Lubok meaning of the word. What is "lubok" and "lubok pictures"

Splint

Due to its intelligibility and focus on the “broad masses”, the popular print was used as a means of agitation (for example, “flying sheets” during Peasants' War and the Reformation in Germany, popular prints of the times of the Great french revolution).

In Germany, picture factories were located in Cologne, Munich, Neuruppin; in France - in the city of Troyes. In Europe, books and pictures of obscene content are widespread, for example, "Tableau de l'amur conjual" (Picture of conjugal love). “Seductive and immoral pictures” were brought to Russia from France and Holland.

German funny sheets were sold in the Vegetable Row, and later on the Spassky Bridge.

Censorship and prohibitions

Plots and drawings were borrowed from foreign Almanacs and Calendars. IN early XIX centuries, plots are borrowed from novels and short stories by Goethe, Radcliffe, Cotten, Chateaubriand and other writers.

Lubok types

• Spiritual and religious - In the Byzantine style. Icon type images. Lives of saints, parables, morals, songs, etc.
• Philosophical.
• Legal - images of lawsuits and court actions. Often there were plots: “Shemyakin Court” and “Yorsh Ershovich Shchetinnikov”.
• Historical - "Touching stories" from the annals. Image historical events, battles, cities. Topographic maps.
• Fairy tales - fairy tales, heroic ones, "Tales of daring people", everyday tales.
• Holidays - images of saints.
• Cavalry - Luboks depicting riders.
• Balagurnik - funny popular prints, satires, caricatures, fables.

Lubok production

One of the first Russian figure factories appeared in Moscow in the middle of the 18th century. The factory belonged to the merchants Akhmetievs. The factory had 20 machines.

19th century

Major General Alexander Seslavin. Historical lubok of the 19th century

IN mid-nineteenth For centuries, large figured printing houses have been operating in Moscow: Akhmetyev, Loginov, Shchurova, Chizhov, Kudryakov, Rudneva, Florova, girls Lavrentiev, Sharapova, Kirilov, Morozov, Streltsov, Yakovlev.

Sytin's first lithographic luboks were called: Peter the Great raises a congratulatory cup for his teachers; how Suvorov plays money with village children; how our Slavic ancestors were baptized in the Dnieper and overthrew the idol of Perun. Sytin began to involve professional artists in the manufacture of popular prints. For signatures to luboks were used folk songs, poetry famous poets. In 1882 in Moscow took place art exhibition. Lubki Sytin received a diploma and a bronze medal of the exhibition.

ID Sytin collected boards from which popular prints were printed for about 20 years. The collection, worth several tens of thousands of rubles, was destroyed in a fire at Sytin's printing house during the Revolution of 1905.

The evolution of the development of the Russian popular print

see also

Notes

Literature

• Lubok, M., 1968
• Folk picture of the XVII-XIX centuries, Sat. st., ed. Dmitry Bulanin, 1996
• Rovinsky D. A., Russian folk pictures, St. Petersburg, 1881
• Anatoly Rogov"Pantry of Joy", Moscow, ed. Enlightenment, 1982
• Ivan Snegirev Lubok pictures of the Russian people in the Moscow world. Moscow. In the University type., 1861
• Mikhail Nikitin. On the history of the study of Russian popular print / / Soviet art history. 1986. Issue 20. pp.399-419
• Yurkov S. From Lubok to "Jack of Diamonds": Grotesque and Anti-Behavior in the Culture of the "Primitive" // Yurkov S. E. Under the Sign of the Grotesque: Anti-Behavior in Russian Culture (XI-early XX centuries). SPb., 2003, p. 177-187
• Splint- article from the Great Soviet Encyclopedia

Links

• Russian drawn popular print of the late 18th - early 19th centuries From the collection of the State Historical Museum

