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6-2014 Pavel Tretiakov’s Icons Wendy Salmond Chapman University, [email protected]
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Recommended Citation Salmond, Wendy. "Pavel Tretiakov's Icons." In From Realism to the Silver Age. New Studies in Russian Artistic Culture. Essays in Honor of Elizabeth Kridl Valkenier, edited by Rosalind P. Blakesley and Margaret Samu, 123-140. DeKalb, IL: NIU Press, 2014.
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Pavel Tretiakov’s Icons
WE NDY S ALM OND
“What for some is the heights, the depths, enchantment, perfection, for others is decline and disintegration.” —A. Grishchenko, Voprosy zhivopisi1
etween 1890 and his death in 1898, the Moscow Creating the Collection (1890–1898) Bart collector Pavel Tretiakov acquired sixty-two In the early 1890s, when Tretiakov made his !rst icons of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. acquisitions, Russia was full of medieval icons, but With this comparatively late entry into the world of for most educated people they were for all intents icons, Tretiakov laid the foundation for one of the and purposes invisible. "e devotional practice of world’s greatest collections of medieval Russian periodically repainting icons and adorning them with paintings. Why is it, then, that Tretiakov’s icons new metal covers (oklady) meant that beneath an image are today so rarely mentioned and so hard to !nd? of quite recent production, several much older versions "e most practical explanation is that they were of the same subject might well be concealed. Even in simply swallowed up into the vast repositories of the this disguised form, however, icons of any appreciable reorganized State Tretiakov Gallery in 1930, along age had long since begun to disappear from daily use. with thousands of icons from churches and private In many churches (particularly in urban centers and on collections nationalized a#er 1917. As a result, locating gentry estates) and in private homes, it was increasingly them in the gallery’s catalogue is a painstaking task 2 unusual to !nd any dating back earlier than the and !nding images of them a challenge. A more eighteenth century. Peter the Great’s importation of complicated reason is that the icons that Tretiakov Western cultural values from around 1700 had made it chose—the very best money could buy in the 1890s— an act of enlightened piety and good taste to replace old quickly became old-fashioned and aesthetically iconostases with shiny new Baroque ones, to whitewash devalued in the next century. Beginning around over frescoes, and in general to improve the grandeur of 1905, as !#eenth-century icons were discovered churches by a process of continued renovation. and cleaned, icon painting’s Golden Age was moved Rather than being destroyed, decommissioned several centuries back in time, from the court culture church icons were typically le# by a pious clergy to of the Muscovite state and the !rst Romanov tsars molder in bell towers and outbuildings, remaining to Republican Novgorod. Tretiakov’s icons were there until the massive collecting boom that began caught up in this process of reevaluation, victims a#er 1905. But in the nineteenth century many smaller of a revolution in aesthetic criteria fought along icons became the jealously guarded property of the generational lines. Old Believer community. Patriarch Nikon’s reform of Russian Orthodox Church ritual in the 1650s split It was thus a market dominated by Old Believer the population into those who followed the o$cial, taste, expertise, and values that Tretiakov encountered reformed Orthodox Church and the adherents of the when he decided to add a group of icons to the so-called Old Belief, who rejected its authority. In the encyclopedic collection of Russian easel painting wake of these reforms, this second group !lled their he had spent four decades acquiring (mentioned prayer rooms with icons painted before the world as in chapters 5, 6, and 7). "e only contemporary they knew it came to an end (!g. 8.1). Old Believers account we have of how Tretiakov bought his !rst became the guardians of all extant knowledge about the icons comes from his fellow collector, Aleksei icon’s history, while their icons became the most visible Bakhrushin. In his gossipy little book, Who Collects symbols of Old Rus. Skilled in emulating the many What, Bakhrushin described Tretiakov’s visit to the styles of pre-Nikonian icon painting, they were the exhibition of church antiquities that accompanied the logical choices to repair or restore important old icons Eighth Archaeological Congress of 1890.4 Held in the for the o$cial church and o#en used the opportunity to Historical Museum on Red Square in Moscow, the “rescue” them, leaving an exact copy in their place. Old exhibition assigned six of its eleven halls to icons from Believers also dominated the antiquarian trade, which leading Old Believer collections, including those of the %ourished during the nationalistic nineteenth century, rival Moscow antique dealers Nikolai Postnikov and and their reputation as both connoisseurs and conmen Ivan Silin. Bakhrushin reported: willing to %eece unwary collectors was celebrated in the popular stories of Nikolai Leskov and Pavel Melnikov- Wishing to have in his magni!cent collection examples of 3 Pecherskii. ancient Russian art, which could only be found in icons, Over time a distinctive Old Believer aesthetic [Tretiakov] wanted to buy a few representative old icons of developed that profoundly in%uenced the !rst collectors good workmanship. For this purpose he approached N.M. and historians of icons in the mid-nineteenth century. Postnikov at the Archaeological Exhibition, but Nikolai Of necessity their icons were small and o#en took the Mikhailovich said that his straitened circumstances form of miniature portable iconostases and triptych obliged him to sell his collection only in its entirety. shrines; as they were forbidden to worship in their own Tretiakov didn’t want this and turned instead to I.L. Silin, churches and were periodically in %ight from o$cial from whom he bought [!ve or six good icons for 20,000 5 persecution, Old Believers had little use for large icons. rubles]. A#erwards Postnikov said (and I believe him "e !#eenth-century icons produced in Novgorod the completely), “I’m very glad that Tretiakov bought these Great or attributed to the monk Andrei Rublev were icons, I’m glad because he started collecting them, and revered, but only dimly understood beneath their layers also because he bought really good worthy icons, and paid of overpainting, and so it was almost entirely Muscovite a good price for them, but at the same time he took the 6 icons that shaped Old Believer taste—icons that had very best things Silin had.” witnessed the reigns of Ivan the Terrible (r. 1533–1584) and Boris Godunov (r. 1598–1605), the ensuing Time "e most striking part of this account is the of Troubles, and the creation of the Romanov dynasty amount Tretiakov was willing to spend on high- in 1613. Favored subjects and styles were those in quality icons, on a par with or exceeding what he was vogue during this turbulent period of Russian history: accustomed to pay for contemporary paintings. "us, complicated scenes of many !gures, abstruse didactic for a little sixteenth-century icon of the Igorevskaia and allegorical themes, miniature painting of great Mother of God in a silver enamel frame he paid Silin virtuosity and decorative beauty, somber in color but 5,000 rubles, the same amount he had negotiated with enlivened by gold highlights and patterns, with frames Vasilii Surikov in 1883 for his monumental history and adornments of chased silver, !ligree, and enamel, painting !e Boiarina Morozova.7 He gave 9,000 studded with pearls and precious stones. Icons made rubles for an icon of the Complete Resurrection, when for the wealthy Stroganov family, inscribed with the just six years before the 10,000 he paid Repin for his patron’s and o#en the artist’s name, were especially Procession of the Cross in Kursk Province was “the prized by Old Believer connoisseurs, since this highest sum [he] had yet paid for a single canvas.”8 wealthy family from Solvychegodsk was reputed to And he gave a staggering 25,000 rubles for his !rst have collected icons as precious works of art as well as acquisition, a portable “church” or iconostasis—10,000 devotional images. more than he would pay Viktor Vasnetsov for his Tsar
PAVEL TRETIAKOV ’S ICONS 8.1. M. Dmitriev, Photograph of the interior of an Old Be- liever prayer room, ca. 1900, Nizhnii Novgorod.
