Iconology and Interpretation
A comprehensive review on three volumes of the series "Ikonológia és műértelmezés" (Iconology and Interpretation) and on papers of the Szeged conference "Iconology East and West".
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A comprehensive review on three volumes of the series "Ikonológia és műértelmezés" (Iconology and Interpretation) and on papers of the Szeged conference "Iconology East and West".
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A comprehensive review on Ernő Marosi's Kép és hasonmás (Image and Likeness: Art and Reality in 14th-15th Century Hungary).
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The article is dedicated to the unique album of drawings which originates from the family archive of the eminent historian D. A. Korsakov and is now found in the collection of the Russian State Historical Archive in Saint Petersburg. This album contains the allegorical and emblematic images related to the reign of Peter II and Anna Ioannovna, but bears neither particular date nor signature. In the article, the drawings from the album are compared with the panegyrical works of the first half of the 18th century, such as programmes of triumphal arches, illuminations and fireworks. At the same time the attention is drawn to certain principles and methods of representation, which stand in stark contrast to serious semantic content of the album and are reminiscent, as a whole, of the art system of the lubok — of popular folk prints, intended for mass audience and appearing in Russia in the 17th century. The manner of executing the drawings also appears slightly primitive. Finally, the author of the article suggests that the album was created in the second half of the 19th – early 20th century by someone belonging to D. A. Korsakov’s circle.
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The article is devoted to the history of the stone sculpture restoration in Russia in the 18th century and the role of the Academy of Arts in this matter. The author made an attempt to understand and appreciate the value of the Academy activities, to emphasize the inextricable link of academic, creative and restorative processes, to trace the history and evolution of the restoration principles in the 18th century. The author also examines the stages of formation of new aesthetic ideas in Russia, the meaning of «integrity» when restoring sculptures appearance of the Summer Garden. I. I. Vien in his «Dissertations about the impact anatomy in sculpture and painting» defined the term «restoration» for the first time in Russia. P. P. Chekalevsky claimed the independent artistic value of separate sculptural fragments, which had a significant influence on the principles of restoration in the 19th century. On the basis of the surviving archival documents and invoices for restoration activities, the author confirms that the major restoration work of the unique monuments of art was made at a high level, only with consent of the Academy of Arts and academic professors N.-F. Gillet, F. G. Gordeev, V. I. Demuth-Malinovsky and others.
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In the artistic heritage of Gavrila Sergeyevich Sergeyev (1765/1766–1816), a lesser known, but typical feature in the fine art of the 18th century found its representation. We say about the copying from original pictures, made by other artists, or borrowing fragments from them. A need in new themes was a cause for this. In 1793–1794, as a member to the Russian Emergency Mission, Sergeev visited Turkey and later made many view watercolours on Turkish themes. However, these works were not always painted himself. For example, his watercolour The Ruins of Eastern Tomb in the collection of the State Russian Museum was painted from an original picture by Luigi Mayer (1755–1803), who had lived for a long time in Constantinople and made many view watercolours there for the British diplomat R. Ensley. Therefore, a discovery of a T. Milton’s print The Internal View of Jupiter Ammon Temple in Libya made from L. Mayer’s original picture, provided an opportunity to give a correct name to the G. S. Sergeyev’s watercolour and refine his artistic biography.
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The paper considers the issues of the general theory of Modernism, analyzing the problems concerning the origin of avant-garde art and thought in eighteenth century. The author examines the rise of Modernist paradigm from Rococo and Neo-Classicism to Goya. Special attention is paid to the French revolutionary architecture (Boullee, Ledoux). Focusing on the extremist and negative aspects of the Rococo art (close, for instance, to David Hume’s philosophy), the article shows its complex role in the development of Modernist myths and notions. The author draws the conclusion that Rococo art stands somewhere between the normativeness of totalitarian aesthetics and Negativity of Modernism. The special irony of the Rococo, its skeptical attitude towards «historical ballast», abstract theories and ideologies, cleared the way for the Modernist negative strategies. The author explores the common ground between the Rococo and anti-Rococo trends in 18th-century art, the social character of the issues of uncertainty, void, nothingness. Considering the concepts of Freedom, Truth, Reality and Negativity in 18th-century art, the author introduces his own theory of Modernism/avant-garde, its main principles, symbolic forms and structures.
