Icons. Nikodim Kondakov

[40] At the same period, there came to an end the perpetual care which is necessary to keep icons from decay and universal destruction set in. An icon requires careful preservation; it must have a more or less steady temperature and suffers from variations in it and also from excessive moisture and dust. The thin layer of gesso that carries the paint swells up, cracks, and scales off, so that many places are left bare. Dust does significant damage, especially if an icon is horizontal, or if a dusty icon gets alternately damp and dry. In the old days the icons were looked after; in the palaces of Moscow there was an Office of Icons (obraznáya paláta, from obraz – icon) which collected old icons and contained shops for mending and cleaning them. Of course, it must be granted that this looking after icons and frequent cataloguing of them led to a general repainting in order to restore them and freshen up the colours, so that an old icon could be returned in a new style.

      33. Our Lady Hodegetria, 10th to 17th century.

      Gold, gilded silver, wood, enamels, pearls, precious and semi-precious stones, 32 × 33 cm.

      Art Museum of Georgia, Tbilisi, Georgia.

      34. Saint Luke the Evangelist, 1056–1057.

      Miniature of the Ostromir Gospel.

      The National Library of Russia, St. Petersburg.

      35. The Synaxarium of the Three Hierarchs, 1073.

      Miniature of the Sviatoslav Collection.

      Museum of History of Moscow, Moscow.

      The Technique

      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

41

Risúnok, ‘drawing’, answers in meaning to the French dessin, both ‘drawing’ and ‘design’; the verb risovát’ comes through the Polish from the German reissen, which besides its ordinary sense ‘to tear’ means ‘to score, to draw with a sharp point, to draw in outline’, being connected with ritzen and the same word as our write: scribo, show the same original meaning. The uses of the Slavonic pisát’, originally ‘to paint or decorate’ (pingo may be allied), means ‘write’ as well as ‘paint’, and ‘paint’ both of walls, tsérkov’ podpísana, ‘a church was frescoed’, and of icons, ikonostás napísan, ‘a screen was furnished with icons’. Mr. N. B. Jopson, Reader in Slavonic Philology at King’s College, London, allows me these etymologies. The ‘stylus’ with which icon-painters draw contours upon the gesso ground. From pisát’ comes pis’mó, the ordinary word for a ‘letter’, but specially used of the ‘style or school’ of icons. Less important varieties are called poshib (lit. ‘stroke’) = ‘local or personal manners’. The equivalent western words stil, shkóla, manera, came into Russian with western painting but are often used of icons. E. H. M.

42

In particular, let me recommend both for exactness of observation and fullness of illustrations that admirable work of Gabriel Millet, Recherches sur l’Iconographie de l’Évangile aux XIVe, XVe et XVIe siècles, 670 gravures, Paris, 1916. N. P. K.

43

For a similar division of labour under Akbar vide Percy Brown, Indian Painting under the Mughals, Oxford, 1924, p. no. This is not the only point of resemblance between Russian and Indian art at that time.