Wendy Salmond Ivan the Terrible in 1897. Between 1890 and 1892 folding iconostases that became commonplace a century alone, he spent over 100,000 rubles to purchase some later. More generally, his purchases—which included thirty icons.9 seven icons of the hymnal icon “In "ee Rejoiceth,” as Yet while we know a good deal about Tretiakov’s criteria well as eight more in which the central icon is framed for buying contemporary art, thanks to his voluminous by scenes or feast days—captured the contemporary correspondence with artists, all we can say for certain taste for artful composition and virtuosity displayed in about his motivations for buying icons so late in his career icons with multiple !gures, scenes, and eye-catching comes from a paragraph in his Will of 6 September 1896, details. "ere were also examples that included rare in which he made clear his intention that these should and unusual subjects and !gures, such as three Russian form part of the public collection he was developing. saints among the “usual !gures” in the bottom deisis On his death, he wrote, “"e collection of early Russian row of the traveling iconostasis, real historical !gures painting (icons) and books on art that remain in my whose presence signaled the preferences and allegiances apartment . . . are to be transferred to the Tretiakov of a speci!c patron. An otherwise unremarkable icon of Brothers’ Moscow Civic Art Gallery.”10 Just what the St. Gerasim of Jordan would have attracted Tretiakov, “patron of the Peredvizhniki” was looking for in his icons it has been suggested, because he recognized in this remains a matter for speculation and even controversy. obscure saint the hero of Leskov’s moralizing tale, Father In broad terms Tretiakov’s goals were self-evident. Gerasim’s Lion.20 Clearly, he was intent on buying some big names for his Beyond these observations, Tretiakov’s motivations gallery, exceptional individuals in a largely anonymous remain elusive and open to interpretation. Was he !eld, who would be a worthy match for the giants of collecting icons as works of art, and thereby ushering contemporary Russian painting like Repin, Surikov, and in an entirely new attitude towards them, as Igor Vasnetsov. At the top of any icon collector’s wish list Grabar and others later claimed?21 Or was he a typical was at least one work by Andrei Rublev, whose name representative of the liberal intelligentsia, for whom had long been synonymous with the !nest traditions of icons were ethnographic artifacts re%ecting Russian life? Russian icon painting.11 Four of Tretiakov’s icons thus In her introduction to the State Tretiakov Gallery’s !rst came with assurances that they were by this legendary icon catalogue in 1963, Valentina Antonova insisted that and elusive !gure.12 Two more bore the inscription there was “absolutely no enthusiasm for Russian icon “painted for Maksim Iakovlevich Stroganov,” in itself painting as art” discernable in Tretiakov’s selections.22 To considered a guarantee of the highest artistic quality. impute such motives to the patron of the Peredvizhniki One of these, a small folding triptych of “In "ee was an anachronism, she argued, since the very notion Rejoiceth” framed by eighteen feasts, bore the signature of the icon’s aesthetic value could only emerge when of the painter Vasily Chirin.13 Another rare “named” Novgorod icons were cleaned early in the next century. Stroganov icon was signed by Nikifor Savin.14 At some Rather, what Tretiakov appreciated in icons was their point in the 1890s Tretiakov also acquired a pair of large ability to tell edifying stories—their povestvovatel’nost’. allegorical icons attributed to Simon Ushakov, the great In support of this argument, Antonova pointed to the court painter of the mid seventeenth century.15 "e number of triptychs and framed icons whose wings impulse to think in terms of individual artists re%ected featured scenes and !gures that illuminated the central both the collector’s mission of acquiring works by “all image; of icons framed in zhitie or bytie scenes—episodes Russian artists” for his gallery, and the contemporary in the life of the personage depicted that unfolded scholarly interest in compiling dictionaries of all known sequentially in time and space; and icons with especially named icon painters.16 complex multi-!gured compositions that required close Where other icon collectors of his generation aspired reading by the viewer. to the greatest possible completeness and range of "ere were good reasons in 1963 to assert the realist styles and periods, Tretiakov was discriminating.17 His credentials of Tretiakov’s icons against the highly acquisitions had all the hallmarks of a top Old Believer formalist approach to early Russian painting that collection. Age was of course highly prized—three icons emerged a#er World War II. "is was a continuation of in his collection were from the !#eenth century18 and the ideological wars that dominated Soviet art history. three more from the !rst half of the sixteenth.19 "e high But Antonova also rightly acknowledged the distinctive price of the “traveling church” no doubt re%ected the personality of the collection; the fact that in the 1890s fact that it was an unusually early example of the small the systematic cleaning of icons had not yet begun; and
PAVEL TRETIAKOV ’S ICONS Tretiakov’s “literary” approach to painting, for which played a more dynamic role, standing in for Old Rus the subsequent generation would so mercilessly critique itself. Surikov adopted a favorite rhetorical device of him. Describing his icons as an “encyclopedia of Russian realist painters, that of visually emphasizing Russian life,” she nonetheless le# unstated what it meant the tension between con%icting cultural forces. Even at for Tretiakov’s new acquisitions to be joining the much a distance the extreme asymmetry of the composition greater painting collection, linking together two spheres embodies the gulf separating the old world (represented of national life. by the icons, books, and candles at upper right) from Tretiakov was certainly sensitive to the breadth of the forces of change that the exiled Menshikov and meanings that icons had acquired by the 1890s. "at he his family represent. Ilia Repin used a similar device appreciated their complexity as signs of Russia past and in his Tsarevna Sophia in the Novodeviche Convent present is quite evident from the collection of paintings (1879), con!ning Peter’s ambitious half sister within a he bequeathed to the nation in 1892 (and to which claustrophobic space walled with gleaming icons. So too he planned to add his new icons, as his will attests). did Aleksei Kivshenko, in War Council at Fili in 1812 As contemporary photographs and catalogues reveal, (commissioned by Tretiakov in 1882). Cued by the path in room a#er room of the contemporary painting of Caravaggesque light, the viewer’s eye travels from the installation, the icon emerged as a consistent narrative warm light pooled beneath the icon of the Smolensk thread within the paintings, a central character even, Mother of God to the shadows where Kutuzov debates in scenes of Russian history and contemporary life.23 whether to abandon Moscow to Napoleon. In these and Like a vast diorama, the collection provided the viewer other dramatic scenes from national history, icons were with an evolving pictorial and conceptual framework staple signs helping the viewer to understand the forces that showed the diversity of icons over time, but also a at work and the lessons to be absorbed. microcosm of the Russian experience. For the Peredvizhniki, dedicated observers of the On the threshold between Rooms 6 and 7, for contemporary Russian scene, the ubiquity of icons example, the attentive viewer could ponder the in daily life o&ered innumerable opportunities for complexities of two and a half centuries of Russian commentaries