B XVIII-XIX centuries. Nevyansk was the center of icon painting in the Urals. The Nevyansk icon is the pinnacle of Ural mining and Old Believer icon painting.
But, before we start talking about the Nevyansk icon, let us briefly note the main points of the technology for painting icons. Translated from Greek, “hey-kon” means image, image on a wooden board. First, the icon was prepared: a block was cut out from a block on both sides of the core; they were dried for several years and then the surfaces were treated. On the front side, an “ark” was cut out along the perimeter - a small depression, so that the fields rose above the middle (however, the ark was not always made). Pavolok - fabric, later paper - was glued onto the base. Several layers of gesso were applied to the pavoloka - a creamy mixture of chalk, glue (usually fish) with a small amount of hemp oil or drying oil. Each layer was thoroughly dried. The gesso was then polished with bone (bear or wolf fang). The drawing of the icon was translated from the copybook: the outlines were pricked with a needle and “powdered” - sprinkled with crushed charcoal from a bag.
On gesso, a “translation” of the pattern of black dots was obtained. Then polyment - paint - was applied to the gesso, gold sheet was glued onto it, which was polished, and after that they began directly to paint the icon. The front surface of the finished icon was covered with a protective film of drying oil or glue.
The Nevyansk icon is an Old Believer icon and is associated primarily with chapels. Most of the population of the Urals and the Nevyansk Demidov factories are Old Believers who fled here from persecution by the tsarist and church authorities. Among them there were many talented icon painters.
The icons were noted among state property in the inventory and transfer books of 1702 during the transfer of the Nevyansk plant to Nikita Demidov. “In the sovereign’s courtyard,” in the blast furnace and hammer shops, “and in other places,” there were nine images on boards without frames. These were the three Saviors: “Almighty”, “On the Throne” and “Not Made by Hands”; "The Resurrection of Christ with the Twelve Feasts", Theotokos, the Annunciation, John the Baptist, St. Nicholas the Wonderworker, Our Lady of the Burning Bush with the Twelve Feasts. All of them went to Demidov along with the plant. These icons were most likely of local origin.
In the census book of Verkhoturye and the district for 1710, at the Nevyansk plant in his yard, “industrial man Grigory Yakovlev Ikonnik” is recorded, 50 years old, no wife, son Eremey 22 years old, and three daughters: 13, nine and six years old. Perhaps he was professionally engaged in icon painting, which is confirmed by the data of the Landrat census of the Nevyansk factories in 1717. This is currently the earliest direct evidence of the existence and work of icon painters not only in Nevyansk, but also in the Ural factories in general. “In the courtyard is Grigory Yakovlev, the son of Sakharov, eighty years old, widowed; he has a daughter, Paraskovya, fifteen, and a daughter-in-law, the widow Tatyana Stepanova, a daughter, Eremeevskaya, a wife, Sakharovo, thirty, and a son (Eremeya) Vasily, six years old. He, Grigory, comes from the Ayatskaya settlement, which is assigned to the Fetkovsky (Nevyansk) factories, and for eleven years he moved to the Fetkovsky factories and was the breadwinner from icon art.”
In the census book of the Ayat Sloboda of 1703, uncultivated industrial people Grigory and Semyon Yakovlev, obviously brothers, are noted. Apparently, they were icon painters, since the sons of Semyon in the Landrat census of the Nevyansk plant are called “children of Ikonnikov.” But their father did not have time to pass on his icon-painting skills to them, probably because he died early (in 1705, the widow and children “moved” to the Nevyansk plant).
In the census and allotment books of 1704, the Ayat, Krasnopolskaya settlements and the possessions of the Epiphany Nevyansk Monastery assigned to the Nevyansk plant among the residents of the Ayat settlement, “which were not given to Nikita Demidov for work in the past 1703” (and were assigned in 1704) are recorded industrialist Yakov Frolov with three sons aged from nine to 21 years. “He pays... a quitrent to the treasury from the trade trade: from the fishery trade, osmi altyn, two money per year.” He combined his studies in icon painting with farming.
According to calculations, this Yakov Frolov and G.Ya. Sakharov were almost the same age and could be each other’s cousins. It can also be assumed that the cousins studied the icon craft in the Ayat settlement and could improve in it by participating in work on the side.
The grandson of Yakov Frolov Arapov, Akinfiy, 21, was noted in the 1732 census at the Nevyansk plant without indicating a profession with the nickname “Ikonnikovs”.
Yakov Frolov, who lived in Ayatskaya Sloboda, probably served as an icon painter the needs of the surrounding peasants and numerous visitors and travelers. Gregory, who settled in the Nevyansk plant, according to him, from 1706, satisfied the more demanding tastes of its inhabitants.
By 1717, the Nevyansk plant numbered over 300 households and turned into one of the largest settlements in the Urals, second only to Solikamsk and Kungur, and surpassing all other cities, including Verkhoturye.
It is reasonable to assume that both named icon painters obviously differed in their level of skill and worked in a traditional manner. It is unlikely that their work was differentiated by customers: Old Believers and adherents of official Orthodoxy.
From 1732 and at least until the beginning of 1735, most likely, it was at the Nevyansk factory that Ivan Kozmin Kholuev, by birth the son of a bobyl from the Verkhnyaya Sloboda village of Gorodets, Balakhonsky district, Nizhny Novgorod province, “fed on icon craftsmanship”. In his own words, he studied icon painting somewhere in the Nizhny Novgorod region, and before appearing in the Urals, he “went to different Russian cities.”
From documents of 1790 we know the name of the peasant of the Yalutorovsky district, Ivan Emelyanov, son of Neryakhin, 34 years old - the Old Believer monk Isaac, trained in icon painting at the "Old Nevyansk Factory", where the peasant Fedot Semenov (son) Voronov lived for two years, learned to paint images (approximately in 1778-1780). Then he went to the monasteries, and then returned to the Nevyansk plant, where in 1784-1786. lived with “the peasant Vasily Vasilyev (son) Krasnykh, aka Barannikov... at the writing of images.”
The fragmentary nature of information about the first Old Believers icon painters in the mining and processing Urals forces us to pay attention to the masters considered the founders of icon painting in factories. Studying this issue in the early 1920s. was handled by Suchelle Dulong, a Frenchman and representative of the Red Cross mission. In January 1923, he presented the results in a report at a meeting of the Ural Society of Natural Science Lovers. S. Dulong visited the chapels and private houses of the Old Believers (formerly Beglopopovites of the Sofontievsky persuasion) in Yekaterinburg and the neighboring village of Shartash, at the Nizhne Tagil and Nevyansk factories. What gives special value to S. Dulong’s data is the fact that in his search he was helped by G. S. Romanov, himself an icon painter in the third generation (Dulong even called Romanov “the last Ural icon painter”) and the famous Ekaterinburg antiquarian D. N. Pleshkov, familiar with most working in the Urals at the beginning of the 20th century. icon painters and related to the Romanovs.
S. Dulong named four masters of this period. This is Father Grigory (in the world Gavriil Sergeev) Koskin (c. 1725 - late 18th century), from the Nevyansk plant. Grigory Andreevich Peretrutov, who settled at the Nizhny Tagil plant; father Paisiy (Petr Fedorovich Zavertkin) and a certain Zavertkin, nephew of Paisiy, second son of his younger merchant brother Timofey Borisovich Zavertkin (1727 - 1769). Moreover, the first and last names belong to representatives of the second generation of local Old Believers icon painters.
“The monk schema monk Paisei Zavertkin is ... a skillful isographer who left quite a lot of disciples behind him; the first (obviously in the sense of “best”) of them is the monk-schemist Grigory Koskin.” Apparently Timofey Zavertkin was also a student of Paisius. Dulong called G. S. Koskin “the greatest, largest Ural icon painter.” Dulong even described the icon of the Mother of God by Koskin, which he saw in a private house in Yekaterinburg, as “brilliant.”
Dulong had not seen the works of Paisiy Zavertkin, but his informant, the Yekaterinburg icon painter G.S. Romanov spoke of them this way: “Father Paisius’s work is much softer than Father Gregory’s.” In the mouth of a professional, the concept of “softer” had a meaning close to the meaning of “freer style of writing” or “more skillful work.”
At present, only 43 miniatures (some, obviously, created with the participation of students) of Tolkovoy’s obverse Apocalypse of the 1730s-1740s can be more or less definitely attributed as belonging to Paisiy Zavertkin. Peter (monastically Paisiy) Fedorovich Zavertkin (c. 1689 - 05/01/1768) - originally from near Yaroslavl, from a family of serf peasants-entrepreneurs, landowners Khomutov, in his youth he worked at the Armory Chamber in Moscow and the Armory Chancellery in St. Petersburg, rather in total, as one of the “masters of various arts”. He fled to Kerzhenets, from there, together with the local skete elders, he moved to the Ural Demidov factories. From here, a few years later, he went to the Vetkovo Old Believer settlements in Poland. In March 1735, he and his family, with passports received from the landowner, settled down to live at the Nizhny Tagil plant. From the beginning of the 1740s. P.F. Zavertkin, under the name Paisiya, was already in the forest “sub-factory” hermitages. There Paisiya, together with his student G. Koskin, was met by an eyewitness around 1742. In 1747, it was included in the revision tales for the Nizhny Tagil plant. In the early 1750s. Monk Paisius probably left for Poland again.
