The Ukrainian Icon: Preserving tradition in religious art

The text below is the excerpt of the book The Ukrainian Icon (ISBN: 9781639198979), written by Liudmila Miliayeva, published by Parkstone International.

An example is the famous two-sided icon “St George the Warrior” (11th-12th centuries) in the Cathedral of the Assumption in the Moscow Kremlin. Its epic style and the hellenistic nobility of the saint’s features remind some researchers, and not without reason, of the monumental paintings in Kiev’s St Sophia Cathedral. The image’s epic character is enhanced by the icon’s unusually large size (the warrior’s seated figure is double life-size)–roughly that of Kievan altarscreens of the 11th century.

The cult of St George in Kiev had its origins in Yaroslav the Wise’s taking of the name George on his conversion to Christianity; a chapel was dedicated to St George in St Sophia Cathedral, and in 1037 work was started on a church of St George and a feast-day established in his honour.

The late-11th/early-12th-century icon “Our Lady of the Great Panagia” is often ascribed to the legendary Kievan artist Alimpi, a monk in Kiev’s Monastery of the Caves, who lived in the late 11th and early 12th centuries and was subsequently canonised. The superbly executed figure of the Virgin Orans with the Saviour Emmanuel in her lap combines poetic femininity with solemn majesty. It possesses a monumental compositional unity that is peculiar to mosaics. In its proportions and its treatment of the golds of the stole it bears an indisputable resemblance to the mosaics in St Michael’s Golden-Domed Cathedral, Kiev (1108-13).

In the whole of Kievan Rus only Kiev possessed any mosaics, and it is therefore probably in that city that the master painted his mosaic-style icons. These include the 12th-century icon “The Archangel Gabriel” (“The Golden-Haired Angel”).

Legend links Kiev with the icon “Our Lady of Svyensk”, which was brought to the Monastery of the Assumption in Svyensk, near Bryansk, in 1288 from Kiev’s Monastery of the Caves. The Virgin is depicted sitting on a throne flanked by the monastery’s founders, the Venerable Anthony and Theodosius. This type of Virgin has come to be known as a “Pecherski” (“Cave”) Madonna. A number of researchers have dated the icon to the time of Alimpi (late 11th/early 12th century), others to the late 13th century, on the basis of the story of its removal to Kiev. Recent palaeographic research of the writing on the scrolls and x-ray photography have proved that the icon was indeed painted at the turn of the 11th and 12th centuries, but that it was partly repainted in the 13th century. In contrast to other icons, here the monumentality of the composition is combined with the almost portrait-like detail in the depiction of St Anthony and St Theodosius.

In the early 12th century a masterpiece of late- 11th/early-12th-century icon-painting was brought to Kiev from Constantinople–”Our Lady of Vladimir”. (Because it was installed in the residence of the Great Princes of Kiev in the town of Vyshgorod, it is sometimes referred to as “Our Lady of Vyshgorod- Vladimir”.) Once on Kievan soil, this exceptionally fine work was covered in glory and was much venerated. In 1155, to assert his sovereignty over the Principality of Vladimir- Suzdal, the son of the then Prince of Kiev Yuri Dolgorukov, Andrei Bogolyubski, removed the icon to Vladimir-on- Klyazma. It became an object of veneration in his principality, and later in the whole of Russia. The unknown painter created what is perhaps one of the saddest and most lyrical images of Mary in the history of art. The period of feudal fragmentation (the second half of the 12th century to the first half of the 13th) led to the formation of large and small sovereign principalities, usually with no fixed borders. Kievan Rus lost its power, but Kiev remained the most important religious and cultural centre of the Eastern Slavs. In North-Eastern Russia the Great-Russian nation was taking shape in Novgorod and Pskov, in spite of the sometimes complicated difficult relations between the two principalities. A Ukrainian nation was taking shape in the Dnieper region and in such geographical- ethnic territories as Volhynia (the Northwest, including the basin of the river Pripyat), Galicia (Transcarpathia, with the basin of the Dniester, Stryy, and Western Bug), Podolia (southern Transdniestria), and Bukovina, in the south-west.

To get a better insight into The Ukrainian Icon, please continue this exciting adventure by clicking on:

Ebook

Hardcover