THE BAROQUE in SEVENTEENTH-CENTURY RUSSIAN ART: ^R^Cajfedpatwtina, PAINTING R^ C ORRTT VT" M1111 AIU'1,1 I'll .ART
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THE BAROQUE IN SEVENTEENTH-CENTURY RUSSIAN ART: ^r^CajfedPATWTINa, PAINTING r^ C ORRTT VT" M1111 AIU'1,1 I'll .ART-- by Natalia Kostotchkina being a dissertation submitted for the degree of MPhil School of Slavonic and East European Studies, University of London 1994 ProQuest Number: U074200 All rights reserved INFORMATION TO ALL USERS The quality of this reproduction is dependent upon the quality of the copy submitted. In the unlikely event that the author did not send a complete manuscript and there are missing pages, these will be noted. Also, if material had to be removed, a note will indicate the deletion. uest. ProQuest U074200 Published by ProQuest LLC(2016). Copyright of the Dissertation is held by the Author. All rights reserved. This work is protected against unauthorized copying under Title 17, United States Code. Microform Edition © ProQuest LLC. ProQuest LLC 789 East Eisenhower Parkway P.O. Box 1346 Ann Arbor, Ml 48106-1346 To the memory of my mother ABSTRACT Russian Baroque of the seventeenth century is one of the most controversial and unstudied phenomena of Old Russian art. Event the term "Russian Baroque" provokes debates and unfavourable criticism among some Russian art historians. Sometimes the existence of Baroque stylistic features in seventeenth-century Russian art is even called into question. There is no common opinion about the chronological framework of this artistic trend. This thesis is an attempt to demonstrate the existence of Baroque stylistic elements in seventeenth-century Russian art and to argue that West European Baroque influence played a great part in the development of seventeenth- century Russian art. One of the objectives of the thesis is to determine the sources of penetration of Western Baroque ideas into Old Russian icon-painting and painting, decorative and applied art. Russian art historiography in Great Britain has not considered the problem of Russian Baroque within the whole spectrum of Old Russian art - in all its varieties and genres. Only in seventeenth-century Russian architecture have Baroque features been fully examined, notably in the work of Dr Lindsey Hughes. That is why 3 seventeenth-century Russian architecture has been excluded from this thesis. The thesis is practically the first scholarly research of the genesis of Russian Baroque and the first comprehensive analysis of seventeenth-century Russian art (both the Moscow school and provincial art centres) from the point of view of its Baroque stylistic features. CONTENTS Preface........................................... 8 I ___ Introduction 1. Aims of the Work..............................11 2. Historiography; The Evolution of the Stylistic Classification of Seventeenth-Century Russian Art..18 3. European Baroque Art and its Seventeenth Century Russian Variant................................... 26 4. Artistic Sources of the Russian Baroque....... 40 Notes............................................. 50 II The Baroque in Seventeenth-Centurv Russian Painting 1. Social Background to the Changes in Traditional Painting.......................................... 57 2. The Evolution of Icon-painting................ 61 3. From Icon to Parsuna: The Origins of the Portrait.............................. 70 4. The Historical Portrait: The Tituliarniki 82 5 5. Master-artists of the Armoury (1) Simon Ushakov............................ 92 (2) Ivan Bezmin............................. 100 (3) Fyodor Zubov............................ 108 (4) Karp Zolotarev.......................... 118 6. The Preobrazhenskaia Portrait Series........ 131 7. Mural Painting; The laroslavl School........ 147 Notes............................................ 165 III The Baroque in Seventeenth-Centurv Russian Decorative-Applied Art 1. Peculiarities of Tradition and Style......... 191 2. Jewellery, Everyday and Ecclesiastical Utensils (1) Moscow Art Centre....................... 204 (2) Novgorod Art Centre..................... 224 (3) Usol ' skii Painted Encunels: Velikii Ustiug and 6 Sol ' vychegodsk................................... 238 3. Art Embroidery..............................250 Notes............................................ 266 IV Conclusion.................................. 285 V____ List of Abbreviations....................... 291 V I___ Glossary of Terms........................... 293 VII Bibliography................................ 301 VIII List of Illustrations....................... 323 I X___ Illustrations............................... 