscow in the third week.

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[1] Robert Auty, Dimitri Obolensky (eds), An Introduction to Russian Art and Architecture, (CUP, 1980), 11.

Origins of Russian Art (3)

A Note on Russians & Byzantium.

However, future Russian peoples were not descended from the Scythians: the core of Russian nationality is Slavic, the name given to people who resided in the forests areas to the north. There were also a number of invading races like the Warings who assailed the Slavs from the north and the Turks who attacked them from the Middle East. The Slavs eventually threw in their lot with the Warings, or as they were become known the Varangians who may have had some lineage with the Angles, hence English. The Varangians mainly invaded from Scandinavia and the Baltic; and they even penetrated as far south as Constaninople where they laid siege to the city in 860. Judging from eyewitness accounts this invasion force of muscular, long-haired, belligerent Norsemen put the fear of God into the Byzantine people with one chronicler of the Siege, Photius, using the word Rus (Rhos), its first use in a Greek text. Eventually this mishmash of various races was to go under the name “Rus”, “the oldest designation for territory dubbed Russian.”[1] Turning to Byzantine art (above), this presents something of a problem in the context of Russian art history because there are usually three prevailing views about its significance to Russia. Firstly: there are those who ignore early Russian art altogether; then there are those who choose to view Russian art as a subset of Byzantine art; then there are those who say Byzantium’s influence upon Russian art was minimal on the grounds that the former had ceased to exist before the latter artistically reached its majority.[2] What doesn’t help is that no handbooks on Byzantine art, or treatises on art theory survive from the period which isn’t really surprising as the function of Byzantine art was largely religious. Secular portraits and decoration were completely different genres altogether. Though the early Church Fathers were opposed to art, it gradually gained approval after it had been incorporated into the Nicene canon after the Council of Constantinople in 843 A.D. Though art historians have found it difficult to pinpoint an “aesthetics” of Byzantine art, they have discerned that rather than follow a path of development from abstract to naturalistic rules, Byzantine art moved in spirals, e.g., from Hellenistic to medieval art and vice versa. As to the characteristics of Byzantine art, it is best described in the following way. Severity of line; lacking roundness and volume; floating free in spiritual space where prayer and adoration have completely abolished the distance the object and subject of contemplation. Turning to Russia, what Carcraft calls “Byzanto-Russian” art was the result of the diffusion of the Mediterrean style to the churches of Eastern Slavs, and especially the panel icons imported by East Slavs from Constantinople and other Byzantine centres. It would be left to the Russians to make up their mind how they should deal with Byzantine art, how they should use it to forge their own national style in painting. And this distinctive national style would become conspicuous after the Turkish conquest of the Byzantine Empire, completed in 1435 resulting in the weakening of Byzantine art in its homeland. From the fifteenth- century onwards, Russia would enter a “Golden Age of Art” which meant Russia had a long time to wait until it entered this phase. This begs the question of why there was such a time-lag between Russia’s origins and the appearance of a truly, distinctive national style in the country.

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[1] Robert A. Maguire and John E. Malmstad, endnotes to Andrei Bely’s Petersburg (1916, Penguin ed, 1978), 295. The novel and the extensive annotations are a good introduction to things Russian.

[2] James Cracraft, The Petrine Revolution, 39.

Origins of Russian Art (2)

