The development of painting and the architectural temple style of Russia originate in the depths of centuries. In 988, Kievan Rus, along with the adoption of Christianity, received a huge cultural heritage of the Byzantine Empire, combining the features of the sparkling splendor of the East and the ascetic simplicity of the West. In the process of synthesizing this multilateral artistic style and a specific original art, the architecture and painting of Ancient Russia were formed.
Historical background for the development of the original style of architecture and painting of Ancient Russia
The painting of Ancient Russia as a monument to pre-Christian culture is unknown to modern scholars, and the sculpture of this era is represented by just 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 created from wood and have not been preserved to date.
Painting in Russia began to undergo its rapid development in the 10th century, when after the introduction of the Slavic alphabet in Cyril and Methodius into the territory of Russia, an exchange of experience between Russian and Byzantine masters became possible, which Prince Vladimir invited after 988 to Russian cities.
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 their development precisely from the Byzantine heritage that poured into this environment.
Prerequisites for the development of architectural style features
The architecture and painting of Ancient Russia as an integral style ensemble appeared under the direct influence of Byzantine architecture, which synthesized the forms of ancient temple buildings, gradually forming the type of cross-domed church, known from the 10th century, very different from the early Christian basilicas. By transferring the domes to the semicircular rigid edges of the quadrangular base of the temple, using the latest developed “sailing” system to support the dome and relieve its pressure on the walls, Byzantine architects achieved the maximum expansion of the interior of the temple and created a completely new type of Christian temple construction.
The design features described above apply to temples, which are 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 squat-shaped domes are located on low drums encircled by a window arcade, and the interior of the church represents a single area not divided by pylons and cross vaults.
Prerequisites for the development of style features of painting
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 murals and frescoes of the first Christian churches of the pre-Mongol period are indistinguishable by Russian and Byzantine origin.
In theoretical terms, the icon-painting and painting of Ancient Russia are perfectly illustrated by 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 the description recorded in the 17th century. The invited icon painters remained in the monastery and laid the foundation for learning their craft. Rev. Alipy and Gregory were the first Russian masters to leave this icon-painting school.
Thus, the art, icon painting, painting of Ancient Russia leads its theoretical and methodological continuity from the ancient knowledge of oriental masters.
The specifics of the architectural and construction type of residential and temple buildings of Ancient Russia
The culture of Ancient Russia, whose painting, icon-painting and architecture are a single ensemble, had little impact on the architecture of public and residential buildings, which continued to be carried out either by typical tower buildings or fortresses. Byzantine architectural standards 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 by the example of the Pskov and Tver monastery buildings, is focused on their structural security, lightness of the domed parts of the building with maximum thickening of the supporting structures.
Iconic Old Russian Painting
The culture of Ancient Russia, the painting of which 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 original artistic Old Russian techniques. And although some types of fine art, 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 precisely after the arrival of Christianity in Russia.
The Orthodox culture of Ancient Russia, the painting of which is represented not only by temple murals and icon paintings, but also by face embroidery and carvings, reflecting the symbols of faith and used by everyday secular people, left an imprint on the interior decoration of buildings and the 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 manually from various ingredients in them.
In miniature parchment painting and icon painting, the masters used mostly the same colors. They were cinnabar, lapis lazuli, ocher, lead white 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, each specific painting technique has its own favorite techniques and methods - both the manufacture of the paint itself and the methods of applying it to the surface.
According to the Novogorodsk icon-painting script of the 16th century, cinnabar, lazor, whitewash, and green tea were the most preferred among the masters. The original also first appeared the names of these colors - yellow, red, black, green.
White, as the most popular paint, was most often used in color mixtures, served to apply spaces 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 with further washing of the resulting white color.
The main component of the "face letter" in icon painting to this day is ocher.
Painting of Ancient Russia, as well as its Byzantine standard, suggested the use of a variety of coloristic material in the writing of the holy forms.
One of the main widely used paints was cinnabar - mercury sulfide. Cinnabar was mined at the famous Russian Nikitinsky deposit in Europe. The paint was made in the process of grinding cinnabar with water, followed by dissolution of pyrite and pyrite accompanying it in the ore. Cinnabar could be replaced with cheaper meerk obtained by firing lead white.
