Archimandrite KYPRIAN (Pyzhov) (+2001)

Towards Understanding Orthodox Iconography

One often hears discussions and even arguments over how to properly paint icons: in the “old” or “new” style. When icons of the “old style” are discussed, these are usually thought of as the ancient primitive types, darkened from age, archeologically interesting, and often feigned copies from them made by home-grown artist-dilettantes. The “new style” is described as icons without any style, in bright, pastel tones. Such superficial, ordinary way of painting icons limits the understanding of many who make judgments on one style or the other. Such arguments often arise among parishioners and clergymen, when a parish church is to be adorned with icons. Some recognize only the “Vasnetsoff style!”
Squabbles over “styles” often heighten to the point of conflict and the ruination of friendships, for the reason that generally, the recognition of true art from amateur attempts of printed icons, whether in the old or new style, which often do not correspond to the original works of art, sometimes copies of originals or of amateur works. The absence of original icons and of professional icon-painters possessing the techniques of one type of icon painting school or another, can be considered the main reason of the observed decline. Torn away from its native culture, most compatriots lost the ability to discern an original from a fake, the true from the false; this sickness, touching upon the various facets of life of the Russian emigration, is apparently reflected in the attitude towards ecclesiastical art, simplifying the ability to understand it to the point where the Catholic publications of paper copies in the pseudo-ancient and pseudo-new styles are accepted by Orthodox émigrés as genuine icons. Of course, if blessed by the proper Church rite, these paper icons replace real icons; but one cannot accept this and move on without desiring to replace it with a hand-painted icon created by the hand of a master…But, one hears, where does one find such a master?...That is a valid question; still, the hope remains, and God will help find one, if the desire is earnest and true. If not, the habit of accepting imitations will take root, and it may atrophy the very desire to pray before icons. The ancient art of icon-painting, blessed by the Church, may be lost, and along with it, the ignorance of the dogma of the veneration of icons confirmed at the VII Ecumenical Council will be firmly established.

Fortunately, there remains that desire among many Russians to see real icons in their churches and homes; there is no dearth of those who wish to practice icon-painting; but without the technical training, not knowing the “A-B-C’s,” it is impossible. Ignorance of the laws of painting, lack of training and knowledge of its forms and techniques preclude one from becoming a master painter. This is required for all forms of art and craft, and it is more important for those who take to depicting the holy faces of the Savior, the Mother of God, the apostles and other saints of God.

Icon-painting abroad remains on an amateur level because it is often approached without the proper training; lack of training in drawing, possessing no sense for the laws of the harmonic arrangement of colors and not knowing how to use paints, those who paint icons “from inspiration” set out to paint the image of Christ, or the Mother of God. Those desiring to paint in the “new style” copy famous depictions of the Savior or the Mother of God by the artists Vasnetsoff for the Cathedral of St. Vladimir in Kiev. Most often they copy German-made lithographs thereof.

The iconographic legacy shared by Russian masters, even during recent times, with the sources of origination, was interrupted in the diaspora, and attempts towards its rebirth are halting, and success is seen only in separate instances.

In our homeland, the art of icon painting often changed: technical methods of different periods varied as much as compositional ones. But deeply rooted in Byzantine religious art, and assuming its legacy, our art of icon painting is a branch of that tree which manifests in color the teaching of the Orthodox Church. Discovered by scholars, the surviving wall paintings of the ancient churches of the Russian north are witness to the lofty artistic culture of the Russian masters of the Novgorod School of the XIV, XV, XVI and part of the XVII centuries, which, developing in original forms, was undoubtedly connected with the golden age of the great artistic culture of the southern Slavic masters of the Balkan Peninsula (especially Macedonia) of the XII and XV centuries and in close artistic relation to the great art of ancient Byzantium.
The academicians N.P. Kondakov, N.P. Likhachev, N.V. Pokrovsky, P.P. Muratov and other scholars of ancient Russian painting (by painting, we mean wall-painting in churches and icons painted on wood), fairly consider this period the blossoming of the art of icon painting in Rus, and its highest manifestation.
The end of the XVII century is considered the beginning of the decline of purely-artistic creativity and the development of mannerism, which lowered the artistic quality of icon-painting. Recognizing the authority of such profound scholars and connoisseurs of art as the above-mentioned scholars, who showed that mannerism forced out the pure art of the ancient schools of icon painting, one however cannot value the high value of the mannerist period, developing on the grace-filled foundation of the previous epoch, which was created on the symbolism of catacomb Christianity. The mannerist period not only imitated the lofty heights of its ancestry, it had its own achievements and breadth of scope, expressed in the original artistic directions of the Stroganoff, Suzdal, Muscovite, Tver, Yaroslav and other schools, which distinguished themselves in their originality and in the technical methods of painting, yet had one common thread: they were deeply spiritual! Icon painters of those times well-knew the spiritual essence of the teachings of the Church of Christ and with remarkable resourcefulness could illustrate it on walls and in icons.