Lubok Lubok

Folk picture, a work of graphics (mainly printed), characterized by the intelligibility of the image and intended for mass distribution. Lubok is characterized by simplicity of technique, conciseness visual means(a rough touch, usually bright coloring), often designed for a decorative effect, a tendency to a detailed narrative (a series of popular prints, popular print books), often complementary images and explanatory inscriptions. Lubok, performed, as a rule, by craftsmen, is a type of folk art, but lubok usually also includes works of professional graphics, borrowing individual lubok-folklore techniques. The oldest popular prints appeared in China and were originally performed by hand, and from the 8th century. - woodcut. The European lubok, made in the technique of wood engraving, has been known since the 15th century. Since the 17th century splint spread in the technique of engraving on copper, and from the 19th century. - lithographs. The formation of the European popular print is associated with such types of late medieval mass pictorial products as paper icons distributed at fairs and places of pilgrimage. Religious images in the popular print acquired a shade of visual and moralizing entertainment. During the years of social revolutionary movements, lubok was used as a journalistic weapon - "flying sheets" of the times of the Reformation and the Peasant War in Germany 1524-26, lubok of the Great French Revolution of 1789-94, etc.; narrating about historical events, battles, rare natural phenomena, the lubok served as a means of mass media. The Russian lubok of the 18th century is peculiar, distinguished by the decorative unity of composition and coloring, independence from the techniques of professional graphics. In the 19th century masters increasingly turned to the images of lubok professional art or those who directly imitated it (in Russia, for example, A. G. Venetsianov, I. I. Terebenev, I. A. Ivanov - the authors of colored etchings dedicated to the Patriotic War of 1812), or inspired by some of his techniques and themes (F. Goya, O. Daumier, G. Courbet). Oriental lubok (Chinese, Indian), which initially often had a magical meaning, is distinguished by its bright colors. Deliberate appeal to the forms of popular print ( cm. Primitivism) manifested itself in late XIX-XX centuries in the work of many artists; A. Derain, R. Dufy, P. Picasso, masters of the association "Bridge" in Germany and so on. In Soviet art, lubok techniques were creatively used by V. V. Mayakovsky and others to create posters and propaganda pictures, as well as by T. A. Mavrina to illustrate children's books.

"Jung-hoi, cutting the demon." Woodcut, coloring. China. 19th century

"The bear hunter pricks, and the dogs gnaw." Woodcut, coloring. Russia. 1st floor 18th century
Literature: D. A. Rovinsky, Russian folk pictures, vol. 1-5 (text), vol. 1-4 (atlas), St. Petersburg, 1881; V. M. Alekseev, Chinese folk picture, M., 1966; (Yu. Ovsyannikov), Lubok. (Album), M., 1968; O. Baldina, Russian folk pictures, M., 1972; Duchartre P.-L., Saulnier R., L "imagerie populaire, P., 1926.

Source: Popular art encyclopedia." Ed. Field V.M.; M.: Publishing house " Soviet Encyclopedia", 1986.)

Folk picture, work charts(mainly printed), characterized by simplicity and intelligibility of the image and intended for mass distribution. The term appeared in the beginning. 19th century Russian word"Lubok" comes, perhaps, from "bast" - the top layer of wood; large boxes were made from it, in which folk pictures were carried. Bast was also called linden, which served as material for printed boards. The oldest luboks appeared in China. In Europe, folk pictures have been known since the 15th century, in Russia - from the 18th century. The first European and Russian luboks were paper icons sold at fairs and places of pilgrimage.

