Orthodox art is a huge layer of the cultural heritage of mankind, rich in achievements, rooted in the culture of early Christianity and in the Old Testament times, and has become the basis of almost all the art of Rus' known to us today.
As you know, the most ancient areas of Orthodox art, which came to Rus' in the 10th century along with Christianity, are painting and music. Having originated in quality and icon painting, these trends have been developing for many centuries, having been developed in beautiful secular music and fine arts.
Among the Russian Orthodox painting of the Middle Ages, the world-famous Novgorod icon painting is the most famous and appreciated. Its samples that have survived to this day are kept in state museums of Russia and are included in the cultural heritage fund of UNESCO. These are well-known to all connoisseurs of the beautiful icon of the Novgorod Savior, the Archangel Michael, the Angel Golden Hair, as well as the famous icon of the noble princes Boris and Gleb, on which the saints are depicted in full growth. In addition to the Novgorod icons, Russian Orthodox painting is also famous for other holy images: the Vladimir icon of the Mother of God, the Trinity, which is allegedly attributed to the pen of Andrei Rublev, the Savior Almighty, the Savior Emmanuel.
Orthodox artists Nesterov, Vasnetsov, Vrubel
However, Orthodox painting has long been no longer limited to the art of icon painting. As soon as culture got out of the influence of the church, and the ban on depicting anyone other than the faces of saints was lifted, such a concept as secular painting appeared and began to develop and flourish in Russia. However, secular artists also liked to depict biblical subjects, both Old Testament and Evangelical. One of the most famous Orthodox artists, without a doubt, can be called M.V. Nesterov, the author of many paintings painted on religious themes. He illustrated both monastic life and the life of the Orthodox community, and also wrote stories on the lives of the saints.
His most famous Orthodox painting, which we remember from school, is “The Vision of the Young Bartholomew”, the plot for which the artist borrowed from the biography of St. Sergius of Radonezh. Orthodox artists M. A. Vrubel and V. M. Vasnetsov are no less famous. Having nothing to do with classical icon painting, Vasnetsov, Vrubel, and Nesterov, in addition to paintings, are also famous for their church paintings. So, Nesterov took part in the painting of the Solovetsky Monastery, Vasnetsov - the Vladimir Cathedral in Kyiv, and the name of Vrubel is inextricably linked with the paintings of the Kyiv St. Cyril's Church.
Modern Orthodox painting
Exhibitions of Orthodox art, held from time to time in different cities of Russia, show that in our time the development of Orthodox painting does not stand still. Among the young artists who distinguished themselves at exhibitions, one can note P. Chekmarev, E. Zaitsev, V. Sokovnin, Archpriest M. Maleev.
The Orthodox paintings of these authors show their keen interest in church life, spiritual figures, historical events that took place or are taking place in the church. In Russia and abroad, there are also exhibitions of the modern, but already quite well-known Orthodox artist A. Shilov, depicting the life of monasteries and their inhabitants. A. Shilov became famous thanks to the portraits of monks: bright, expressive, emotional. Young and old faces depicted in his paintings, touching, sentimental, with carefully written out details, involuntarily
The Bible is a unique book that appeals to the hearts of people in all languages of the world. The Gospel also speaks the language of art. Orthodox paintings by Russian artists prove that the Bible speaks to us not only in the Word, but also in visual images.
Orthodox paintings
Orthodox paintings and Orthodox painting throughout the ages have found inspiration in the Bible. Plots from the Holy Scriptures, the events of the Old and New Testaments came to life on the canvases. We decided to acquaint readers with the spiritual heritage of the great artists who embodied the plots of the great Book. Orthodox paintings they wrote at all times with oil and charcoal, on canvases and on the walls of secluded cells.
Our contemporary Elena Cherkasova- painter. Her Orthodox paintings based on stories from the Bible are already taking their place in the world history of painting.
A spiritual crisis led the artist to Orthodox paintings, as art critics write. After coming to faith, Elena Cherkasova planned to take up icon painting. But in the end I came to my own language of conversation with people who come to faith through art. Her "naive" and at the same time profound paintings became an example of deep self-denial and objectivity.
Marriage at Cana
This painting is a sermon that conveys events in the form of a story about biblical heroes and their actions.
Elena Cherkasova's painting cannot be called classical; Elena managed to create a new classic. It does not attempt to copy the traditional icon-painting school, but this gives the Orthodox paintings of contemporary artists the opportunity to create something new, using their spiritual experience and imagination.