Mannerism crowded out the lofty achievements of the masterpieces of the artistic golden age. But it could not do otherwise—who could satisfy the enormous need for icons in the growing territory of Holy Rus?

If the XVII century is considered the period of mannerist icon painting, then truly it can be called the age of the flowering of mannerism through to the present day.

The schools of icon painting mentioned above gave us excellent masters, who, by heading the icon-painting studios, adorned with frescoes a multitude of churches of Muscovite Russia and its principalities. In the second have of the XVII century, the canonical severity of the icon-painting style gradually lost its form; spiritually ascetic faces of saints were replaced with Europeanized, almost portrait-like, images of the salaried icon painter of the Faceted Palace, Simon Ushakov, who laid the foundation of the new trend called the “Ushakov School.”

The unification with Little Russia, where the religious art developed under Polish influence, which assumed everything created by Catholic Italy, which in turn “blindingly” recreated pagan classicism on the walls and ceilings of its churches and palazzi, began to be reflected in the religious art of Muscovite Russia.
The age of reforms of Peter I attracted famous architects from abroad: Tresini, Lebnon, Rastrelli and many others who built palaces and churches in the popular Baroque style of the day, with their interiors resplendent with the busy Rococo—the French decorative style more suitable for ballrooms than Orthodox iconostases.

European architecture demanded its corresponding style of icon painting: images of saints assuming mannerist poses appeared, with rosy cheeks, styled hair and costumes of the salon style. For the realization of the new damands, lay artists were invited, whose students became master icon painters, the disseminators of new forms in the art of icon painting. These forms, along with its technique, were quickly mastered by Russian masters and amateurs, who boldly covered the walls not only of new churches but even old ones—monuments of ancient Russian art--with their Europeanized paintings. Individual icons prepared in provincial workshops with pretensions to some sort of “Rennaissance,” or “Rococo” are singularly unattractive; but still, there is a method, a skill in its craft.

Since the middle of the last century [the 19th], the Italian-Polish manner assumes a more severr form—the saccharine mannerism disappears, and the Europeanization of icon painting becomes more appropriate for the depiction of Orthodox sensibility, losing, at the same time, any significance in artistic value. Despite the facelessness and limpness of the established mannerism, it entered the mainstream of life, the eye of the Orthodox worshiper becomes accustomed to it, and in this way, the “new style” is granted the right to exist, as mentioned in the beginning of this article.
The taking root of this taste in icons of this type was to a great degree aided by the oleographic publications of Fesenko, Pleshcheev and others in Odessa. These prints were mostly made from crude “lubok”-type originals, but they were eagerly purchased by the people thanks to their low price and attractive bright colors. Still, these anti-artistic icons were not painted by self-taught amateurs—with all their faults, they possessed a level of skill. The icon workshops of Mt. Athos, Valaam and many other monasteries, and also in private workshops, icon painters of the school of Realism had an expertise in the technique of oil painting; they could carefully render every curl of hair and every fold of cloth. The masters of this school, as in all things, were highly-qualified, some not; but there was always the skill of craft evident in each icon painted in Russia distinguishing it from those painted abroad. If earlier centuries, which tied Russian church painting with the lofty artistic-spiritual heights of Byzantium, comprised the epoch of pure art in Russia, and subsequent periods excelled in craft, then the icon painting done abroad in our century can truly be called “the émigré style.”

What is happening in the Homeland now, we don’t know; it is very possible that the catacombs of today have developed new symbolism, instead of icons, which are being destroyed by the godless Soviet state; but Russian abroad, over the course of a half a century, emulating both styles of icon painting could not elevate it to the level of craft. Imitators of ancient painting, that is, those who paint in the “old style” did not understand its main value—the ability to express the spiritual essence of the person depicted, but they concentrate on the “incorrectness,” that is on those particularities which contradict realistic perception, they took this as the most important thing, and in their pseudo-ancient works they stressed that which could have been avoided without violating the general composition and style.

