Icons. Nikodim Kondakov

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.

      Colouring and Pigments in Russian Icon-painting

      Just as the philological way of studying remnants of antiquity has given way to the archaeological, so now in the history of painting the time has come for a full study, beginning with the theme and the drawing and ending up with the colours. Now that the technique of reproduction in colours has eliminated the hand and become entirely photographic and mechanical, the time has come for science can take into account the historical succession of colouring and pigments and accordingly to make, in icon-painting, a satisfactory distinction between different schools.

      Russian icon-painters still distinguish in the history of their craft various schools – Nóvgorod, Pskov, Early Moscow and Stróganov. They base the distinctions upon the colouring; more exactly

47

For these vestments see A. Fortescue, The Orthodox Eastern Church, pp. 405 sqq. The felón’, paenula, is the chasuble at first made of soft stuff: when made of stiff material it was for convenience short-ened in front instead of being cut away at the sides as in the West. A special variety oí felón’ was entirely covered with a pattern of crosses (polistávri); this was reserved for bishops: the sakkos is of the shape of a Western dalmatic, i.e. slit up the sides and with sleeves; originally peculiar to the patriarch, it is now worn by all bishops; but it does not commonly appear upon early icons; it is worn by S. Alexis in the seventeenth century. The actual sakkos of S. Photius is figured by Millet, ap. Michel, Histoire de l’Art, III. ii, p. 957. Our author appears to use sakkos in the sense of polistavri, the vestment in which nearly all bishops are portrayed.

48

One of the differences between Greeks and Latins was the position of the fingers in blessing: the earlier Greeks folded down the thumb, fourth and fifth fingers and by extending ‘two fingers’ (dvupérstie), the index and middle finger, symbolized the dual nature of Christ, cf. Mon. Piot, vii (1900), pp. 95, 96. The Latins put thumb, index and middle to-gether to typify the Trinity. The Greeks later adopted a pose whereby the four letters were formed by the five fingers; this was called imenoslóvnoe, ‘name-word’. In the seventeenth century Nicon, Patriarch of Moscow, finding that many errors had crept into the Slavonic service books reformed them to the norm of the contem-porary Greek, but in many cases, such as this of the blessing, the Russians had preserved the more ancient usage. The innovations caused a great schism in the Church and were only forced upon it by the power of the State. The Old Believers who refuse still to accept them, had a special reverence for ancient icons, and to them is due the preservation of many most important examples (see infra).