Architecture and painting of Ancient Russia. Religious painting of Ancient Russia

2024 Author: Leah Sherlock | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 05:25

The development of painting and the architectural temple style of Russia originates in the mists of time. In 988, Kievan Rus, together with the adoption of Christianity, received a huge cultural heritage of the Byzantine Empire, which combines the features of the sparkling splendor of the East and the ascetic simplicity of the West. In the process of synthesis of this multifaceted artistic style and specific original art, the architecture and painting of Ancient Russia were formed.

Historical prerequisites for the development of the original style of architecture and painting of Ancient Russia

The painting of Ancient Russia as a monument of pre-Christian culture is unknown to modern scientists, and the sculpture of this era is represented by only a few wooden sculptures of idols. The situation is the same with the architectural monuments of pre-Christian Russia, most likely due to the fact that they were made of wood and have not survived to this day.

Painting in Russia began to experience its rapid development in the 10th century, when after the introduction of the Slavic alphabet into the territory of Russia by Cyril and Methodius, it became possible to exchange experience between Russians andByzantine masters who were invited after 988 to Russian cities by Prince Vladimir.

At the beginning of the 11th century, the situation in the political and social spheres of the ancient Russian state developed in such a way that the pagan religious component began to be forcibly removed by the ruling class from all spheres of public life. Thus, the architecture and painting of Ancient Russia began its development precisely from the Byzantine heritage that poured into this environment.

Prerequisites for the development of style features of architecture

Architecture and painting of Ancient Russia as an integral style ensemble appeared under the direct influence of the architecture of Byzantium, which synthesized the forms of ancient temple buildings, gradually forming the type of cross-domed church known since the 10th century, which was very different from early Christian basilicas. Transferring the domes to the semicircular rigid edges of the quadrangular base of the temple, using the latest developed "sail" system for supporting the dome and easing its pressure on the walls, Byzantine architects achieved the maximum expansion of the internal space of the temple and created a qualitatively new type of Christian temple building.

The design features described above refer to temples based on the so-called "Greek cross", which is five squares located at the same distance from each other.

Much later - in the 19th century - the so-called "pseudo-Byzantine" style of temple buildings was formed in Russia, in which the domes were squatlocated on low drums, surrounded by a window arcade, and the interior of the temple is a single area, not divided by pylons and cross vaults.

Prerequisites for the development of stylistic features of painting

The painting of Ancient Russia as an independent type of artistic decoration of temples took shape after invited Byzantine masters brought their icon-painting experience to this territory after the baptism of Russia. Therefore, numerous wall paintings and frescoes of the first Christian churches of the pre-Mongol period are indistinguishable in Russian and Byzantine origin.

In theoretical terms, the icon painting, painting of Ancient Russia perfectly illustrates the Assumption Cathedral of the Kiev-Pechersk Lavra, the works in which belong to the brush of Byzantine masters. The temple itself has not been preserved, but its interior decoration is known from a description recorded in the 17th century. The invited icon painters stayed in the monastery and laid the foundation for learning their craft. Saints Alipiy and Gregory were the first Russian masters to emerge from this icon-painting school.

Thus, the art, iconography, painting of Ancient Russia leads its theoretical and methodological continuity from the ancient knowledge of Eastern masters.

The specifics of the architectural and construction type of residential and temple buildings of Ancient Russia

The culture of Ancient Russia, whose painting, iconography and architecture are a single ensemble, little affected the architecture of public and residential buildings, which continued tocarried out either by typical tower buildings or fortresses. Byzantine architectural norms did not imply any practical protection of the complex of buildings or each of them separately from enemy attacks. The art of Ancient Russia, the painting and architecture of which can be shown on the example of the Pskov and Tver monastic buildings, is focused on their constructive security, the lightness of the domed parts of the building with the maximum thickening of the supporting structures.

Cult ancient Russian painting

The culture of Ancient Russia, whose painting progressed under the comprehensive influence of Byzantine art, finally took shape by the end of the 15th century, incorporating all its brightest specific qualities and assimilating with the original artistic ancient Russian techniques. And although some types of fine arts, such as artistic sewing and wood carving, were known to ancient Russian masters, they received the widest distribution and development in the bosom of cult art after the arrival of Christianity in Russia.

The Orthodox culture of Ancient Russia, whose painting is represented not only by temple frescoes and iconography, but also by facial sewing and carvings, reflecting the symbols of faith and used in everyday life by worldly people, left an imprint on the interior decoration of buildings and decoration of their facade parts.

Variety and composition of paints

Monasteries and icon-painting workshops of Ancient Russia were a place of concentration of scientific achievements and experiments in the field of chemistry,since paints were made by hand from various ingredients.

In miniature painting on parchment and icon painting, masters mostly used the same colors. They were cinnabar, lapis lazuli, ocher, white lead and others. Thus, the painting of Ancient Russia remained true to its practical skills: the ancient painting of Byzantium could not completely replace the local methods of obtaining paints.

However, in each specific painting technique there were and are their favorite techniques and methods - both for making the paint itself and for applying it to the surface.

According to the Novogorodsk icon-painting original of the 16th century, cinnabar, azure, whitewash, greenery were the most preferred by the masters. The names of these colors also appeared for the first time in the original - yellow, red, black, green.

White, as the most popular paint, was most often used in color mixtures, served to apply gaps and "whiten" other paints. Whitewash was made in Kashin, Vologda, Yaroslavl. The method of their manufacture consisted in the oxidation of lead strips with acetic acid, followed by washing the resulting white color.

