Icons. Nikodim Kondakov

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СКАЧАТЬ only the expression of its epoch and the influences dominant therein, but also of its nation and place. The history of art which puts before us in historical development Italian, French, and German drawing shows us that drawing must be national and likewise individual; it is however significantly more complicated than, say, handwriting, in that we can often do no more than observe the national type in a drawing. When we come to the icon with the knowledge that there is a mechanical copy underlying every considerable drawing, we might expect to have to give up all search for national character, whereas even in the drawing we do perceive national traits and this opens to us a very special side of the craft which brings it into very close connection with a true art.

      The Russian icon-painter set himself the task, before everything else, of precisely imitating his Greek model; giving no play either to his pupil or to himself, he tried to make an exact copy. From the sixteenth century on we hear how the icon-painters sought this model; it made them buy old icons, it forbade any venture to paint even small details in their own fashion instead of the Greek – for instance the contour of the eyes – they were afraid to begin any innovation lest it should be a ground of accusation against them. Yet, all the while, the icon was getting a national tinge, and often it was the head and face which showed it first, next the figure, and only towards the end in a period of decline is there any change in the clothing, the ancient conventional raiment being modified by new influences. The changes of course affect the less prominent details: for instance, while the curly hair of S. George survives as a characteristic point of the saint, the slight wave in that of S. Nicholas may be gradually lost.

      If then we are asked the source and cause of such a change in the characteristic Greek types, we can point, first of all, to the series of miraculous and specially revered icons. You might think that these were the ones which would be most exactly copied, but as a matter of fact it is in these in which we find most frequently and most clearly a change in type. It is evident that, in accordance with a custom which early gained acceptance, patrons were almost always inclined to choose for their own devotion some miraculous icon that they specially revered and knew very well. Such icons would be copied more often than others, and more often than in the case of others would a copy serve as a model for further copying, and, as a result, the process of modification was especially swift. The human hand, as it follows the stencil mechanically traced from the original, tends to modify its lines after its national character and even after a definite manner of icon-painting which suggested to the painter definite features of the iconic type. If we take the type of S. Nicholas Thaumaturgus, whose innumerable Russian icons show evident signs of Greek tradition, this tradition can be exemplified and confirmed by a whole series of early Byzantine pictures in wall mosaic (Daphni, S. Luke in Phocis, S. Sophia at Kiev), and portable mosaic (Stavro-Nikita[46], Kiev Theological 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 СКАЧАТЬ