Grigory Andreevich Peretrutov “was a royal icon painter under Peter the Great and fled to the Urals,” settled in Nizhny Tagil, then took the monastic name Gury. Moreover, in the Urals the Peretrutovs were listed under the name Sedyshevs. Gregory's father, a nobleman of the Annunciation Monastery Settlement in Nizhny Novgorod, Andryushka Yuriev Peretrutov, was probably also an icon painter.
Long-standing family ties between the Pertrutov-Sedyshev and Zavertkin families are also likely. Grigory Peretrutov and Pyotr Zavertkin could know each other well from their work at the Armory Chamber. And Zavertkin’s brother Boris was engaged in business in Nizhny Novgorod. In the Urals, these families lived side by side for decades.
In 1752, churchmen, accompanied by a military team, raided Zavertkin’s house. Among the evidence, an entire iconostasis was found. And among the especially important schismatics of the Tobolsk diocese, Timofey Zavertkin received a vivid description: “An evil schismatic who... paints icons according to schismatic superstition... and sends them to all schismatic places, where they are accepted... as miraculous.” Icon painting developed throughout the Urals, but nowhere did it reach such perfection as in Nevyansk and the settlements associated with it.
The icons of Nevyansk masters were distinguished by good quality writing and their work was highly valued, so their customers were not only “local and surrounding residents, but in general residents of the entire Trans-Urals and even European Russia.”
The heyday of the Nevyansk icon was the second half of the 18th - first half of the 19th centuries. At this time, ten icon painting workshops operated in Nevyansk, and by the beginning of the 20th century. Only three families were engaged in icon painting, painting icons to order, and even they “sometimes sat without work.”
The most famous dynasties, engaged in icon painting for more than 100 years, were the Bogatyrevs, Chernobrovins and others. Ivan Prokhorovich Chernobrovin painted the icons of the Sretensky iconostasis of the temple in the name of St. Nicholas the Wonderworker. Byngi, the Nikolaev iconostasis was renewed (and the carver and gilder of the Sretensky iconostasis was his brother, Yegor Prokhorovich).
The dynasty of hereditary icon painters Chernobrovins from the registered peasants of the Nevyansk plant has been known since 1798. Ivan Prokhorovich Chernobrovin was born in 1805, studied icon painting with Ivan Anisimovich Malyganov. He was listed as a serf at the Nevyansk plant, “correcting the coal duty,” hiring free state peasants and engaged in “writing holy icons.”
An Old Believer of the Chapel Concord, Ivan Prokhorovich in 1835 converted to the same faith together with his brother; was a respected person among fellow believers. The Chernobrovins enjoyed the full trust of the church authorities and received from them large orders for icons and decoration of newly built Orthodox and Edinoverie churches. The Chernobrovins lived in separate houses and worked separately (unlike the Bogatyrevs), uniting only to complete large orders. I.P. Chernobrovin painted icons for the Rezhevskaya, Shaitanskaya, Sylvenskaya Edinoverie churches in the Urals. The last signed icon of Chernobrovin dates back to 1872. The icons were painted by Andrei Chernobrovin and Fyodor Chernobrovin. Other Nevyansk icon painters also gained fame: Fyodor Anisimovich Malyganov, Ivan Petrovich Burmashev, Stefan Petrovich Berdnikov, Efim Pavlovich Bolshakov, Ivan Ivanovich Vakhrushev, Afanasy Nikolaevich Gilchin, Egor Markovich Lapshin, the Serebrennikov dynasty: Joseph, his sons Nazar and Ipat, grandson Kondraty Ipatievich and great-grandson Daniil Kondratievich, Vasily Gavrilovich Sukharev and others.
A significant role in the formation of the Nevyansk icon-painting school was played by the traditions laid down by the Moscow Armory Chamber in the middle of the 15th century and developed in the late 15th - first half of the 18th centuries. in Yaroslavl, Rostov the Great, Kostroma. It is known that among the first craftsmen who came to the Nevyansk plant were immigrants from the Moscow, Tula, Olonets, and Nizhny Novgorod provinces. By 1723, the first batch of settlers from Kerzhenets arrived. Consequently, icon painters could focus on a fairly wide range of traditions, taking the iconography of the 16th-17th centuries as a model. But it took a significant period of time to unify the stylistic features and technical and technological techniques that determined the originality of the Ural mining plant Old Believer icon painting. An indirect, but very important indication of the time of the formation of the Nevyansk school can be the appearance in the 1770s. and an increase in the number of dated icons in subsequent years. Previous similar works are rare: “Our Lady of Egypt” of 1734 and icons of 1758 and 1762. It is significant that the same S. Dulong until the end of the 18th century. names only one dated local work he has seen: Timofey Zavertkin “around 1760.”
"Our Lady of Egypt", 1734
Among the mining Old Believers throughout the 18th century. Until the last decade, there were practically no signature icons. Among the Nevyansk icons, the first signature is dated 1791, works by I.V. Bogatyrev (“Peter and Paul with scenes from their lives”), and even later examples of even the highest level were rarely signed. The customer began to be identified in Nevyansk icons in the 19th century. when painting icons for chapels and later for churches of the same faith. Nevyansk masters painted icons in the traditions of the icon painting schools of pre-reform Rus', but did not copy old icons, but creatively reworked traditions, expressing in icons their feelings, their vision of the world as God’s creation. They took their best features from ancient Russian icons: from Moscow - elongated proportions of figures, rhythm, patterning, writing in gold; from Yaroslavl - three-dimensional, rounded image of faces, dynamism of the plot (bold three-quarter turns of the figures), etc.
The Nevyansk icon has retained the extraordinary expressiveness and spirituality, fervor, festivity, and brightness inherent in the ancient Russian icon. But the masters took into account both the spirit of the new time and the experience of secular painting. The buildings and interiors depicted on the icon receive volume, “depth”, that is, the image is constructed according to the laws of direct perspective (the image is based on the peculiarities of the perception of space by the human eye). They tried to get closer to reality. This can be seen in the “depth” of the icons, in the volume of the faces, in the depiction of the natural landscape, views of cities and buildings. The images contain local flavor, reflecting geographical features: the buildings can be seen in the buildings of Ural mining complexes, domes and silhouettes of Ural churches. An invariable detail of the landscape is a tower with an arched passage, the silhouette of the Nevyansk Tower can be seen in the image of cities (Savior Not Made by Hands), and on the icon “The Holy Crucifixion of Our Lord Jesus Christ” (“Golgotha”) of 1799, stored in the Nevyansk Icon Museum. Yekaterinburg, a tower with chimes is depicted. Instead of conventional mountains with obliquely cut areas, there are typical Ural ridges, softened by time, with rock outcrops, overgrown with coniferous copses. Some peaks are white (snowy). Trees on the mountain slopes, grass, bushes, round pebbles, fir trees and pines, steep river banks with hanging plant roots are an indispensable attribute of Nevyansk writing.
"Calvary", 1799
Realistic tendencies also manifested themselves in the reflection in the faces of some saints of the local ethnic type (Vogul features in the appearance of St. Nicholas the Wonderworker in icons of the 18th - first half of the 19th centuries).
“Nicholas the Wonderworker”, second half of the 18th century.
To paint the icons, the masters used mineral paints - very durable, not fading or fading, so the icons leave the impression of freshness and novelty. In addition, mineral paints gave the icon a special flavor.
The drawings of the best Nevyansk icons amaze with their grace and plasticity. The Nevyansk icon is distinguished by its fine writing, elegance, decorativeness, and abundance of gold: the entire icon was covered with plates of gold leaf. Gold leaf was applied to polyment (red-brown paint that was previously used to cover gesso). The golden background shone through a thin layer of paint, which gave the icon a special warmth. In addition, the craftsmen were proficient in various methods of processing the gold background: engraving, coloring, and niello patterns. The resulting textured (uneven) surface refracted the rays of light in different ways, creating the impression that the icon itself glowed with its own special light, for which it was called luminiferous. Shades of bright blue, green, red colors in combination with gold attract and catch the eye. Gold has always been in harmony with the main color scheme of the icon. It symbolized Christ, divine light, the sun, power, purity of thoughts, the victorious radiance of goodness.
In the design of the Nevyansk icon of the first half of the 18th - mid-19th centuries, the influence of the Baroque style, unusual for icons, is noticeable: lush multi-figure compositions with dynamic poses of saints, their robes fluttering with patterned draperies - folds; an abundance of decorative elements - the centerpiece and margins are often decorated with elaborate gold curls; the inscriptions along the edges of the icons are framed by lush golden cartouches - frames, ornate thrones are “composed” of curved-concave curls; clouds and horizons are indicated by curly lines. The robes of the saints are distinguished by their multicolored patterns and floral designs, reminiscent of roses and other flowers on Tagil trays (this is typical for icons painted by the Chernobrovins).
From the beginning of the 19th century. features of classicism appear in the icon, reflected in the already mentioned real images of the Ural landscape and types of mining buildings. Architectural buildings and details are depicted in three-dimensional space, i.e. get volume and depth. The images of saints are distinguished by their miniature size, fine writing, psychology and physiognomy. The most expressive thing about the icons of the Nevyansk masters is their beautiful faces: pretty, full-cheeked, with large eyes, wrinkles on the forehead, a short straight nose, a rounded chin, and slightly smiling lips. They radiate kindness, empathy and compassion. Some of the faces reflect shades of feelings: in the faces of the angels there is childlike innocence and touching purity of thoughts.
Most of the later icons are characterized by a gold background with floral or geometric patterns embossed on gesso. The saints are depicted against the backdrop of a landscape with a low horizon line. The composition of the icon is simplified, it becomes similar to a painting, and linear perspective plays an important role in it.