The main component of the "facial writing" in icon painting to this day is ocher.

The painting of Ancient Russia, as well as its Byzantine standard, assumed the use of a variety of color materials in the writing of holy images.

One of the main widely used paints was cinnabar - sulphurousmercury sulfide. Cinnabar was mined at the most famous Russian Nikitinsky deposit in Europe. The manufacture of the paint took place in the process of rubbing cinnabar with water, followed by the dissolution of pyrite and pyrite accompanying the ore. Cinnabar could have been replaced by cheaper red lead obtained by firing white lead.

Azure, like white, was intended for writing gaps and obtaining tones of other colors. In the past, the main source of lapis lazuli was the deposits of Afghanistan. However, since the 16th century, a large number of ways to obtain a blue pigment from lapis lazuli have appeared.

Along with these basic colors, Russian icon painting used cormorant, scarlet, green, green, verdigris, krutik ("blue"), cabbage rolls, sankir (brownish tones), hook, reft, game. The terminology of the ancient painter denoted all colors with different words.

The artistic style of ancient Russian icon painting

In each territorial-holistic state association there is a certain consolidation of artistic and aesthetic norms, which later lose some connection with the reference model. Such a separate and self-developing sphere of national-cultural manifestation is the painting of Ancient Russia. Ancient painting is more subject to technical and visual changes than other areas of art, so it is worth mentioning separately its features, closely related to architecture and writing methods.

The Mongol invasion destroyed most of the iconographic and fresco monuments of Ancient Russia, undermining andsuspending the process of writing new works. However, a certain picture of the past can be restored from the surviving documents and scarce archaeological sites.

From them it is known that in the era of the pre-Mongol invasion, the monumental painting of Ancient Russia had a significant impact on icon painting with its technical techniques - conciseness of compositional construction and gloomy restrained color - but by the 13th century this color begins to give way to bright warm colors. Thus, by the 13th century, the Byzantine icon painting technique was undergoing a process of refraction and assimilation with such ancient Russian national artistic techniques as the freshness and brightness of the color scheme, the rhythmic compositional structure and the immediacy of color expression.

The most famous masters who brought the painting of Ancient Russia to the present day are working in this era - briefly this list can be represented by Metropolitan Peter of Moscow, Archbishop Theodore of Rostov, St. Andrei Rublev and Daniil Cherny.

Features of Old Russian fresco painting

Mural painting in Russia did not exist before the advent of Christianity and was completely borrowed from Byzantine culture, in the process of assimilation and development, somewhat modifying the existing Byzantine techniques and techniques.

To begin with, it is worth saying that the culture of Ancient Russia, whose painting had previously existed in the form of a mosaic, modified the use of plaster preparatory materials, using sub-mosaic limestonebase under the fresco, and by the end of the 14th century there was a transition from the ancient Byzantine techniques of writing and making materials - to new native Russian methods of fresco painting.

Among the fundamentally changed processes for the manufacture of bases and paints, one can single out the appearance of plaster, created exclusively on the basis of pure limestone, first diluted for strength with quartz sand and marble chips. In the case of Russian painting, the stucco fresco base - gesso - was made by long-term exposure of lime mixed with vegetable oils and glue.

Old Russian facial sewing

After 988, with the advent of Byzantine traditions in the painting of Ancient Russia, ancient painting became widespread in the field of cult ritual area, especially in facial sewing.

The Tsarina's workshops, which functioned under the auspices of the Grand Duchesses Sophia Paleolog, Solomonia Saburova, Tsarina Anastasia Romanova and Irina Godunova, contributed a lot to this.

Face sewing as a religious painting of Ancient Russia has a lot of common compositional and graphic features with the icon. However, facial sewing is a collective work, with a clear distribution of the roles of the creators. The icon painter depicted on the canvas the face, inscriptions and fragments of clothing, the herbalist - plants. The background was embroidered in a neutral color; face and hands - with silk threads of flesh tones, including screeds were placed along the lines along the contours of the face; clothes and surrounding objects were embroidered either in gold orsilver threads, or multi-colored silk.

For greater strength, canvas or cloth was placed under the embroidered fabric, under which a second lining of soft fabric was attached.

The two-sided embroidery on banners and banners was especially difficult. In this case, silk and gold threads were pierced through.

Facial embroidery is widely used - large veils and airs decorated the temple, placed under the icons, covered the altar, were used on banners. In many cases, canvases with the faces of saints were attached to the gates of a temple or palace, as well as inside the reception halls.

Territorial variation of ancient Russian art

The culture of Ancient Russia - painting, iconography, architecture - has some territorial variability, affecting both the decoration of temples and the architectural and construction features of buildings.

For example, the art of Ancient Russia, the painting of which implies the use of either mosaics or frescoes as decorations for the interior decoration of churches, is perfectly revealed by the example of St. Sophia Cathedral in Kyiv. Here there is a free combination of both mosaic and fresco painting; during the examination of the temple, two layers of soil were revealed. In the Church of the Transfiguration in the village of Bolshiye Vyazemy, all plaster bases are made of pure lime without fillers. And in the Spassky Cathedral of the Spaso-Andronievsky Monastery, blood albumin was found as a connecting link in plaster gesso.

Thus, we can conclude that the singularity andThe uniqueness of ancient Russian art lies in its territorial orientation and individual personal preferences and skills of Russian artists to convey the color and character of an idea in accordance with its national norms.