Russian Modernism

and the Russo-

Byzantine Revival

Maria Taroutina

The Icon and

the Square
The Icon and the Square
Maria Taroutina

THE ICON AND THE SQUARE

Russian Modernism
and the Russo-Byzantine Revival

The Pennsylvania State University Press

University Park, Pennsylvania
 Copyright © 2018 Maria Taroutina
All rights reserved
Printed in the United States of America
This book is made possible by a
Published by The Pennsylvania State
collaborative grant from the
University Press,
Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.
University Park, PA 16802–1003

Library of Congress Cataloging-​in-​

The Pennsylvania State University Press
Publication Data
is a member of the Association
of University Presses.
Names: Taroutina, Maria, author.
Title: The icon and the square :
It is the policy of The Pennsylvania State
Russian modernism and the Russo-​
University Press to use acid-​free paper.
Byzantine revival / Maria Taroutina.
Publications on uncoated stock satisfy
Description: University Park,
the minimum requirements of American
Pennsylvania : The Pennsylvania
National Standard for Information
State University Press, [2018] |
Sciences—Permanence of Paper
Includes bibliographical references
for Printed Library Material,
and index.
ansi z39.48–1992.
Summary: “Charts the rediscovery
and rigorous reassessment of the
Additional credits: page ii, Vasily
medieval Russo-​Byzantine artistic
Kandinsky, Concentric Circles, 1913
tradition in Russia in the years
(fig. 91); page v, Mikhail Vrubel,
1860–1920. Explores the link between
Annunciation, 1884 (fig. 39); page vii,
Byzantine revivalism and modernist
Mikhail Vrubel, Six-​Winged Seraph
experimentation, which ultimately
(Azrael), 1904 (fig. 59); page xii, Kazimir
made a significant and lasting impact
Malevich, Self-​Portrait, 1933 (fig. 111);
on twentieth-​century avant-​garde
page xvi, Jean-​Joseph Benjamin-​
movements”—Provided by publisher.
Constant, The Empress Theodora at the
Identifiers: lccn 2018007213 |
Coliseum, 1889 (fig. 9); page 12, Andrei
isbn 9780271081045 (cloth : alk.
Rublev, Virgin of Vladimir, fifteenth
paper)
century (fig. 28); page 58, Saints Boris
Subjects: lcsh: Art, Russian—19th
and Gleb, fourteenth century (fig. 30);
century. | Art, Russian—20th
page 96, Angels, Last Judgment, twelfth
century. | Art, Modern—Byzantine
century (fig. 43); page 136, The Fiery
influences. | Modernism (Art)—
Ascension of the Prophet Elijah, fifteenth
Russia. | Art, Byzantine—Influence.
century (fig. 77); page 178, Vladimir
Classification: lcc n6987 .t37 2018 |
Tatlin, Painterly Relief, 1913–14 (fig. 105);
ddc 709​.47​/09034—dc23
page 218, Natalia Goncharova, Religious
lc record available at https://​lccn​.loc​
Composition: Virgin (with Ornament),
.gov​/2018007213
1910 (fig. 73); page 224, Mikhail Vrubel,
Lamentation i, 1887 (fig. 51); page 250,
Aleksei Afanasiev, Saints John the Apostle
and James the Great, 1894–97 (fig. 108).
 CONTENTS