In the Nevyansk icon there are images of saints in the fields in both the 18th and 19th centuries. only height ones. In the 18th century kiots, in which the saints are located, mostly with a keel-shaped end. As a rule, the background is colored, often deep pink or red, sometimes with golden fire-like clouds. In the 19th century the saints located below are in rectangular icon cases with earthenware, and the upper ones are also in icon cases with a figured finish. In the 19th century pommels are often marked with niello cartouches. In the Nevyansk icon there are no saints in the fields in round windows or half-length, standing one on top of the other. There are also no images of saints in the lower and upper fields. Saints in the fields take place mainly on house icons; On format icons intended for chapels and churches of the same faith, saints in the margins are rarely found.
So, we can assume that the Old Believer icon painting school in the mining Urals (Nevyansk school) was formed quite late, approximately in the middle - last quarter of the 18th century, when the third or fourth generations of local masters were already working. Having developed as an independent phenomenon, it acquired that stability that external influences could only enrich, but not destroy.
In the icon, the people sought and expressed their ideals, their ideas about truth, goodness and beauty. The Nevyansk icon embodied this ideal with the greatest completeness. Peering into the faces of the saints, we comprehend the soul of the people, their faith, hope and love - what the “zealots of ancient piety” were able to preserve, having experienced persecution by the authorities.
Copyright Korotkov N. G., Medovshchikova N. I., Meshkova V. M., Plishkina R. I., 2011. All rights reserved
Literature:
- Dulong S. Notes on the issue of Ural icon painting. Ekaterinburg, 1923.
- Golynets G.V. On the history of Ural icon painting of the 18th-19th centuries: Nevyansk school // Art, 1987. No. 12;
- Golynets G.V. Ural icon // Seasons: Chronicle of Russian artistic life. M., 1995;
- Nevyansk icon. Ekaterinburg: Ural University Publishing House, 1997. - 248 pp.: ill. ISBN 5-7525-0569-0. Res.: English - Parallel catalog text: Russian, English. Format 31x24 cm.
- Runeva T.A., Kolosnitsyn V.I. Nevyansk icon // Region-Ural, 1997. No. 6;
- Ural icon. Picturesque, carved and cast icon of the 18th - early 20th centuries. Ekaterinburg: Ural University Publishing House, 1998. - 352 pp.: ill. ISBN 5-7525-0572-0. auto-comp. Yu. A. Goncharov, N. A. Goncharova, O. P. Gubkin, N. V. Kazarinova, T. A. Runeva. Format 31x24 cm.
- The Nevyansk letter is good news. Nevyansk icon in church and private collections / Author. entry Art. and scientific ed. I. L. Buseva-Davydova. - Ekaterinburg: OOO "OMTA", 2009. - 312 p.: ill.; 35x25 cm. circulation 1000 copies. ISBN 978-5-904566-04-3.
- Bulletin of the Museum "Nevyansk Icon". Issue 2. Ekaterinburg: Columbus Publishing Group, 2006. - 200 p. : ill. : ISBN 5-7525-1559-9. Circulation 500 copies.
- Bulletin of the Museum "Nevyansk Icon". Issue 3. Ekaterinburg: Publishing house "Autograph", 2010. - 420 p. : ill. : ISBN 978-5-98955-066-1 Circulation 1000 copies.
Nevyansk icons:
- St. Nicholas the Wonderworker with selected saints in the margins (in an embroidered frame), last quarter of the 18th century.
- The Savior Not Made by Hands with two holding angels, Nevyansk 1826 Wood, duplicated board, end dowels. Pavoloka, gesso, tempera, gilding. 33.2 x 29 x 3 cm. Private collection, Ekaterinburg, Russia. Restoration: 1996–1997 - Byzov O.I.
- Transfiguration of the Lord with selected saints in the fields, 1760s.
- Nevyansk icon. John the Baptist Angel of the Desert with Lives.
- Icon "St. Nicholas the Wonderworker." 1840s Museum "Nevyansk Icon".
- The Savior Not Made by Hands, with the saints in the fields. Malyganov Ivan Anisimovich (c. 1760 - after 1840). Nevyansk 80–90s of the 18th century. Wood, ark, end keys. Pavoloka, gesso, tempera, gilding. 44.5 x 38.5 x 2.8 cm. Private collection, Ekaterinburg, Russia. Restoration: 1997 - Byzov O.I.
Museum "House of the Nevyansk Icon", Nevyansk
Museum "Nevyansk Icon", Yekaterinburg
Icon painting in the Urals /10 grades/
Delivery format: lecture /with multimedia accompaniment/
Time: 2 hours
In the life of an Orthodox Christian, the icon occupies an important place. It has become an integral part of the Orthodox tradition; without it it is difficult to imagine an Orthodox church and worship, the home of an Orthodox Christian and his life. Whether a person is born or dies, goes on a long journey or starts a business, his life is accompanied by a sacred image - an icon.
The meaning of the icon in the Orthodox world can be compared with Holy Scripture and Tradition. If they contain revealed truths in verbal form, then the icon testifies to God in the language of lines and colors.
The internal appearance of the temples was inextricably linked with the architectural decoration of the cathedrals. The icon had a special place in Russian churches. It was called “speculation in colors.” In the icon image, a believer could, without knowing literacy, comprehend the basic tenets of faith. Icons with the faces of the Savior, the Mother of God, and saints created a unique image of an Orthodox church.
The fate of the icon painting tradition in the 20th century was not easy - three quarters of a century passed under the sign of the state’s struggle with the church and its culture. But it was in this century that the icon was rediscovered. This was preceded by a serious preparatory process that began in the 19th century. Advances in historical science, archeology and source studies, iconographic research, and the emergence of scientific restoration prepared the way for the discovery of the icon.
Icons came to the Urals in different ways: settlers brought them with them, they were ordered in other cities for churches under construction, and they were painted by local icon painters. During the 17th-19th centuries, the Urals developed their own icon painting traditions. Today you will get acquainted with the history of the formation of the features of icon painting in the Urals.
Stroganov school of icon painting
It is tempting to begin the history of Ural icon painting with the Stroganov icon, which became widespread at the end of the 16th and beginning of the 17th centuries. This direction got its name from the owners of the Prikamsky saltworks Maxim and Nikita Stroganov.
The uniqueness of the Stroganovs lies in the fact that they managed, with extraordinary enterprise and courage, to achieve already in the second half of the 16th – 18th centuries. economic and political power, which many of the then aristocratic families in Russia could not achieve. They created in their estates in Solvychegodsk, and then in the Kama region, a high level of culture that corresponded to their spiritual and aesthetic ideals, focused on the best cultural achievements of their time.
By the nature of their activity, traveling around the country and major trade and cultural centers, the Stroganovs perceived the best examples of Russian art, be it monuments of architecture, icon painting, singing art, etc. And perceiving, thanks to the talent of their masters, they created masterpieces of architecture, icon painting, book-writing, singing, jewelry and other arts, which made it possible to talk about the Stroganov schools of icon painting, facial sewing, and singing art.
The icons of the “Stroganov school” are distinguished by their masterly technique of execution, the beauty and variety of pure shining colors, the use of created gold, fine detailing, the variety and detail of the plots, and the secular nature of the interpretation of the images. The more mature works of the school are characterized by emphasized elegance of forms - the saints seem to float in the air, barely touching the ground, they have elongated body proportions, narrow shoulders, thin arms with miniature hands, long legs with small feet, graceful movements, gracefully tilted heads, gestures hands are pretentious, movements are deliberate, even mannered.
The Stroganov School is the art of icon miniature. Icon painters of the Stroganov school are not concerned with the philosophical content of the icon, but with the beauty of the form, in which a rich spiritual meaning can be captured. “Careful, fine writing, skill in finishing details, sophisticated drawing, masterly calligraphy of lines, sophistication and richness of ornamentation, polychrome coloring, the most important component of which was gold and even silver - these are the components of the artistic language valued by the masters of the “Stroganov school” and their customers,” writes art critic D.V. Sarabyanov (Ist. Russ, art, 1979. P. 8).
In the Church of the Epiphany in Solikamsk there was a carved wooden iconostasis with a rich collection of icons of the Stroganov school of painting of the 18th-19th centuries. The Royal Doors, the central part of the iconostasis composition, were covered with openwork carvings. The frames (cases) for the icons were framed with intricate floral patterns. The royal doors were crowned with a “koruna” (crown) decorated with flower garlands and a carved sun. And in this carved splendor are icons, distinguished by “jewelry precision of writing”, richly decorated with gold and enamels.
Researchers identify two groups of icons associated with the name of the Stroganovs. The first and most numerous include icons painted in the Solvychegodsk workshops of the Stroganovs. These icons have no distinctive features (signatures) and were made by ordinary artisans in the 17th century. dispersed to churches and monasteries, mixing with other icons of Pomeranian writing.
Another group is icons created by Moscow masters, sovereign icon painters who carried out orders from the Stroganovs in the capital or in Solvychegodsk, such as Procopius Chirin in the “Time of Troubles.” This group probably includes icons made by local Stroganov icon painters who were trained by capital masters, whose works were often not inferior in level of execution to the icons of Moscow icon painters.
When ordering icons, salt industrialists turned to those masters whose works best suited their tastes and preferences. They were attracted to the icons by the abundance of pure, bright colors, gold, skillful depiction of details, detailed plots, and miniature, filigree writing. Subsequently, they encouraged and developed this direction in their fiefdoms. Thus, the Stroganovs’ private order created the famous school of icon painting.
