G Model DENDRO-25341; No. of Pages 9 ARTICLE IN PRESS Dendrochronologia xxx (2015) xxx–xxx Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Dendrochronologia journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/dendro Combined dendrochronological and radiocarbon dating of three Russian icons from the 15th–17th century a,∗ a b,c Vladimir Matskovsky , Andrey Dolgikh , Konstantin Voronin a Institute of Geography RAS, 119017, Staromonetniy pereulok 29, Moscow, Russia b Institute of Archaeology RAS, 117036, Dmitryɑ Ulyanovɑ st. 19, Moscow, Russia c Stolichnoe Archaeological Bureau, 119121, Iljinka st. 4, office 226, Moscow, Russia a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t Article history: Dendrochronology is usually the only method of precise dating of unsigned art objects made on or of Received 10 June 2015 wood. It has a long history of application in Europe, however in Russia such an approach is still at an Received in revised form 9 October 2015 infant stage, despite its cultural importance. Here we present the results of dendrochronological and Accepted 12 October 2015 radiocarbon accelerated mass spectrometry (AMS) dating of three medieval icons from the 15th–17th Available online xxx century that originate from the North of European Russia and are painted on wooden panels made from Scots pines. For each icon the wooden panels were dendrochronologically studied and five to six AMS Keywords: dates were made. Two icons were successfully dendro-dated whereas one failed to be reliably cross-dated Icons Wiggle-matching with the existing master tree-ring chronologies, but was dated by radiocarbon wiggle-matching. Wiggle- matching of radiocarbon dates is the most promising method for dating Russian icons in the absence of a Wood dating Radiocarbon dating dense dendrochronological network. However, for this case uncertainties connected with the radiocarbon Russia method have to be taken into account and further studies of these uncertainties must be undertaken by Wood painting comparing dendro-dated and radiocarbon-dated wooden works of art. Our results, moreover, showed Cultural heritage that in two cases art-historical dates were by five to ten decades older than the earliest possible time of the creation of the icons, based on dendrochronology. © 2015 Elsevier GmbH. All rights reserved. 1. Introduction In Russia previously only one art object has been dated dendrochronologically—it was a Dexiokratusa icon from Velikiy Dendrochronological dating is usually the only method of pre- Novgorod (Voronin et al., 2015). There are two main reasons for cisely dating unsigned art objects made on or of wood. Whereas this poor state of such research: (1) sparse dendrochronological numerous studies are dedicated to this topic in Europe (e.g., Bauch network mainly representing coniferous species (mainly pine and and Eckstein, 1970; Lavier and Lambert, 1996; Kuniholm, 2000; spruce) and (2) problems with getting permission for the analyses Wazny, 2002), there are quite few of them in Russia (here we take of art objects in museums and galleries. only the European part of the country). In Eastern Europe several The three icons—“Mother of God with the Child, Jerusalem type” works were carried out on radiocarbon dating (Kovalyukh et al., (MOG), “St. Nicholas of Myra in Lycia with scenes of his life” (NIC) 2001) and on dendrochronological dating (Krapiec˛ and Barniak, and “St. George and the Dragon miracle” (GEO) have been selected 2007) of icons painted between the 12th and 19th century. for the analysis because they are painted on coniferous panels, they Up to now, medieval Russian icons were mostly studied by represent one region—North-West (NW) of European Russia (ER), art historians and chemistry technologists, but they usually date which has a dense dendrochronological network (Fig. 1) and a con- these objects on the basis of an empirical relative chronology. This tinuous period of art development—from the early 15th to 17th chronology is based on several historically dated Russian icons. century according to attributions by art historians and chemistry Usually it is not possible to define a precise date of creation of technologists. The purposes of this study were (1) to acquire precise historically undated icons on the base of such chronologies. Time and reliable dates for the icons; (2) to compare them with previ- intervals for these dates are usually twenty to thirty years wide. ous attributions by means of an art-historical analysis and chemical analyses of pigments; and (3) to assess additional statistical mate- rial for comparison of dendrochronological and radiocarbon dates ∗ from medieval icons in the NW ER. Corresponding author. E-mail address: [email protected] (V. Matskovsky). http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.dendro.2015.10.002 1125-7865/© 2015 Elsevier GmbH. All rights reserved. Please cite this