List of Illustrations  vii

Acknowledgments xiii
Note on Transliteration,
Translation, and Dates  xv

Introduction 1

1 Byzantium Reconsidered: Revivalism,

Avant-Gardism, and the New Art Criticism  13

2 From Constantinople to Moscow and

St. Petersburg: Museums, Exhibitions,
and Private Collections 59

3 Angels Becoming Demons: Mikhail Vrubel’s

Modernist Beginnings 97

4 Vasily Kandinsky’s Iconic Subconscious and the

Search for the Spiritual in Art  137

5 Toward a New Icon: Kazimir Malevich, Vladimir

Tatlin, and the Cult of Nonobjectivity  179

Epilogue 219

Notes 225
Selected Bibliography  251
Index 261
Illustrations
1. Andrei Rublev, Old Testament Trinity, 1425–27.
Photo: Bridgeman Images.  14
2. Simon Ushakov, Old Testament Trinity, 1671.
Photo: Bridgeman Images.  15
3. Andrei Voronikhin, Kazan Cathedral, St. Peters-
burg, 1801–18. Photo: Bridgeman Images.  16
4. Ivan Martos, Saint John the Baptist, 1804–7.
Photo: Bridgeman Images.  17
5. Vladimir Borovikovsky, Saint Catherine, 1804–9.
Photo: Bridgeman Images.  18
6. Karl Briullov, Assumption of the Virgin, 1836–
42. Photo © 2017, State Russian Museum,
St. Petersburg. 19
7. Koimesis, 1105–6. Fresco. Church of Panagia
Phorbiotissa, Asinou, Cyprus. Photo © 2017,
A. Dagli Orti / SCALA, Florence.  20
8. Vladimir Borovikovsky, Royal Doors with
Christ, the Virgin, the Archangel Gabriel and the
Four Evangelists, 1804–9. Photo: Bridgeman
Images. 21
9. Jean-​Joseph Benjamin-​Constant, The Empress
Theodora at the Coliseum, 1889. Photo © Chris-
tie’s Images / Bridgeman Images.  24
10. Vasilii Smirnov, The Morning Visit of a Byzantine
Empress to the Graves of Her Ancestors, 1889.
Photo: Bridgeman Images.  27
11. Detail of Vasilii Smirnov, The Morning Visit of a
Byzantine Empress to the Graves of Her Ancestors,
1889. Photo: Bridgeman Images.  28
12. Lunette Mosaic of Saint Lawrence, fifth century,
Galla Placidia Mausoleum, Ravenna. Photo:
De Agostini Picture Library / A. Dagli Orti /
Bridgeman Images.  28
13. Detail of Vasilii Smirnov, The Morning Visit of a
Byzantine Empress to the Graves of Her Ancestors,
1889. Photo: Bridgeman Images.  29
14. Mosaic of Apostles with Fountain of Life, fifth
century, Galla Placidia Mausoleum, Ravenna.
Photo: Bridgeman Images.  29
15. Detail of Vasilii Smirnov, The Morning Visit of a
Byzantine Empress to the Graves of Her Ancestors,
1889. Photo: Bridgeman Images.  30
16. Detail of Mosaic of Empress Theodora and Her
Retinue, sixth-​century, Church of San Vitale,
Ravenna. Photo: Bridgeman Images.  30
17. Constantine Thon, Cathedral of Christ the
Savior, Moscow, 1837–82. Photo: Calmann &
King Ltd. / Bridgeman Images.  32
18. Iakov Kapkov, Metropolitan Alexis Healing the
Tatar Queen Taidula of Blindness While Dzhanibeg
Looks On, 1840. Photo: Bridgeman Images.  35
19. Dionysius and workshop, Metropolitan Alexis
Healing the Tatar Queen Taidula of Blindness,
detail of Metropolitan Alexis Vita Icon, 1480.
Photo: Bridgeman Images.  36
20. Grigorii Gagarin, murals of the Betania Monas-
tery, from Le Caucase pittoresque, 1847. Photo:
Bridgeman Images.  37
21. Interior view of the Cathedral of St. Vladimir,
Kiev, 1862–82. Photo: Galina Mardilovich.  40
22. Prerestoration photograph of Andrei Rublev’s
Old Testament Trinity with its revetment,
1904. 62
23. Prerestoration photograph of Andrei Rublev’s
Old Testament Trinity without its revetment,
1904. 63
vii
 24. Vasilii Vereshchagin, A Room in Alexander
Basilewsky’s Residence in Paris, 1870. Photo:
Bridgeman Images.  65
25. Saint Theodore the Dragon Slayer, thirteenth
century. Photo © The State Hermitage Museum,
St. Petersburg. 66
26. Installation view of Christian antiquities in
the Russian Museum of His Imperial Majesty
Alexander III, 1898. Photo © 2017, State Russian
Museum, St. Petersburg.  69
27. Christ Pantocrator, 1363. Photo: The State Her-
mitage Museum, St. Petersburg.  70
28. Andrei Rublev, Virgin of Vladimir, fifteenth cen-
tury. Photo: Bridgeman Images.  70
29. Installation view of the Novgorod Icon Cham-
ber in the Russian Museum of His Imperial
Majesty Alexander III, 1914. Photo © 2017, State
Russian Museum, St. Petersburg.  72
30. Saints Boris and Gleb, fourteenth century. Photo:
Bridgeman Images.  73
31. Saint John the Evangelist and Prochorus, from the
Zaraisk Gospel, 1401, fol. 157v. Photo: Bridge-
man Images.  74
32. The Pashkov House, Moscow, 1784–86.  75
33. Vladimir Sherwood and Anatolii Semenov,
Approved Design of the Historical Museum Build-
ing, 1875. Photo: Russian State Library, Mos-
cow / Bridgeman Images.  80
34. Emperor Leo VI Prostrated Before Christ Pan-
tocrator, 1880s, restored 1986–2002. Photo
© The State Historical Museum, Moscow.  81
35. Saint George, eleventh century. Photo
© The State Historical Museum, Moscow.  82
36. The Battle of Novgorod with Suzdal, 1880s,
restored 1986–2002. Photo © The State Histori-
cal Museum, Moscow.  83
37. Alabaster figures of prophets and peacocks,
1880s, restored 1986–2002. Vladimir Room,
State Historical Museum, Moscow.  84
viii Illustrations
38. Mikhail Vrubel, Angels’ Lamentation, 1884.
Photo © The Museum of St. Cyril’s Church,
Kiev. 98
39. Mikhail Vrubel, Annunciation, 1884.  100
40. The Virgin Mary, eleventh-​century mosaic,
St. Sophia Cathedral, Kiev. Photo: Bridgeman
Images. 100
41. Annunciation, late twelfth century. Photo:
De Agostini Picture Library / Bridgeman
Images. 101
42. Mikhail Vrubel, Two Angels with Labara, 1884.
Photo © The Museum of St. Cyril’s Church,
Kiev. 102
43. Angels, detail of Last Judgment, twelfth-​century
mosaic, Cathedral of Santa Maria Assunta,
Torcello, Venice. Photo: Mondadori Portfolio /
Archivio Magliani / Mauro Magliani & Barbara
Piovan / Bridgeman Images.  103
44. Mikhail Vrubel, A Man in a Russian Old-​
Style Costume, 1886. Photo © 2017, SCALA,
Florence. 104
45. Christ Pantocrator with Archangels, eleventh cen-
tury, St. Sophia Cathedral, Kiev. Photo: Bridge-
man Images.  105
46. Mikhail Vrubel, Seated Demon, 1890. Photo:
Bridgeman Images.  106
47. Detail of Mikhail Vrubel, Seated Demon, 1890.
Photo: author.  107
48. Mikhail Vrubel, Portrait of Savva Mamontov,
1897. Photo: Bridgeman Images.  108
49. Reproductions of Paul Cézanne’s Mont Sainte-​
Victoire and Mikhail’s Vrubel’s Demon Looking at
a Dale. 109
50. Viktor Vasnetsov, Holy Trinity, 1907. Photo:
Bridgeman Images.  111
51. Mikhail Vrubel, Lamentation i, 1887. Photo:
Bridgeman Images.  115
52. Detail of Mikhail Vrubel, Lamentation ii, 1887.
Photo © 2017, SCALA, Florence.  116
 53. Mikhail Vrubel, Study for the Virgin, 1884. Photo:
Bridgeman Images.  119
54. Mikhail Vrubel, Head of Demon, 1890. Photo:
Bridgeman Images.  119
55. Mikhail Vrubel, Head of an Angel, 1887,
or Head of the Demon, 1890. Photo: Bridgeman
Images. 120
56. Mikhail Vrubel, The Standing Demon (also
known as Seraph), 1904. Photo © 2017, State
Russian Museum, St. Petersburg.  121
57. Mikhail Vrubel, Demon Cast Down, 1902. Photo:
Bridgeman Images.  122
58. Mikhail Vrubel, Head of John the Baptist,
1905. Photo © 2017, State Russian Museum,
St. Petersburg. 123
59. Mikhail Vrubel, Six-​Winged Seraph (Azrael),
1904. Photo: Bridgeman Images.  124
60. Detail of Mikhail Vrubel, Six-​Winged Seraph
(Azrael), 1904. Photo: author.  125
61. Mikhail Vrubel, The Vision of the Prophet Ezekiel,
1905. Photo: Bridgeman Images.  126
62. Mikhail Larionov, Blue Rayonism (Portrait of
a Fool), 1912. © ADAGP, Paris, 2017. Photo
© Leonard Hutton Galleries, New York.  127
63. Vasilii Polenov, Moscow Courtyard, 1878. Photo:
Bridgeman Images.  129
64. Gustave Caillebotte, Paris: A Rainy Day, 1877.
Photo: Bridgeman Images.  129
65. Naum Gabo, Head No. 2 (1916), enlarged ver-
sion, 1964. The Work of Naum Gabo © Nina
& Graham Williams. Photo © 2017, Album /
SCALA, Florence.  132
66. Mikhail Vrubel, Head of a Lion, 1891. Photo:
Bridgeman Images.  133
67. Mikhail Vrubel, Eastern Tale, 1886. Photo:
State Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow / Bridgeman
Images. 134
68. Gabriele Münter, Vasily Kandinsky at His
Desk in His Apartment at 36 Ainmillerstraße,
Munich, June 1911. Photo: Gabriele Münter- und
Johannes Eichner-​Stiftung, Munich.  140
69. Vasily Kandinsky, The Blessing of the Bread, 1889.
Photo: State Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow.  141
70. Vasily Kandinsky, Untitled, 1906–7. Photo:
Gabriele Münter- und Johannes Eichner-​
Stiftung, Munich.  142
71. Isaiah’s Prayer with Dawn, from the Paris Psalter,
tenth century, fol. 435v. Photo: Bibliothèque
nationale de France.  143
72. Vasily Kandinsky, Colorful Life (Motley Life),
1907. Photo: Bridgeman Images.  145
73. Natalia Goncharova, Religious Composition:
Virgin (with Ornament), 1910. © ADAGP, Paris,
2017. Photo: Bridgeman Images.  150
74. Saint George and the Dragon, nineteenth cen-
tury. Photo © Centre Pompidou, MNAM-​
CCI, Dist. RMN-​Grand Palais. Droits
réservés. 155
75. Vasily Kandinsky, In the Black Square, 1923.
Photo: The Solomon R. Guggenheim Founda-
tion / Art Resource, New York.  155
76. Vasily Kandinsky, Yellow-​Red-​Blue, 1925. Photo:
Bridgeman Images.  156
77. The Fiery Ascension of the Prophet Elijah,
Novgorod icon, fifteenth century. Photo
© Bibliotekar.ru. 157
78. Vasily Kandinsky, All Saints i, 1911. Photo: Peter
Willi / Bridgeman Images.  158
79. Vasily Kandinsky, All Saints ii, 1911. Photo: Städ-
tische Galerie im Lenbachhaus, Munich.  159
80. Vasily Kandinsky, Red Spot ii, 1921. Photo:
De Agostini Picture Library / Bridgeman
Images. 160
81. Vasily Kandinsky, Impression iv (Gendarme),
1911. Photo: Städtische Galerie im Lenbachhaus,
Munich. 161
82. Christ’s Entry into Jerusalem, fifteenth century.
Photo © State Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow.  162
Illustrations ix
 83. Vasily Kandinsky, Last Judgment, undated. Photo
© Centre Pompidou, MNAM-​CCI, Dist. RMN-​
Grand Palais. Droits réservés.  163
84. Detail of Last Judgment, seventeenth-​century
fresco, St. Sophia Cathedral, Vologda. Photo:
Bridgeman Images.  164
85. Detail of Last Judgment, seventeenth-​century
fresco, St. Sophia Cathedral, Vologda. Photo:
Bridgeman Images.  164
86. Vasily Kandinsky, Composition v, 1911. Photo:
Bridgeman Images.  164
87. Detail of Vasily Kandinsky, All Saints i, 1911.
Photo: Peter Willi / Bridgeman Images.  165
88. Detail of Vasily Kandinsky, Yellow-​Red-​Blue,
1925. Photo: Bridgeman Images.  165
89. Last Judgment, Novgorod icon, sixteenth cen-
tury. Photo: Bridgeman Images.  166
90. Vasily Kandinsky, Composition vii, 1913. Photo:
Bridgeman Images.  167
91. Vasily Kandinsky, Concentric Circles, 1913. Photo:
Bridgeman Images.  168
92. Kazimir Malevich, Black Square, 1915. Photo:
author. 180
93. Posledniaia futuristicheskaia vystavka kartin 0,10
(nol’-desiat’) (Last Futurist Exhibition of Paint-
ings 0.10 [Zero-​Ten]), Khudozhestvennoe Buro,
Petrograd, December 1915–January 1916. Photo:
Bridgeman Images.  181
94. Vladimir Tatlin, Corner Counter-​Relief, 1914–15.
Photo © St. Petersburg State Archive of Cin-
ema, Photo, and Sound Documents.  181
95. Vladimir Tatlin, Corner Counter-​Relief, 1914–15.
Photo © St. Petersburg State Archive of Cin-
ema, Photo, and Sound Documents.  182
96. Lef Zak, Parody of a Kazimir Malevich Painting,
1908–9. Photo © RGALI.  185
97. Kazimir Malevich, Self-​Portrait (Sketch for
a Fresco Painting), 1907. Photo: Bridgeman
Images. 186
x Illustrations
98. Vladimir Tatlin, Sailor, 1911. Photo: Bridgeman
Images. 187
99. The Heavenly Ladder of Saint John Climacus,
twelfth century. Photo: Bridgeman Images.  188
100. Vladimir Tatlin, Female Model (Nude 1: Com-
position Based on a Female Nude), 1913. Photo:
Sputnik / Bridgeman Images.  189
101. Vladimir Tatlin, Seated Figure, 1913. Photo
© RGALI. 190
102. Natalia Goncharova, The Savior in Majesty,
1917–18. © ADAGP, Paris, 2017. Photo: State Tre-
tyakov Gallery, Moscow.  192
103. Henri Matisse, Spanish Still Life, 1910. © Suc-
cession H. Matisse. Photo: Bridgeman
Images. 193
104. Vladimir Tatlin, Composition-​Analysis,
1913. Photo © Städtische Kunsthalle
Düsseldorf. 194
105. Vladimir Tatlin, Painterly Relief, 1913–14. Photo:
Bridgeman Images.  195
106. Vladimir Tatlin, Study of Apostle Thomas on
the Cupola of the Church of St. George, Staraia
Ladoga, 1905–10. Photo © 2017, SCALA,
Florence. 201
107. Apostle Thomas, twelfth-​century fresco, Church
of St. George, Staraia Ladoga. Photo: Bridge-
man Images.  202
108. Aleksei Afanasiev, Saints John the Apostle and
James the Great, 1894–97. Photo: author.  203
109. Deceased Kazimir Malevich in the funeral
hall, May 17, 1935. Photo © 2017, State Russian
Museum, St. Petersburg.  210
110. Kazimir Malevich, Suprematism: Self-​Portrait
in Two Dimensions, 1915. Photo: Collection
Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam.  212
111. Kazimir Malevich, Self-​Portrait, 1933. Photo:
Bridgeman Images.  214
112. Virgin Hodegetria of Smolensk, ca. 1450. Photo:
Bridgeman Images.  215
 113. Nikolai Suetin, Train Car with UNOVIS Sym- 115. Alexander Kosolapov, Caviar Icon, 1996. © 2017,
bol en Route to the Exhibition in Moscow, 1920. Alexander Kosolapov / Artists Rights Society
© Nikolaj Mihailovic Suetin / BILD-​KUNST, (ARS), New York. Photo: State Tretyakov Gal-
Bonn–SACK, Seoul, 2017. Photo © 2017, State lery, Moscow / Bridgeman Images.  222
Russian Museum, St. Petersburg.  216
114. Pussy Riot performing “Punk Prayer: Mother
of God, Drive Putin Away!,” February 21, 2012,
Moscow. Photo © ITAR-​TASS.  220

