The British Museum collection
The British Museum’s collection of Russian
icons is relatively small – together with Byzantine and Greek
icons, it numbers little over 100 works. The collection was formed
spontaneously as a part of what was the large Department of
Medieval Antiquities via acquisitions and gifts, mostly made during
the period after the Second World War. Nevertheless, the collection
is valuable not only because of the ancient
Icon of St George (cat. no. 1) – a rare
iconographic type from the beginning of the 15th century, but in
the collection are representatives of all periods of Russian icon
painting, with the exception of the earliest period of the 12th and
13th centuries – the so-called pre-Mongol period.
The historical and anthropological aspects of
this collection are most interesting. The first donation to the
Museum was a small, ‘domestic’
icon of the New Testament Trinity (cat. no. 68), or ‘Paternitas’, with
a very simple and artless image of God the Father, Jesus Christ and
a symbol of the Holy Spirit in the form of a dove. The icon arrived
at the British Museum in 1920 when Russia was still embroiled in
civil war. Thousands of Russian people emigrated from their
motherland, carrying with them only the most valuable items. Often
these included icons of a similar type, which were preserved in
every family from wealthy aristocratic households to the most
simple and poor. Icons were ordered on the occasion of the birth of
children or for other important events; parents blessed their
children with them for marriage. The ‘Paternitas’ icon is numbered
amongst those naïve icons, fashioned ‘under cover’ (on the panel
only the faces are drawn, as the remaining surface was covered by a
metal casing with an embossed image), which were manufactured in
their tens of thousands in the Suzdal villages of Mstera and
Kholui. It is possible that this icon also appeared in England in
the luggage of Russian émigrés or soldiers of the British military
units serving in the north of Russia.
A different icon, entering the collection in
1924, also preserves a memory of those dramatic years of Russian
history. An icon of the Mother of God of Vladimir (cat. no. 12) from
the 17th century was given to the British Museum by Captain H.W.
Murray. On the back is a label with an inscription that says that
the icon was given to T.A. Kilby on 28 July 1919 by the monks of a
monastery on the shores of Lake Onega, in thanks for saving them
from the Bolsheviks
. There are several
old monasteries on the shores of Lake Onega, but one of the oldest,
the Kornilev Monastery – founded in the 15th century on the small
island of Palei off the northern shore of the lake, was burned and
destroyed by the Bolsheviks, in 1919. In this period the monastery
belonged to the Old Believer branch of the Russian Orthodox Church.
The style of icon, restored in Old Believer ‘old-style’ manner,
indirectly confirms that this icon miraculously escaped from
precisely this place.
A further icon,
‘The Fiery Ascent of the Prophet Elijah’ (cat. no. 47), entered the British
Museum via Miss M.H. Turner in 1944. It is possible that the icon
was brought back to Britain by a British convoy which had been
delivering equipment and supplies to the USSR during the Second
World War. An icon is always resonant with some mystical origin
existing outside of the image on the panel. The Biblical prophet
Elijah, according to legend, appeared in the heavens in a fiery,
blazing chariot, and his icon indeed appeared in Britain in 1944,
when hundreds of British soldiers were perishing in torpedoed
boats.