On July 16, on the eve of the Day of Remembrance of the Holy Royal Martyrs, Pavel Ryzhenko, People's Artist of Russia, a parishioner of the Church of All Saints of the Alekseevsky Stauropegial Convent, reposed in the Lord.
About himself, Paul wrote:
“Each, and especially Russian, person reaches out in the depths and secrets of his heart to the light - Christ. Faith in Christ came to me very late, but, believing, I wanted to run after Him, hoping someday to get closer to this light. It is difficult for me to write about this, there are no words to clearly express my thoughts, but I need to say about the people who are dead and alive, who are the bearers of the faith and spirit of the Russian Empire. And to say on the canvas, because it is my duty to the great truth of Rus'. The duty of a not completely broken resident of the metropolis, who, through the outlines of modern houses, through the smog of the Third Ring, sees how again and again these strict and loving faces of our ancestors, who shed their sweat and blood for Christ and for each of us, appear again and again.
Approaching the boundary of my life, the boundary that the great Pushkin could not cross, at which many stopped, I ask myself a question of questions: whom did I serve? To whom, and not to what, and in general, what is art?
I hope that my paintings will awaken the genetic memory of my contemporaries, pride in their Fatherland, and perhaps help the viewer find the only right path for themselves. And then - I will be happy with the fulfilled duty. (pavel-ryzhenko.rf)
His paintings were loved by believers and secular people. Everyone remembers Paul himself as a man of great power of the Spirit and faith.
October 18 is the day of memory of the outstanding Russian Orthodox artist Mikhail Nesterov. Mikhail Nesterov died in 1942. The artist came to faith after the loss of his beloved wife. He was one of the founders of the "Union of Russian Artists", preserved in his paintings the best traditions of the Russian Church and Orthodox painting.
Orthodox paintings by these artists allow us to reveal a little more of the mystery of the Bible.
, … Today - painting.
The relationship of faith and art is not always simple, both on the one hand and on the other. However, nowhere is the "union" of art and Christianity more visible than in the visual arts. For example, the icon is not only the most Christian thing, but also an innovation in art with its famous “reverse perspective”. And the discovery of perspective itself is the property of classical European painting, which, in turn, will forever testify that Europe is a Christian culture. The place of non-classical, contemporary art requires separate consideration. All these three - icon painting, classical painting and contemporary art - will be discussed in books, lectures and films, which we will present below. In the meantime, I want to say the main thing.
“What is ecclesiastical? This is new life, life in the Spirit. What is the criterion for the correctness of this life? - The beauty. Yes, there is a special spiritual beauty, and it, elusive for logical formulas, is at the same time the only true way to determine what is Orthodox and what is not, ”wrote Florensky. The best "proof of the existence of God", according to Florensky, is this: "if there is Rublev's Trinity, then there is God." Beauty as the Name of God is the axial thought of Orthodoxy. And art is the human response to this Beauty.
And how else, if God, "whom no one has ever seen," became a man, a part of this world? Therefore, He can be depicted (the dogma of icon veneration) - and any image, thereby, is “justified”.
Brueghel, Rubens "Sight"
Florensky is a great thinker, in particular, it was he who discovered the "reverse perspective". The icon is such not from the inability to draw, but completely consciously; in the icon, a completely special technique and a special thought manifest itself. About this - the work "Reverse Perspective". Another, "Iconostasis", is more general: dream logic, a window to another world, the experience of the heavenly. The collection of Florensky's works "History and Philosophy of Art" collected several of his special works on our issue.
In parallel with Florensky, Trubetskoy worked, who also made a significant contribution to understanding the phenomenon of the icon: “Three Essays on the Russian Icon” - the icon as philosophy.
The Russian contribution to aesthetics will help to see the anthology "Philosophy of Russian religious art of the XVI-XX centuries." .
"Reading an Icon" - a series of conversations about iconographic subjects.
Lectures by Father Alexander Saltykov, art critic, dean of the faculty of church arts of PSTGU: from the ordination of the consecration of icons to the scientific study of church art.
37 radio programs of "Iconology": from the most general topics ("icon and beauty") to the analysis of specific iconographic plots.
"Icon. The Human Face of God” is a seven-part film about the icon, superbly filmed and theologically and artistically complete.
“Evidence of Beauty” is a film where the great Christian intellectual Sergei Averintsev talks about icon painting.
"Rublev" is a classic book from the ZhZL series about the reverend artist.