Illustrations xi
Acknowledgments
The publication of this book would not have been
possible without the generous support of a number
of different individuals and institutions. As is the
case with many first books, work on this project
began during my graduate-​school years in the
Department of the History of Art at Yale University.
Accordingly, I am grateful to the faculty and gradu-
ate students of the department for providing a rig-
orous, vibrant, and intellectually rich environment,
in which this text was first conceived and elaborated.
I owe a huge debt of gratitude to my two dissertation
advisors, Tim Barringer and David Joselit, whose
generosity, attentiveness, and continued support
have benefited me far beyond the course of my
graduate studies. I am likewise deeply indebted to
Robert S. Nelson for his sagacious guidance, unfail-
ing good counsel, and sustained attention to my
work. I am especially thankful for his thoughtful and
constructive reading of the final manuscript in its
entirety. Molly Brunson has been an inspiring inter-
locutor, guide, and mentor in the field of Russian art,
both at Yale and beyond. Finally, I must thank the
two anonymous reviewers of the manuscript, whose
incisive and penetrating comments have both deep-
ened and enriched the present work.
I have been privileged to be part of a small inter-
national community of exceptionally gifted and cre-
ative scholars of Russian art, whose collective inter-
est in and feedback on my work has helped me to
develop my ideas and research in exciting new direc-
tions. In particular, I would like to mention Rosalind
Polly Blakesley, Wendy Salmond, Jane Sharp, Galina
Mardilovich, Margaret Samu, Aglaya Glebova,
Kristin Romberg, Maria Mileeva, Alison Hilton,
Louise Hardiman, Nicola Kozicharow, Myroslava
Mudrak, Allison Leigh, and Maria Gough. I am like-
wise fortunate to have found a stimulating academic
milieu at Yale-​NUS College in Singapore, where a
number of attentive and spirited colleagues have
offered advice, guidance, and support throughout
the writing process. I am especially thankful to
Mira Seo, Jessica Hanser, Robin Hemley, Nicholas
Tolwinski, Sarah Weiss, Andrew Hui, Nozomi Naoi,
Pattaratorn Chirapravati, and Rajeev Patke.
In Russia, I am grateful to these institutions
for facilitating my research: the State Tretyakov
Gallery, the Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts,
the State Historical Museum, the State Hermitage
Museum, the State Russian Museum, the Russian
State Archive of Literature and Art, the Russian
State Library, and the Federal State Cultural Estab-
lishment Artistic and Literary Museum–Reserve
Abramtsevo. Special thanks are also due to the
following individuals for their invaluable help with
obtaining images: Marina Ivanova, Vera Kessenich,
Zhana Etsina, Eteri Tsuladze, Vyacheslav Kornienko,
Marta Koscielniak, and Giulia Leali.
I would also like to acknowledge the staff at
Pennsylvania State University Press for their superb
assistance throughout the publication process. The
executive editor, Eleanor Goodman, has enthusiasti-
cally supported this project from the very beginning,
and it has been an absolute pleasure to work with
her at every stage. Cali Buckley and Hannah Hebert
have lent valuable help throughout the production
process. I am likewise exceedingly grateful to Keith
xiii
 Monley for his meticulous, attentive, and sensitive
copyediting of the manuscript and to Matthew Wil-
liams for his design and production expertise. The
completion and publication of this book would not
have been possible without the generous funding
provided by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the
Georgette Chen Trust, and Yale-​NUS College.
Portions of this material have appeared in the
following publications: Byzantium/Modernism:
The Byzantine as Method in Modernity, ed. Roland
Betancourt and Maria Taroutina (Leiden: Brill,
2015); “From Angels to Demons: Mikhail Vrubel
and the Search for a Modernist Idiom,” in Modernism
and the Spiritual in Russian Art, ed. Louise Hardiman
and Nicola Kozicharow (Cambridge: Open Book,
2017); “Second Rome or Seat of Savagery: The Case
of Byzantium in Nineteenth-​Century European
Imaginaries,” in Civilisation and Nineteenth-​Century
Art: A European Concept in Global Context, ed. David
O’Brien (Manchester: Manchester University Press,
2016); and “Iconic Encounters: Vasily Kandinsky’s
and Pavel Florensky’s ‘Mystic Productivism,’ ”
Postmedieval: A Journal of Medieval Cultural Studies 7,
no. 1 (March 2016): 55–65.
My heartfelt thanks to a wonderful group of
steadfast and devoted friends, whose kindness,
warmth, and good humor have enriched my life over
the years that I have been at work on this book, espe-
cially Sarah Karmazin, Jeanne-​Marie Jackson, Tatsi-
ana Zhurauliova, Lauren Turner, Vanessa Cervantes,
Roland Betancourt, Jorge Gomez-​Tejada, Tomasz
Siergiejuk, and Marta Herschkopf.
xiv Acknowledgments
Finally, and most importantly, I must thank my
family. Without their love, unconditional faith, and
moral support, this book would never have been
written. I am grateful to my parents-​in-​law, Denis
and Ghislaine Pitard, for their kind encouragement
and sincere interest in my work. My remarkably
energetic grandmother, Antonina Rogailina, not
only tracked down rare books and manuscripts in
Russia but also contacted archivists and curators on
my behalf, facilitating the progress of this project
in a way that few grandmothers probably could.
I would also like to acknowledge my late grandpar-
ents, Vladimir Konko, Alla Taroutina, and Mikhail
Rogailin, whose passion for the arts continues to
reinforce my own dedication to the discipline of
art history. Most of all, I thank my parents, Igor and
Evgenia Taroutina, to whom I owe not just my life
but every possible academic, professional, and per-
sonal success. Words cannot express my profound
gratitude for their never-​ending patience, love, and
understanding, and especially for their numerous
sacrifices in support of my academic goals and aspi-
rations. I would also like to recognize Genelyn Man-
derico, whose valuable work enables my own. Last,
I thank Josselin, Michel-​Eugene, and Juana, who
never take me too seriously and who fill my life with
sunshine, warmth, and endless laughter. My family
continually reminds me to write for a wider audi-
ence beyond the academe, and so this book is for
them.
Note on Transliteration, Translation, and Dates
In the interest of readability and familiarity, this
book uses a modified form of the Library of Con-
gress system of transliteration. I generally omit
diacritical marks and yer signs except in the titles of
Russian publications listed in the reference notes.
I use ii and yi at the end of proper names except in
cases of commonly established spellings, such as
Kandinsky, Florensky, and Tolstoy (instead of Kan-
dinskii, Florenskii, and Tolstoi). I likewise use famil-
iar English variants of place names, first names, and
the names of rulers, for example Moscow instead of
Moskva, Alexander instead of Aleksandr, and Nich-
olas I instead Nikolai I. The dates of artworks, exhi-
bitions, important historical events, and the reigns
of different rulers are included in parentheses on
first mention, as are the birth and death dates of key
individuals. All dates conform to the postrevolution-
ary Gregorian calendar. Unless otherwise stated, all
Russian and French translations are my own. When
quoting existing translations, I have sometimes
made slight modifications in the interests of clarity
and precision.
xv
INTRODUCTION
In 1910 the Russian artist, critic, and art historian
Alexander Benois (1870–1960) proclaimed that “one
way or another, all new artists are guilty of Byzan-
tinism”—a trend that, according to him, was neither
isolated nor localized, but signaled a widespread
“turning point” in the artistic culture of the early
twentieth century. Singling out Henri Matisse as one
of the most important pioneers of “Byzantinism,”
Benois wrote: “Matisse develops mistakes and blun-
ders into a system, a theory. . . . A return to ‘correct’
design, to ‘accurate’ coloration, is no longer possible
for him. Any such return would be a compromise.”
For Benois, the term “Byzantinism” signified not only
a particular set of modernist pictorial values, which
he identified as a “simplified style, monumentality,
and primitive decorativeness,” but also a new theory
of art that firmly rejected the slightest hints of repre-
sentational illusionism as an aesthetic “compromise.”1
Benois’s deployment of the word “Byzantinism” can
be interpreted in two ways: either as a convenient
metaphor or historical analogy for “modernism” or
as a genuine (mis)reading of Byzantine goals and
aesthetics as anachronistically protomodern. In any
case, he was not alone in equating “Byzantinism”
with modernist painting. Only two years before him,
Roger Fry had similarly described the Postimpres-
sionist works of Signac, Gauguin, Van Gogh, and
Cézanne as “proto-​Byzantine,” articulating a cycli-
cal—rather than a teleological—theory of artistic
development. He argued that
Impressionism has existed before, in the Roman art of the
Empire, and it too was followed, as I believe inevitably,
by a movement similar to that observable in the Neo-​
Impressionists—we may call it for convenience Byzan-
tinism. In the mosaics of Sta Maria Maggiore . . . one can
see something of this transformation from Impressionism
in the original work to Byzantinism in subsequent resto-
rations. It is probably a mistake to suppose, as is usually
done, that Byzantinism was due to a loss of the technical
ability to be realistic, consequent upon barbarian inva-
sions. In the Eastern Empire there was never any loss of
technical skill; indeed, nothing could surpass the perfec-
tion of some Byzantine craftsmanship. Byzantinism was
the necessary outcome of Impressionism, a necessary and
inevitable reaction from it.2
1
 Modern art was thus understood by Benois and
Fry as an essentially Byzantine revival, one that had
intentionally shifted the representational paradigm,
much like Byzantine art had done centuries before.
This definition of modernism significantly
departs from conventional accounts of the subject,
which have largely prevailed to this day. Accord-
ing to these narratives, Edouard Manet and the
Impressionists inaugurated a distinctive new style in
painting in the 1860s and 1870s as a direct response
to the changing fabric of everyday life and especially
to transformations in the urban landscape and in
middle-​class leisure. The defining characteristic
of this novel modern art was a progressively self-​
conscious emphasis on its own materiality and the
two-​dimensionality of the canvas. Clement Green-
berg famously professed that
Manet’s became the first Modernist pictures by virtue of
the frankness with which they declared the flat surfaces on
which they were painted. The Impressionists, in Manet’s
wake, abjured underpainting and glazes, to leave the eye
under no doubt as to the fact that the colors they used
were made of paint that came from tubes or pots. . . . It was
the stressing of the ineluctable flatness of the surface that
remained, however, more fundamental than anything
else to the processes by which pictorial art criticized and
defined itself under Modernism.3
By contrast, the early twentieth-​century Rus-
sian theorists Nikolai Punin (1888–1953) and Nikolai
Tarabukin (1889–1956) argued that Manet and the
Impressionists marked the “end” of the “whole tra-
dition of European art,” instead of a new beginning,
since their practice was still essentially rooted in the
naturalist transcription of external reality, a project
that began during the Italian Renaissance.4 For them,
2 The Icon and the Square
Manet’s Olympia was nothing more than a modern-
ist revision of Titian’s Venus of Urbino, rather than a
complete rejection of that representational paradigm
tout court. Describing the Renaissance as a bankrupt
tradition, Punin pessimistically observed in 1913 that
“since the fall of the Byzantine Empire . . . European
painting had slowly and gradually edged toward its
demise. . . . Manet, Monet, Degas, Renoir . . . this
entire mass of international artists, this entire school
of followers—[is] an enormous procession of the
dead.”5 One explanation for this negative view was
the absence of a historical Renaissance in Russia,
which meant that the nation’s artists and critics had
to identify a different artistic “golden age” that they
could claim as their cultural patrimony. Further-
more, the external markers of modernity that were
so ubiquitous in Paris in the aftermath of Hauss­
mannization were much less pronounced in Moscow
and St. Petersburg. By the close of the nineteenth
century, Russia was significantly underindustrialized
in comparison to the other Great Powers. The coun-
try’s population was still largely agrarian, and despite
increasing urban development, the growth in Mos-
cow and St. Petersburg could not compete with the
dizzying proliferation of arcades, department stores,
street cafés, bars, and cabarets that were so prevalent
in other European capitals.
As a consequence, several scholars have char-
acterized Russian modernism as an exemplary case
of “alternative modernity,” which neither protested
nor retreated from the modern world, but instead
recast it “as a new, spiritual age.”6 Thus, for example,
in her study of Silver Age poetry, Martha M. F. Kelly
astutely observes that, “in Russia’s case, modernism
often takes on the aspect of a neo-​religious model of
modernity,” and the writings of poets such as Alex-
ander Blok, Mikhail Kuzmin, and Anna Akhmatova
actively fuse “the legacy of the Western humanities”
with the “ritual and insight” of Russian Ortho-
doxy—a combination that the authors believed could
“restore the fractured body of modern society.”7 In the
realm of the visual arts, critics such as Benois, Punin,
and Tarabukin looked equally to Byzantium and to
Russia’s Orthodox heritage as models of visuality and
systems of thought alternative to and distinct from
the cultural heritage of western Europe, models that
they believed possessed the capacity to revitalize the
hackneyed image world of modernity. For young
Russian artists, not only did Byzantine and medieval
Russian art provide a pictorial alternative to the per-
vasive salon painting still propagated by the European
academies, but it also offered a formal and conceptual
genealogy different from that of ascending French
modernism, which in turn allowed the emergent Rus-
sian avant-​garde to lay claim to complete originality
and independence from its European contemporaries
and—by extension—to avoid the damning accusa-
tion of “derivativeness.” Indeed, following Matisse’s
visit to Moscow in 1911, Russian commentators
repeatedly claimed that the Frenchman had come to
Russia to learn about modernism—especially from
the country’s medieval art—rather than to explain
or expound on modernist practices to Russian audi-
ences.8 More importantly, the Byzantine visual tradi-
tion offered artists, beyond purely pictorial affinities,
new ontological, phenomenological, and philosoph-
ical possibilities for refiguring the modern artwork.
Accordingly, moving beyond the examination of
strictly stylistic influence or art-​historical tendencies,
The Icon and the Square: Russian Modernism and the
Russo-​Byzantine Revival analyzes a dense network of
theological, political, aesthetic, and revivalist ideas
and motivations, as well as the discursive spaces and
artistic praxes that they engendered.
The term “Russo-​Byzantine” is itself a cultural
construction and for that reason is a fluid and mul-
tivalent designation. In the late nineteenth century
scholars such as Nikodim Kondakov (1844–1925)
and Dmitrii Ainalov (1862–1939) used this term with
reference to a type of medieval art and architecture
that was produced on Russian soil but manifested
“complete subjection to the Byzantine style.”9
Accordingly, in his various publications, Kondakov
went to great lengths to distinguish between “Byz-
antine,” “Russo-​Byzantine,” and purely “Russian”
pictorial languages, carefully attending to the minute
variations in style and iconography.
By contrast, during Nicholas I’s reign (1825–55),
the term “Russo-​Byzantine” was applied to a hybrid
revivalist style, in nineteenth-​century architecture