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The article is dedicated to the pictorial decoration of the pulpit of Stt. Peter and Paul Cathedral in St. Petersburg. It examines the iconographic origins of the pulpit and offers the analysis of its decoration content. The lost inscriptions on the pulpit panels are reconstructed as the texts of Scripture known from the first descriptions of Stt. Peter and Paul Cathedral. The subject matter of one of the panels is attributed as the «Prophecy of Jeremiah». The author suggested a version regarding the plot painted on the lost door of the pulpit. The pulpit decoration represents the Russian top theological ideas of the first third of 18th century. It is proved that the archbishop Pheophan Prokopovich was the author, at least, of a number of subjects depicted, and also of the idea and iconographic programme of the main pulpit.
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The article is devoted to the little-studied monument of the Russian provincal church architecture: the church in the village of Novotroitskoe. The author focuses on the problem of architectural shaping and borrowing forms of popular iconographic samples. The Church in Novotroitskoe is placed in a wide architectural context of 18th-19th centuries. The first part of the article contains the analysis of the church and a free-standing bell tower. It also outlines the analogy of unusual belfry, clearly inspired by the work of G. Quarenghi. In its second part the article deals with the problem of influence of the Novotroitskoe church architectural appearance in the provincial church construction of the beginning of the 19th century. The architectural design, interpreting the forms of Novotroitskoe became widespread in Tambov & Ryazan regions. The existing of this project, first implemented in the cathedral of the city Ranenburg, and then time and again repeated is discussed in detail. In the third part an attempt to clarify the possible sources of the architectural design of the temple in Novotroitskoe and cathedral in Ranenburg is made. A vast range of edifices associated with the work of G. Quarenghi, N. A. Lvov and F. I. Demertsov, etc. in Saint-Petersburg and province (Moscow, Ryazan, Tver, Tambov, Poltava, Kyiv and Chernigov provinces) is arraigned on.
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The choice of this theme is first of all due to «sarmat», that is Polish-Ukrainian roots of the ensemble of the portraits of Cossack cheiftains, representatives of Cossack heads and members of their families which were situated in Cherkassk, the capital of the Donskoy military. The stability of showing a warrior with certain strict upbringing, with his own code of honour and the demonstration of his readiness to protect his house, his people and his church allows us to speak about certain piety towards the image of a knight. The absence of such classical features of chivalry as armour and also the image of a rider is filled up by almost sacred attitude to weapons and awards. On the contrary, in the capital branch, and in Russian court art of the 18th century, in particular, both the theme of armour and a rider appeared to be quite actual. The uniting thing was the order as the symbol of belonging to a certain corporation. With time the signs of knighthood of «sarmat» type keeping the features of Gothic in the Donskoi portrait are supplemented with the features of the Gothic revival which arrived from the capital of the Russian empire. This baroque combination of the things that cannot be combined as a result of consciously selected aesthetic artistic elements typical for a certain branch of the Primitive art, was a particular case in the interrelationship between the centre and the Cossacks.
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A portrait bust, preserved in two casts: bronze (The State Russian Museum) and plaster (The State Tretyakov Gallery), holds a special place among the well-known works of Fedot Shubin (1740–1805), which left their mark in the history of Russian art. This bust has been considered as a portrait of the count P. V. Zavadovsky (1739–1812) for a long time. It has been dated back either 1770s, given the age of P. V. Zavadovsky and the period of time when he had been a favourite of Catherine the Second, or 1790s, taking into account the virtuosity of its execution. The absence of the physiognomic similarity with the portrait of P. V. Zavadovsky in painting and the discovered «Self-portrait with the sons» by the Austrian painter G.-B. Lampi the Elder, which is iconographically close to the considered bust, were the reasons to rename this work of one of the greatest portrait sculptor of the 18th century.