327 Supplementary Material PREFACE I first became interested in the Russian Baroque in 1984, when I was involved in the organisation of an exhibition in the Hermitage entitled "Russian Art of the Baroque Age". At the time I was working in the Russian Cultural Section of the Hermitage Museum in Leningrad as one of the curators of the Ancient Russian art collection. It was whilst compiling the catalogue for the aforementioned exhibition that I began to turn my attention to the important stylistic influence of the Western Baroque on late seventeenth-century Russian gold and silver items and utensils decorated with painted fusol'skie) enamel. I subsequently developed my thoughts and observations in a chapter of the book "Russkaia emal' 12-nachala 20 veka" (Russian Enamel from the Twelfth to the Beginning of the Twentieth Century). It then occurred to me that I might try and identify the traces of the Baroque stylistic influence on a wider range of Russian seventeenth-century art, including icons, oil paintings, frescoes and decorative-applied art. This I succeeded in doing at London University as part of MPhil research under the supervision of Dr Lindsey Hughes, without whose constant support and advise this work would never have been written. I would like to take this opportunity to express my profound gratitude to her. I should also like to thank Nick Ukiah for his 8 outstanding translation of my dissertation. My thanks also go to the administration of SSEES and the librarians of London University. N.K. May 1994, London I. INTRODUCTION 10 1. AIMS OF THE WORK The late seventeenth century was a period in Russian history which saw the beginnings of large-scale cultural changes, a time of formation in the national consciousness of a new paradigm of reality, a new "image of the world" and of man. In essence, this period saw the beginnings of the changeover from one epoch in Russian history to a new age, the transition from the Middle Ages to the Modern period, heralded by the radical reforms of Peter I. This transitional period is usually considered in Russian historiography to have begun in the mid- Seventeenth to early eighteenth centuries. Whereas in Western European history the transition from the Middle Ages to the Modern period took place over nearly three centuries (taking in its course the Renaissance and Reformation periods), in Russia this period of historical and cultural development lasted just over half a century. The accelerated pace of this process of transition from the Middle Ages to the Modern period, and the short period of time that the transition lasted, exerted a decisive influence on the character of Russian culture (in particular, Russian art) of this transitional period. The development of West European art of the time of transition into the culture of the Modern period was smooth and evolutionary in nature, whilst Russian art of the late seventeenth century developed in an atmosphere of spiritual and social crisis. Describing late 11 seventeenth-century Russian culture, the Russian cultural historian, B.I.Krasnobaev, writes that: "the new^ussian culture did not develop smoothly from that of the Middle Ages. On the contrary, its birth was the result of a crisis, that is, the development and sharpening of contradictions within the culture of the Middle Ages"[l]. This dramatic crisis in traditional Russian culture, caused by a socio-economic crisis, explains to a large extent the desire on the part of Russian artists of this time to use stylistic elements of the Baroque in their work - an artistic style always tending towards affectation, tragic exaltation and dramatic intensity. Until recently, this period of Russian history and Russian art was not considered by analysts to be an independent cultural period, with its own characteristics (differing from the periods which came before and after it), manifesting its own unique philosophical system of viewing and understanding the world, which conditioned in turn its system of artistic symbolism and semiotics. More often than not, historians of Russian art of this transitional period have seen in it merely a somewhat weaker expression of artistic elements from the following period - the Modern period, which is bound up in Russia with the reforms of Peter the Great. This view of Russian culture (art) of the seventeenth century distorts and impoverishes our understanding of its characteristics and its place in the history of Russian art. For this very 12 reason it is difficult not to agree with S .A.Vaigachev that "the approach, whereby the philosophical content of aspects of cultural life in the transitional period is evaluated on the basis of the achievements of the cultural period which followed it, is, in our view, deeply mistaken, since...this approach in essence assigns to Russian seventeenth century culture nothing more than an auxiliary role, as the preparation for the so-called "new" ("secular") culture of the following period"[2]. One of the aims of this work is the substantiation of a definite autonomy for late seventeenth-century