on the way Russians lived now. "e history, played out against a background of icons and public display of miracle-working icons was a ready- o#en featuring icons as active protagonists (!g. 8.2). made panorama of Russian society with unparalleled Flanking the doorway were two large paintings that opportunities for unveiling social disparity and Tretiakov acquired in 1885–1886, part of a sequence o$cial corruption. Powerful examples of this in of canvases devoted to the history of the Great Schism, Tretiakov’s collection were Perov’s Easter Procession a topic of considerable public interest in the 1880s. At (1861), Savitskii’s Meeting the Icon (1878), and Repin’s the upper le# hung Sergei Miloradovich’s !e Black Procession of the Cross in Kursk Province (1880–1883). Council. Solovetsky Monastery’s Uprising against the Icons also made poignant and pointed backdrops for New Printed Books in 1666, while to the right was the petty miseries and injustices of contemporary Aleksandr Litovchenko’s Tsar Aleksei Mikhailovich private life, as the Russian realists took the viewer and Nikon, Archbishop of Novgorod, before the Relics behind closed doors to reveal an array of social ills. of Filipp the Miracleworker, Metropolitan of Moscow. A#er Firs Zhuravlev’s Before the Betrothal was acquired Such carefully painted church interiors were a staple by the Alexander III museum in 1872, Tretiakov of Russian history painting, their iconostases and commissioned a variant of this commentary on the frescoed walls a widely accessible metonym for the theme of the unwilling bride (!g. 8.3). In both versions struggle between dissent and the o$cial church. In the the familial icons in their shiny modern oklads are, if wake of the events that Miloradovich and Litovchenko not coconspirators in oppression, at least indi&erent reenacted, the Solovetskii Monastery would become to the plight of the oppressed. Zhuravlev gives the a bastion of resistance to Nikon’s reforms, and the little silver-gilt covered icon of the Kazan Mother of Moscow Kremlin’s Dormition Cathedral a backdrop for God a key role as instrument of the father’s implacable what Richard Wortman calls the Romanov dynasty’s will, placed along the diagonal axis of his gaze and “scenarios of power.”24 articulating the spatial and psychological gap dividing In the third painting in this cluster, Vasilii Surikov’s him from his daughter.25 depiction of Peter the Great’s erstwhile crony in Even artists uninterested in social polemics gravitated Siberian exile (Menshikov in Berezovo, 1883), icons towards the icon corner as the setting for innumerable
Wendy Salmond 8.2. Unknown photographer, "e Tretiakov Gallery, view from Room 7 looking into Room 6, showing installation of works by Miloradovich, Litovchenko, and Surikov, 1898.
PAVEL TRETIAKOV ’S ICONS 8.3. Firs Zhuravlev, Before the Betrothal, 1874. Oil on canvas, 99 x 134 cm, State Tretiakov Gallery, Moscow.
Wendy Salmond scenes of popular life. In !e Sick Husband (1881) Vasilii act, allowing the public to visualize for the !rst time the Maksimov invited viewers to contemplate the shelf of full sweep of Russian painting’s evolution, while at the modest icons above the dying man’s bed, in the spirit of same time providing the icons with an extraordinarily a sympathetic ethnographer rather than an indignant rich context that brought the full spectrum of Russian Populist. Artists whose sole interest was to entertain and history and culture to life. amuse were also magnetically drawn to the icon corner, where the family icons were served up as local color and a benign commentary on the sheer banality of human a&airs. Vladimir Makovskii’s !e Nightingale Fanciers From Private to Public (1898–1913) (1873) and Vasilii Meshkov’s Tooth Pulling (1891) draw It was not until a#er Tretiakov’s death in 1898 our attention to scenes so ordinary that the icons have that the icons were !nally moved from his private the same status as the samovar, so familiar that they fade apartments to join the main collection, which he had into the background like wallpaper. formally presented to the city of Moscow in 1892. A Such images de!ned Tretiakov’s collection as an room was found for them on the second %oor of the encyclopedia in pictures of Russia past and present, former family home on Lavrushinskii Lane and work its scope encompassing both the iconostases of the began on preparing them for public display. Kremlin cathedrals and the cheap mass-produced Integrating the icons into the collection was the images of the peasantry, with all that this implied. By charge of a Council appointed by the Moscow Duma the 1890s, however, Tretiakov was also extending his and consisting of the artists Valentin Serov and Ilia patronage to a younger generation of artists whose Ostroukhov, and Tretiakov’s daughter, Aleksandra view of the past and the current Russian scene were Botkina. Tretiakov’s will stipulated that his painting colored by new aspirations to breathe life into the collection be maintained exactly as it was during his past and !nd poetry in the present. His !rst icon lifetime, with any new acquisitions hung separately. But purchases thus coincided with his patronage of a new the icons o&ered a truly unprecedented opportunity direction in religious painting that to many promised a to show how examples of early Russian painting could renaissance in the practice of icon painting itself. Since form part of a single unfolding history of Russian art. 1885 Viktor Vasnetsov and Mikhail Nesterov had been Ostroukhov invited the distinguished diplomat, engaged in painting the interiors and icons of the new historian, and collector Nikolai Likhachev to catalogue St. Vladimir’s Cathedral in Kiev, and in 1893 Tretiakov Tretiakov’s icon collection according to the most up- bought a set of Vasnetsov’s cartoons for his gallery— to-date scholarly criteria. Likhachev had started to images of the Mother of God, Christ Pantocrator, "e collect icons shortly a#er Tretiakov, when he bought a Only Begotten Son, and enormous ecstatic scenes of large chunk of Nikolai Postnikov’s collection at auction. the Last Judgment. At the Peredvizhnik exhibition By the late 1890s he had embarked on a grandiose in 1890 he also bought Nesterov’s Vision of the Youth project to construct a full history of the icon’s stylistic Bartholomew, a highly controversial work among the evolution based on the greatest possible number of older generation of Peredvizhniki precisely because it examples.26 Organizing Tretiakov’s collection was thus smacked too much of icon painting. "is work can be a preliminary opportunity for him to publish “his ideas glimpsed through the doorway into Room 6 (see !g. on the history of icon painting and miniatures.”27 8.2), together with two other canvases on the life of St. "e issue that most concerned Likhachev was Sergius of Radonezh that Nesterov donated to Tretiakov devising reliable stylistic criteria that could be used to in 1897–1898. Above it is the triptych !e Labors of !t icons securely into a chronological structure, and St. Sergius, which the artist described as a skladen or for this he borrowed some of the fundamental tools folding icon, a word redolent of Old Believer icons (by of Old Believer connoisseurship. He selected four key this date Tretiakov had acquired eight such triptychs). visual markers to locate an icon within its period, from As he selected icons for his gallery throughout the the early Novgorod era to the late Stroganov style: 1890s, Tretiakov may not have been choosing with an the coloration (vokhrenie) of faces, their shape, the eye to their formal values of color and line, but nor delineation of drapery folds (probelka), and the way was he seeing them as mere “stories for the illiterate,” mountains were painted.28 In Tretiakov’s collection as caricatures of Peredvizhnik realism. "e addition of the predominance of icons from the period ca. icons to Tretiakov’s gallery was a much more intentional 1550–1650 meant that Likhachev’s central problem was