Lazor, like white, was intended for writing spaces and obtaining tones of other colors. In the past, Afghanistan’s deposits were the main source of lapis lazuli. However, since the 16th century, a large number of methods for producing blue pigment from lapis lazuli have appeared.
Along with these basic colors, Russian icon painting used cormorant, scarlet, green tea, greens, yar-copper, twist (“blue”), stuffed cabbage, sankir (brownish tones), hook, rift, game. The terminology of the ancient painter indicated all colors in different words.
Artistic manner of old Russian icon painting
In each territorial-integral state association, a certain consolidation of artistic and aesthetic norms takes place, which in the future will 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, therefore, it is worth mentioning separately about its features, closely related to architecture and writing methods.
The Mongol invasion destroyed most of the icon-painting and fresco monuments of Ancient Russia, undermining and suspending the process of writing new works. However, a certain picture of the past can be restored from preserved documents and meager archaeological sites.
Of these, it is known that in the era of the pre-Mongol invasion, the monumental painting of Ancient Rus had a significant impact on icon painting with its technical methods - the conciseness of compositional construction and gloomy restrained color - however, by the 13th century this color began to give way to bright warm colors. Thus, by the 13th century the Byzantine icon-painting technique undergoes the process of refraction and assimilation with such old Russian national artistic techniques as the freshness and brightness of the color scheme, the rhythmic compositional structure and the directness of color expression.
In this era, the most famous masters work, who have brought the painting of Ancient Russia to the present - briefly, this list can be represented by Metropolitan of Moscow Peter, Archbishop of Rostov Theodore, Rev. Andrei Rublev and Daniil Cherny.
Features of Old Russian Fresco Painting
Fresco 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, slightly modifying the existing Byzantine techniques and techniques.
To begin with, it is worth saying that the culture of Ancient Russia, the painting of which previously existed in the form of mosaics, altered the use of stucco preparatory materials using a mosaic limestone base under the mural, and by the end of the 14th century there was a transition from ancient Byzantine writing and material-making techniques to new native Russian methods of fresco painting.
Among the fundamentally changed processes for the manufacture of substrates and paints, the appearance of stucco created solely on the basis of pure limestone, previously diluted for strength with quartz sand and marble chips, can be distinguished. In the case of Russian painting, the stucco fresco base - gesso - was made by long-term exposure of lime in a mixture with vegetable oils and glue.
Old Russian front 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 frontal sewing.
The tsaritsyn’s workshops, which functioned under the auspices of the Grand Duchesses Sofia Paleolog, Solomoniya Saburova, Tsarits Anastasia Romanova and Irina Godunova, contributed to this a lot.
Face sewing as a religious painting of Ancient Russia has a lot of common compositional and graphic features with the icon. However, face sewing is a collective work, with a clear distribution of roles of the creators. The icon painter depicted on the canvas a face, inscriptions and fragments of clothing, a herbalist - plants. The background was embroidered with a neutral color; face and hands - with silk threads of skin tones, including screeds arranged along lines along the contours of the face; clothes and surrounding objects were embroidered either with gold and silver threads, or multi-colored silk.
For greater strength, a canvas or cloth was placed under the embroidered fabric, under which a second lining of soft fabric was attached.
Particularly difficult was the double-sided embroidery on banners and banners. In this case, silk and gold threads pierced through.
Facial embroidery has widespread use - large swaddling sheets and airs adorned the temple, laid out under the icons, covered the altar, and were used on banners. In many cases, canvases with the faces of the saints were attached to the gates of the 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 architectural and construction features of buildings.
For example, the art of Ancient Russia, the painting of which involves the use of mosaics or frescoes as interior decoration of temples, is perfectly revealed by the example of the Cathedral of St. Sophia of Kiev. Here, a free combination of both mosaic and fresco painting is observed, when examining the temple, two layers of soil were revealed. In the Church of the Transfiguration of the village of Big Vyazemy, all the plaster bases are made of pure lime without fillers. And in the Spassky Cathedral of the Spaso-Andronievsky Monastery, blood albumin was revealed as a connecting link of stucco gesso.
Thus, we can conclude that the peculiarity and originality of ancient Russian art lies in its territorial orientation and individual and personal preferences and the ability of Russian artists to convey the color and character of the idea in accordance with its national standards.