article in press as: Matskovsky, V., et al., Combined dendrochronological and radiocarbon dating of three Russian icons from the 15th–17th century. Dendrochronologia (2015), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.dendro.2015.10.002 G Model DENDRO-25341; No. of Pages 9 ARTICLE IN PRESS 2 V. Matskovsky et al. / Dendrochronologia xxx (2015) xxx–xxx Fig. 1. Map of Europe (inset) and of the study region in Western Russia. Reference tree-ring chronologies of pine are marked with large blue circles (numbers correspond to the ones in Table 1). Locations of the icons are marked with squares and codes. Towns are marked with small black circles. All toponyms in the text are reflected on the map. (For interpretation of the references to color in this figure legend, the reader is referred to the web version of this article.) 2. Materials tury, possibly made by an unknown master from Rostov Velikiy (Sayenkova, 2011). 2.1. The icon “Mother of God with the Child, Jerusalem type” (MOG) 2.3. The icon “Saint George and the Dragon miracle” (GEO) The MOG icon was painted on one wooden panel of 64 cm high, The GEO icon was painted on a wooden panel made from one 43 cm wide and 2.5 cm thick (Fig. 2). It belongs to the type of image board of 73 cm high, 54 cm wide and 3.7 cm thick (Fig. 2). The gesso of the Mother of God which was popular in the lands of Velikiy Nov- of this icon, which is the ground coat for the painting, is based on gorod in the 15th–16th century. The art historian O.V. Lelekova and chalk. According to the style of painting it was created in the Rus- the chemistry technologist M.M. Naumova (National Institute of sian North between the end of the 16th—the beginning of the 17th Renovation, Moscow, personal communication) referred this icon century. to the Velikiy Novgorod art tradition of the beginning of the 15th It is not always possible to determine the exact location where century. E.M. Sayenkova (National Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow, per- the icon has been painted. For the three icons it was only possi- sonal communication) attributed this icon to the same art tradition ble to trace them back to the locations on the map (Fig. 1): MOG and time period. and NIC were brought from Vologda and GEO from Ferapontovo, Vologda region. From additional sources it is more likely that the GEO icon was not transported before, but MOG and NIC probably were. Nevertheless the good condition of the wood reflects “north- 2.2. The icon “St. Nicholas of Myra in Lycia with scenes of his life” (NIC) ern” conditions for the residence of the icons because the icons are not damaged by wood destructive insects. The NIC icon was painted on a wooden panel consisting of two boards, which were later fixed by three additional boards on the 3. Methods back (not analyzed). These two boards were produced from one tree. The size of the icon is 78 cm high, 61 cm wide and 3.4 cm thick For dendrochronological analysis, the upper or lower edge of (Fig. 2). The icon belongs to a small group of the Russian medieval the panel was prepared with a sharp razor blade and then high- icons with a red background. This type of icons was painted in Rus- resolution macro-photographs of cross-sections of the boards were sian lands from the 13th to the 15th century. O.V. Lelekova and taken. These photographs were combined, and each tree ring was © M.M. Naumova refer this icon to the beginning of the 15th century. marked and measured in CooRecorder (Cybis, 2006) to obtain an E.M. Sayenkova also refers this icon to the first half of the 15th cen- accurate tree-ring width series. Cross-dating was performed by Please cite this article in press as: Matskovsky, V., et al., Combined dendrochronological and radiocarbon dating of three Russian icons from the 15th–17th century. Dendrochronologia (2015), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.dendro.2015.10.002 G Model DENDRO-25341; No. of Pages 9 ARTICLE IN PRESS V. Matskovsky et al. / Dendrochronologia xxx (2015) xxx–xxx 3 Table 1 Reference tree-ring width chronologies of pine. # Place Description Ref. Approx. # of samples Years AD coordinates 1 Solovki Solovki islands, White Solomina et al., 2011 65.09N 35.64E 243 1185–2009 sea. Living trees, architectural wood 2 Onega Arkhangelsk region. Chernykh and Sergeeva, 1997, 63.48N 39.14E 62 1367–1784 Architectural wood updated in the Institute of (churches) Geography, Russian Academy of Sciences (IGRAS), 2013 3 Kirillov Vologda region. Living Solomina et al., 2011; 59.86N 38.37E 282 1085–2009 trees, architectural and Karpukhin and Matskovsky, archaeological wood 2014 4 Vologda Vologda town. Karpukhin, 2009; updated in 59.22N 39.88E 215 1518–1881 Architectural wood IGRAS (2013) 5 Novgorod Novgorod town. ITRDB (russ1); Kolchin, 1963; 58.52N 31.28E 92 1102–1514 Archaeological wood Tarabardina, 2001, corrected and updated in IGRAS, 2014 6 Kostroma Kostroma town.