PAVEL TRETIAKOV ’S ICONS the identi!cation and dating of so-called Stroganov In this period of abundant opportunities for icons, those highly coveted treasures that epitomized acquiring icons from earlier centuries, the Tretiakov Old Believer taste and the height of virtuosity in collection remained static. Not a single icon was added the icon’s stylistic evolution. Since inscriptions were between his death and 1917, so that with every year the integral to an icon’s meaning and value, he also drew disparity between the taste of the 1890s and the rapidly on paleographical evidence, which allowed him expanding state of knowledge intensi!ed. It is not immediately to dismiss some of the more optimistic entirely clear why the Council of the Tretiakov Gallery attributions (the Rublev and Ushakov icons).29 held back from what must have been a great temptation While Likhachev was bringing system to the to take advantage of the new market, particularly as collection, Ostroukhov commissioned a set of display Ostroukhov, the gallery’s trustee until 1913, was a cases from the carpentry workshop at Abramtsevo passionate collector himself. Perhaps, as Grabar said, it (see chapter 4).30 Designed by Viktor Vasnetsov, one was a purely economic decision, the council’s limited of Tretiakov’s favorite artists and himself a collector of acquisitions budget obliging them to make hard choices icons, the cases were a restrained version of the highly between rare eighteenth-century classics, icons, and ornamented neo-Russian style that Abramtsevo had contemporary art.31 Perhaps it was the in%ated prices made popular (!g. 8.4). Vasnetsov’s framing of the resulting from the competition among a new set of icons, together with Ostroukhov’s careful symmetrical collectors, or perhaps Ostroukhov’s preoccupation with hanging and generous spacing, gave the Tretiakov building his own collection played a part.32 Whatever Gallery’s icon room an ambiance quite distinct from the reason, it was the only part of the collection not the rest of the galleries, where paintings were packed involved in the controversial debates surrounding cheek by jowl, Salon style. "e installation re%ected a new acquisitions at the time, and the incorporation of lingering theatricality associated with workshops like those new pieces into Tretiakov’s original collection.33 Abramtsevo, together with a desire to preserve some Certainly, when Grabar rehung the collection in 1913, memory of the icons’ original context, be it an Old Tretiakov’s icons enabled him to present the gallery as Believer prayer room or the icon corner in a northern a collection of Russian artists “from earliest times to izba. In 1904, however, this approach to linking the the end of the nineteenth century.” "e visitor, “moving Russian past and present through the design of space from le# to right through the rooms of the second %oor, was already losing its freshness and novelty. What really would become familiar with the entire complex process signaled a sea change in public perception, however, of the organic development of Russian art.”34 Yet this was that almost overnight, Tretiakov’s icons became claim to ever-expanded inclusiveness was hard to old-fashioned. sustain with a collection of icons that remained ossi!ed In retrospect, this dramatic change in the perception in the Muscovite era. of Tretiakov’s icons seems to stem from various "e enforced stasis of Tretiakov’s icons is especially coincidences at the time. In 1904 the Archaeological noticeable when compared with the rising pro!le Institute, under Ostroukhov’s direction, cleaned of Nikolai Likhachev’s collection. It was Likhachev Rublev’s icon of the Old Testament Trinity, revealing whom Sergei Diaghilev approached to borrow thirty- the !rst real glimpse of the legendary artist; in the !ve icons for the Russian exhibition at the 1906 Salon process, the oklad given by Boris Godunov was d’Automne in Paris (see chapter 9), which he described permanently removed. "e following year, Nicholas as “a look at the development of our art as seen by the II issued the Edict of Toleration, which brought the modern eye.”35 Diaghilev insisted that these icons be o$cial persecution of Old Believers to an end and displayed on a wall of gold brocade—a pre!guration allowed communities to build their own churches of so many later exhibitions designed to heighten the furnished with church-size icons. In conjunction with sensory context of the experience.36 Equally signi!cant these developments, a boom in private collecting took was Diaghilev’s omission of the Peredvizhniki from the o&, leading to a new generation of collectors, among exhibition, a calculated a&ront to Tretiakov’s legacy and them Stepan Riabushinskii, Aleksei Morozov, and a sign that new histories of Russian art could be written Ostroukhov himself. Finally, experiments in cleaning that did not necessarily conform to the model laid out Novgorod icons revealed an unsuspected world of color in the halls of the Tretiakov Gallery. and form that cast the miniature Stroganov icons that One should not exaggerate the speed of this Tretiakov had favored in the shade. change in critical opinion. Until World War I, at
Wendy Salmond 8.4. Unknown photographer, Vitrines to house Pavel Tre- tiakov’s icon collection, designed by Viktor Vasnetsov and made at the Abramtsevo Carpentry Workshop, 1904. (redacted until 2024)
PAVEL TRETIAKOV ’S ICONS least, Tretiakov’s icons were still highly regarded as miniature-work (melkaia) icon.”38 "e same theme exceptional examples of the Muscovite and Stroganov ran through his catalogue of Ostroukhov’s collection, styles, and when Matisse visited the gallery in 1911 in which he compared the new breed of collector with he spent an enjoyable hour or so with Ostroukhov those of the past, who had focused on “icons small in “opening all the glass doors of the cupboards.”37 Above size and of particularly painstaking execution, unable all, the taste for icons of the seventeenth century to comprehend the beauty of Novgorod painting and received a huge o$cial boost in court circles during the acknowledging only their historical value, with a false celebrations for the Romanov Tercentenary of 1913. Yet idea of Rublev as a master of tenderly shaded ‘%owing’ 1913 was also the de!nitive year in which the map of icon painting and an exaggerated delight in the re!ned the Russian icon’s history was redrawn, pushing icons of miniatures of the Stroganov school.”39 Tretiakov’s era to the periphery. In Grabar’s History, Muratov included nine icons from Tretiakov’s collection to help illustrate his theory. In Tretiakov’s very !rst purchase, the early sixteenth- century traveling iconostasis, Muratov believed he Demotion (1913–1930) could still glimpse “the aesthetic theme shining through Around 1913 the public discussion of icons took the religious theme,” but therea#er a process of decline a sharp turn. Tretiakov’s icons were drawn into a set in where formal, painterly values were increasingly public forum about icons that became increasingly sacri!ced to narrative in Tretiakov’s choices. "e polemical. Critical in this respect was the exhibition painter of Tretiakov’s Nativity (!g. 8.5) was “not so of icons from private collections held at the Delovoi much concerned with the picture quality and strict Dvor on Varvarka Street in Moscow, a grand public coherence of the impression it made, as preoccupied unveiling of newly cleaned Novgorod icons in all their with various picturesque episodes; he sacri!ces the splendor. Novgorod icons had been dreamed about, proportion of the !gures and the rhythm of the but never seen in their original form, covered as they composition, but cannot bring himself to sacri!ce a were by the layers of subsequent