and design, that drew on both Byzantine and medi-
eval Russian prototypes. Popularized by architects
such as Constantine Thon (1794–1881) and artists
such as Timofei Neff and Fedor Solntsev (1801–
1892), this style was interchangeably referred to as
“Byzantine,” “Neo-​Byzantine,” “Russo-​Byzantine,”
and even “Neo-​Russian” throughout the second half
of the nineteenth century, thus demonstrating the
porous nature of these categories. More generally,
the rediscoveries of Byzantium and medieval Rus
could be said to constitute two sides of the same
coin, which fit into the broader transnational cat-
egory of romantic medieval revivalism that spread
through Europe in the wake of the Napoleonic Wars.
As a result, in multiple instances interest in Byzan-
tium tended to stimulate and perpetuate interest in
medieval Rus and vice versa.10
However, by the opening decades of the twen-
tieth century and in no small part thanks to the
pioneering work of Kondakov and his students,
commentators began increasingly to differentiate
Introduction 3
 between the “Byzantine” and “ancient Russian,” and
the “Neo-​Byzantine” and “Neo-​Russian” classifica-
tions as discrete cultural, art-​historical, and aesthetic
categories. In addition to advances in archaeological
and art-​historical knowledge, rising nationalism
played a significant role in the ideological recast-
ing of the icon as a medieval “masterpiece” and a
manifestation of a purely “Russian” artistic genius,
especially in the wake of the Russo-​Japanese War
(1904–5) and as a response to the rising interna-
tional tensions on the eve of World War I.
Over the past forty years, the word “Russo-​
Byzantine” has been applied both to the early medi-
eval Russian art and architecture produced under
Byzantine tutelage and to the subsequent revivalist
projects of the mid to late nineteenth century.11 More
importantly, this designation has also come to be used
as a broader signifier or shorthand for the Eastern
Orthodox aesthetic canon, which comprises a multi-
plicity of different styles, schools, and iconographies
but ultimately derives from medieval Byzantium and
expresses similar spiritual, material, and ornamen-
tal values.12 In the present book, I employ the term
“Russo-​Byzantine” in this final, more expansive way
to signify a discrete aesthetic, theological, and philo-
sophical tradition that began in Byzantium and was
subsequently elaborated in Russia and its neighboring
territories and stood apart from the mainstream prac-
tices of western Europe. In doing so, I take my cue
both from a number of early twentieth-​century theo-
rists such as Nikolai Tarabukin and from contempo-
rary scholars such as Jane Sharp, who have all used the
“Russo-​Byzantine” designation similarly. Having said
that, I nevertheless maintain a distinction between
“Byzantine” and “ancient Russian” in instances where
period commentators have made a conscious deci-
sion to emphasize these as separate artistic categories.
4 The Icon and the Square
Also wanting definition as I use it is the term
“revival.” Needless to say, the revivalist Russo-​
Byzantine cathedrals, erected in the nineteenth
century, were, not strictly speaking, “reconstruc-
tions” of the medieval prototypes. Instead, they
were heavily mediated by the aesthetics, tastes, and
ideas of the period. Even ostensibly historically
responsible restoration projects often tended toward
a “fictional” reimagining of medieval monuments in
their own nineteenth-​century image.13 As such, the
Russo-​Byzantine revival was not simply an innocent
recovery of a lost artistic tradition but an invested,
purposeful, and contingent phenomenon. This is
hardly surprising, given the broader pan-​European
interest in resurrecting the artistic achievements of
past epochs in the service of new aesthetic goals,
cultural needs, and political demands. In many ways,
the “long” nineteenth century can be characterized
as a succession of revivalist movements in art and
architecture, the most well known of which include
Jacques-​Louis David and neoclassicism, the German
and English Romantics and the Gothic Revival,
and finally the Aesthetic and Symbolist movements
and a renewed interest in Hellenism. However,
many of these movements were not conservative
or retrograde “returns” to past traditions and styles
but radical protests against the prevailing tastes and
artistic practices of a particular period. To state it
slightly differently, revivalism was often deployed as
a vanguard strategy for bringing about change and
innovation in the visual and decorative arts.
In Russia—as in the rest of Europe—there were
a multitude of different antiquities from which to
choose, including ancient Greece and Rome, Egypt,
Scythia, and even Persia.14 However, more often
than not fascination with these various civilizations
tended to follow the transient fashions and trends
of western Europe. What is more, it was frequently
refracted through the centrifugal forces generated
by the increasingly dominant interest in Byzantium
and Russia’s pre-​Petrine heritage. Thus, in her sem-
inal study of Russian Egyptomania, Lada Panova
observes that it was a quintessentially belated
phenomenon, largely driven by an Occidental,
European attraction to the exotic, ancient “Orient.”15
More importantly, she writes that Russian engage-
ment with Egypt was initially stimulated by pilgrim
travelers to the Monastery of St. Catherine on
Mount Sinai—one of the most ancient and steadfast
strongholds of the Orthodox faith. In other words,
interest in the “monastic Egypt” of early Christianity
anticipated and stimulated the subsequent turn-​of-​
the-​century preoccupation with the exotic Egypt
of Cleopatra and the ancient Pharaohs.16 Similarly,
in Russia’s Rome: Imperial Visions, Messianic Dreams,
1890–1940, Judith Kalb contends that Russian inter-
est in ancient Rome was in large part shaped by the
“Third Rome” ideology, in which Byzantium, as Sec-
ond Rome, played an integral role in legitimating
Muscovy’s claims to being the “Third Rome” (a pop-
ular theory discussed in more detail in the second
chapter of this book).17
As these examples demonstrate, by the second
half of the nineteenth century Russian enthusiasm
for different ancient civilizations progressively con-
centrated into a much more profound and ubiqui-
tous focus on Byzantium—a phenomenon that can
be summarized as the fundamental transformation
from a detached study of the cultural and religious
“other” into a more sustained investigation of the
cultural and religious “self.” The Byzantines were
increasingly viewed as kindred souls and the imme-
diate ancestors of the modern Russians, in contrast
to the ancient Romans and Egyptians, who were
understood as Latin and Oriental “others.” Moreover,
vestiges of Byzantine culture in the form of religious
ritual and public devotion, theological thought, and
Orthodox art and architecture persisted in Russia
well into the modern period as living, breathing tra-
ditions. As Vera Shevzov points out, Russia on the
eve of the Bolshevik Revolution had one of the larg-
est Christian cultures of modern times, with more
than eighty million “official” Orthodox Christians
in European Russia alone, which constituted some
85 percent of the population.18 Accordingly, many of
the artists, scholars, collectors, curators, and critics
discussed in this book were practicing Orthodox
believers, while those who considered themselves
to be atheist or agnostic had nevertheless grown up
surrounded by Orthodox culture and were intimately
familiar with its key tenets, emblems, and iconic
images. In this sense, the Russo-​Byzantine revival
was not so much a momentary rediscovery of a dis-
tant and “dead” civilization that could be mined for
literary, artistic, and theatrical content, as a continu-
ous, evolving, and exhaustive inquiry into the origins
of Russian religious, philosophical, and visual culture
and the ways in which it could shape both contempo-
rary life and future developments. Thus, although ini-
tially born of an academic, historicist, and imperialist
impulse, the Russo-​Byzantine revival rapidly evolved
into a crucial catalyst for modernist experimentation
and a means of articulating avant-​garde theory and
aesthetics that had far-​reaching implications for artis-
tic practice in the twentieth century.
The final terms that require some explanation
are “icon” and “iconic,” which I use in their original
medieval sense and not simply with reference to
the portable panel icon with which we associate
them today. In Greek, the word εἰκών (eikōn),
or “icon,” was applicable to any religious image,
Introduction 5
 which included frescoes, mosaics, illuminated man-
uscripts, woodcarving, enamels, and ivories, as well
as portable panel icons. I therefore explore a wide
variety of different media throughout the course
of the book, demonstrating how artists engaged
with a number of diverse materials and representa-
tional strategies under the rubric of “icon.” It is also
important to note here that in the Russian language
the word ikonopis originates from the verb pisat’,
which means “to write” rather than “to paint.”19 The
icon, then, is not “painted” but “written,” thus theo-
logically equating the visual image with the spoken
word. As such, the icon testifies to God’s presence
as much as the “word” in that both participate in
the same project of incarnation: “In the beginning
was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the
Word was God. . . . And the Word was made flesh,
and dwelt among us” ( John 1:1–14, KJV). Conse-
quently, in addition to aesthetic concerns, the icon
raised important semiological questions about pres-
ence, representation, and signification enabled by
the sign and its dialectical function in the theoriza-
tion of the modern artwork and the idea of “iconic-
ity.” Furthermore, in Russian there is also a semantic
distinction between ikonopis, or religious represen-
tation, and zhivopis, or secular representation, which
literally means “to render from life.” While the for-
mer implies a transcription of a metaphysical reality,
the latter is firmly rooted in a physical, observable
reality. This is an important differentiation, since
the association of “truth” with empirical vision had
become increasingly attenuated in the course of
the nineteenth century. As David Peters Corbett
observes, the formulation of new scientific theories
had undermined the notion of a fixed, stable, and
visible reality and had rekindled public interest in the
supernatural, the otherworldly, and the divine:
6 The Icon and the Square
developments in nineteenth-​century science . . . led to a
switch in attention from the visible to the invisible worlds.
In contrast to the analysis of the physical sciences, which
focused on penetrating to the deepest, most arcane levels
of reality, the visual increasingly appeared preoccupied
with surface, with mere phenomenal appearance. Reality,
it seemed . . . , took place at a level below that which sight
could register, in the movement of invisible but pervasive
particles through the universe, a process too deep for
vision, which was now merely one of a number of ephem-
eral manifestations riding on the deceptive surface of the
world.20
Analogous argumentation was advanced in the 1910s
by thinkers such as Pavel Florensky (1882–1937) and
Nikolai Tarabukin, who contended that the medi-
eval conception and visualization of the universe,
with their emphases on the “symbolic” and the
“abstract,” were in fact closer to the ethos of modern
science and twentieth-​century epistemology than
to the positivist ideas and representations that had
prevailed in the nineteenth century. Thus, in his 1913
essay “The Stratification of Aegean Culture,” Floren-
sky argues that
society’s invisible arteries and nerves are being nourished
and stimulated by the thought of the Middle Ages, which
until quite recently was thought dead and buried.
. . . And in fact the work that has been done in
systematising the knowledge we have accumulated, the
efforts made to create reference books on all branches
and spheres of science, the very consolidation of what
has been gained—surely it is nothing but the accu-
mulated results of a culture that is over. . . . All of these
encyclopedias, reference books and dictionaries—are
they not just the deathbed wishes of that culture which
emerged in the fourteenth century? To comprehend the
life-​understanding of the future, we must turn to its roots,
to the life-​understanding of the Middle Ages; the Middle
Ages of the West and especially the East. To understand
the philosophy of the New Age, we must turn to the phi-
losophy of Antiquity.21
By the same token, the Russo-​Byzantine revival was
deeply indebted to nineteenth-​century positivism,
predicated as it was on the inevitable processes of
modernization, such as secular scholarship and new
techniques of cleaning and restoration, without
which the public rediscovery of Russia’s artistic
patrimony would not have been possible. Accord-
ingly, over the course of five chapters The Icon and
the Square examines the generative tension between
nostalgia for the past, traditionalism, and national-
ism, on the one hand, and technological progress,
radicalism, and avant-​gardism, on the other, demon-
strating how the Russo-​Byzantine revival was both a
manifestation of and a response to the onslaught of
modernity. By concentrating on moments of discon-
tinuity and dissonance in addition to continuity, this
book resists presenting a steady teleological narra-
tive, highlighting instead the rich plurality of artistic
responses that marked this cultural phenomenon.
To this end, I examine the works of four very
different artists—Mikhail Vrubel (1856–1910), Vasily
Kandinsky (1866–1944), Kazimir Malevich (1878–
1935), and Vladimir Tatlin (1885–1953)—focusing
on their distinctly divergent approaches and aspi-
rations while simultaneously considering how their
individual engagements with Russo-​Byzantine art
drove each artist to push beyond the boundaries
of his respective artistic and intellectual milieu.
In doing so, these artists not only transformed their
own artistic practices but also influenced major
paradigm shifts in the trajectory of Russian and
modern European art more broadly. To highlight
these shifts, I analyze the artistic and theoretical
output of each artist through the prism of prominent
twentieth-​century critical voices that were instru-
mental in advancing both the new theories of iconic
representation and those of the newly minted avant-​
garde. Mikhail Vrubel’s body of work is interpreted
alongside Nikolai Tarabukin’s writings; Kandinsky’s
oeuvre is read in relation to the philosophy of Pavel
Florensky; and Vladimir Tatlin’s and Kazimir Malev-
ich’s projects are examined through the argumenta-
tion of Nikolai Punin.
At the same time, I illustrate that the transi-
tion from nineteenth- to twentieth-​century artistic
practices was not simply one of rupture and revo-
lution. Although the Soviet avant-​garde project has
typically been described as a radical break from the
period—both in its art and its criticism—I posit
that the former would have been impossible with-
out the latter. Paradoxical though it may sound, the
revivalist impulse of the late nineteenth century
played a pivotal role in ushering in the formal and
conceptual innovations of the twentieth. Building
on the pioneering work of an older generation of
scholars such as Camilla Gray, John Bowlt, and
Dmitrii Sarabianov, The Icon and the Square aims to
shift the chronological origin of Russian modern-
ism from the beginning of the twentieth century
to the closing decades of the nineteenth.22 By the
same token, instead of producing yet another linear
teleology, I allow my proposed trajectory to fold
back onto itself, demonstrating how subsequent
avant-​garde theorists and critics reappropriated
nineteenth-​century artists such as Vrubel in order to
create a mythical origin or native starting point for
themselves. As such, I construct a circular narrative
that captures both the complexity and the symbiotic
Introduction 7
 nature of the relationship between the last two
decades of the nineteenth century and the first two
decades of the twentieth. In doing so, I propose a
different methodological approach, which has sig-
nificant implications for the study of Russian artistic
culture beyond the Russo-​Byzantine revival.