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Art collection of Kirill Razumovsky (1728–1803) was considered to be one of the best in the late 18th century, but in the beginning of the 19th century the collection was already scattered. However, due to the historical document discovered some time ago, we got the opportunity to re-establish the collection. The list of the paintings hanging in the palace of Kirill Razumovsky on the bank of the Moika river in Saint Petersburg gives us the names of the paintings, their dimensions, and also the names, the dates and the places of birth of their authors. Here are the leading European art schools in the collection: over 70 works of Italian authors, the Dutch pieces account for about 40, so do the French, the number of the Flemish is lower, and less than 10 German and Russian works. After the second European trip in 1765-1767 the collection expanded. The person responsible for placing the paintings and restoration in the newly built palace was G. A. Martinelli. Most of the artists mentioned in the inventory were born and worked in Italy, among them: J. Bassano, A. Caracci, Guercino, P. J. Batoni, J. P. Panini, A. Ioli. The palace was decorated with the paintings of Dutch and Flemish artists of 16-18th century, including Rembrandt, M. de Hondecoeter, F. Moucheron and I. Moucheron, W. van de Velde, N. Berchem, A. Brouwer, F. Snyders, P. Bruegel the Elder and J. Bruegel («Velvet»). French art was represented first of all with watercolors, including Charles-Louis Clerisseau. Very few of the works of Russian artists which hung in the Petersburg house were signed, among them the works of A. Matveev, D. G. Levitsky, A. P. Losenko and M. V. Lomonosov. In our research we managed to trace the location of a number of works of the Razumovsky collection in the house on the Moika river.
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The article considers a comprehensive creative work and activity of the Imperial Porcelain factory as well as the private Russian factories, promoting the theme of the multinational Russian country and introducing with the help of porcelain figurines different types and nationalities of people living in Russia. Within the 18th and throughout 19th century porcelain factories produced single figures as well as the big series, which have not lost their relevance today.
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The article is devoted to the principles of residential development along the canals of St. Petersburg center (for example, the Red and the Old Palace canals), formed in the Petrine time and being in progress during the reign of Anna Ivanovna. The appearance of the embankments is documented in detail in fixation drawings of the houses facades from the Stockholm collection. The analysis allows to conclude that the nature of the building along the canals coincided with the one used from the time of Peter I, for the decoration of the Neva embankments, and differs from that used in the construction along the Fontanka river.
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The article is dedicated to the analysis of interior decoration details captured on 4 paintings. It’s notable that two of them, the picture painting by Kapiton Zelenzov (from Tretyakov gallery) and the canvas of an unknown author (from the State historical museum) have the image of the same room based on the upper level of a landlord’s house, but with a 20 year difference. The first picture is dated 1830, the second — the beginning of 1850s. The interior decoration of a room from Zelenzov painting is typical for the «Alexander Empire style». The furniture made of mahogany has strict and compact lines. The design from the second picture looks brighter and more colorful. The furniture is the same, but it’s changed because of gold plated details that added to a view a romantic sense of style of Nicolas I. The sofa attracts a particular attention as is decorated at the bottom with three-dimensional gold plated details in form of swans, which give it a unique view. But the most astonishing thing is that the very same sofa «with swans» the author of this article found on another picture from the private collection. The picture was published in the journal «Pinacoteca» in 1998 (Vol. 4). It was believed to be one of the variants of a work from the collection of State historical museum, dated 1820s. But the fact that it shows the sofa from 1850s doesn’t allow us to date it back to 1820s as it was thought before. In other words, the picture from a private collection dates 1890s and presents a so-called «remake» of two mentioned canvases from the collection of State historical museum. Thus the image of the same sofa on the three out of four mentioned pictures allows us not only to state a more exact date of one of them, but also to refer the origins of all four to one family collection. The article also has assumptions about those people who are shown on the paintings; the author believes that all of them are members of Golizyn-Golovkin family, whose progenitor was a famous figure of Peter the Great’s époque, a chancellor count G. Golovkin.