centuries. Inevitably, single one of the many ‘grasses’ and the goats nibbling therefore, those later centuries began to su&er by at them.”40 A Cruci!xion with two saints on the borders invidious comparison. "e very act of cleaning involved from the time of Boris Godunov (ca. 1570) showed a decision to sacri!ce later historical layers in search of the “illustrative and literary traditions of Godunov’s a superior original image. reign, for example in the inclusion of three men playing "e young critic Pavel Muratov became the ‘v morru’ [a !nger guessing game] at the foot of the most articulate spokesman for this new position. A cross.”41 "is process of deterioration culminated in passionate advocate of Novgorod icons as “the only a little icon of Saints Vasilii the Blessed and Artemii manifestation of high art in the entire history of early Verkolskii, probably painted in the last years of Mikhail Russian painting,” Muratov’s contribution to volume Fedorovich’s reign (r. 1613–1645), which was essentially six of the new History of Russian Art (1909–1916) “just a magni!cent calligraphic pattern. "e icon edited by Igor Grabar was instrumental in reassessing painter who painted it was preoccupied with decoration the icon’s history in light of recent discoveries, and utterly indi&erent to representation. "e artistic characterizing the Moscow period in general and center of this work is the beautiful star-shaped golden the Stroganov school in particular as one of slow grasses rising above the feathery patterned mountains.” decline in a great artistic tradition. Icons that had once What was new in Muratov’s writings of 1913–1915 seemed exquisite, virtuosic, and teeming with interest, was not the chronology of icon painting, but the invention, and event, were now more likely to seem critical vocabulary he coined for reevaluating its fussy and overembellished, requiring no aesthetic highs and lows. Whereas for the Novgorod icon sensibility to appreciate. “Anyone can be astonished by painter “the theme of the icon was his painterly the painstaking execution of Stroganov miniatures,” vision, for the Stroganov master it was only the theme Muratov wrote. “"is quality is more comprehensible of adornment, where his devotion was measured by and accessible than any other purely artistic quality of the re!nement of his eye and the skill of his hand, the early icon. Even someone entirely lacking in artistic earned through long and self-sacri!cing labor.”42 "is receptiveness could take delight in the exceptionally virtuosity indicated a “minor art” akin to the jeweled !ne dra#smanship and execution of the Stroganov oklads that framed the images and the adornments
Wendy Salmond 8.5. Icon of the Nativity, second half of the sixteenth century. Tempera on panel, silver and enamel oklad and haloes, 32 x 26 cm, State Tretiakov Gallery, Moscow.
PAVEL TRETIAKOV ’S ICONS that interfered with contemplation of the painting For Grishchenko, the taste of Tretiakov the icon itself. For Muratov (and other young critics like collector was inseparable from that of Tretiakov the Nikolai Shchekotov and Aleksandr Anisimov), the “patron of the Peredvizhniki.” He made a grudging discovery of Novgorod icons was Russia’s chance to e&ort to point out the few icons of passing interest—a be part of world art, not a mere local variant. "rough small Pokrov, for instance, that might be early !#eenth- them lay Russia’s true path back to Byzantium and century Novgorod (“broadly painted with bright strong thus to Hellenic culture, rather than the false path to colors applied with a feel for color, the rhythm of the the Italian Renaissance mapped out by older scholars. composition”). But all the Stroganov icons exempli!ed a "ere may also have been an ideological dimension “complete absence of painting and feel for color.”44 In the to these young critics’ rejection of Muscovite icons: Complete Resurrection painted for Maksim Stroganov, a distaste for the notion of Republican Novgorod’s Grishchenko professed to see merely “an utter confusion subjugation to the Muscovite state in the sixteenth of specks and garments, a multitude of faces and gold century, an emblem of which was the imposition of scrolls, where the dead colors have a faded ochre tinge.” state controls on icon painters. Stroganov icons awakened the kind of almost visceral "e last prerevolutionary report on Tretiakov’s icons, distress that Salon or Victorian painting elicited in written by Ukrainian artist Aleksei Grischenko in 1916, modernist circles—even the green used for the ground provides an important contemporary document for and borders struck Grishchenko as unpleasant. understanding the Russian avant-garde’s embrace of icons. Grishchenko’s lively and opinionated account From the Novgorod church, full of grandeur and import, of how he and his generation came to discover furnished with broad-painted icons, we !nd ourselves icons is equally useful for explaining the polemical in the cramped little prayer-room of the Stroganovs, a necessity of demoting Muscovite and Stroganov icons sort of house chapel, where miniature icons sparkle with of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries from the gold and an abundance of assiduously delineated forms, supremacy they enjoyed in the nineteenth century. where the eye, sliding at close range over the richly Along with other kinds of “realism,” they were added elegant surface, strains to make out the tiniest detail to the cultural baggage thrown overboard from the of the miniature !gures, where there’s more room for steamship of modernity. astonishment than for the experience of élan, transport, 45 Grishchenko quite speci!cally targeted Tretiakov and creative delight. as the worst kind of nineteenth-century icon collector: far from being a shrewd judge of quality, he was now a "at Muscovite icons were caught in the cross!re of man indi&erent to the superior beauties of Novgorod a much bigger campaign was clear from Grishchenko’s icons (a nonsensical charge, given that the collector had snide comments directed at Repin, Kramskoi, and been dead a good decade before the work on cleaning Tretiakov himself. “"e struggle in Russia for new Novgorod icons got underway). Among Grischenko’s painterly ideals,” he claimed, “was and is at the same thumbnail introductions to Moscow’s private and public time the struggle to discover new horizons in the museum collections, his comments on Tretiakov’s icons evaluation of early Russian painting.”46 If nineteenth- were dismissive and openly tendentious: century realists naturally gravitated toward “everyday life, a speci!c vulgar subject, and ethnography,” both It would be a great mistake to judge early Russian in contemporary painting and in icons, then it was just painting by Tretiakov’s collection. . . . "e seventeenth as natural to discern an inner resonance between the century of Stroganov and Moscow styles, the latest contemporary art of the French Republic and that of and least interesting epoch of early Russian art, is the Novgorod Republic, “united by that facet of artistic the most fully represented. [. . .] "e fact that his culture that was oriented to painterly culture (color, 47 collection consists for the most part of seventeenth- composition, texture).” In Cézanne’s paintings and century Stroganov and Moscow icons, whose principal Novgorod icons alike, “the verbal story is reduced to 48 content is “storytelling,” “complexity,” “correct drawing,” zero.” “People who approached academic conventions, “!ne-work,” and “extraordinary execution” is the real routine and naked everyday reality with loathing all felt reason why the Novgorod icon—the antipode of the the greatest interest in the art of the early icon painters, Stroganov—did not end up in the late Tretiakov’s they understood and appreciated the artistic side of the 43 49 collection. icon above all else [Grishchenko’s emphasis].”