The process of decline and crude imitations of religious art to a greater degree touched upon the countries of the Orthodox East. At the present time in Greece there is an artistic rebirth of the Byzantine style, which is expressed in the distortion of wonderful forms and lines and the stylistically-developed, spiritually lofty creations of the ancient artists of Byzantium. The contemporary Greek icon painter Contaglou, with the cooperation of the Church of Athens, published a series of reproductions of his works, which cannot but be considered artless emulations of the great Greek artist Panselinos, who adorned with his frescoes the churches of Mt. Athos of the XIV century. Contaglou’s admirers and his students say that “saints should not look like real people”—but what are they supposed to look like? The primitiveness of such reasoning harms those who see and do not superficially regard the spiritual and esthetic beauty of ancient icon painting and who rejects its surrogates, offered as examples of an allegedly-reborn Byzantine style.

Often, the expression of enthusiasm for the “old style” is not genuine, revealing in its proponents simply a pretension and inability to discern true art from crude imitation.

In imitative works by contemporary icon painters, style is “over-stylized,” picking out one certain characteristic of the body, the head or hands, expressing in old icons a prayerful reverence, the contemporary stylizer subjects it to intolerable emphasis, to the point where the holy image becomes laughable. An detailed rendering of folds of cloth, which requires special study, when subjected to such “stylization,” looks more like rough-hewn wood than folds of silk. Faces are intentionally darkened “so that they would look like the old style,” when the darkness of ancient icons is not an original characteristic, but the opposite: properly cleaned icons of old are striking in the color. At the present time, the Latin church has also become interested in Byzantine art—the pages of Catholic publications are splashed with almost-blasphemous distortions of the images of the icons of the Eastern Church. (These illustrations are often added to articles on the “Eastern Rite,” which reveals the artificiality of the Catholic understanding of Orthocox icon-painting.)

The false opinion that icons must be painted with pre-arranged types, with harshly-defined contours, to show some sort of “expressiveness,” differentiating saints from “real people,” evokes the opposite reaction in many people, which recalls the German [Expressionist] lithographs, or copies thereof, and leads to the impression that the “new style” is “better, after all!”

But what about the “Vasnetsoff style?” We respond that icon painting does not know such a style. Everyone knows that a great artist lived in Russia, Viktor Mikhailovich Vasnetsoff, who painted “The Three Bogatyrs,” “Alyonushka,” “The Blind Bards,” and that he illustrated stories and fables. The main memorial of Vasnetsoff’s work is the fresco work in St. Vladimir Cathedral in Kiev with its grand image of the Mother of God over the altar. Reproductions of the images of the Savior and the Mother of God with Child were widely distributed. These two icons by Vasnetsoff are everywhere and are used in schoolbooks, calendars and other publications. These images can often be seen on iconostases (especially in America). These images limit the possibility of using the “Vasnetsoff style” for wider use. All attempts to paint “like Vasnetsoff” lead to poor results and have a very amateurish flavor. The same can be said for the artist Nesteroff, who painted the famous work “Holy Russia,” with the wonderful landscape of the Russian North. Nesterov took part in painting the frescoes of St. Vladimir Cathedral and the church of the Convent of SS Martha and Maria in Moscow. In his image of the Savior, Nesterov wished to reproduce, in a painterly fashion, the wonderful image of Christ by Rublev, yet he distorted His features with an imaginary “psychological” expression. The icons of Saints Martha and Maria, on the same iconostasis, are clearly the portraits of persons known to the artist, as are all the other holy images painted for the Vladimir Cathedral and Convent of Martha and Maria. Nesterov’s paintings are also widely distributed as prints, known as the “Nesterov style.”

And so, in tearing away from one’s natural roots and losing the legacy connecting the Russian master icon painters with the sources of Russian icon painting, can one hope for its rebirth in the diaspora? Apparently, no. But the improvement in the quality of icons painted by various individuals who have no schooling or artistic training is possible—but only when the main attention is paid to preparation. If those who wish to paint icons do not labor over mastering draftsmanship, the interrelation of color, proportion and composition in general, if they do not try, repeatedly, to copy the details of good, clear reproductions (which can be easily obtained now), then it will be impossible to hope for the improvement in the quality of icon painting abroad.

The quality of any icon depends not only from artistic taste or religious inspiration of the artist, but from the knowledge of technique, beginning with the preparation of the panel and ground, the ability to use paints, both tempera and oils, and others, the ability to gild, burnish, etc. If developed technique defines the quality of any craft, this applies more so to that of the painting of icons.

“Russky Pastyr,” No. 39, 2001