Theophanes the Greek and Andrei
Rublev
The rich tradition of church murals and icon painting
in Russia, «Inch began as early as the tenth century
with the importation of Byzantine icons, continued
unabated into the nineteenth century. Mi ii у of the
numerous examples are of extremely high quality, and
Only two early painters are known by their names.
Theophanes the Greek, born between 1330 and 1340, had
«inked in Constantinople and in other Byzantine centres
and brought to Russia the dramatic Palaeologan style. In
1378 Theophanes was at work in Novgorod, and at the turn
of the century in Moscow, then the centre of a powerful
principality. Theophanes is known to have been able to
paint from memory with great rapidity and sureness, and
his technique can be appreciated in his few surviving
works, such as the wonderful fresco of a stylite (pillar
sitter) in the Church of Our Saviour of the
Transfiguration at Novgorod. The free, brilliant
pictorial style of Castelseprio, with all its echoes of
Helleno-Roman illusionism, still continues in the work
of Theophanes seven centuries later.
His brush dashes along at such speed carrying a
message of religious mysticism that we are reminded of
the great Greek painter El Greco, who worked in Spain in
the sixteenth century. The lightning strokes of
Theophanes show a personal variant of the Byzantine
tradition and vibrate at an Intensity that could not be
transmitted to a pupil.
In Moscow Theophanes worked in association with a
younger and native Russian artist, the monk Andrei
Rublev, who painted a fine series of frescoes that still
survives at Vladimir but who is the best known for his
icons. In the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, the
iconostases in Russian churches had been heightened with
the addition of upper rows of images, and thus the
demand for icons was very great. The style of Russian
icons is usually distinguished by flat masses of only
slightly modulated color, often of great brilliance, and
by a keen sense of the importance of contour.
Rublev was content to work within the limitations of
this style, but he certainly raised it to its highest
level of aesthetic and spiritual achievement. His
best-known work is the Old Testament Trinity, an icon
painted in memory of the Abbot Sergius, who died in
1411. The painting is heavily damaged; gold has been
scraped from the background and the drapery, but even in
its present state it is a picture of haunting beauty.
The scene is traditional one in Russian icons, but
Rublev did not handle it in the traditional manner. The
meeting of Abraham and Sarah with the three angels, who
sat down to supper under a tree in the plains of Mamre
(Gen. 18:1 — 15) was interpreted in Christian thought as
a revelation of the Trinity. In Russian icons Abraham
and Sarah had always been represented, and a lamb's
head, symbolic of the sacrifice of Christ, substituted
for the textual calf. Rublev goes to the heart of the
mystery, showing only the three angels as if we were
Abraham and Sarah experiencing the vision. The
relationships among the three angels are treated with
the greatest poetic intensity and linear grace; the
contours flow from body to body as the glances move from
face to face. Throughout Russia icons were produced in
great numbers long after the fall of Constantinople to
the Turks in 1453.
Literature:
Book "Russian art" A.P. Minyar-Belorucheva |