Wendy Salmond In developing his history of Russian icons, In this climate of strident black-and-white Grishchenko was developing an idiosyncratic form of oppositions, the subtle gradations of the 1890s in reception theory, whereby the aesthetic habits of the which Tretiakov had collected his icons were lost. His present generation enabled it to appreciate what was icons represented a perfect time capsule of that decade, dismissed before and, conversely, made almost repellant hermetically sealed in their whimsical Abramtsevo the cultural heights of the past. “["e best period of frames, positioned against the panorama of the Novgorod] speaks to our plastic perceptual apparatus, bigger collection. Like so many other aspects of late and not our verbal, narrative one . . . not by the word nineteenth-century culture, they proved impossible for but by painterly and plastic means, by colors and the next generation to value. composition.”50 Even a#er they were cleaned, Novgorod icons could only be seen and understood by eyes prepared by exposure to modern French painting— they remained a closed book to the intelligentsia and Conclusion the Peredvizhniki of Tretiakov’s generation. "e laws "e seal on Tretiakov’s icon collection was !nally of generational struggle meant that the patron of the broken in 1917, when the Council of the Tretiakov Peredvizhniki was destined to esteem Stroganov icons Gallery acquired a thirteenth-century Pskov icon above all others, because his “perceptual apparatus” of Selected Saints for 15,000 rubles from Ivan Silin’s was tuned to the verbal and narrative. “"eir exclusive son.54 A#er a second major acquisition in 1921, a aspiration towards the ‘subject,’ to ethnographically sixteenth-century icon of the Church Militant, the correct ‘genre paintings,’ to geographically precise, collection relapsed again into dormancy throughout clumsy landscapes, their leathery dead-blind palette, the 1920s, when the pro!le of the gallery was con!ned amateurish ‘natural technique’ and execution created an to eighteenth- and nineteenth-century painting atmosphere of extreme contempt for icon painting.”51 (between 1924 and 1929 it was the Historical Museum By this standard, Muscovite and Stroganov icons were in Moscow that functioned as the capital’s central no more “early Russian painting” than the canvases of repository of icons and church art). During these years, Kramskoi or Repin were paintings. Both led the viewer it seems, Tretiakov’s icons were put in storage, until along the “long path of literary verbal story-telling.”52 Grabar retrieved a handful to include in the Soviet Young Russian artists might now be going to Moscow loan exhibition that toured Germany, England, and collections of French modernism and ancient icons the United States from 1929 to 1932.55 His o$cial with equal enthusiasm—but, Grishchenko implied, the rationale for including them was not their quality, but Tretiakov Gallery was not on that itinerary. the fact that other icons from private collections might "is irascible criticism shows a world of values raise problems in émigré circles. He described them as in %ux, a history of Russian art still in the making, coming from “a collection that had been in storage for a the sort of internecine warfare that has become quite number of years and inaccessible for viewing.”56 familiar in the Cubo-Futurists’ battles against Repin In 1929 a shi# in museum policy mandated that or Alexandre Benois, but that seems rather shocking henceforth the Tretiakov Gallery would serve as the in the sedate world of medieval painting. Tretiakov’s national center for Russian !ne art. Hundreds of icons could not satisfy the aesthetic criteria of the the best icons were transferred from the Historical new school of critics and artists, not only because Museum and supplemented with hundreds more from they were tainted by the collector’s Peredvizhnik the State Museum Fund and the growing number of associations, but because to appreciate them, it closed churches. In 1930 the State Tretiakov Gallery’s seemed, one had to see with Peredvizhnik-trained Department of Early Russian Painting was o$cially eyes, attuned to storytelling and trivial earth-bound opened. "roughout this period of turmoil Tretiakov’s details. To value earlier icons required aesthetic habits original collection retained its integrity, even in the face shaped by exposure to more recent art. Emblematic of unrelenting pressure to sell national heritage abroad of this trend, for Grishchenko, was the role that in the 1930s. Only one work—an icon of St. Makarii of French scholar Gabriel Millet had played in opening Egypt and St. Makarii of Alexandria that Tretiakov had his contemporaries’ eyes to the aesthetic qualities of acquired as a possible Rublev—was inadvertently released Byzantine art, likening the frescoes at Mistra to the to the trade organization Antikvariat and sold to the divided tones of impressionist painting.53 Pittsburgh industrialist George Hann in 1936.57 By 1963,
PAVEL TRETIAKOV ’S ICONS when the !rst major catalogue of the Tretiakov Gallery chto sobiraet (Moscow: L.E. Bukhgeim, 1916), 65, 66, icons was compiled, almost all of the original icons were 67. All subsequent accounts of how Tretiakov came integrated into the greatly expanded collection, their to collect icons—and they are very few—are based on illustrious provenance quietly downplayed. this brief entry. "ough today we can only experience Tretiakov’s 7. Letter to P.M. Tretiakov, 4 May 1883, in collection of icons through a process of virtual V. Surikov. Pis’ma, Vospominaniia o khudozhnike reconstruction, it is more than just a quaint minor relic (Leningrad: Iskusstvo, 1977), 55. of the 1890s. "e story of its fall from grace during the 8. Elizabeth Kridl Valkenier, Ilya Repin and the avant-garde polemics of the prerevolutionary decade World of Russian Art (New York: Columbia University is one that applies to any number of late nineteenth- Press, 1990), 107. Elsewhere Valkenier cites another century cultural phenomena, ruthlessly demoted aspect of Tretiakov’s patronage: “the fact that he for their storytelling, illustrative tendencies, and the would pay more for a painting on a religious subject. apparent predominance of the verbal over the visual. "us Perov received 2,000 rubles for his Bird Catcher "e strength of the prejudice against Tretiakov’s taste in (1870) and 8,000 for his Nikita Pustosviat (1881), icons can still be seen in the resistance to adopting the the representation of a saintly hermit.” See Elizabeth miniature, multi-!gured style for contemporary icons.58 Valkenier, Russian Realist Art. !e State and Society: !e Yet in post-Soviet Russia, taste and demand are again in Peredvizhniki and !eir Tradition (New York: Columbia %ux. Stroganov icons are in demand among collectors as University Press, 1989), 68. they were in the nineteenth century, and the miniature 9. "is means that almost one-eighth of the technique is now a permissible model for new icons. 