It is important to emphasize that this book
does not claim to be comprehensive, given the
scope, complexity, and breadth of this topic. The
voluminous period literature on the subject pro-
vides a plethora of possible examples and avenues
of inquiry, and the account presented here is nec-
essarily selective. Certain artists, theorists, writers,
collectors, and scholars have been privileged at
the expense of others, and it is my hope that the
present study will stimulate further investigation
into this cultural phenomenon and will shed more
light onto the figures, events, and institutions that I
mention only in passing. Indeed, study of medieval
revivalism and modernism has gained considerable
momentum in recent years. A number of excellent
publications have already addressed the subject of
the “medieval/modern” encounter, broadly defined,
such as Alexander Nagel’s Medieval/Modern: Art Out
of Time (2012), Bruce Holsinger’s Premodern Condi-
tion: Medievalism and the Making of Theory (2005),
and Amy Knight Powell’s Depositions: Scenes from
the Late Medieval Church and the Modern Museum
(2012), signaling a surge of public interest in ques-
tions of medieval revivalism and modern and post-
modern artistic practice. Robert S. Nelson’s Hagia
Sophia, 1850–1950: Holy Wisdom Modern Monument
(2004), J. B. Bullen’s Byzantium Rediscovered (2003),
and the edited volume Byzantium/Modernism
(2015) all explore similar issues, focusing specifically
on Byzantine art and its pervasive influence on
nineteenth- and early twentieth-​century European
8 The Icon and the Square
and American artistic production. The Icon and the
Square builds on this discourse by analyzing Russia’s
unique historical relationship to and understand-
ing of Byzantium and its visual culture. As such,
it moves beyond the generalizations of “medieval,”
“Christian,” and “religious” art, on the one hand, and
the broader pan-​European context, on the other.
Akin to the aforementioned studies, the present
book similarly interrogates the ideas of cross-​
temporal encounter and anachrony as viable models
for critical inquiry and art-​historical analysis.
Two important publications that examine the
modernist appropriation of the iconic tradition
in Russia and are instrumental in anchoring the
present project are Andrew Spira’s Avant-​Garde
Icon: Russian Avant-​Garde Art and the Icon Painting
Tradition (2008) and Jefferson Gatrall and Doug-
las Greenfield’s Alter Icons: The Russian Icon and
Modernity (2010). Both of these books engage with
an immense body of artwork, ranging from famous
avant-​garde masterpieces to previously unpublished
works, and scrupulously analyze the myriad mod-
ernist citations of Orthodox iconography and form,
as well as the key transformations in the production,
circulation, and consumption of the Russian icon
from the Enlightenment period to the post-​Soviet
era. The latter work in particular provides an excel-
lent and theoretically sophisticated overview of the
multiple contradictions and intricacies inherent
in the iconic revival. However, both books tend to
focus almost exclusively on the twentieth century
and generally limit their discussions to the portable
panel icon at the expense of earlier periods and
other forms of iconic representation. Conversely,
The Icon and the Square strives to present a cohesive
picture of the long and multifaceted process of his-
torical unfolding intrinsic to the reevaluation of the
medieval image. In addition to individual artists,
critics, and scholars, the present study examines
major cultural institutions and associations such as
the Imperial Academy of Arts, the Archaeological
Institute in Constantinople, and the Hermitage,
Rumiantsev, Imperial Russian Historical, and Rus-
sian Museums, and their ongoing activities over the
course of several decades. As a result, rather than a
series of disconnected historical vignettes or case
studies, this book attends to the evolving dialogue
between various generations of painters, architects,
curators, archeologists, collectors, and theorists
both within and between different institutions.
It thus aims to provide a more expansive view of
the broader cultural trends, as well as a rigorous,
in-​depth analysis of the ways in which these broader
trends affected, interacted with, and ultimately
transformed the artistic practices of major avant-​
garde figures. In doing so, the book simultaneously
adopts macro and micro approaches to the Russo-​
Byzantine revival, showing how the seemingly
conservative interests and aspirations of traditional
institutions such as the Crown, the church, and the
Imperial Academy of Arts temporarily aligned with
those of the radical, leftist, and postrevolutionary
avant-​garde. It thereby strives to rethink the oppos-
ing binary categories of avant-​gardism and revival-
ism, historicism and innovation, secularism and reli-
gion, modernity and traditionalism, and regionalism
and internationalization as they have been applied
to the trajectory of modern art in both Russia and
Europe.
Other noteworthy publications on this topic are
Wendy Salmond’s Arts and Crafts in Late Imperial
Russia (1996), Oleg Tarasov’s Icon and Devotion:
Sacred Spaces in Imperial Russia (2002), and the
edited volume Visualizing Russia: Fedor Solntsev and
Crafting a National Past (2010). All of these works
examine the development of a specifically Russian
national aesthetic and convincingly chart the com-
plex ways in which the country’s nineteenth-​century
visual culture underwent critical transformations,
particularly in the realm of design, popular icon-​
painting methods, folk-​art traditions, and devotional
practices. Building on this discourse, Jane Sharp and
Sarah Warren have examined parallel issues from
the perspective of the early twentieth-​century avant-​
garde in their monographs on Natalia Goncharova
(1881–1962) and Mikhail Larionov (1881–1964)
respectively.23 Sharp’s erudite account of Goncharo-
va’s sophisticated strategy of cultural appropriation,
which combined the icon and the broadsheet, the
copy and the original, the high and the low, and the
Eastern and Western aesthetic traditions, is espe-
cially valuable to the present book as it convincingly
foregrounds a “different stake in modernist art
history.”24
Finally, it is important to mention Iurii
Savel’ev’s “Vizantiiskii stil’” v arkhitekture Rossii: Vto-
raia polovina xix–nachalo xx veka (2005) and Ger-
old Vzdornov’s Istoriia otkrytiia i izucheniia russkoi
srednevekovoi zhivopisi: xix vek (1986) and Restavrat-
siia i nauka: Ocherki po istorii otkrytiia i izucheniia
drevnerusskoi zhivopisi (2006). All three of these
publications have significantly advanced the under-
standing of the Russo-​Byzantine revival by bringing
together important archival materials, primary
documents, and period photographs. Unfortunately,
these works are, for the time being, only available
in Russian and are therefore inaccessible to a wider
international readership. The Icon and the Square
is thus one of the first English-​language studies to
address the topic of the Russo-​Byzantine revival
in Russia systematically and methodically, from its
Introduction 9
 early stages in the mid-​nineteenth century to its
culmination in the artworks of canonical modern
artists such as Vasily Kandinsky, Kazimir Malevich,
and Vladimir Tatlin, all the while attending to the
phenomenon’s broader historical, formal, and philo-
sophical dimensions.
The book begins with a general overview of the
late Enlightenment period, examining how and why
Byzantium was disparaged by the most prominent
thinkers of the age both in Europe and in Russia.
Drawing on a wide range of discursive intersections,
the first chapter traces the gradual shift from the
largely negative eighteenth-​century views of Byz-
antium to an active espousal of the Neo-​Byzantine
and Russo-​Byzantine styles in the late nineteenth
century and, finally, to their transformation into rad-
ical avant-​garde polemics in the early Soviet period.
In particular, it analyzes the activities and publica-
tions of key figures such as Prince Grigorii Gagarin
(1810–1893), Nikodim Kondakov, and Adrian Pra-
khov (1846–1916), who were instrumental in spear-
heading multiple excavation, preservation, and res-
toration initiatives throughout the second half of the
nineteenth century. Since numerous contemporary
artists were enlisted in these efforts, the engagement
with Byzantine art—in both its Greek and Russian
variants—rapidly spread beyond narrow academic
and archaeological circles. The chapter closes with
a review of the twentieth-​century writings of Pavel
Florensky, Nikolai Punin, and Nikolai Tarabukin,
who argued that artistic encounters with Russia’s
Byzantine heritage ultimately catalyzed the develop-
ment of a self-​conscious modernist movement in the
visual arts.
Building on these themes and ideas, the sec-
ond chapter considers how Byzantine—and sub-
sequently medieval Russian—art was understood
10 The Icon and the Square
and presented to the broader museum-​going public
in Moscow and St. Petersburg in the years 1860 to
1915. To this end, it investigates the formation, insti-
tutionalization, and exhibition of key nineteenth-​
century collections and analyzes the changes in
cataloguing and display practices, which evolved
from an ethnographic organizational logic to an
art-​historical one. More specifically, it traces the
clear shift in the understanding of Russo-​Byzantine
artworks not simply as archaeological curiosities
but as aesthetic masterpieces in their own right. The
chapter concludes with a detailed discussion of the
1913 Exhibition of Ancient Russian Art, which was
described by many critics and art historians as “the
beginning of a new artistic consciousness in Russia”
and which highlighted the culmination of the tri-
angulating forces of modernism, Byzantinism, and
avant-​gardism.25
The reinvention of canonical Russo-​Byzantine
forms at a key historical juncture is at the heart of
the book’s third chapter, which surveys the oeuvre
of the influential but little-​studied artist Mikhail
Vrubel. Active in the late nineteenth century, Vrubel
came to understand Russo-​Byzantine art as an
important forebear of an indigenous anti-​Realist,
proto-​abstract painterly tradition that seemed to
presage his own modernist innovations. Breaking
with the photographic precision of the prevailing
Realist school, Vrubel emphasized the material qual-
ity of the paint and the flatness of the canvas, creat-
ing a characteristically modernist visual syntax, rem-
iniscent of Paul Cézanne. The chapter also considers
how Vrubel’s shifting iconography in the late 1880s
and early 1890s expressed a particularly fin de siècle
experience of spiritual malaise and destabilized
identity in the face of a religious crisis brought about
by widespread secularization. The chapter ends with
an investigation of the myriad ways in which sub-
sequent leftist art criticism espoused Vrubel as the
mythical origin for the Soviet avant-​garde project
by claiming that he not only anticipated but enabled
many of the formal and conceptual innovations of
the twentieth century.
The last two chapters examine the forma-
tive and lasting impact that the Russo-​Byzantine
revival had on the artistic production of canonical
twentieth-​century artists. Chapter 4 traces Vasily
Kandinsky’s nascent interest in iconic art on the eve
of his move to nonobjectivity. Through a detailed
analysis of several of Kandinsky’s paintings from
the early 1910s alongside the complex iconic phi-
losophy propagated by his exact contemporary
and VKhUTEMAS and RAKhN colleague, Pavel
Florensky, this chapter offers a new perspective on
Kandinsky’s artistic evolution.26 Considering his
well-​known formulation of a new spiritual art in the
form of abstraction and situating it within the realm
of Orthodox theology and aesthetics, The Icon and
the Square advances an entirely novel set of as-​yet-​
unexplored interpretative possibilities for his oeuvre.
More specifically, it discusses Kandinsky’s theories
on art within the context of a renewed religious fer-
vor, epitomized by the 1909 Vekhi (Landmarks) pub-
lication, which espoused a steadfast commitment to
a progressive Christian humanism in contrast to the
turn-​of-​the-​century crisis of spirituality.27
The book concludes with a discussion of the
epoch-​making 0.10: The Last Futurist Exhibition of
Painting in St. Petersburg, where Kazimir Malevich
and Vladimir Tatlin presented their competing
versions of a vanguard “new realism,” which, as I
argue, drew on the icon’s unique ontological status
as a “presentation” rather than a “representation”
of an invisible metaphysical reality. Deliberately
refiguring the icon into a new abstract idiom, Tatlin’s
Corner Counter-​Reliefs inaugurated a novel phenom-
enology of the artwork by embracing “real space,”
while Malevich’s Black Square enacted a powerful
and enduring iconicity, quickly becoming “a sacred
image itself within a modernist canon.”28 Although
the iconic resonances of Tatlin’s and Malevich’s
works have been discussed by scholars on numerous
occasions, they have never been examined within
the long trajectory of the Russo-​Byzantine reviv-
al—a neglected but vital history that brings texture
and added meaning to the modernist masterpieces
of these and other celebrated artists of the period.
To sum up, then, The Icon and the Square, by rein-
scribing the Russo-​Byzantine revival into the larger
narrative of Russian art history, proposes a new set
of cultural coordinates from which to interrogate
both the inherent mechanisms and theoretical
underpinnings of Russian modernism and the far-​
reaching influence that it had on the art of the twen-
tieth century.
Introduction 11
1
BYZANTIUM RECONSIDERED
Revivalism, Avant-​Gardism, and the New Art Criticism
Over the centuries, Russia’s long, complex relation-
ship with Byzantium and its cultural and artistic
legacy underwent a number of different phases
ranging from fervent admiration and imitation to
outright contempt and rejection and finally to a
gradual rediscovery and reconsideration. By the
second half of the nineteenth century, a new interest
in Byzantium and medieval Russia began to take
root in the academic and artistic communities,
spearheaded by prominent public figures such as
Prince Grigorii Gagarin, Fedor Solntsev, Nikodim
Kondakov, and Adrian Prakhov. Accordingly, this
chapter examines how a number of important art
historians, philosophers, theorists, and art critics,
as well as artists, were all profoundly affected by the
rediscovery of this previously neglected artistic pat-
rimony—a rediscovery that not only redefined the
course of Russian art history but arguably played a
crucial role in catalyzing Russia’s contribution to the
international avant-​garde.
According to the Russian Primary Chronicle,
it was the unparalleled aesthetic experience of
Byzantine art and ritual that convinced Prince
Vladimir’s envoys to Constantinople that Kievan
Rus ought to accept Eastern Orthodoxy as its offi-
cial religion. After attending the liturgy at the Hagia
Sophia, they claimed: “We knew not whether we
were in heaven or on earth. For on earth there is no
such splendor or such beauty. . . . We only know that
God dwells there among men.”1 Consequently, fol-
lowing its conversion to Orthodoxy in 988, Kievan
Rus became a major producer of monumental art
and architecture, closely based on the Byzantine
model. In the course of the twelfth and thirteenth
centuries, artisanal workshops proliferated in the cit-
ies of Kiev, Novgorod, Pskov, Vladimir, Suzdal, and
Muscovy, where a rich array of icons, illuminated
manuscripts, and metalwork were produced on a
daily basis. However, by the closing decades of the
eighteenth century this rich medieval artistic legacy
fell into complete disrepute and near obscurity. The
Westernizing reign of Peter the Great (1682–1725)
in particular represented a drastic rupture with
Byzantine traditions. His replacement of the patri-
archate with the Holy Synod and its subsequent
transformation into a department of state drastically
13
 Fig. 1  Andrei Rublev, Old Testament Trinity, 1425–27. Tempera
on wood, 55 3/4 × 44 4/5 in. (141.5 × 114 cm). Formerly in the
Cathedral of the Holy Trinity, Sergiev Posad, now in the
State Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow.