It all started with the fact that, at the request of salt industrialists, their own iconographic original was compiled, which presented a set of images-drawings of icons arranged in calendar order.
This was a guide for Stroganov artists - both beginners and experienced.
The “Stroganov school” of icon painting developed in close connection with court painting: many Moscow artists were involved by the Stroganovs in painting icons and painting churches - Procopius Chirin, Fyodor Savin, Stepan Arefiev, Istoma Savin and his sons, Nazariy and Nikifor Savin, Ivan Sobolev, Bogdan Sobolev and, most likely, Semyon the Lame.
At the same time, at the turn of the 16th - 17th centuries, as already mentioned, with the beginning of the construction of churches and residential chambers undertaken by the Stroganovs in Solvychegodsk (Annunciation Cathedral, Vvedensky Monastery) and Perm possessions (Pyskorsky Monastery, many churches in forts and towns) activities of icon chambers of salt industrialists. Their researchers consider them as an offshoot of Moscow ones. The names of such masters as Grigory, Bogdan Sobolev, Mikhail, Pervusha, Persha and others are associated with Solvychegodsk upper rooms. Boys “from the service clan” who had a penchant for drawing were selected to learn icon painting and carving on the Stroganovs’ patrimonial estates. They were sent to the icon-painting workshops of Novy Usolye or Ilyinsky, where they were trained as real masters. Sometimes they were taught by masters from Moscow and Nizhny Novgorod.
Researchers note that at the turn of the 16th – 17th centuries. The Stroganovs have significant collections of icons: Nikita Grigorievich has at least 300, Maxim Yakovlevich has at least 240-250 icons. Such quantities were needed not only for deposits, they were probably going for sale.
Some part of Stroganov’s letter has survived to this day and is in museum collections across the country: the State Russian Museum, the Tretyakov and Perm galleries, the Solvychegodsk and Berezniki historical and art museums.
The Stroganovs often ordered icons dedicated to the saints of the same name. Thus, among the contributions of Nikita Grigorievich Stroganov there are many icons and sculptures depicting the warrior Nikita, and this is explained by the fact that Saint Nikita was the heavenly patron of the eminent person. Both he and his cousin Maxim Yakovlevich were well versed in icons, so some suggest that they themselves were engaged in icon painting.
Already at this time, the Stroganovs' philanthropy was emerging as a special family trait of representatives of this family.
Icons from the Stroganov workshops, which salt industrialists generously donated and put their souls into churches and monasteries in the Kama region, can be seen in the art and local history museums of the Urals. The Perm Art Gallery became the custodian of a number of icons by masters of the Stroganov school - Istoma and Nikifor Savin, Semyon Khromy, master Grigory, Bogdan Sobolev, presumably Stefan Arefiev and Semyon Borozdin.
Among them, the earliest is the icon “Our Lady of Vladimir, with a legend (eighteen marks), written in the 1580s. Istoya Savin. This is a true masterpiece of the Stroganov school.
The Perm gallery also contains icons of Nikifor Savin, the son of Istoma. His icon “St. Nikita the Warrior” especially showed the peculiarities of his work as a master of virtuoso miniature painting. Saint Nikita, the heavenly patron of Nikita Grigorievich Stroganov, is depicted with great subtlety and grace.
The icon of the same name from the collection of the Perm gallery belongs to the brush of the master Gregory. Here we observe a different solution to the work: the image of Nikita is more severe, and the painting is darker and static, the colors are denser, as if condensed.
The same master Gregory painted a life-size icon of the Mother of God. The name of master Gregory is little known among Solvychegodsk and Moscow icon painters of the Stroganov school. There is an assumption, which is also based on the stylistic features of Gregory’s letter, that this master was of local origin and worked in the Kama estates of the Stroganovs.
Five icons from the Perm gallery are associated with the name of the master Semyon Khromy. Four icons - “Our Lady of Smolensk”, “Nativity of St. John the Baptist", "Saints Basil the Great, Gregory the Theologian and John Chrysostom", "Sunday of All Saints" - have insert entries mentioning the authorship of S. Lame. “The Conversation of the Three Hierarchs” is attributed to S. Khromy on the basis of stylistic similarity.
The collection of signed Stroganov icons includes small holiday icons. One of them is “The Descent of St. Spirit" 1610, written by Stefan Arefiev - the same Moscow icon painter who in 1600-1601. took part in the painting of the Solvychegodsk Annunciation Cathedral. From Usolye comes the icon “Our Lady of the Sign with four chosen saints in the fields,” presumably painted by Emelyan Moskvitin.
Large icons have also been preserved. One of them (“Saints Peter and Paul”) was placed in one of the churches in the village of Sludki by Maxim Yakovlevich, his wife Marya Mikhailovna and sons Ivan and Maxim.
Another large-sized icon, “The Mother of God with the Child Christ on the Throne,” signed with the name of Bogdan Sobolev, arrived at the Perm Gallery from Solikamsk.
The Stroganov school of icon painting did not last long. However, in the depths of this specific - due to the fact that the masters worked primarily for churches - artistic direction, qualities were born and established that were also characteristic of the development of secular painting of the 17th century. This, according to art researchers, is the very “nature of the interpretation of images... as well as the desire of artists to show this or that event of sacred history as believably as possible.” The Stroganov school of icon painting in many ways became one of the harbingers of the renewal of Russian painting in the 18th century.
Monuments of the Stroganov school represent a remarkable phenomenon of late medieval art in Russia.
Nevyansk school of icon painting
A special large group of icon painting is represented by Old Believers. A large number of Old Believer icons stored in churches, museums, and private collections in Siberia can be divided into several stylistic groups.
A characteristic feature of one of these groups was strict adherence to tradition, for example, the icon of the Mother of God “Joy of All Who Sorrow.” It is focused on Stroganov’s writing: an elegant design of elongated figures, and the color spaces of the clothes add subtlety to the color. Non-darkened wood and drying oil, profiled dowels, bright colors of the figures. For the sake of a more accurate correspondence to Stroganov’s originals, later masters sometimes used various technological techniques to age the wood and painting and increase the cost of the icons.
Another type of Old Believer icons are “dark-shaped icons.” By the XVIII-XIX centuries. The drying oil on the old icons became very dark; the focus on their dark brown color while observing the canons in composition and design determined the peculiarity of this group. For the Old Believers, the main principle of evolution is the combination, synthesis of various stylistic trends. It is revealed in the icons of the Novosibirsk Art Gallery, such as St. Nicholas the Wonderworker.
The largest group of Old Believer icons is Nevyansk. This term is more stylistic than geographical.
For 300 years, Novgorod, northern, and then Moscow and Volga icons could not help but penetrate here. It is very difficult to say this specifically at the present time: the first iconostases did not survive, most of the documents that preserved the history of many icons that are today in Siberian churches and museums have disappeared.
It is possible to talk about Ural icon painting itself only from the middle of the 18th century. Regarding the first decades of the 18th century, we have to limit ourselves to documentary evidence and legends. Ural icon painting of the 18th-19th centuries, as well as the iconography of this period in Russia as a whole, can be divided into three directions.
1).Orders of the Orthodox Church, supported by the Holy Synod and the state and oriented towards Western European culture of that time.
2). Icons created primarily for Old Believers and based on Old Russian and Byzantine traditions.
3). Folklore iconography that existed among the people.
The first direction captured mainly the Kama region and Trans-Urals. In one case, this is explained by the geographical proximity to Muscovy, in the other - by the fact that in the Trans-Urals, with its administrative and religious center in the city of Tobolsk, there was also a strong influence of the Church.
The second direction is characteristic, first of all, of the mining Urals, which became a stronghold of “ancient piety.” Ural Old Believer icon painting begins to show features of originality, obviously, from the 1720s-1730s, when the schismatics who had previously moved to the Urals from the center of Russia (from Tula) and from Pomerania (from Olonets) were joined after being “dispelled” from the upper Volga, Kerzhenets and from the areas bordering Poland (from Vetka and from Starodubye) new settlers, Old Believers.
Very few Ural icons painted in the first half of the 18th century have survived. There is reason to assume that its heyday occurred later, in the second half of the 18th - first half of the 19th century.
In 1701, on the initiative of the government, a metallurgical plant was built in Nevyansk and Kamensk, in 1703-1704. in Alapaevsk and Uktussk. Peter I entrusts the management of these factories to Nikita and Akinfiy Demidov. They launched the construction of the most modern metallurgical enterprises of that time in the Urals. Their family nest was originally Nevyansk, and from 1725 it became Nizhny Tagil. The government assigned entire villages from central Russia to the factories. The Demidovs willingly gave shelter to the Old Believers, who, due to their illegal status, were practically powerless.
At every factory a church was built, and at large factories more than one. The need for icons has increased sharply. The Old Believers, who made up a significant part of the population of the factory villages, did not recognize the icons painted after the reform of Patriarch Nikon, as a result of which the emergence of Old Believer icon painting became inevitable.
First of all, Stroganov icons were valued. The Old Believers recognized them and bought them in large quantities. This is how a whole icon-painting direction arose, oriented towards Stroganov, which was called “Nevyansk”.
“Coated with darkened linseed oil, the Nevyansk icons were often mistaken for Stroganov’s. They are really brought together by the elongated proportions of the figures, the sophistication of the poses, the subtlety of the writing, the abundance of gold spaces... Stroganov’s icons were painted on olive-green or ocher backgrounds; gold was used more sparingly in them.”