839,000 rubles he spent on art between 1871 and 1897 went on icons (Valkenier, Russian Realist Art, 65). Even among icon collectors this was an exceptional amount. According to Ivan Zabelin, in 1889 Postnikov asked Notes 700,000 rubles for his 3,000–object collection (1,000 1. A. Grishchenko, Voprosy zhivopisi. Vypusk 3-i. of which were icons), dropping the price to 400,000 Russkaia ikona kak iskusstvo zhivopisi (Moscow: Avtora, in 1895. See Ivan Zabelin, Dnevniki. Zapisnye knizhki 1917), 258. (Moscow: Izd. im. Sabashnikovykh, 2001), 141, 190. 2. Of the original 62 icons described in Nikolai In 1913 Nikolai Likhachev received 300,000 rubles Likhachev’s 1905 catalogue, 47 are included among when he sold his entire collection of some 1,500 icons the 1,053 in the most recent complete catalogue of to the Russian Museum. See L.G. Klimanov, “Nikolai the State Tretiakov Gallery’s collection. See Kratkoe Petrovich Likhachev—kollektsioner ‘skazochnogo opisanie ikon sobraniia P. M. Tret’iakova (Moscow: razmakha’,” in Iz kollektsii N.P. Likhacheva. Katalog Sinodal’naia tipogra!ia, 1905); and V.I. Antonova and vystavki v Gosudarstvennom Russkom Muzee (St. N.E. Mneva, Katalog drevnerusskoi zhivopisi v dvukh Petersburg: Seda-S, 1993), 24. "e details of Tretiakov’s tomakh (Moscow: Iskusstvo, 1963). To date I have icon collecting—prices, dates, provenance—are vague. found reproductions of 21 of the icons, most of them Likhachev provided some information in his 1905 in prerevolutionary sources. catalogue and Antonova expanded on this in the 1963 3. See the excerpts from these writers and catalogue of the collection, drawing on an archival commentaries on them in Valerii Lepakhin, Ikona source (TsGALI, f. 646, op. 1, no. 194). From this v russkoi khudozhestvennoi literature. Ikona i same document Antonova cited the distribution of his ikonopochitanie, ikonopis’ i ikonopistsy (Moscow: Otchii initial purchase as follows: “65,000 to Silin, 35,000 to dom, 2002), 217–315. S.A. Egorov, and the remainder to Nikolai Postnikov.” 4. On the importance of this exhibition, see See Antonova and Mneva, Katalog drevnerusskoi G.I. Vzdornov in Istoriia otkrytiia i izucheniia russkoi zhivopisi, 1:17. srednevekovoi zhivopisi. XIX vek (Moscow: Iskusstvo, 10. “Dukhovnoe zaveshchanie P.M. Tret’iakova,” 1986), 206–7. in Gosdudarstvennaia Tret’iakovskaia galereia. 5. Silin’s information, presumably based Ocherki istorii 1856–1917, ed. Ia. V. Bruk (Leningrad: on hearsay, does not tally with the prices cited by Khudozhnik RSFSR, 1981), 306. Likhachev and Antonova (see below). 11. Nikolai Postnikov wrote that his own 6. Iz zapisnoi knizhki A. P. Bakhrushina. Kto collecting stemmed from a desire to preserve the great
Wendy Salmond works of “the Rublevs, Stroganovs, Ushakovs and other Melnikov-Pecherskii’s epic In the Forest and In the Hills great artists and teachers of their stamp, working in and Mordovtsev’s historical novel !e Great Schism. the knowledge that theirs is a sacred charge and a lo#y See Antonova and Mneva, Katalog drevnerusskoi task, requiring a cheerful mind, chaste thoughts, a sober zhivopisi, 1:18, 20. heart.” See Katalog khristianskikh drevnostei sobrannykh 21. “[Tretiakov] was the !rst among collectors Moskovskim kuptsom Nikolaem Mikhailovichym to select icons not for their subject but for their artistic Postnikovym (Moscow: Kushnerev i Ko, 1888), i. signi!cance and was the !rst to openly acknowledge 12. Two came from Nikolai Postnikov, and them as genuine and great art, stating in his Will that Tretiakov must have acquired them when the dealer his icon collection should be merged with the gallery. was obliged to sell his vast collection at auction in the For the !rst time the Russian icon occupied its proper 1890s. See Antonova and Mneva, Katalog drevnerusskoi place.” See Grabar’s introduction to the 1917 Tretiakov zhivopisi, 17. Gallery catalogue, cited in Antonova and Mneva, 13. Nos. 800 and 802 in Antonova and Mneva, Katalog drevnerusskoi zhivopisi, 1:26. Lidiia Iovleva Katalog drevnerusskoi zhivopisi, vol. 2. "ese icons are makes the same point in “Galereiia bez Tret’iakova,” two of just thirty icons known to have been painted for Nashe nasledie, 78 (2006). Maxim Iakovlevich Stroganov. See M.S. Trubacheva, “ 22. Antonova and Mneva, Katalog drevnerusskoi ‘Po poveleniiu Maksima Iakovlevicha Stroganova . . . zhivopisi, 1:25. Antonova speci!cally mentioned claims ,’” in Ikony stroganovskikh votchin XVI–XVII vekov po by Nikolai Likhachev and Igor Grabar that Tretiakov materialam restavratsionnykh rabot VKhNRTs imeni was the !rst to collect icons as works of art, a role that Akademika I.E. Grabaria. Katalog-Al’bom (Moscow: she attributed instead to Ilia Ostroukhov. Skanrus, 2003), 359. 23. "is is consistent with the observation that 14. No. 793 "e Good Fruits of Instruction. Leskov was “perhaps the only writer in world literature 15. Nos. 59 and 60 in the 1905 catalogue. who created a work of art whose main hero is an Likhachev dismissed their inscriptions as obvious icon.” See Lepakhin, Ikona v russkoi khudozhestvennoi modern fakes (Kratkoe opisanie ikon, 46.) "ese icons literature, 282. are not included in the 1963 State Tretiakov Gallery 24. Litovchenko worked directly in the catalogue. Dormition Cathedral and the Armory, sketching details 16. A dictionary formed part of Dmitrii for his painting. He allowed himself a lapse from strict Rovinskii’s Obozrenie ikonopisaniia v Rossii do kontsa accuracy by “painting the interior of the cathedral and XVII veka (St. Petersburg, 1856). Icon painters were the silver co$n as they were in the nineteenth century. also included in Nikolai Sobko’s Slovar’ russkikh "e noted critic Vladimir Stasov posed for the !gure khudozhnikov, 2 vols. (St. Petersburg: Tip. M.M. of Nikon.” "e painting was restored and put back on Stasiulevicha, 1893–1899). view in the Tretiakov Gallery in 2009. See “Vystavka 17. Compare Tretiakov’s 62 icons with Postnikov’s risunkov I.E. Repina i otrestavrirovannoi kartiny A.D. 3,000, Nikolai Likhachev’s 1,500, and Egorov’s 1,300. Litovchenko s 10 fevralia po 30 aprelia 2009,”
