Читать онлайн "Russia under the first Romanovs from Cambridge history of Russia, volume 1" - Press Cambridge University - RuLit

Woodwork, especially iconostases, survives mostly from interiors. Away from Moscow craftsmen made not just carvings but also three-dimensional religious images, rather like high-relief icons. Popular subjects were St Nicholas of Mozhaisk and St Paraskeva.[344] The first known examples of free-standing stone sculpture in Russia are the statues of saints outside the tower church of the Sign at Dubrovitsy (1690-1704). The church's design also departed radically from traditional Orthodox conventions by dispensing with cupolas in favour of an open-work crown. Inside there were Latin inscriptions.[345] The Westernised tastes of its owner, Peter I's tutor Prince Boris Golitsyn, who knew Latin and had access to Italian craftsmen, place the church at Dubrovitsy at the very limits of 'transitional' culture. There would be strong resistance to 'graven images' well into the eighteenth century.

The Armoury: icons, portraits, applied art

The Kremlin Armoury Chamber (Oruzheinaiapalata), established at the beginning of the sixteenth century, comprised a complex of studios making, storing and repairing high-quality items for the tsars' ceremonial and everyday use. Under the directorship of the boyar Bogdan Khitrovo from 1654 to 1680 it emerged as a virtual 'academy of arts'.[346]

The royal churches and residences swallowed up icons by the dozen and the Armoury's studios employed some of the best icon painters (ikonopistsy) in the land. The most famous was Simon Ushakov (1629-86), who is regarded as the very embodiment of 'transition', a pioneer of new effects in icon-painting, but never a fully-fledged easel painter.[347] In particular, he was known for his ability to apply chiaroscuro effects, especially to faces in such traditional compositions as Christ Not Made by Hands. Ushakov was acquainted with Western art. The classical arch in the background of his icon The Old Testament Trinity (1671), for example, was copied from a print of a painting by the Italian Paolo Veronese. In his epistle to Ushakov, written some time between i656 and i666, fellow icon painter Iosif Vladimirov asked: 'How can people possibly claim that only Russians are allowed to paint icons and only Russian icon-painting may be revered, while that of other lands should neither be kept nor honoured?' In the reply attributed to him, Ushakov wrote of the usefulness of image- making for commemorating the past and recording the present, comparing the painter's skill with the properties of a mirror.[348] But he remained firmly within an Orthodox context.

His icon The Planting of the Tree of the Muscovite Realm (i668) demonstrates several aspects of his art. It includes images of Tsar Alexis, his first wife Mariia and two of their sons, the only surviving 'portrait' of the tsar known for sure to have been produced during his lifetime and signed by the artist. (The signing of icons, hitherto anonymous, is itself evidence ofthe growth of artistic autonomy.) The icon also contains accurate representations of the walls of the Kremlin and the Spasskii (Saviour) tower. But far from being a vehicle for 'realism' that 'undermines the religious-symbolic basis of early Russian art',[349]the iconography conventionally ignoresthe laws oftime, space andperspective, bringing together heaven and earth and architecture and holy men of different epochs, presided over by an image of the twelfth-century Vladimir Mother of God.[350] Notional likenesses of rulers and their families in poses of supplication or prayer, as here, were in the Byzantine tradition. Another example is the icon Honouring the Life-Giving Cross (1677-8), by another Armoury painter, Ivan Saltanov, in which Constantine the Great and St Helena venerate the cross together with Alexis, Mariia and Patriarch Nikon.[351]

Clearly neither Ushakov nor Saltanov had any intention of depicting the 'struggle between the secular and the religious' detected by some modern historians.[352] More recently Russian scholars have shifted the emphasis from the novelty of Ushakov's work to its traditional elements - Byzantine, Kievan and Muscovite - categorising it as 'late medieval'.[353] The painter Fedor Zubov (d. 1689) copied some of his icons directly from foreign religious paintings, for example, his Crucifixion of 1685, in which blood, usually omitted from the Orthodox iconography of this subject, drips from Christ's hands and sides. But he also worked in a strictly Orthodox idiom. Icons such as Nativity of the Mother of God (1688) are remarkable for their stylised ornamentation, intricate details of architecture and landscapes and the application of highlights to fabrics.[354]Other leading painters of the era, such as Karp Zolotarev, Ivan Bezmin and Kirill Ulanov, remained true to Orthodox iconography, while adopting certain 'Italianate' stylistic features.[355] But subjects such as landscapes and still life that in Western art had long been treated independently in a secular context, in Russia remained within the framework of icons and frescos.

Soviet scholars attempted to identify distinct 'schools' of icon-painting beyond Moscow, for example, in the Kostroma workshops of Gurii Nikitin,[356]but their studies were compromised by the ideologically motivated quest for 'progressive' features in 'democratic' art away from the oppressiveness of the tsar's court. Fine-quality icons were produced in Iaroslavl', Ustiug, Vologda and other regional centres. Small icons rich in miniaturised detail are often attributed to the Stroganov school. The intricately decorative effects, lavish application of gold and glowing colours that are hallmarks of seventeenth- century icons had analogies in applied art. Coloured enamelling on gilded silver (a speciality of Sol'vychegodsk), decorative leather work and fabrics sown with gold and silver thread and seed pearls displayed a mixture of traditional floral and Western motifs.[357]

The most 'democratic' form of religious art were the single-sheet wood block prints (lubki) of icon subjects, often with decorative borders of flowers and geometric patterns, that circulated widely among all classes of the population. A whole collection of such prints makes up Vasilii Koren's illustrated Bible and Apocalypse (1692-6), fusing folk and Baroque motifs. Some served liturgical purposes, for example, printed antiminsy for use at the altar, others featured non-devotional topics, for example The Feast of the Pious and Impious and The Mice Bury the Cat (see Plate 27).[358] The most sophisticated prints came from Ukraine, where artists produced illustrations from wood and metal blocks for religious books and also allegorical conclusiones, engraved programmes for debates in the Kiev Academy.[359] In the 1680s these spread to Moscow. One of the most ambitious official graphic projects was Karion Istomin's illustrated Alphabet (Bukvar'), which was first made in manuscript for the royal children, then printed in 1694. Many of the illustrations for each letter of the Cyrillic alphabet were copied from Western sources.