The heyday of the Russian popular print - 18 - early. 19th century Luboks were created mainly in Moscow and, possibly, in the North and the Volga region. At first, folk pictures were engraved using the technique woodcuts, from the end of the 18th century. more often made engravings on copper. The first copper prints were made by professional engravers from St. Petersburg - A. F. and I. F. Zubov, as well as Moscow silversmiths from the royal village of Izmailovo. Black and white prints were painted by hand with bright, "sunny" colors - red, orange, yellow, which "flashed" even more strongly against the background of dark purple and deep green. Folk pictures brought a sense of celebration into the house, at the same time they taught and amused. Favorite popular plots - hunting, feasts, fist fights, walks with beauties, fun of jesters and buffoons, fabulous adventures Bovs of Korolevich and Yeruslan Lazarevich and various "diva" (a sea monster-whale found in the White Sea, a comet, a "strong elephant beast"). Luboks often use the language of allegory, the grotesque, they can serve as a tool for sharp political satire: so, Peter I turns into them either into a cat (“Cat of Kazan”), which can be buried (“Mice bury a cat”, late 17th-early 18th century), then into a funny monster - a crocodile, and his wife Ekaterina I - to Baba Yaga (“Yaga Baba goes to fight with a corcodile”, early 18th century). The biting pictorial language of folk pictures was addressed professional artists who created patriotic leaflets during Patriotic War 1812 (A. G. Venetsianov, I. I. Terebenev and others). The image in luboks is complemented by text, which is often a dialogue of characters in the spirit of mischievous jokes of buffoons or folk representations. square theater.
images folk art, captured in popular prints, enriched the work of P. A. Fedotov, L.I. Solomatkina, partly V. G. Perov. At the turn of the 19th-20th centuries. many artists, especially participants artistic association « Jack of Diamonds» , sought to revive the naive charm of the popular print. In the 20th century visual techniques folk pictures were creatively used by V. V. Mayakovsky and D. S. Moor to create posters and propaganda pictures, as well as by T. A. Mavrina and other illustrators of children's books.

In contact with

Originally a kind of folk art. It was carried out in the technique of woodcuts, copper engravings, lithographs and was complemented by freehand coloring.

Lubok is characterized by simplicity of technique, laconism of visual means (a rough stroke, bright coloring). Lubok often contains a detailed narrative with explanatory inscriptions and additional (explanatory, complementary) images to the main one.

Story

The most ancient luboks are known in China. Until the 8th century, they were drawn by hand. Since the 8th century, the first popular prints made in woodcuts have been known. Lubok appeared in Europe in the 15th century. The woodcut technique is typical for early European lubok. Copper engraving and lithography are added later.

Due to its intelligibility and focus on the "broad masses", the popular print was used as a means of agitation (for example, "flying sheets" during the Peasants' War and the Reformation in Germany, popular prints of the Great French Revolution).

In Germany, factories for the production of pictures were located in Cologne, Munich, Neuruppin; in France - in the city of Troyes. In Europe, books and pictures of obscene content are widespread, for example, "Tableau de l'amur conjual" (Picture of conjugal love). “Seductive and immoral pictures” were brought to Russia from France and Holland.

The Russian lubok of the 18th century is notable for its sustained composition.

Oriental lubok (China, India) is distinguished by its bright colors.

At the end of the 19th century, lubok was revived in the form of comics.

In Russia

Story

In 16th century Russia early XVII For centuries, prints were sold, which were called “Fryazhsky sheets”, or “German amusing sheets”.

IN late XVII century in the Upper (Court) printing house, a Fryazhsky camp was installed for printing Fryazh sheets. In 1680, the craftsman Afanasy Zverev cut "all kinds of Fryazh cuts" on copper boards for the tsar.

German amusing sheets were sold in the Vegetable Row, and later on the Spassky Bridge.

Censorship and prohibitions

Moscow Patriarch Joachim in 1674 forbade "buying sheets printed by German heretics, Luthers and Calvins, in their accursed opinion." The faces of the revered saints were to be written on the board, and the printed images were intended for "handsomeness".

The decree of March 20, 1721 forbade the sale "on the Spassky Bridge and in other places in Moscow, composed by people of various ranks ... prints (sheets) printed arbitrarily, except for the printing house." The Izugrafskaya Chamber was created in Moscow.

The chamber issued permission to print luboks "arbitrarily, except for the printing house." Over time, this decree ceased to be executed. Appeared a large number of low-quality images of the Saints.

Therefore, by decree of October 18, 1744, it was ordered "to submit the drawings in advance for approbation to the diocesan bishops."

The decree of January 21, 1723 demanded that "Imperial persons skillfully write to painters testified in good craftsmanship with all danger and diligent care." Therefore, in popular prints there are no images of reigning persons.

In 1822, police censorship was introduced for printing popular prints. Some popular prints were banned, the boards were destroyed. In 1826, by censorship charter, all prints (and not just popular prints) were subject to censorship.

Plots of paintings

Initially, the plots for popular prints were handwritten legends, life stories, "father's writings", oral legends, articles from translated newspapers (for example, "Chimes"), etc.