PAVEL TRETIAKOV ’S ICONS 29. Likhachev’s skeptical approach to signatures 39. Muratov, Drevnerusskaia zhivopis’ v sobranii was well founded. See the examples he cites in Tsarskii I.S. Ostroukhova (Moscow, 1914), 4. “izograf” Iosif i ego ikony (St. Petersburg: Ekspeditsiia 40. Muratov, “Russkaia zhivopis’ do serediny 17- zagotovleniia gos. bumag, 1897), 12–13. Likhachev’s use ogo veka,” 300. of paleographic evidence was later dismissed by Aleksei 41. Muratov, “Russkaia zhivopis’ do serediny 17- Grishchenko as an example of the “archaeological” ogo veka,” 318, !g. 321. approach that ignored the formal evidence in favor of 42. Muratov, “Russkaia zhivopis’ do serediny 17- the verbal in Grishchenko, Voprosy zhivopisi, 174). ogo veka,” 360. 30. See Wendy Salmond, Arts and Cra"s in Late 43. Grishchenko, Voprosy zhivopisi, 212 Imperial Russia: Reviving the Kustar Art Industries 44. Grishchenko, Voprosy zhivopisi, 213. 1870–1917 (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge 45. Grishchenko, Voprosy zhivopisi, 107. University Press, 1996), 15–45; Oleg Tarasov, Framing 46. Grishchenko, Voprosy zhivopisi, 212. Russian Art. From Early Icons to Malevich (London: 47. Grishchenko, Voprosy zhivopisi, 240. Reaktion Books, 2011), 195. 48. Grishchenko, Voprosy zhivopisi, 241. 31. Writing on behalf of the council in 1915, 49. Grishchenko, Voprosy zhivopisi, 244. Grabar regretted that neither icons nor examples of 50. Grishchenko, Voprosy zhivopisi, 42. embroidery had been acquired, since “to our very 51. Grishchenko, Voprosy zhivopisi, 15. great regret what we let go during this time is lost to us 52. Grishchenko, Voprosy zhivopisi, 245. forever.” See Gosudarstvennaia Tret’iakovskaia galereia. 53. Grishchenko, Voprosy zhivopisi, 255. See G. Ocherki istorii 1856–1917, 324. Millet, Monuments byzantins de Mistra: Materiaux pour 32. It was in the library of the Tretiakov Gallery in I’ etude de 1 ‘architecture et de la peinture en Grece aux 1910 that Grabar reported being “a witness to the secret XIVe et XVe siecles (Paris: Leroux, 1910). visits of some people bringing and taking away icons in 54. Inexplicably, since this icon is now the wee hours,” and in particular to some shady deals acknowledged as one of the Tretiakov Gallery’s pulled o& by Ostroukhov, in I.E. Grabar, Moia zhizn’. masterpieces, Grishchenko’s evaluation of it was Avtomonogra#ia (Moscow: Iskusstvo, 1937), 216. scathing: “why has the Tretiakov gallery, which has 33. See Lidiia Iovleva, “Galereiia bez Tretiakova,” spent major capital on acquiring paintings by artists Nashe nasledie, 78 (2006). On the controversy whose work is richly represented in the gallery, still surrounding the rehanging and new acquisitions, see not acquired a single good icon? Wouldn’t it be better, Gosudarstvennaia Tret’iakovskaia galereia. Ocherki instead of a portrait by Levitskii (12,000 rubles), to istorii 1856–1917, 316–29. acquire a real Novgorod icon?” [214]. 34. Gosudarstvennaia Tret’iakovskaia galereia. 55. On the exhibition see Wendy Salmond, “How Ocherki istorii 1856–1917, 318–19. America Discovered Russian Icons: "e Soviet Loan 35. Serge Diaghilew, [Introduction], Salon Exhibition of 1930–1932,” in Alter Icons: !e Russian d’automne. Exposition de l’Art Russe (Paris, 1906), 7. Icon and Modernity, ed. Je&erson J.A. Gatrall and 36. Alexander Benois was unimpressed by Douglas Green!eld (University Park: Pennsylvania State Diagilev’s “fairly outlandish idea of arranging ancient University Press, 2010), 128–43. icons, not on some sort of neutral background, but on a 56. Grabar to Glavnauka (the central shimmering gold brocade, covering from top to bottom administration for scholarly activities 1922–1933), the large hall that began the exhibition.” Sergei Diagilev 14–15 January 1929, GTG, f. 106, 529. "ree icons i russkoe iskusstvo: Stat’i, otkrytye pis’ma, interv’iu, were reproduced in the deluxe edition Masterpieces of perepiska, sovremenniki o Diagileve, ed. I.S. Zil’bershtein Russian Painting edited by Michael Farbman (London: and V.A. Samkov (Moscow: Izobrazitel’noe iskusstvo, A. Zwemmer, 1930): Plates XXXIV Cruci!xion, XLIV 1982), 2:233. Nativity, XLIV Praise with Festivals. "e !ve others 37. Yu.A. Rusakov and John E. Bowlt, “Matisse sent on tour were the Pokrov, Vasilii the Blessed, and in Russia in the Autumn of 1911,” !e Burlington Artemii Verkolskii, Nikifor Savin’s "e Good Fruits of Magazine, 117, no. 866 (May 1975): 289. Instruction, and Aleksii Metropolitan of Moscow. 38. Pavel Muratov, “Russkaia zhivopis’ do 57. See Wendy Salmond, “Russian Icons and serediny 17-ogo veka,” in Istoriia russkogo iskusstva American Money,” in Treasure into Tractors. !e (Moscow: Knebel, 1914), 6:37. Selling of Russia’s Cultural Heritage, 1918–1938, ed.
Wendy Salmond Anne Odom and Wendy Salmond (Washington, DC: Hillwood Museum and Gardens, 2009), 273–304. 58. "us, a contemporary website reports that, “L.I. Lifshits was one of the !rst art historians to protest the widely held point of view that contemporary icon painting must orient itself to the art of the ninth through !#eenth centuries as the most theologically justi!ed, able to express spiritual reality most precisely, i.e. he asserted the right to exist of ‘!ne-work’ icons with allegorical depictions, the canonical nature of which is still being debated today.” See Moskovskaia ikona kontsa XX veka
PAVEL TRETIAKOV ’S ICONS