14
diminished the ecclesiastical authority of the church,
with the result that secular tastes progressively came
to dominate over religious dogma in questions of
aesthetics. Variations on French, Italian, and Ger-
man Baroque became the preferred styles for build-
ings in the newly founded capital of St. Petersburg,
while the Imperial Academy of Arts, established in
1757, propagated a refined, academic style of painting
based on western European models. By the mid-​
eighteenth century, medieval visuality had become
so unpopular that even the most sacred ancient
icons were repainted in line with more naturalistic,
representational tastes.
A comparison between the fifteenth-​century
Old Testament Trinity icon (fig. 1) by Andrei Rublev
(1360–1430) and a seventeenth-​century version
of the same subject (fig. 2) by Simon Ushakov
(1626–1686) clearly demonstrates the radical trans-
formations in artistic taste that took place over the
course of two centuries. In contrast to Rublev’s vivid
blues, reds, and greens, Ushakov employed a much
more muted palette of predominantly soft pastel
and pale ochre hues. During Rublev’s time, icon
painters rarely mixed their colors or employed shad-
ing techniques. Instead, they would apply a single
pigment, subsequently adding only white or gold
Fig. 2  Simon Ushakov, Old Testament Trinity, 1671. Tem-
highlights to emphasize specific formal elements in
pera on wood, 49 2/3 × 35 1/2 in. (126 × 90.2 cm). Formerly
the image, such as the folds in garments or the con- in the Church of the Exaltation of the Cross, Tavricheskii
vex shapes of human bodies. By contrast, Ushakov Palace, St. Petersburg, now in the State Russian Museum,
St. Petersburg.
attempted to create a sense of volumetric form and
three-​dimensional, illusionistic space. In his version
of the Trinity, the folds in the angels’ garments are
carefully modeled in three dimensions with dra- departing from the more hieratic and stylized Byzan-
matic chiaroscuro effects replacing the linearity and tine mode of Rublev’s physiognomies. The furniture
flatness of Rublev’s image. Similarly, the angels’ faces and table setting in Ushakov’s Trinity are likewise
in Ushakov’s work are much more rounded and nat- much more ornate and elaborate than in Rublev’s
uralistically rendered with halftones and shadows, work. The bases of the table and chairs on which the