Plots and drawings were borrowed from foreign Almanacs and Calendars. At the beginning of the 19th century, plots were borrowed from the novels and stories of Goethe, Radcliffe, Cotten, Chateaubriand and other writers.

At the end of the 19th century, pictures on themes from the scriptures, portraits of the imperial family prevailed, then genre pictures came, most often of a moral and instructive nature (about the disastrous consequences of gluttony, drunkenness, greed).

Face editions of "Yeruslan Lazarevich" and other fairy tales, images in faces folk songs(“The boyars rode from Nova-Gorod”, “Husband’s wife beat”), female heads with absurd inscriptions, images of cities ( Jerusalem - the navel of the earth).

Lubok production

The engravers were called "Fryazh carving masters" (in contrast to the Russian "ordinary" wood carvers). In Moscow at the end of the 16th century, the first engraver was presumably Andronik Timofeev Nevezha.

Signing was called drawing and coloring. Approximately in the 16th (or in the 17th) century, commemoration was divided into commemoration and engraving. The bannerman applied the drawing, the engraver cut it out on a board, or metal.

Copying boards was called translation. The boards were originally lime, then maple, pear and palm.

The splint was made as follows: the artist applied pencil drawing on a linden board (bast), then, according to this drawing, with a knife, he made a deepening of those places that should remain white. The board smeared with paint under pressure left black contours of the picture on paper.

Printed in this way on cheap gray paper were called plain paintings. Prostoviki were taken to special artels. In the 19th century, in the villages near Moscow and Vladimir, there were special artels that were engaged in coloring popular prints. Women and children were engaged in coloring luboks.

Later, a more perfect way to produce popular prints appeared, engravers appeared. With a thin chisel on copper plates, they engraved a drawing with hatching, with all the small details, which could not be done on a lime board.

One of the first Russian figure factories appeared in Moscow in the middle of the 18th century. The factory belonged to the merchants Akhmetievs. The factory had 20 machines.

Prostovikov, that is, the cheapest pictures, costing ½ a penny a piece, were printed and colored in the Moscow district for about 4 million annually. Top price popular prints was 25 kopecks.

Popularity

Luboks fell in love in Russia immediately and by everyone without exception. They could be met in the royal chambers, in the serf's hut, in the inn, in monasteries.

There are documents showing that Patriarch Nikon had two hundred and seventy of them, for the most part, however, still Fryazhsky. And Tsarevich Peter has already bought a lot of domestic ones, in his rooms there were about a hundred of them. There are two reasons for such a rapid and wide popularity of seemingly simple pictures.

Firstly, the splints were replaced common man books inaccessible to him: textbooks, starting with the alphabet and arithmetic and ending with cosmography (astronomy), fiction- in luboks with a series of successive pictures, as in stamps hagiographic icons, with extensive signatures, epics and stories were retold or published.

Adventure translated novels about Bova Korolevich and Yeruslan Lazarevich, fairy tales, songs, proverbs. There were luboks like newsletters and newspapers that reported on the most important state events, about wars, about life in other countries.

There were interpreters Holy Bible depicting the largest monasteries and cities. There were medical splints and about all sorts of folk beliefs and omens. There were the worst satires.

Photo gallery

Helpful information

Splint
lubok picture
popular leaf
funny leaf
prostovik

origin of name

The name comes from boards of special sawing, which were called bast (deck). On them back in the 15th century. wrote plans, drawings, drawings. Then the so-called “fryazh sheets” appeared, and later small paper pictures were simply called lubok (popular folk picture).

In Russia

In Russia, folk pictures became widespread in the 17th-20th centuries. They were cheap (even low-income segments of the population could buy them) and often performed the function decorative design. Lubok sheets performed the social and entertaining role of a newspaper or primer. They are the prototype modern calendars, posters, comics and posters. In the 17th century, painted bast boxes became widespread.

