Early Russian Icons - 11th to 13th Century

I found a wonderful book on early Russian icons at the library and have taken it upon myself to study it as if it were course work. I'm repeating what I've learned here on this blog to further settle it in my mind. The following post is mostly a reordering of notes taken from The Russian Icon, From Its Origins to the Sixteenth Century by Viktor Nikitich Lazarev (which incidentally can be bought new from Amazon for as little as $793.99! *cough*, a steal considering you could pay as much as $2,500 for a "used - acceptable" copy! I'll give up the notion of asking for it as a birthday gift. ).

Byzantine icons began to be introduced to Russia by the end of the 10th century but by the 12th century icons created in Russia began to develop their own distinct style. Still, to the untrained eye Byzantine icons of the same period and early Russian icons look very similar. Both have the dark coloring taken from the Byzantine palette, voluminous treatment of the bodily form (in lay terms, the bodies are proportional and have a weighty feel, more dimensional), shading from light to dark is very gradual and smooth, most especially noted on faces, red lines are painted to outline facial features and give extra depth, and thin golden lines are used liberally throughout the folds of clothing and locks of hair.

The Ustyug Annunciation icon is an excellent example of a 12th century Novgorodian Russian icon. It is one of the few Pre-Mongolian icons that survived the Mongolian invasion of Russia. You can see the weighty Byzantine forms, gradual shading of the faces, darker color palette, and abundant gold detailing.

That this icon is from Novgorod is of some significance. Novgorod is one of the "Northern cities" in Russia along with Pskov and I suppose we can even venture to include Moscow in a limited sense because it was the main recipient of the Northern works. The Northern cities had a much more intense development of the Russian iconographic style as a result of several things. It was further away from Byzantium and thereby naturally had a little more room to develop its own style. The Northern cities also had republican forms of government. It allowed them to approach things in a new, different and bold way. This was instrumental to the formation of a style distinct from Byzantine icons.

Now before we go too far in talking about the innovations of the early Russian iconographers we have to remember one important thing. Russia inherited from Byzantium all the fundamental iconographic types, such as the same representations, compositions and scenes portrayed from the Old and New Testaments, of Christ, and of the Mother of God. The iconoclasm was already settled by the second Council of Nicea in 787. The type of icons was pretty much settled. A Byzantine icon of the Theotokos will look much the same as a Russian icon of the Theotokos, as we said earlier, to the untrained eye. (Hence my own interest in the subject!) However, Russian iconography changes the form without changing the type. It takes on a different set of emotional nuances because of this subtle change of form; the faces become more gentle and open, profiles become more outlined, precise, even elongated, the gradual shading turns into a more expressive modeling, and the intensity of pure colors is embraced.

Being a 12th century icon, in the Ustyug Annunciation we get to see a glimmer of Russian style coming through a heavy Byzantine support. In the top middle of the icon we see the Ancient One accompanied by cherubim and seraphim. This part of the icon would have been less bound by canonical models and more of the iconographer's personal taste for color come clear. The Russian love of pure color shows up with bright whites, bold reds and deep blues. In later icons this taste of pure, simple colors pervades more into the icon but here in an early icon we can see it set like a jewel in a Byzantine crown! A first flowering of the soul of Russia!