Byzantium Reconsidered 15
 Fig. 3  Andrei Voronikhin, Kazan Cathedral, St. Petersburg,
1801–18.
angels sit are intricately carved with floral motifs.
Meanwhile, a brilliant white table cloth, gathered
into illusionistic folds that cast shadows, covers the
table, on top of which stand a variety of richly deco-
rated gold and silver vessels. Ushakov seems to have
embraced the opportunity to depict a number of
different textures and gleaming, metallic surfaces in
order to demonstrate his skill as an artist.
Even in his choice of background motifs, Usha-
kov radically departed from the medieval master by
replacing the diminutive building in the upper left
corner of Rublev’s icon with an imposing classical
triumphal arch complete with Corinthian columns.
Through it we see yet another Greco-​Roman build-
ing and what looks like a Roman Catholic basilica
with a shining golden dome. Not only does this
architectural ensemble introduce recession and
perspectival depth into the image—both of which
are entirely absent in Rublev’s work—but it also acts
as a framing device for the central scene in the fore-
ground, which is further emphasized by the strategic
inclusion, on the opposite side of the image, of a
16 The Icon and the Square
large leafy tree that mirrors and complements the
architectural motifs. Such formulaic framing tech-
niques were often used by European Baroque artists
such as Nicolas Poussin (1594–1665) and Claude
Lorrain (1600–1682), Ushakov’s exact contem-
poraries, whose luminous landscapes were avidly
collected by the Russian royalty and aristocracy
throughout the Enlightenment period. Although
Ushakov repeated Rublev’s composition of the three
angels sitting around a table, the sumptuous details
and novel pictorial techniques that he incorporated
into his version of the Trinity clearly betray his
familiarity with and imitation of Italian Renaissance
and Baroque styles. In fact, he was even criticized by
certain conservative clerics, such as the archpriest
Avvakum, for his overly Westernized “lascivious”
depictions of “fleshly carnality.”2
Russian ecclesiastical architecture of the period
equally looked to western Europe—and especially
to Italy and France—for inspiration. Thus, for
example, the Kazan Cathedral in St. Petersburg, con-
structed between 1801 and 1818, combines elements
of Italian Baroque and French neoclassicism (fig. 3).
Designed by Andrei Voronikhin (1759–1814), the
cathedral is an imposing domed building, measuring
just over 71.5 meters in height, with an elaborate
semicircular colonnade, comprising 136 columns of
Pudost stone.3 Voronikhin was purportedly inspired
by St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome, and although the
Kazan Cathedral was specifically built to house the
medieval Virgin of Kazan icon, architecturally it rad-
ically departed from the Russo-​Byzantine prototype
and was instead structured after a Catholic basilica
with a central transept and three naves.4 The main
entrance to the cathedral was fashioned after a Greek
temple with a classical entablature, cornice, and tri-
angular pediment. Meanwhile, the main doors were
copies after Lorenzo Ghiberti’s bronze doors for the
baptistery of the Santa Maria del Fiore in Florence
and were cast by Vasilii Ekimov (1758–1837), a lead-
ing metalwork expert at the St. Petersburg Imperial
Academy of Arts. Fig. 4  Ivan Martos, Saint John the Baptist, 1804–7. Bronze.
Kazan Cathedral, St. Petersburg.
Both the exterior and the interior decoration
of the cathedral had very little in common with the
traditional Orthodox canon. As is well known, the
Orthodox Church’s prohibition on “corporeality” freestanding bronze sculptures of the Russian
and “graven images” precluded any kind of three-​ warrior saints Vladimir and Alexander Nevsky,
dimensional sculpture, especially since it carried executed by Pimenov, and of Saint John the Baptist
pagan, Hellenistic associations of idolatry. Accord- (fig. 4) and Saint Andrew, sculpted by Martos and
ingly, Orthodox church decoration was strictly Demuth-​Malinovskii respectively. The interior of the
limited to icons, mosaics, and frescoes. By contrast, cathedral was likewise decorated with statuary, bas-​
the façade of the Kazan Cathedral was adorned with reliefs, and sculptural friezes, all of which reflected
fourteen sculptural reliefs of biblical scenes by the the prevailing neoclassical tastes of the period rather
academic sculptors Ivan Martos (1754–1835), Ivan than the Orthodox artistic canon.
Prokofiev (1758–1828), Fedor Gordeev (1744–1810), Lastly, instead of the monumental frescoes and
Stepan Pimenov (1784–1833), Vasilii Demuth-​ mosaics typical of the Byzantine tradition, the walls
Malinovskii (1779–1846), and Jean-​Dominique of the Kazan Cathedral were hung with large-​scale
Rachette (1744–1809). In addition, on the north easel paintings, created by the leading artists of the
side of the cathedral were four pilasters containing St. Petersburg Imperial Academy of Arts, such as