The Problem of the Classical Style and Russian Art

Gombrich might have opted to pick up the story of Russian art in the seventeenth-century since as Cracraft rightly says surveys of European art of that century seldom mention Russian art despite the fact that this is the era when Peter the Great (1672- 1725) first embarked upon his project of westernising Russia by providing a “window on the west” with the building of St Petersburg which ushered in the age of Russian baroque. Until the age of Peter, Russian art was virtually absent from European historical accounts which, as Cracraft delicately puts it “reflects qualtitative decisions by scholars regarding form and content, technique and style, and meaning or significance as well as historical context.” The neglect of Russian art also reflects a jaundiced view that before the age of Peter, Russia was regarded as “provincial” and medieval.[1] Only a handful of scholars have taken the trouble to study relations between Byzantine and late- medieval proto-Renaissance art in Italy which of which some understanding is required in order to appreciate early Russian art. As Otto Demus says, Byzantine art was regarded as “the living continuation of Greek art” which would lead the Italian artists back to the classical source, “the Greek behind the Byzantine” in Byzantine art. Sienese art is a good example of this, and it has some affinities with Russian art as both were stylistically late developers: medievalism can be seen in Sienese art as late as the fifteenth-century. However, where the Russians were concerned, they had no way of referring back to the classical sources: they were “disciples of Byzantium but they never became students of antiquity.” Arguably, the nearest we get to classism in the sense of Greco-Hellenistic in Russian art is the Greek- influenced art of the Scythians who dwelt on the shores of the Black Sea, and this depends on whether we admit the Scythians to the history of art in Russia. One account by Cyril G. E. Bunt published in 1946 opens with the art of the Scythians who were a fierce horse-loving people living on the shores of the Black Sea.[2] Preserved amongst the treasures of the Hermitage are a number of Scythian cultural artifacts which offer some idea of the kind of art these tribes of the Euxine Steppes produced. What is immediately apparent from looking at their bow-cases, helmets and jewellery is the influence of the Greeks with their peopled reliefs, though this is of course metalwork, not painting. More closer to the Scythians own culture are such archaeological finds as the Nikopol Vase (4 BC) (above) which contains scenes of horse-taming and some wonderful exotic animals and decorative patterns. All of this reflects the diffusion of Greek-Hellenistic art on the horse-riding people of the Black Sea. So, perhaps we should be cautious before excluding the influence of classical art from Russian stylistic development altogether.

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[1] Cracraft, The Petrine Revolution, 4.

[2] Cyril G. E. Bunt, Russian Art: From Scyths to Soviets, (The Studio: London and New York, 1946), 10-20.

Origins of Russian Art (1)

Russia and the Story of Art.

“Historians of European art are even more equivocal in their appraisal of the imagery produced in Russia before Peter’s time. In fact, except as a provincial subset of medieval Byzantine art, Russian imagery is entirely absent from the familiar “story of art” as it unfolds in Europe until the advent of modernism around the turn of the twentieth century. Such is the case in the most widely consulted general art histories.” [1]

Why was Russia left out of the “story of art”? In the famous survey of the same name, Ernst Gombrich after dealing with the Roman and Byzantine art of the fifth to thirteenth centuries, opened his next chapter by “looking eastwards” towards Islamic and Chinese art.[2] Why was Russia not included in this oriental excursion? The answer, as Cracraft says in the extract above is that “Russian art” would have been viewed as a sub-species of Byzantine art- see below. However, Gombrich should not be chided too much as his omission of early Russian art is reflective of a prevailing trend in general histories of art: for Western art historians Russian art did not begin until the efflorescence of avant-garde modern art in the early twentieth-century. Thus it is not until near the end of Gombrich’s book that Russian artists like Wassily Kandinsky (1866-1944) are considered, and then only as a facet of German Expressionism.[3] By showing Russia’s contribution as late as the modern period Gombrich was merely repeating what most Western art historians had done when representing Russian art. Some balance was restored with the publication of Camilla Gray’s The Russian Experiment in Art 1863- 1922 which surveyed the evolution of Russian art alongside its European counterparts from the realist period of the nineteenth- century until 1922. Gray’s study was important because it did not neglect the influence of early Russian art on the new, experimental artists; thus Gray showed how modern constructivist sculptors like Vladimir Taitlin (1885-1953) and painters like Natalia Goncharova (1881-1962) with her Madonna and Child of 1905-7 (above) looked back to the icon painters of the medieval period and later.[4] A comparison between Goncharova’s Madonna and one of the medieval ones like the Lady of Vladimir is instructive because it shows certain traditional compositional forms were playfully subverted by twentieth-century avant-garde artists. Unlike historical icons, Goncharova dispenses with the flat yellow of the background and substitutes a textured, worked surface out of which flowery forms sprout. At the same time the modern icon retains old-school iconographical details such as angels flanking the Virgin, though they are painted dull green like the plants and flowers.

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[1] James Cracraft, The Petrine Revolution in Russian Imagery, (University of Chicago, 1997), 4.

[2] It is worth comparing Gombrich’s treatment of Russian art with Hermann Leicht who in his History of World Art (Spring Books, London, 1963), gives a whole chapter to Russia after Early Christian Art and before Islamic Art, 188-196.

[3] Ernst Gombrich, The Story of Art, (Phaidon, 1950, rep 1984), 451. Kandinsky is the only Russian artist Gombrich includes.

[4] Camilla Gray, The Russian Experiment in Art 1863- 1922), (first pub 1962, rev 1972, Thames and Hudson), 98.