The Nevyansk resorted to solid gilding. Gold leaf was applied to a red-brown polyment, which was previously covered with gesso. The polyment gave the gold a rich, warm tone. It filled the middle and fields, delimited by a thin layer of color or whitewash; the image of window frames, domes and spiers of architectural buildings shone in the halos. Its brilliance echoed the light of created gold, modeling the volumetric plasticity of polychrome draperies, and in a special group of icons, with cast copper folds and crosses embedded in the middle. The noble metal was enriched with magnification, engraving, and patterns. The coloring of Nevyansk icons is notable for its decorativeness.
As mentioned earlier, the heyday of Ural icon painting occurred at the end of the 18th - beginning of the 19th centuries. The recognized center of icon painting in the Urals was Nevyansk. Famous dynasties of icon painters worked here - the Bogatyrevs, Chernobrovins, Zavertkins, Romanovs, Filatovs, who played a large role in the creation of the Nevyansk school of icon painting, as well as masters Grigory Koskin, Ivan and Fyodor Anisimov, Fedot and Gabriel Ermakov, Platon Silgin and others. People from Yekaterinburg, Nizhny Tagil, Staroutkinsk, Chernoistochinsk and other places in the mining Urals came here to study icon painting.
The most fruitful and lasting influence on the Nevyansk icon was exerted by the Bogatyrev dynasty of icon painters, whose activity spanned the period from 1770 to 1860
Ivan Vasilievich, Mikhail Ivanovich, Afanasy Ivanovich, Artemy Mikhailovich, Iakinf Afanasyevich and Gerasim Afanasyevich Bogatyrevs represented the leading workshop of Nevyansk icon painting, focused on the commercial and industrial part of the Old Believer merchants, elders of Old Believer communities, factory owners, gold miners, who held in their hands the entire economy of the Urals .
The icons of the Bogatyrevs from the heyday of their workshop (the first third of the 19th century) in color, design, composition are closest to the Yaroslavl icon painting of the last third of the 18th century, oriented, in turn, to the late period of creativity of one of the prominent masters of the Moscow Armory Chamber, Fyodor Zubov (1610 -1689).
And, although at the beginning of the 19th century there were up to a dozen icon-painting workshops in Nevyansk, almost all of them copied the Bogatyrevs. Their work was considered very valuable.
The ancestors of the Bogatyrevs appeared in Nevyansk in the early 1740s, arriving with a trading caravan from Yaroslavl. According to the revision tale of 1816, three Bogatyrev families lived at the Nevyansk plant. The icon painters themselves taught children the craft of icon painting, as completely as possible, i.e. personal or personal letter.
The most representative icons characterizing the style in which they worked are the icons: Archdeacon Lawrence, Saint Leo of Catania with his life, the Nativity of Christ, the Old Testament Trinity, the Savior Not Made by Hands.
In January 1845, a law was passed prohibiting schismatics from engaging in icon painting, but despite this, the Bogatyrevs, like other icon painters, continued to engage in their work.
The main reason for the constant oppression by the authorities was the active schismatic activity of the Bogatyrevs, and not the icon-painting craft. In 1850 The Bogatyrev icon painters were exiled to the Theological factories of the Urals for evading joining the Edinoverie. Only later, with the transition to Edinoverie, were they allowed to return to Nevyansk.
The first printed materials about the Bogatyrev icon painters appeared in 1893. The journal "Brotherly Word" published the diary of court councilor S.D. Nechaev, who, on behalf of Nicholas I, carried out a “research on the split” in the Perm province. Nechaev personally met with the Bogatyrevs and, impressed by this meeting, made the following diary entry on November 22, 1826: “In Nevyansk, the best icon painters carefully preserve the ancient Greek style in design and shade. For this they use egg yolk. The Bogatyrevs are the most skillful and richest of all. image for the new Old Believer church in Yekaterinburg."
In the middle of the 18th century, in archival documents, the surname Chernobrovins was often found next to the surname of the Bogatyrevs. They lived in Nevyansk from the end of the 17th century. According to documents, in 1746 the following families lived in Nevyansk: Fyodor Andreevich Chernobrovin with his wife and three sons Dmitry, Afanasy, Ilya, and Matfei Afanasyevich with his wife, son and two daughters.
At the beginning of the 19th century, they became the ancestors of six families assigned to the Nevyansk plant of the Chernobrovin peasants. All of them were Old Believers, but in 1830 they converted to Edinoverie.
The Chernobrovina icon painters did not have a single family workshop, like the Bogatyrevs, they lived in separate houses and worked separately. They united only to fulfill large orders.
The work of the Chernobrovins during its heyday (1835-1863) is characterized by excellent mastery of the art of composition and the ability to combine subjects, a combination of traditional Old Believer techniques of icon painting with elements of secular painting (painting spaces with created gold). The use of techniques of flowering and drawing gold, as well as marking and chasing when decorating the background. The use of herbs and flowers in the decoration of Tagil painting when depicting fabrics in clothing and draperies. In the color scheme of the icons, the dominant colors were red and green, gravitating towards a cold tone in combination with dark emerald green and medium-density blue-green.
The Chernobrovins received contracts from the managers of Nevyansk factories to paint icons for newly built Edinoverie churches. So “in the spring of 1838, cousins Ivan and Matthew Chernobrovin entered into an agreement to paint icons for the iconostasis in the Assumption Edinoverie Church, which was being built in the Rezhevsky plant, for 2,520 rubles.” In November 1839 they undertook to "paint additional holy icons for Easter 1840."
In 1887, they participated in the opening of the Siberian-Ural Scientific and Industrial Exhibition in Yekaterinburg. For the presented icons they were awarded an honorary review from the Ural Society of Natural History Lovers.
The most expressive icons reflecting their iconographic style are: Archdeacon Stephen, Theotokos “What shall we call you, Joyful One,” John the Baptist.
In the middle of the 19th century, the Chernoborovins managed to establish themselves as one of the leading dynasties of Ural icon painters. It is no coincidence that D.N. Mamin-Sibiryak noted that “Nevyansk icon painters are known to the entire schismatic world in the Urals as the Bogatyrevs or Chernobrovins...”. For more than half a century these dynasties worked in Nevyansk. Many Nevyansk icon painters, in particular, P.A. Karmanov, S.F. Berdnikov, A.N. Gilgin. in their works they adhered to the traditions laid down by the Bogatyrevs and Chernobrovins.
"Nevyansk masters showed a tendency to preserve and revive ancient traditions, even to the point of reminiscing the red-backed Novgorod icon."
But nevertheless, it was precisely in the backgrounds, landscape and interior, that the influence of the new time was more acutely felt: a compromise typical for icon painting of the transitional period between a volumetric face and a flat one, combined with the depth of space. “The canonical figures are graceful, their flesh is moderate, and sometimes extremely “thin” (images of forearms and shins with barely noticeable girths of wrists and ankles, ribs and joints).
The main ones for the Nevyansk icon turned out to be not the Stroganov traditions, but those that were laid down by the Moscow Armory Chamber already in the middle of the 17th century and developed at the end of the 17th - the first half of the 18th century in Yaroslavl, Rostov the Great, Kostroma.
The Nevyansk icon bears signs of the Baroque style, both in pre-Petrine and post-Petrine times. The Baroque style, expressing the expressive perception of the world characteristic of the people's consciousness, grew in the Nevyansk icon until the end of the 18th century and was largely preserved in the middle of the 19th century. Being typologically related to the Baroque, chronologically it testifies to the development of classicism in Russian art, which introduced its own characteristics into its style. At the turn of the 18th - 19th centuries, Nevyansk masters painted two-part horizontal icons. One of these icons is the icon “Nativity of the Mother of God”, “Introduction into the Temple” by the Bogatyrev family.
Over time, the architectural backgrounds in the icons become classified, acquire similarities with the interiors of rotundal churches, and are fixed with clear contours.
The influence of romanticism also captured the Nevyansk icon. They found their basis in the dramatic worldview of the “religious pessimism” of the Old Believers. A clear example of this is the icon of the Bogatyrevs “The Nativity of Christ”, in which the main event is accompanied by scenes emphasizing the feeling of anxiety, fear on the brink of life and death, the expectation of a chase, brutal reprisal.
Although romanticism in icons did not have clear formal features and was lost in the Baroque style, it contributed to the rethinking of the icon space, which began in the 17th century, divided into a middle and a mark into a grandiose panorama seen from different points of view, unfolded on a plane. The golden skies, scenes of the worship of the Magi, the temptation of Joseph, and the bathing of a baby taking place in a cozy cave, similar to a grotto in the rock, speak of the romantic outlook of the Nevyansk icon painters. The views of natural nature are romantic - valleys with herds grazing by the rivers, cliffs with hanging roots and grasses, man-made parks fenced with slender trellises and vases on poles.
However, this does not make the icon a painting; it is subordinated to a dogmatic meaning. Many motifs that came into Russian iconography from Western obverse Bibles and prints turned out to be in tune with local Ural realities back in the 17th century.
Based on common ancient Russian foundations, the iconography of various regions, under the influence of the local way of life, acquired its own distinctive features. As a result of complex migration processes, the Ural icon painters absorbed and processed the Old Believer iconography of Russia. In turn, Nevyansk influenced the central regions of Russia and at the same time extended its influence to the east - to Siberia and Altai.