"Biblical text and European painting" - lectures, where first a certain biblical passage is analyzed in the most detailed way, and then how it was reflected in European art.
"The Gospel in the works of the best masters of icon painting and painting" - each film of the cycle is a reading of one of the Gospels, accompanied by church music and illustrated with great works of painting and icon painting.
And, of course, "Bible Story", where you will find many issues about painting.
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Russian artist, musician and theater figure Vasily Polenov for a long time did not dare to turn to the Biblical theme in his work. Until a terrible thing happened: his beloved sister became seriously ill and before her death she took the word from her brother that he would begin “to paint a big picture on the long-conceived topic“ Christ and the Sinner ”.
And he kept his word. After the creation of this picture, Polenov began to create a whole cycle of paintings called "From the Life of Christ", to which he devotes several decades of tireless creative and spiritual searches. Polenov for this even makes a trip through Constantinople, Athens, Smyrna, Cairo and Port Said to Jerusalem.
Henryk Semiradsky
The outstanding portrait painter Henryk Semiradsky, although he was a Pole by birth, from his youth felt an organic connection with Russian culture. Perhaps this was facilitated by studying at the Kharkov gymnasium, where drawing was taught by a student of Karl Bryullov Dmitry Bezperchiy.
Semiradsky brought picturesqueness to his canvases on biblical subjects, which made them vivid, memorable, and alive.
Detail: Took part in the painting of the Cathedral of Christ the Savior.
Alexander Ivanov
“He left one divine Raphael as his teacher. With a high inner instinct, he sensed the true meaning of the word: historical painting. And his inner feeling turned his brush to Christian subjects, the highest and last degree of high,” Nikolai Gogol wrote about the famous painter.
Alexander Ivanov is the author of the painting "The Appearance of Christ to the People", which cost him 20 years of real work and creative devotion. Ivanov also made watercolor sketches for the murals of the "Temple of Humanity", but almost never showed them to anyone. Only after the death of the artist, these drawings became known. This cycle entered the history of art under the name "biblical sketches". These sketches were published over 100 years ago in Berlin and have not been republished since.
Nikolai Ge
Ge's painting "The Last Supper" shocked Russia, as once "The Last Day of Pompeii" by Karl Bryullov. The newspaper "St. Petersburg Vedomosti" reported: "The Last Supper" strikes with originality against the general background of the dry fruits of academic bearing, "and the members of the Academy of Arts, without objecting, could not make up their minds for a long time.
In The Last Supper, Ge interprets the traditional religious story as a tragic confrontation between a hero who sacrifices himself for the good of humanity and his student who forever renounces the teacher's precepts. In the image of Judas, Ge has nothing private, only general. Judas is a collective image, a man "without a face."
Detail: Nikolai Ge first turned to gospel stories under the influence of Alexander Ivanov
Ilya Repin
It is believed that none of the Russian artists, except for Karl Bryullov, enjoyed such lifetime fame as Ilya Repin. Contemporaries admired the skillfully executed multi-figure genre compositions and, as it were, "living" portraits.
Ilya Repin in his work repeatedly turned to the gospel theme. He even went as a pilgrim to the Holy Land to see for himself the places where Christ walked and preached. "I wrote almost nothing there - once, I wanted to see more ... I painted the image of the Russian church - the head of the Savior. I also wanted to put my mite in Jerusalem ..." Later he said: "everywhere the Bible is alive", "so grandiose I felt the living God "," God! How wonderfully you feel your insignificance to non-existence.
Ivan Kramskoy
Ivan Kramskoy had been thinking about his painting "The Resurrection of the Daughter of Jairus" for a whole decade. At the beginning of 1860, he makes the first sketch, and only in 1867 - the first version of the picture, which did not satisfy him. To see everything that has been done in this way, Kramskoy travels around Europe with a mandatory visit to the best museums in the world. leaves for Germany. He walks through the art galleries of Vienna, Antwerp and Paris, gets acquainted with new art, and later travels to the Crimea - to the areas of Bakhchisarai and Chufui-Kale, so similar to the Palestinian desert.
Marc Chagall
The author of the famous "Bible Message" Marc Chagall loved the Bible since childhood, considering it an extraordinary source of poetry. Since he came from a Jewish family, he began quite early to comprehend the basics of education at the school at the synagogue. Many years later, already an adult, Chagall in his work tried to comprehend not only the Old, but also the New Testament, tends to understand the figure of Christ.
