The multimedia CD-ROM “Yaroslavl Icon Painting”.

V.V. Gorshkova
Yaroslavl Art Museum
Address: 150000, Yaroslavl, Volga embankment, 23
Phone: (0852) 30-86-65

A.L. Priorov
Yaroslavl State University
Address: 150000, Yaroslavl, Sovetskaya st.,14
Phone: (0852) 32-11-94
E-mail: pri@cnit.uniyar.ac.ru

The multimedia product (MMP) “Yaroslavl Icon Painting” recorded on CD-ROM is the most complete collection of Fine Art of the Yaroslavl painting school of the last eight centuries (from the 13th to 20th ones). The content of MMP was prepared by scientific workers of the Yaroslavl State University historic faculty, Yaroslavl Art museum and Yaroslavl museum-preserve of history and architecture.

MMP “Yaroslavl Icon Painting” includes descriptions of more than 200 icons and 150 details from them. Icons (details) of each century can be viewed with music accompaniment and multimedia lectures. Viewing icons involves a short description, narrative about the icon, its large-scale image and entire historic technical information.

One of the distinctive opportunities offered by MMP is its flexible icon search system according to the attributes specified: name, literary source of the subject, time of creation, master, commissioner. The system makes it easy to select the icons according both to particular attributes and to a given combination of them.

A distinctive feature of Russian medieval culture is a little quantity of written sources that characterise the intellectual processes of ancient Russian society. The famous term by Georgy Florovsky “intellectual silence of ancient Russia” has been acknowledged for the epoch of the 10th through 15th centuries has left not many documents reflecting philosophic and moral problems that occupied our predecessors. That is why the monuments of art became those invaluable sources that expressed ideals, hopes and intentions – the whole complex of ideological problems of Russian Dark Ages. An integral part of pictorial works of art of ancient Russia is precision of their artistic touches and expressiveness of figural language. All of this accounts for the interest in ancient Russian icon painting and aspiration to make some works of art that are kept in different museums and different towns accessible to any man interested in it.

The multimedia CD “Yaroslavl icon painting” is dedicated to monuments of easel painting of Yaroslavl, the town with almost one thousand year long history. The town has passed through many convulsions of native history together with Russia since it has been founded by Yaroslavl the Wise in the 11th century. Yaroslavl added lively pages to the history of ancient Russian painting. The collection of icons in Yaroslavl museums numbers about four thousands monuments. Restored icons are the subject of intent attraction of experts and the object of interest of city guests. The Yaroslavl icon-painting legacy is irregularly distributed through centuries. This is the result of those events of Russian history the town took actively part in.

Early icons produced in Yaroslavl have not survived. This is explained by the fact that the town was a small wooden fortress on the Volga at that period. Characteristic is its description in the chronicles recorded under the year 1152 when the town was besieged by Volga Bulgarian: “… a small town”.

At the beginning of the 13th century Yaroslavl had a short, but impetuous flouring broken by the Tartar- Mongolian invasion. In 1218 the town became the capital of the independent principality. The chronicles mention that the fire of 1221 had destroyed seventeen churches. The first prince Vsevolod erected three stone temples. Since that time, the end of pre-Mongolian period, two icons remarkable for their profound ideological content and perfection of artistic performance have survived. Both of them relate to the princely workshop. The one is a solemn foundational image intended for the Monastery of the Transfiguration of the Saviour “Yaroslavl Orans”, and the other is a personal family icon of the Yaroslavl princes “Christ Pantocrator”. Both of the icons belong to the gold fund of ancient Russian painting, to the greater extent thanks to their good condition.

The calm having come on to the Russian land after the establishment of the Golden Horde’s yoke played its role in art – before the 80s of the 13th century we have no information about building or creation of icons in Yaroslavl.

Just in the last decade of the 13th century the artistic life of the town brisks up thanks to the appearance of the prince Theodore Rostislavovich the Black. The icons of the late 13th century “The Virgin of the Tolga enthroned” and “Archangel Michael” are linked with him and his wife, khan’s daughter christened Anna, brought from the Horde. Big size and solemn character of the images witness to extraordinary experience of masters and active artistic works in the town in the end of the 13th century.

All over the beginning of the 14th century the folk layer of culture prevails. Most brightly it is reflected in the icon “Nicholas the Miracle- Worker”. The icon of the 13th century “the Saviour with apostles on the fields” deserves special mention. It comes from the town Mologa flooded in 1940. The Mologa principality followed the traditions of Yaroslavl icon painting.

Not rich in icons is the 15th century when Yaroslavl was an active participant in the war waged by Demitry Donskoy’s successors. However such icons as “Elijah the Prophet in the Wilderness” witness to the fact that the brush of Yaroslavl painters created really “divinity in colours” as this icon reflected complicated images of liturgy poetry.