Since the 1830s. The Nevyansk icon began to evolve towards decorative art, a luxurious thing that personified the fabulous capital of the Ural factory owners. Gold is used so abundantly that it begins to make it difficult to perceive painting, which becomes dry and fractional over time, while at the turn of the 18th-19th centuries the golden background played the role of a frame for precious painting, shimmering with shades, harmoniously complementing it.
Nevyansk icon painting was also influenced by individual icon painters. Thus, the icons of Filatov, who converted to the common faith, were made not in the Byzantine tradition, which was organically developed by the art of Ancient Rus', and from which Old Believer iconography never parted, but in the late Byzantine, Italo-Greek. Some signs disappeared under the influence of this hobby. On the other hand, the new appeal to the Byzantine precepts corresponded to the aspirations of the Old Believers to preserve the rigor of iconography and style, and to prevent the penetration of naturalism into church painting.
The Old Believers did a lot to preserve the Orthodox, Old Russian tradition in Russian art. At a time when the Orthodox Church preferred academic painting, communities of “ancient piety,” relying on their own capital, provided their icon painters with a variety of work and supported their creativity. But at the end of the 19th - beginning of the 20th centuries, when, due to various ideological and aesthetic reasons, the traditions of Ancient Rus' were widely in demand, the Old Believer masters remained in the shadow of the icon painters of Palekh, Kholuy and Mstera, who were always loyal to the state, its church and became executors of their orders. The Nevyansk school was becoming a thing of the past. She didn’t leave without a trace. Throughout its development, it had a noticeable influence on the folklore icon, which no longer squandered its creative potential, on local book miniatures, on wood and metal painting, on the entire artistic culture of the Urals.
The study of the Nevyansk school convinces us that this is a major phenomenon in the history of Russian art, expanding the understanding of icon painting of the New Age. During her heyday, she reached true artistic heights. The harsh reality of the mining region, and by no means the ideal morals that reigned among merchants and gold miners, filled the Old Believer iconography with the pathos of passionate preaching. But behind the specific historical situation, behind the church strife, the Ural painters discerned timeless artistic values. The researcher of ancient Russian art G. K. Wagner said about Archpriest Avvakum that he “went down in history not as an Old Believer, but as an exponent of the eternity of heavenly ideals” and that this is why “his dramatic life and dramatic work look so modern.” These words can be attributed to the best masters of Nevyansk icon painting.
Icons of the Nevyansk school are kept in museums in Yekaterinburg, Perm, Chelyabinsk, Nizhny Tagil and in private collections. The impression that the faces make is akin to the feeling of a person who comes to the temple for the first time: amazement and celebration. The colors of the icon fascinate, attract the eye, and you can almost hear the sound of spiritual verses. Nevyansk icons are characterized by purity of color, widespread use of gold, and painting of clothes with large flowers or buds, similar to those that can be found on Tagil trays or in house painting (which indicates the close connection of all branches of art in the Urals). The development of the ancient Russian tradition in the Nevyansk icon painting school can be called the use by masters of elements of contemporary painting, which was expressed in a landscape that included real features of the Ural nature. “Placed” in the Ural landscape, the gospel events become closer, casting their light on the Stone Belt, which seems so far from the holy places.
The subjects of the Nevyansk icon are varied. From the festive rank of the iconostasis, which contained icons depicting the holidays of the annual Christian cycle - “Annunciation”, “Nativity of Christ”, “Baptism of the Lord”, “Transfiguration”, “Assumption of the Mother of God” and others. Theotokos icons - “The Council of Sixteen Theotokos Icons”, Our Lady “Softening Evil Hearts”, Our Lady “From the Troubles of the Suffering”, Our Lady “The Virgin Before the Nativity”, Our Lady “The Sign”. Icons with the faces of Orthodox saints - Nicholas the Wonderworker, St. Panteleimon the healer, righteous Simeon of Verkhoturye.
The Nizhny Tagil Museum-Reserve houses one of the most beautiful icons of the Nevyansk school - “He rejoices in You.” In the center of the composition is the image of the Mother of God sitting on a throne with the Child Christ on her lap. Above is God the Father, personifying the heavenly powers, behind him are five single-domed churches. Around the throne are archangels, saints and great martyrs. The combination of purple and gold gives the icon solemnity and attractive power.
However, we have to state the unfortunate fact that mostly scattered icons have reached us; practically no iconostases have been preserved, nor have the churches in which they were preserved. The fate of Nevyansk icons is dramatic: many of them survived due to the fact that they accidentally ended up in museums, many were irretrievably lost in the anti-religious “battles” of the Soviet era.
This is the fate of the famous iconostasis from the house church of the merchant L. Rastorguev. It is known that the merchant of the first guild, Lev Rastorguev, was a zealot of the old faith and built an exemplary house chapel-chapel in his estate. The icons for the iconostasis of the chapel were commissioned from the famous Nevyansk masters Bogatyrev. In the middle of the 19th century. the merchant's heirs were exiled, and the estate was empty for many years. After the revolution, in the 1920s, the iconostasis, “broken and dumped in the corner of the barn,” finally went to the museum, where it was hidden for many years. Today we can see the restored surviving icons in the Museum of History and Local Lore of Yekaterinburg, and we can imagine the former splendor of the iconostasis from old photographs. One cannot help but be grateful to those museum curators, collectors, artists, and clergy who, during the difficult decades of atheistic dictatorship, preserved wonderful works of Ural icon painting.
Art criticism understanding of Russian icon painting of the 18th - 19th centuries. began in our country in the 1960s, in the Urals - a decade later. This was due to complex changes taking place in the spiritual and aesthetic consciousness of society. Undoubtedly, the appeal to the icon painting of the New Age was a logical continuation of the deep scientific tradition of studying Byzantine and Old Russian art.
In the last 20-30 years, during expeditionary work and thanks to the enthusiasm of researchers, the attitude towards the Old Believer heritage has changed, and consistent and serious work on its study has begun. Today we can say that scientists have done a lot: they have established the names of icon painters and the time of creation of surviving icons, and examined the influence of various artistic styles from baroque to romanticism and realistic painting. The publication of the albums “Nevyansk Icon” and “Ural Icon” are important milestones on this path, opening up new opportunities for a broad study of the Ural schools of icon painting.
At the end of 2002, the Regional Fund “Revival of Nevyansk Icon Painting and Folk Art Crafts” was created in Nevyansk.
The icon painting workshops were located in a small mansion - the former estate of a gold miner. Mostly Orthodox youth work there. In the future, it is planned to create an educational institution on its basis to train specialists in icon painting, restoration, decorative and applied arts and folk crafts. Icon painters constantly study, copy the works of old masters, try to visit churches in Yekaterinburg and Verkhoturye more often, and come to Byngi, where in the old church, all the temple icons painted by Nevyansk masters were miraculously preserved during the hard years. And the work is progressing, orders for Ural churches are being fulfilled, but most importantly: the techniques and methods of Nevyansk writing are being revived.
Many amazingly beautiful holy images were created by modern Nevyansk icon painters, using not only ancient, centuries-old techniques, but also using the latest technologies.
Nevyansk school of icon painting
developed in the middle XVIII century among the Old Believers Wed. Lv. The first masters - Elder Gregory (G. Koskin), monk Guriy (G.A. Peretrutov), Father Paisiy (P.F. Zavertkin) - worked in the monasteries and surroundings of Nevyansk. The patronage of miners allowed the creation of workshops in the city. Icon painting skills were passed on from generation to generation. The school reached its heyday at the end of the 18th - first half. XIX century, when the families of the Bogatyrevs, Chernobrovins, Anisimovs, and several worked. later - Filatovs, Romanovs, Kalashnikovs and others.
A characteristic feature of the Nevyansk school is a synthesis of the traditions of pre-Petrine Rus', focusing on the iconography of the late 16th-17th centuries. However, the influence of the styles of the New Age: Baroque and Classicism also affected. Nevyansk icons are characterized by sonority and purity of color, writing on gold (in expensive icons), width. the use of the “blooming gold” technique, clothing, prescribed evil. assist, painting them with large flowers, buds, grass patterns, complex folds of clothes. In some icons polyment (a lining layer of red ocher) was used. Sometimes gold, superimposed on a layer of silver sheet, acquired a cold tonality. The innovation of Nevyansk masters is especially noticeable in the landscape, which included elements of real images. ur. nature.
In a personal letter, two types of faces are visible. The first comes from icon painting ser. XVII century, the region was a continuation of Novgorod traditions: hard, graphic design, sharply defined nose, mouth, chin, cheekbones, eyes with heavy lower eyelids, curved eyebrows, brow ridges, wrinkles on the forehead, light ochre-white. The second one is distinguished by soft oval modeling, subtlety, ease of writing, and the revitalization of the dark face with either dense or transparent whitening slides.
Among the subjects and images of icons, images of the Mother of God predominate, the “Tenderness” type, expressing all shades of maternal feeling. The Vladimir and Feodorovskaya Mother of Gods are often found. Popular are Kazanskaya, an intercessor and defender before the Lord, “Joy to all who mourn” with the inscription: “Consolation for the afflicted, healing for the sick, clothing for the poor”, “Unexpected joy” and “Softening of evil hearts” (“Semystrelnitsa”). Jesus Christ was portrayed both as a stern judge, “King of the King,” a formidable Almighty, and as a Savior who brings love to his neighbor, a Messiah who came to “those who labor and are heavy laden.” Among the most revered saints Nicholas the Wonderworker, perceived as a protector and patron of labor, Elijah the Prophet, usually depicted in the composition “The Fiery Ascent of Elijah”, St. George (the most common icon is “George’s Miracle on the Dragon”), Alexander Nevsky, revered as a protector of -dov from fires. In the 19th century Panteleimon the Healer is popular. Numerous icons depicting three saints - Basil the Great, Gregory the Theologian, John Chrysostom, as well as Moscow. Metropolitans Peter, Alexei and Jonah.