Lubok types

• Spiritual and religious - In the Byzantine style. Icon type images. Lives of saints, parables, morals, songs, etc.
• Philosophical.
• Legal - images of lawsuits and court actions. Often there were plots: “Shemyakin Court” and “Yorsh Ershovich Shchetinnikov”.
• Historical - "Touching stories" from the annals. Image of historical events, battles, cities. Topographic maps.
• Fairy tales - fairy tales, heroic ones, "Tales of daring people", everyday tales.
• Holidays - images of saints.
• Cavalry - Luboks depicting riders.
• Joker - funny popular prints, satires, caricatures, fables.

Coloring method

Artel workers accepted orders for coloring hundreds of thousands of copies from lubok publishers. One person per week painted up to one thousand popular prints - one ruble was paid for such work. The profession was called a colorist. The profession disappeared after the advent of lithographic machines.

Advantages of a printed picture

The first to see through the advantages of a printed picture in Moscow were the same habitues of the Spassky Bridge, or Spassky Krestets, as this place was often called then. The book trade flourished there even to the splint - the main trade in Russia was in this part. But only books were sold more handwritten and very often of the most poisonous quality, such as the satirical "Priest Savva - great glory” and “Services of the tavern”. The writers themselves and their friends - artists from the same common people - drew illustrations for these books, or sewed them into the pages, or sold them separately. But how much can you draw by hand?!

Manufacturing

It was these writers and artists who drew attention to the popular prints, which were brought by foreigners, first as a gift to the Moscow tsar and the boyars, and then for a wide sale. It turned out that making them is not so difficult, moreover, many thousands of pictures can be printed from one board, and even with text cut out in the same way next to the picture. Someone from foreigners or Belarusians, apparently, built the first machine in Moscow and brought ready-made boards for the sample.

I.D. Sytin

In the second half of the 19th century, I. D. Sytin was one of the largest producers and distributors of printed popular prints. In 1882, the All-Russian Art and Industrial Exhibition took place in Moscow, at which Sytin's products were awarded a silver medal. ID Sytin collected boards from which popular prints were printed for about 20 years. The collection worth several tens of thousands of rubles was destroyed during a fire in Sytin's printing house during the 1905 Revolution.

Style formation

The still young Russian popular print, of course, borrowed a lot from other arts, and first of all from the book miniature, and therefore, artistically, it soon became, as it were, a kind of alloy, a synthesis of all the best that had been developed. Russian art behind previous centuries of its existence.

But only to what extent the lubochniks have sharpened and exaggerated all forms, to what extent they have increased the contrast and heated up the colors, heated up to such an extent that each leaf literally burns, sprinkles with cheerful multicolor.

In our time

IN modern world the style of the lubok is not forgotten. It is widely used in illustrations, theatrical scenery, paintings and interior design. Dishes, posters, calendars are produced.

IN modern fashion Lubok also found its reflection. As part of the 22nd Textile Salon in Ivanovo, the collection of Yegor Zaitsev, “iVANOVO. Splint".

What is a lubok? Why and how was it made? What does it have in common with the deck of a ship? And why did the authorities ban it? The answers are in the article!

News of various kinds have become an integral part of life modern man. And it doesn't matter where we get them: from the Internet, from newspapers or on television. It is important for us that the information is fresh, versatile and constant. And if you think that our ancestors did without it, then you are greatly mistaken. In the old days, they also had their own media. And they were wildly popular too. And some of them were banned too. And they also advertised something, scolded someone, inspired something. So what did the then editions produce?

In the old days, there was one type of media, and that was lubok. A lubok, also known as a lubok sheet or a picture, is a stylized image printed on paper with comments. And since it reflects the creativity of the people rather than professionals, it was distinguished by simplicity, conciseness and intelligibility.

Short story

The first popular prints (nianhua) appeared in China. Moreover, at first each sheet was drawn by hand, and only after the 8th century did the Chinese learn how to make prints. From the Celestial Empire, popular art spread to India and Arab countries. Like all oriental painting, Asian popular prints were distinguished by their saturation of colors and an abundance of elements.

IN European countries Lubok has been known since the 15th century. At first, the images were in black and white, and looked like unsightly children's coloring books; they got color a little later. European luboks were distinguished by a variety of subjects and were similar to modern newspapers and magazines: in major cities there were editions-factories (which later turned into printing houses), and shops selling them.