The 16th century, especially its second half, has left much more monuments. There appeared complexes of icons entering the prophetic, festive and Deesis tiers of iconostasises. In the 16th century Yaroslavl is the object of intent attraction and care of the Great Moscow princes. Princely masters sent from the Moscow reconstruct stone temples burnt down, paint murals and icons.

Among the icons of the 16th century a special place is taken by the images from the iconostasis of the Cathedral of the Transfiguration of the Saviour. The experience of co-operative work of capital and local painters enriched the Yaroslavl artistic tradition as well. The expansion of the circle of painted saints, sophistication of compositions, reflection of new church ideas- all these are the characteristic features of Yaroslavl icon painting of the second half of the 16th century. The image of St John Chrysostom, the heavenly patron of Ivan IV, that was produced in the 1560s, is a salient monument of civic art. The end of the 16th century is the beginning of the formation of the Yaroslavl icon painting school, which has its prosperity in the 17th century.

The overwhelming majority of Yaroslavl icons having come up to our days is created in the period from the first third of the 17th century to the beginning of the 18th century. This is due to the stone building on a large scale that took place in Yaroslavl after the fire of 1658. During the second half of the 17th century 15 temples had been set up in the town. For them Yaroslavl icon painters painted more than two thousands icons.

As a rule Yaroslavl icons are notable for its big size, intricate dynamic composition, abundance of characters and vivid action. The distinctive colouring produced by paints that were prepared of local pigments provides the icon images with a festive appearance.

Beside local masters, painters from other towns such as Semeon Spiridonov from Kholmogory, Jury Nikitin from Kostroma, Fyodor Zubov from Usolye Kashskoye take part in the work. The icons by these painters often became examples for Yaroslavl masters who tried to combine scope and monumentality with refinement and abundance of details.

Unfortunately, the art of Yaroslavl virtuosos remains unnamed. Names of Yaroslavl icon painters are known from books, however the lack of information about where, in which temples these painters worked, deprives us of the opportunity to connect the names with particular icons.

The 17th century concludes the ancient Russian art. And it is Yaroslavl that has honour to play this role thanks to its intensive artistic live.

The 18th century brought radical changes in icon painting. Now this church art is one of the kinds, but far not the main one, in Russian culture. The icon painting is affected by secular realistic pictorial art and even by its styles – Baroque, Classicism.

The icons of the19th century are most frequently monuments of academic culture where one often encounters details of Russian interior and even costume of that time. Much more the 19th century contains personal and family icons, on which saints – patrons of commissioners and members of his family, are depicted. Among the icons of the 18th through 19th centuries there also are those similar to a folk picture – lubok.

This witnesses to the fact that the church painting partially penetrated the folk culture.

Rather irregular in the history of the Yaroslavl icon painting is the 20th century. If on the edge of 19th and 20th centuries a significant quantity of works of different style, from academic to lubok ones, were still produced, from the 20s to 80s of that century no icons of Yaroslavl are known. The 1980s give rise to the intent activity of contemporary Yaroslavl icon painters, who continue the development of Yaroslavl history of icon painting on the base of century traditions.

Gorshkova Viktoriya Viktorovna, the manager of the department of ancient Russian art of Yaroslavl art museum, has been graduated from the Yaroslavl state university in 1977 as historian and from the Repin institute of the Art Academy as art historian in 1985.

Priorov Andrey Leonidovich, philosophy doctor at the Yaroslavl State University, in 1986 graduated with excellence from the Yaroslavl State University as physicist.

Yaroslavl Centre of New Information Technologies (YarCNIT) was established in 1992 according the decision of the Ministry of Sciences, Russian Federation. YarCNIT is the structural part of Yaroslavl State University named after P.G.Demidov. Within the frameworks of YarCNIT the Demo-Hall for Information Technologies in the Humanities and the Scientific-Technological Program for the Humanities "Yaroslavia" were opened in 1994 and 1996 correspondingly.

YarCNIT is intended to act in the sphere of new information technologies in education and university science. The main tasks of the Centre are the projects devoted to studying and preserving of historical and cultural heritage of Yaroslavl Region, works in the area of information technologies of humanitarian sphere.

These tasks are solved by creating the specialised web-servers, producing CD-ROMs, developing the distant learning courses elements, developing and creating the corporate databases. The main used concepts for solving the current tasks are multimedia and Internet.

YarCNIT presents the results at various conferences, in mass media, by publishing CD-ROMs and sharing Internet resources.

Last time the results were presented at the following conferences:

 

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