In the second half. XIX century the gradual decline of N.Sh.I. began, caused by a change in the economic situation of the ur. z-dov, the disappearance of rich customers and competition from Mon. and private workshops; By the end of the century, only three workshops remained in Nevyansk. But dep. craftsmen worked until the 20s of the 20th century. Prod. N.Sh.I. are stored in the State Russian Museum, EMI, SOKM, and in music. "Nevyansk Icon" in Ekat.
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Runeva T.A., Kolosnitsyn V.I.
Ural historical encyclopedia. - Ural Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Institute of History and Archeology. Ekaterinburg: Academbook. Ch. ed. V. V. Alekseev. 2000 .
Lovers of Russian painting received a magnificent gift from the Ural University Publishing House: the album “Nevyansk Icon” (Ekaterinburg, 1997). The idea of this book has long been nurtured by employees of the Ural museums, art restorers, collectors and connoisseurs of icon painting. And now the project, which took almost two decades to implement, has come to life. This required not only generous material support, but also the artistic flair of the Ekaterinburg collector, poet, and entrepreneur Evgeniy Roizman.
An interesting collection of icons from the Nevyansk school is kept in the Sverdlovsk Regional Museum of Local Lore. We present reproductions of some of them. Simeon the God-Receiver. Icon of the late 18th - first quarter of the 19th century.
Our Lady Hodegetria of Smolensk. Icon of the late 18th - first quarter of the 19th century.
Nicholas the Wonderworker. The painting was done at the end of the 18th - beginning of the 19th century. The silver setting dates back to 1825.
Archdeacon Stefan. Circle of Blackbrows. Second quarter of the 19th century.
Akathist to the Mother of God. Workshop of the Bogatyrevs. 1800. Fragment of an icon.
The album is a scientific publication in which 150 works of fine art known only to specialists (184 color reproductions of icons, including fragments) were published for the first time. The book also presents photographs of icon painters taken back in the last century at the dawn of photography, ancient landscapes of the outskirts of Nevyansk - the estates of the outstanding industrialists Demidovs and other rare historical materials discovered in Russian archives.
About Nevyansk icon painting - the original phenomenon of Russian church painting, about the artistic significance of the work of famous and unknown talented icon painters, whose works with amazing power and sincerity express the complexity and contradictory way of life of the Urals of the 18th-19th centuries, today, perhaps, best of all knows the scientific album editor, associate professor at Ural University Galina Vladimirovna Golynets. It was she who first introduced the concept of “Nevyansk icon painting school” into scientific circulation more than 15 years ago. This is what she says about this icon painting school.
Unlike the well-known ancient icon painting schools - Novgorod, Pskov, Moscow - the Nevyansk school arose and was formed only in the 18th-19th centuries. Its creators were Old Believers who rejected the church reform of the mid-17th century and fled the northern and central regions of the country. They brought Ancient Rus' with its centuries-old cultural heritage to the Urals.
It is paradoxical that in the Urals the industrial base of young Russia was laid by people who did not accept Peter’s reforms, by those who combined efficiency and daring impulses of creative energy with a commitment to patriarchal ideals. That is why the creators of the new industry and accompanying art (products made of malachite and jasper, cast iron and steel engraving) were at the same time zealous guardians of the artistic traditions of the Russian Middle Ages. Features of originality in the Ural Old Believer icon emerged already in the time of Peter the Great, but it experienced its heyday, stimulated by the rise of industry and the economy of the region, later - in the second half of the 18th - first half of the 19th century.
The concept of “Nevyansk school”, used in relation to the Ural Old Believer icon, is quite arbitrary, but not arbitrary. The city of Nevyansk, which grew from a settlement at a metallurgical plant founded in the upper reaches of the Neiva River at the end of the 17th century, became the Old Believer center of the Urals. He gathered the best icon painters. However, not only icons born in Nevyansk itself should be included in the Nevyansk school. The local isographers, fulfilling various orders - from small home icons to monumental multi-tiered iconostases, set up workshops in other Ural cities, spreading their influence all the way to the Southern Urals.
Icon painting skills passed down from generation to generation, the existence of dynasties such as the Bogatyrevs and Chernobrovins, the presence of favorite iconographic types, characteristic stylistic features and tempera techniques - all this allows us to talk about the Nevyansk icon painting school. It is characterized by elongated proportions of figures, sophistication of poses, and subtlety of writing. The Nevyansk people skillfully mastered all the secrets of craftsmanship and knew how to merge the expressive means of painting into a single whole.
Whatever traditions shine through in the Nevyansk icon, it is, first of all, based on the 17th century, whose art became the protograph for all later icon painting. The main ones in the Nevyansk school were the traditions laid down by artists in the mid-17th century in Yaroslavl, Rostov the Great and Kostroma. The Old Believer Ural icon gave us examples of a more organic and creative development of ancient Russian traditions than, say, the Palekh icon, made “antique,” even if intended for the New Believer church. Of course, the attitude of the Old Believers did not remain unchanged. Outbreaks of religious fanaticism gradually faded, the influence of the official church and secular principles of life grew. “Numerous merchants conduct extensive trade, and most of the merchants are gold miners. It’s a pity that almost all of them are Old Believers or schismatics, however, this does not prevent them from being worthy citizens and people not alien to public pleasures,” he wrote in 1843 to the editor of the all-Russian magazine "Repertoire and Pantheon" one of the Yekaterinburg correspondents.
Gradually, the Nevyansk icon began to evolve towards decorative art, becoming a luxurious thing, personifying the fabulous capital of the Ural industrialists. Nevyansk icon painting was becoming a thing of the past, but it did not leave without a trace. She had a noticeable influence on the folklore icon, which no longer squandered its creative potential, on local book miniatures, on wood and metal painting, on the entire artistic culture of the Urals.
The study of the Nevyansk school convinces us that this is a major phenomenon in the history of Russian art, expanding the understanding of icon painting of modern times. During her heyday, she reached true artistic heights. The famous researcher of ancient Russian art G. K. Wagner said about Archpriest Avvakum that he “went down in history not as an Old Believer, but as an exponent of eternal mountain ideals” and that this is why “his dramatic life and dramatic work look so modern.” These words can be attributed to the best masters of Nevyansk icon painting. This is the opinion of Galina Vladimirovna Golynets, who devoted many years to studying this direction of Russian icon painting.
The book will undoubtedly draw attention to the original, hitherto practically unknown school of icon painting, and to many mysterious, previously “hidden” pages of the history of the “supporting edge of the state!”, in which this school could originate and fruitfully develop over several centuries.
The edition was printed in one of the best printing houses in Finland, on special quality paper. As the editor-in-chief of the publishing house F.A. Eremeev said, the album “Nevyansk Icon” is one of the first publications in our country that uses the advanced technology of the so-called non-rast, that is, dotless, printing. Thanks to this, the smallest details are visible in landscape reproductions, and their quality is comparable to that of the highest quality color photographs.
From the editor:
The name of the Ural entrepreneur and public figure Evgeniy Roizman well known in Russia. First of all, he is associated with the activities of the Drug-Free City Foundation, which he founded, and political influence in Yekaterinburg. Much less is known about his main hobby - collecting Old Believer icons. Evgeny Roizman not only created the first private museum of icons in Russia, saved hundreds of works of church art from theft or destruction, but also contributed to the dissemination and scientific recognition of the term “Nevyansk icon”. The currently published material consists of various interviews and stories by Evgeniy Roizman dedicated to Old Believer icons, their connoisseurs and guardians.
Private Museum "Nevyansk Icon"
— We opened the museum in 1999. This was the first private museum of icons in Russia. The idea of opening such a museum was suggested to me by a famous Ekaterinburg collector Yuri Mikhailovich Ryazanov.
I've thought about this a lot. Icons occupied half of my apartment; they were in the office, with numerous friends, and in several restoration workshops. Negotiations with the authorities to provide me with premises for the museum, which began back in 1997, dragged on. So I've been running around. And at this time fate smiled at me - Anatoly Ivanovich Pavlov He gave me the first floor of his mansion and two more rooms in addition.
Everything went in. Max and I are in the same room ( Maxim Petrovich Borovik, director of the museum) made a storage room, the other was occupied by restorers. After the opening, when there were more icons, the restorers were relocated and the storage facility was emptied. They hung everything according to their own understanding. The question of hanging was very difficult. Tell me how to hang it? By plot? Chronologically? By sections? For workshops? Unclear. And I had no experience. We did everything on a whim. We started the exhibition with the earliest ones and gradually moved on to the later ones. Time has shown that we were right. The exhibition turned out to be stylish and flexible. The most important thing is that you could work with her.
The Nevyansk icon existed documented from 1734 (the “Our Lady of Egypt” icon until 1919 (Savior Almighty). In fact, we have earlier Nevyansk icons, and we know about the last secret icon painters in the 1950s. The phenomenon that we call "Vysoky Nevyansk", practically did not cross the line of the 18th century. With the accession of Alexander I, with the spread of Edinoverie and the rise of industry in the Urals, Nevyansk icon painting entered a new stage. At the orders of wealthy factory owners, tax farmers and gold miners, Nevyansk craftsmen from the Bogatyrev dynasty created luxurious masterpieces until the end of the 1830s, but real, strict and earnest Nevyansk icons remained in the 18th century. That, in general, is all.