In some countries, luboks existed until the 19th century. They were supplanted by ordinary printed newspapers and comics.

Lubok plots

In the East, the pictures had a predominantly religious and philosophical content, but as soon as the popular prints came to Europe, their subject matter expanded significantly. Fabulous or epic, historical and legal (images of trials filled with satire and morality) appeared. As well as pictures depicting saints (like modern calendars), horsemen and folk heroes. Jokers had a separate place and great popularity - humorous popular prints with caricatures, satire, jokes, toasts and fables.

In addition, in Europe some large firms and businesses ordered promotional luboks telling about their products or services. Very often, luboks were used by the government and the church as propaganda or agitation. In general, luboks used to play the same role as modern newspapers and leaflets.

Lubki in Russia

Lubok came to Russia from Europe in the 16th century and it was then called the “fryazh leaf”. At first, only imported pictures were on sale, but from the end of the 17th century, the Moscow Court Printing House learned how to make them on their own. According to the method of production, they got their new name - lubok. But more on that below.

Despite the availability of domestic products for sale, imported jokers were very popular. Orthodox Church outraged by their "immorality and obscenity", and it came to a ban on the sale of "sheets of heretics." The ban was introduced in 1674, and in 1721, at the insistence of the church, censorship was also introduced on domestic popular prints. The so-called Artistic Chamber monitored the morality of the pictures.

But, fortunately, printing presses flourished that knew how to circumvent censorship. Otherwise, we would not have wonderful luboks demonstrating folk customs past times.

Lubok production

In Russia, lubok makers were called "Fryazh carving masters". The very process of applying and coloring a picture is a sign.

The work consisted of the following: the artist (signer) drew an image on the board, and the engraver cut it out, that is, he made an impression. Then the copier applied to him dark paint and made an imprint on paper - the result was a simple picture. These sheets were handed over to artels engaged in coloring. As a rule, children and women worked in them. The professional workers of such cartels were called colorists. But with the advent of new, more advanced methods of drawing a picture (lithography and engraving), such artels were disbanded.

So why did the printed pictures get such a name - lubok? Answer: the drawing for the print was applied to a lime board obtained in a special way sawing from the bottom of the tree bark. Such boards were called luba. They went to the manufacture of roofs of houses and decks of ships, and the bast obtained from young trees was good for a bast.

Such is the history of the lubok - special kind folk art, the forerunner of newspapers, magazines and now popular comics.

In contact with

Originally a kind of folk art. It was carried out in the technique of woodcuts, copper engravings, lithographs and was complemented by freehand coloring.

Lubok is characterized by simplicity of technique, laconism of visual means (a rough stroke, bright coloring). Lubok often contains a detailed narrative with explanatory inscriptions and additional (explanatory, complementary) images to the main one.

Story

The most ancient luboks are known in China. Until the 8th century, they were drawn by hand. Since the 8th century, the first popular prints made in woodcuts have been known. Lubok appeared in Europe in the 15th century. The woodcut technique is typical for early European lubok. Copper engraving and lithography are added later.

Due to its intelligibility and focus on the "broad masses", the popular print was used as a means of agitation (for example, "flying sheets" during the Peasants' War and the Reformation in Germany, popular prints of the Great French Revolution).

In Germany, factories for the production of pictures were located in Cologne, Munich, Neuruppin; in France - in the city of Troyes. In Europe, books and pictures of obscene content are widespread, for example, "Tableau de l'amur conjual" (Picture of conjugal love). “Seductive and immoral pictures” were brought to Russia from France and Holland.

The Russian lubok of the 18th century is notable for its sustained composition.

Oriental lubok (China, India) is distinguished by its bright colors.

At the end of the 19th century, lubok was revived in the form of comics.

In Russia

Story

In Russia of the 16th century - the beginning of the 17th century, prints were sold, which were called "Fryazhsky sheets", or "German amusing sheets".

At the end of the 17th century, a Fryazhsky mill was installed in the Upper (Court) printing house for printing Fryazh sheets. In 1680, the craftsman Afanasy Zverev cut "all kinds of Fryazh cuts" on copper boards for the tsar.