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Igor Vasilievich Ryazantsev (1932–2014), a famous researcher and expert on Russian art, resigned from the life in 2014. This article is a tribute to a prominent scholar and a friend. It provides a brief overview of his career and the analysis of the most important works, books and collections of articles.
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The article is devoted to the study of one of the failed exhibits for the porcelain collection of Empress Catherine II. Since the cultural and artistic relations between Russia and the Nordic countries in the 18th century were intense, the purchase of the expensive service «Flora Danica», as the author shows, was a logical continuation of the Russian empress’s policy of art collecting. It emphasizes the Catherine’s principles of art commissioning and their special correlation with the foreign policy of the Russian Empire during this period.
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The article deals with the questions of specificity and evolution of mythological portrait as a variety of costume portrait in Russian painting of the 18th century. The author dwells on the problem of genre classification and analyses the most noted works in the considered group from the standpoint of peculiarities of interpretation of the images and stylistic tendencies. Main attention is paid to the role of the foreign artists working in Russia in the emergence and development of mythological portrait in home art of the gallant century. The issue is studied in the context of integration of national and West-European cultures. Mental aspect of creation such images is also touched on, while they indispensably have an allegorical component responding to the way of thinking and cast of mind of the people of that epoch.
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The coming soon restoration of the Summer Palace of Peter I, which follows the completed restoration of the Summer Garden, forced us to turn to the experience of 50 years ago. In 1961–1964 the restoration of the Summer Palace was conducted under the guidance of the architect and restorer A. Hessen. In fact, it defined the image of the Summer Palace, its interiors and exteriors the way the current generation of visitors and researchers knows it now. Referring to the experience and solutions of the past to enrich the Summer Palace image at present it is possible to introduce the new solutions in its use and the exhibition design.
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The article is devoted to the problems of preservation, restoration and replication of the sculpture of the Summer Garden. The collection of the marble monuments acquired by Peter the First is the most significant one of the garden sculpture. The sculpture monuments had been staying in the open air for 300 years, suffering from the disadvantageous environmental exposure which determined the necessity of substitution of the original works for the copies, accomplished during 2009–2012. The original sculptures preserve at the Mikhailovsky Castle (a branch of the State Russian Museum).
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The genesis of style of post-Petrine Russian architecture has never been the subject of a standalone research. The period comprising the second half of 1720s – 1730s is usually characterised as the early baroque. Falling within the decade of Empress Anne’s reign it is often considered to be a transient stage between the epoch of Peter the Great and Elizabeth of Russia. Such evaluation of the architecture of the Empress Anne period is connected with the negative attitude to her reign as a whole. In the last ten years the historians have done a lot to overcome the stereotyped attitude towards this period. A certain breakthrough was made in the analysis of urban development during the period, however the study of genesis of style of 1730s is still, as a rule, limited by the analysis of separate structures. The author attempts to consider the history of Empress Anne period architecture studies in the native historiography of 20th – beginning of 21st century, to reveal the evolution of attitude to it. One demonstrates ambiguity and inconsistency of evaluations even within the analysis of creative activity of Bartolomeo Francesco Rastrelli, whose work was heavily influenced by German baroque. That was noted in the researches of the first third of 20th century, and later the role of such influence was considered insignificant. Against this background the activity of other architects has been studied insufficiently. In this regard the author examines the attitude to the creative activity of I. J. Schumacher, that turns out to be closely connected with German line of baroque style, which forms were introduced by this architect in the Russian architecture in a variety of well-known buildings. The author draws attention to the necessity of deeper analysis of the period of study in Europe of Peter’s I pensioners, whose vigorous activity falls within 1730s. The author comes to the conclusion that studying of the style formation peculiarities in this period is impossible without examination of mechanisms of Russian and European architectural connections.
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