The British Museum collection
Page 3
In Russian church art, in accordance with the
Byzantine tradition, the image of the Virgin Mary received especial
veneration. Her icon was given a theological name corresponding
with the literal translation of the Greek original: ‘Mother of God’
‘Bogomate’ (from the Greek Theotokos or
MeterTheou). Additionally, an icon of the Mother
of God might receive the name of that church where its ‘master
copy’ was located; its place of origin and veneration; of certain
functions, for example intercession (the Greek ‘Paraklesis’), or
concepts of dogma.
In Russian iconography certain types of image
of the Mother of God received local names too, usually linked to
the place where the miraculous image was found. Thus, the Byzantine
type known as the Hodegetria (from the Greek Hodegetria–
the One who shows the way) is famous in different variants under
the names ‘Vladimirskaya’ (of Vladimir), ‘Smolenskaya’ (of
Smolensk), ‘Tikhvinskaya’ (of Tikhvin), ‘Gruzinskaya’ (of Georgia),
‘Iaroslavskaya’ (of Iaroslavl’), ‘Korsunskaya’ (of Korsun) and
others. On later
calendrical icons of the 18th and 19th centuries one may count
images of around 130 miracle-working icons of the Mother of
God.
The image of the Mother of God became the
source of a multiplicity of diverse images, originating as
illustrations of symbolic interpretative images from the Bible or
as allegories of Church hymnography such as
‘In Praise of the One who bore God’ (cat. no. 23), ‘The Burning Bush’,
‘The Stone not Hewn by Man’, ‘The Life-bearing Spring’,
‘Sophia the Wisdom of God’ (cat. no. 25),
‘The Mother of God, Joy to All Who Grieve’ (cat. no. 72) and others.
In Old Rus, which contemporaries considered
‘the House of the Mother of God’, copies of several famous
Byzantine icons, especially those preserved in the Church of the
Theotokos in Blachernae in Constantinople, gained fame. Ancient
icons such ‘The Vladimir Mother of God of Tenderness’ (pre-1130,
Tretiakov Gallery, Moscow), brought from Constantinople to Kiev and
then moved in 1155 by Grand Prince Andrei Bogoliubskii to the
Assumption Cathedral in Vladimir, date back to these. Amongst the
‘Blachernitissa’ type is the oldest Novgorodian icon of ‘The Mother
of God of the Sign’ (from the first half of the 12th century,
Novgorod Museum), the renowned 16th-century icon of the Mother of
God of Kazan, and others. Russian iconographers carefully
reproduced revered icons in multiple replicas over the centuries,
since in Orthodox Christianity it is believed that the
wonder-working power of an icon is transmitted to its exact
copies.
Amongst icons of the Mother of God in the
collection of the British Museum is a fine
icon of ‘Sophia the Wisdom of God’ (cat. no. 25) from the late 17th
century. In this icon are represented two widespread versions of
the symbolic union of the image of the Mother of God with the idea
of Divine Wisdom ‘building her house’, understood as the creation
of the earthly church. The image of the fiery-faced winged angel in
the centre, according to Novgorodian tradition, arises from the
prophecies of Isaiah about an angel of Great Light and the vision
of John the Apostle in the Book of Revelation: ‘And I saw another
mighty angel come down from heaven, clothed with a cloud: and a
rainbow was upon his head, and his face was as it were the sun, and
his feet as pillars of fire’ (10:1).
The Mother of God, supporting on her breast a
disc with an image of the Christ child, Emmanuel, represents the
mystery of the incarnation of the Word (cat. no. 29). On other
icons of the so-called ‘Kievan’ type (cat. no. 46),
the Mother of God is seated on a throne in the centre, encircled by
prophets glorifying her. Here the Mother of God is depicted as a
straightforward embodiment of the earthly Church – the House of
Wisdom.
Against a background of later, more
complicated dogmatic images of the Mother of God, her image in
earlier icons, such as the mid-16th century
‘Mother of God Smolenskaya’ (cat. no. 3), is attractive in its
simplicity and grandeur. The iconographic type known as the
Smolensk Mother of God dates back to a Byzantine icon first brought
to Rus by Princess Anna, the daughter of the Byzantine Emperor
Constantine IX, who was given in marriage to Prince Vsevolod
Iaroslavich (1030-93). Their son, Grand Prince Vladimir Monomakh,
brought the miracle-working icon from Chernigov to Smolensk, to the
Church of the Assumption of the Mother of God (1101).
This image was an exact copy of one of the
icons of the Mother of God in the Church of the Blachernae in
Constantinople, and was, according to church tradition, painted by
the Apostle Luke himself. The Byzantine model was the source for
the dissemination in Rus of the most solemn, processional type of
half-length image of the Mother of God with the Christ child in her
arms. The figure of Christ, who has his hand raised in blessing
towards the Theotokos, is seated in a strict frontal pose on her
left hand.
The vertically elongated proportions of the
figures, the fine lines of the drawing and the soft, tonally subtle
modelling of the faces embodies the style of Moscow iconography of
the first half to the middle of the 16th century, when the
influence of the art of the early icon painter Dionysii was still
in evidence.
The strict canons of iconography and the traditional skills of
icon painting were carefully preserved by the Orthodox Church. In
the middle of the 16th century, when there arose a danger that the
Russian icon would be corrupted by new European ideas, via the
medium of Cretan icons and Polish paintings, a special decree of a
council of Russian hierarchs – the Stoglav Council of 1551 –
rigidly regulated iconographic formulae. As models for emulation
they approved the iconography of the ancient masters – Byzantine
and Russian – amongst whom Andrei Rublev (c. 1360–1428/30)
was specified. These decisions contributed to the preservation of
special iconographical patterns for the following centuries. The
subsequent split in the Russian church in the second half of the
17th century, as a result of the reforms of Patriarch Nikon (Moscow
Council of 1666), on the one hand opened the way to Western
influence and moved traditional iconography to the periphery of
Church life, and on the other hand made her forms into a symbol of
‘Holy Rus’. Old Believers – followers of ancient Orthodoxy – not
only preserved old icons in their everyday practice but, for the
duration of the 18th and 19th centuries, supported the skill of
icon painting with egg tempera colours on panels in accordance with
ancient canons. The iconographers of Mstera, Palekh and Kholui –
heirs of the ‘Suzdalian’ tradition in the 19th and beginning of the
20th century – could thus paint icons in the ‘old-fashioned’ style
so skilfully that contemporary researchers do not always
distinguish them from the ancient models they are based upon.
Dr Yury Bobrov
Academy of Arts, St Petersburg
May 2008
Translated from the Russian by Stella Rock