German amusing sheets were sold in the Vegetable Row, and later on the Spassky Bridge.

Censorship and prohibitions

Moscow Patriarch Joachim in 1674 forbade "buying sheets printed by German heretics, Luthers and Calvins, in their accursed opinion." The faces of the revered saints were to be written on the board, and the printed images were intended for "handsomeness".

The decree of March 20, 1721 forbade the sale "on the Spassky Bridge and in other places in Moscow, composed by people of various ranks ... prints (sheets) printed arbitrarily, except for the printing house." The Izugrafskaya Chamber was created in Moscow.

The chamber issued permission to print luboks "arbitrarily, except for the printing house." Over time, this decree ceased to be executed. A large number of low-quality images of the Saints have emerged.

Therefore, by decree of October 18, 1744, it was ordered "to submit the drawings in advance for approbation to the diocesan bishops."

The decree of January 21, 1723 demanded that "Imperial persons skillfully write to painters testified in good craftsmanship with all danger and diligent care." Therefore, in popular prints there are no images of reigning persons.

In 1822, police censorship was introduced for printing popular prints. Some popular prints were banned, the boards were destroyed. In 1826, by censorship charter, all prints (and not just popular prints) were subject to censorship.

Plots of paintings

Initially, the plots for popular prints were handwritten legends, life stories, "father's writings", oral legends, articles from translated newspapers (for example, "Chimes"), etc.

Plots and drawings were borrowed from foreign Almanacs and Calendars. At the beginning of the 19th century, plots were borrowed from the novels and stories of Goethe, Radcliffe, Cotten, Chateaubriand and other writers.

At the end of the 19th century, pictures on themes from the scriptures, portraits of the imperial family prevailed, then genre pictures came, most often of a moral and instructive nature (about the disastrous consequences of gluttony, drunkenness, greed).

Face editions of "Yeruslan Lazarevich" and other tales, images in the faces of folk songs ("The boyars rode from Nova-gorod", "Husband's wife beat"), women's heads with absurd inscriptions, images of cities ( Jerusalem - the navel of the earth).

Lubok production

The engravers were called "Fryazh carving masters" (in contrast to the Russian "ordinary" wood carvers). In Moscow at the end of the 16th century, the first engraver was presumably Andronik Timofeev Nevezha.

Signing was called drawing and coloring. Approximately in the 16th (or in the 17th) century, commemoration was divided into commemoration and engraving. The bannerman applied the drawing, the engraver cut it out on a board, or metal.

Copying boards was called translation. The boards were originally lime, then maple, pear and palm.

The splint was made as follows: the artist applied a pencil drawing on a linden board (bast), then using this drawing with a knife he made a deepening of those places that should remain white. The board smeared with paint under pressure left black contours of the picture on paper.

Printed in this way on cheap gray paper were called plain paintings. Prostoviki were taken to special artels. In the 19th century, in the villages near Moscow and Vladimir, there were special artels that were engaged in coloring popular prints. Women and children were engaged in coloring luboks.

Later, a more perfect way to produce popular prints appeared, engravers appeared. With a thin chisel on copper plates, they engraved a drawing with hatching, with all the small details, which could not be done on a lime board.

One of the first Russian figure factories appeared in Moscow in the middle of the 18th century. The factory belonged to the merchants Akhmetievs. The factory had 20 machines.

Prostovikov, that is, the cheapest pictures, costing ½ a penny a piece, were printed and colored in the Moscow district for about 4 million annually. The highest price of popular prints was 25 kopecks.

Popularity

Luboks fell in love in Russia immediately and by everyone without exception. They could be met in the royal chambers, in the serf's hut, in the inn, in monasteries.

There are documents showing that Patriarch Nikon had two hundred and seventy of them, mostly, however, still from Fryazh. And Tsarevich Peter has already bought a lot of domestic ones, in his rooms there were about a hundred of them. There are two reasons for such a rapid and wide popularity of seemingly simple pictures.

Firstly, luboks replaced books inaccessible to the common man: textbooks, starting with the alphabet and arithmetic and ending with cozmography (astronomy), fiction - in luboks a series of successive pictures, as in the hallmarks of hagiographic icons, with extensive signatures, epics, stories were retold or published .