Imagine: the Urals, little Nevyansk, an Old Believer center, several workshops, just a hundred years of icon painting. Life is in full swing: now raids, now searches - they were hiding in hermitages. They didn't write for sale. Only on order (if there was no order, they didn’t write at all). The icon painters are respected, all literate. The customers are also literate, sophisticated and very rich Old Believers. They knew what they wanted to get for their money. In addition, all sincere believers are ready to risk fire for their faith. Literally. This is where the phenomenon comes from - the Nevyansk Icon. There are few Nevyansk icons. Sometimes we are forced to take what we know cannot be restored. Just because of the fragments. Soon this won't happen either.
What is the essence of the museum? Don't let the phenomenon disappear
I think we succeeded. In general, the museum is alive. The entrance is free. There are a lot of visitors. In the first five years - 150 thousand people. We are always doing something. We go on expeditions, publish books and albums, and hold exhibitions. The first exhibition of the museum outside of Yekaterinburg took place in May 2005 in Ferapontovo. Moreover, I am very pleased that she was in Ferapontovo. A huge number of people passed through in 2.5 months. Then the icons moved to Yaroslavl for several months. There was a very strong resonance.
They gave us many icons. Among the donors Governor Eduard Rossel, my friend and companion Vadim Churkin, my comrade and kind person Igor Altushkin, many Ekaterinburg and Moscow collectors and restorers. Many thanks to all of them!
I really love the Museum. I think this is the best thing I've done in my life. And perhaps most important.
Old masters
Kharlampy was extremely revered by our Old Believers. The fact is that the saint, being a zealot of the true faith, had very great authority among the people, and therefore was subjected to all sorts of tortures and executions from his superiors. But all the tricks and evil intrigues were turned against the tormentors themselves. Kharlampy, a strong and generous man, always forgave his tormentors.
When the chief wanted to tear the body of Harlampius with iron cats, his hands became detached and hung on the body of the saint. Kharlampiy took pity on him, and then they became friends again. And hegemon Lucian spat at Harlampius, and Lucian’s head immediately turned 180 degrees. Kharlampy forgave him, and his head turned back. They tried to torture the holy elder in different ways and tied him to a horse. And the horse turned to the tormentors and said in a human voice: “Well, you are fools!” And then they decided to execute Kharlampy. And on the night before his execution, the elder was honored with a conversation with the Savior. And the Savior asked the condemned man: “Friend Harlampius, what do you want me to do for you?” Harlampy answered simply: “God, where will I be buried, may that land be fertile forever and know no troubles.” “Have it your way,” said the Lord. And in the morning, when they came to take Kharlampy away for execution, he, without waiting for this solemn moment, took it and quietly died his own death. At the age of 113! Can you imagine the message to ill-wishers?!
In agricultural regions, Kharlampy was revered as a guardian of the harvest, but here, in the mining Urals, he protected from sudden death without repentance. There are more than 90 faces on this icon. All are in relief, coated with white in many layers and finished with the finest “selection”, this is the technique used by icon painters. The clothes are mostly richly ornamented, and the faces, for the most part, are characteristic. Any of the faces, except the central one, can be covered with a match head. But when the angels take the soul of Harlampy and lift it up to the Lord, the face of the soul is much smaller than a match head, look.
This icon, despite its very high level, does not fall out of the general context of contemporary Nevyansk icons. That is, this level was the rule, not the exception.
"George"
One serious collector was told that far in the north, in an Old Believer village, a man had a huge plaque - “George” from the 18th century. And so this collector put on a hat with earflaps, waders and went. I traveled for two days by train, then another day on a narrow-gauge railway, then upstream by motorboat. I found this guy almost beyond the Arctic Circle. He bargained, put it on his back and carried it away happy. A few kilometers later he hears stomping: the owner of the icon is running after him with a hefty knife. He caught up, caught his breath and said:
- Listen, bro, wait a little! I'll scrape the gold off my teeth.
Chip icon
The wood chip icon (on wood chips) was distributed throughout Russia in huge quantities in the 19th century. It is known that one family made up to six hundred such icons a week. Then they were removed with foil (sometimes they are called subfocal ones, because the icon was not completely depicted, and only faces and hands were visible from under the foil), paper flowers and placed in inexpensive icon cases. Were these icons accessible and inexpensive even then? and are now sold for mere pennies, yet they are very touching and expressive.
Once a Yaroslavl collector gave me a small collection of chipped icons. I see in them a combination of naivety and sophistication, and besides, they remind me of the famous Fayum portrait:
Chest of icons
I saw a chest in Vologda from Misha Surov ( Mikhail Vasilievich Surov, politician). I grabbed onto it, and Misha had no choice but to give it to me for the museum. A chest is like a chest. Strong, good quality. Closes without gaps, with a lock. Made from icons. From the life-size image of Nikola and from Alexander Nevsky. Moreover, the master who received these icons in the warehouse tried to do it as respectfully as possible. On the front part, Nikola was practically untouched, only the legs were sawed off - they went to the back side, and Alexander Nevsky went to the ends. The chest comes from Upper Vaga.
But the wonderful icon “The Only Begotten Son” - it also comes from Vologda. In 1929, it was given to the school caretaker from the warehouse, and he was ordered to make a school board out of this icon. However, the caretaker carefully hid the icon in the attic, and found some other material for the school board. “The Only Begotten Son” lay in the attic until 2002. The caretaker’s grandchildren found this icon, sold it to a Moscow collector and bought an apartment with the money. Now the icon is in our museum.
Why Nevyansk icon?
— Your museum is based on Old Believer icons from the Nevyansk Demidov factory. Why did icon-painting workshops appear there? And when did the term “Nevyansk icon” appear?
The Demidov factories were a powerful religious Old Believer center in the Urals. Two waves of Old Believers went there: one from Pomerania in the middle of the 18th century, the second from the Volga region after 1722. We called them Kerzhaks. Here there was a merger of powerful Old Believer streams.
The Nevyansk icon is an icon of the mining Urals. Art historians called this phenomenon: mining Old Believer icon painting. They were distinguished, first, by the fact that the Old Believers sacredly respected traditions. And secondly, these icons were high-tech. Carpentry and carpentry skills were at a very high level. This is what distinguishes the “Nevyansk” icons from all the icons that were painted in Russia. Very high class. The Old Believers themselves were people of a different level.
For the first time, D. N. Mamin-Sibiryak mentioned Ural icon painting in his essays “Gems” and “Platinum”, then there was the famous report by Suchel Dulong, which he read in 1923 at a meeting of the Ural Society of Natural History Lovers. Dulong was a representative of the French mission, toured the chapels and drew attention to the high level of local icon painting. His report was the first attempt at a scientific study of the issue. And we have already introduced this term into scientific circulation. In 1997, the album “Nevyansk Icon” was published. Although the first publication in the press took place back in 1986, the phenomenon lay on the surface.
The difference between Nevyansk icons is, first of all, their “white face,” which is one of the main attributive features. The second is a very high class, very high technology. There are a number of indirect signs: from some point on, an abundance of gold, reflection of local geographical features in the landscapes - gray-blue hills, for example, this is exactly what they look like around Nevyansk. The icons are made in the same color scheme, they are immediately visible. The quality of the writing is very high and only tempera - never oil.
— You said that icons were an “expensive pleasure”? How much did the icons cost?
— You understand that in the 19th century, mainly Russian Old Believers were merchants. We lived on a different level. Old Believer settlements differ from ordinary ones. I saw this when I went on expeditions as a student. The icon, at that time, was worth a lot of money.
Our scientific supervisor found in the archives how one Old Believer ordered an icon, the cost of which was 70 rubles. This was the 2nd half of the XYIII century. A few pages later there was a description of all his property. So, his hut, outbuildings and cattle cost 20 rubles. Moreover, if an icon of Nevyansk writing was given as a dowry, it was described separately. I’ll say more, I’ve never seen Nevyansk icons in villages. They never came from villages, only from mining towns and cities, where there was production and they lived richer. They still don’t come from the villages.
—Which icons were in greatest demand among the Ural Old Believers?
“We can only judge by those that have reached us.” I had a case when a famous Russian diplomat came to the museum. At one time he studied icons very seriously. There was especially a wave before the Olympics. He says, “Do you know why you have all this? Because we didn’t take any of this.” In those years, they took certain subjects: “Georgiev Pobedonostsev”, “Flor and Laurel”, so that there were more horses, and “Virgins” and “Spasov” were called “monoliks”. They didn’t take them again, because there were a lot of icons, everything was littered. But there were few large Nevyansk icons. I know of only one case of a large format icon from the 80s of the 18th century. There were many “Kazan icons”; the Old Believers loved to order this icon. In the Urals there was generally a cult of “Kazanskaya”. Of the Mother of God, she is most often found. Next in number are “Nikola”, “Spas” and “Pokrov”. Pomeranians loved to order “Spas”.
—After 70-100 years, the icon darkens. How and where do you restore icons?
— Restoration is a big problem. We take some of the icons - especially from the 18th century - simply because they are fragments, realizing that it is impossible to restore them. As it is, it will remain so. Working with icons requires a lot of restoration work. We were forced to create our own restoration workshop. Then they opened a restoration department in Yekaterinburg at the Art School.
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