Adventure translated novels about Bova Korolevich and Yeruslan Lazarevich, fairy tales, songs, proverbs. There were luboks like newsletters and newspapers that reported on the most important state events, about wars, about life in other countries.

There were interpreters of the Holy Scripture, depicting the largest monasteries and cities. There were lubok-medical books and about all sorts of popular beliefs and signs. There were the worst satires.

Photo gallery

Helpful information

Splint
lubok picture
popular leaf
funny leaf
prostovik

origin of name

The name comes from boards of special sawing, which were called bast (deck). On them back in the 15th century. wrote plans, drawings, drawings. Then the so-called “fryazh sheets” appeared, and later small paper pictures were simply called lubok (popular folk picture).

In Russia

In Russia, folk pictures became widespread in the 17th-20th centuries. They were cheap (even low-income segments of the population could buy them) and often served as a decorative design. Lubok sheets performed the social and entertaining role of a newspaper or primer. They are the prototype of modern calendars, posters, comics and posters. In the 17th century, painted bast boxes became widespread.

Lubok types

• Spiritual and religious - In the Byzantine style. Icon type images. Lives of saints, parables, morals, songs, etc.
• Philosophical.
• Legal - images of lawsuits and court actions. Often there were plots: “Shemyakin Court” and “Yorsh Ershovich Shchetinnikov”.
• Historical - "Touching stories" from the annals. Image of historical events, battles, cities. Topographic maps.
• Fairy tales - fairy tales, heroic ones, "Tales of daring people", everyday tales.
• Holidays - images of saints.
• Cavalry - Luboks depicting riders.
• Joker - funny popular prints, satires, caricatures, fables.

Coloring method

Artel workers accepted orders for coloring hundreds of thousands of copies from lubok publishers. One person per week painted up to one thousand popular prints - one ruble was paid for such work. The profession was called a colorist. The profession disappeared after the advent of lithographic machines.

Advantages of a printed picture

The first to see through the advantages of a printed picture in Moscow were the same habitues of the Spassky Bridge, or Spassky Krestets, as this place was often called then. The book trade flourished there even to the splint - the main trade in Russia was in this part. But only books were sold more handwritten and very often of the most poisonous nature, such as the satirical "Priest Savva - great glory" and "Service to the tavern." The writers themselves and their friends - artists from the same common people - drew illustrations for these books, or sewed them into the pages, or sold them separately. But how much can you draw by hand?!

Manufacturing

It was these writers and artists who drew attention to the popular prints, which were brought by foreigners, first as a gift to the Moscow tsar and the boyars, and then for a wide sale. It turned out that making them is not so difficult, moreover, many thousands of pictures can be printed from one board, and even with text cut out in the same way next to the picture. Someone from foreigners or Belarusians, apparently, built the first machine in Moscow and brought ready-made boards for the sample.

I.D. Sytin

In the second half of the 19th century, I. D. Sytin was one of the largest producers and distributors of printed popular prints. In 1882, the All-Russian Art and Industrial Exhibition took place in Moscow, at which Sytin's products were awarded a silver medal. ID Sytin collected boards from which popular prints were printed for about 20 years. The collection worth several tens of thousands of rubles was destroyed during a fire in Sytin's printing house during the 1905 Revolution.

Style formation

The still young Russian lubok, of course, borrowed a lot from other arts, and first of all from book miniatures, and therefore, artistically, it soon became, as it were, a kind of alloy, a synthesis of all the best that Russian art had developed over the previous centuries of its existence.

But only to what extent the lubochniks have sharpened and exaggerated all forms, to what extent they have increased the contrast and heated up the colors, heated up to such an extent that each leaf literally burns, sprinkles with cheerful multicolor.

In our time

In the modern world, the style of lubok is not forgotten. It is widely used in illustrations, theatrical scenery, murals and interior decoration. Dishes, posters, calendars are produced.

Lubok is also reflected in modern fashion. As part of the 22nd Textile Salon in Ivanovo, the collection of Yegor Zaitsev, “iVANOVO. Splint".