Byzantium Reconsidered 17
 Vladimir Borovikovsky (1757–1825), Vasilii Shebuiev
(1777–1855), Fedor Bruni (1801–1875), Grigorii Ugri-
umov (1764–1823), Orest Kiprensky (1782–1836),
and Karl Briullov (1799–1852). Executed in a slick,
academic style, these works espoused the post-​
Renaissance aesthetic of religious painting that dom-
inated the European academies of art at the time,
rather than the traditional hieratic forms of Orthodox
icon painting. Thus, for example, Borovikovsky’s rep-
resentation of Saint Catherine (1804–9) (fig. 5) had
more in common with his portraits of the Russian
royalty and aristocracy than with a Byzantine icon.
Rendered in a three-​dimensional, illusionistic space,
Saint Catherine is shown standing in front of an
Egyptian pyramid, with a crowd of onlookers extend-
ing into the background of the image, in a dimly lit
evening landscape. Wearing an ornate crown and
sumptuous garments lined with fur and trimmed
with pearls and precious stones, Saint Catherine casts
a longing, contemplative glance up to the heavens,
where a semicircular chorus of cherubs emerges from
the wispy clouds just above the saint’s head, intimat-
ing a halo. Borovikovsky’s painstaking attention to
the different textures and surfaces of Saint Cather-
ine’s attire, as well as his use of naturalistic modeling,
rich tonalities, atmospheric lighting, and deep shad-
ows, makes this work a triumph of Russian academic
painting, but also a radical departure from traditional
iconic representations of the saint.
Similarly, for the central image of the cathedral’s
side altar, Karl Briullov produced a painting of the

Fig. 5  Vladimir Borovikovsky, Saint Catherine, 1804–9. Oil on

pressed cardboard, 69 × 35 ¾ in. (176 × 91 cm). Formerly in
Kazan Cathedral, St. Petersburg, now in the State Russian
Museum, St. Petersburg.

18 The Icon and the Square

Virgin’s Assumption (1836–42) (fig. 6) in a style
that closely imitated the Italian Baroque tradition.
Painted shortly after Briullov’s return from Italy,
where the artist had lived for more than a decade,
this work clearly borrows from the religious paint-
ings of Italian masters such as Guido Reni, Annibale
Carracci, and Carlo Maratta. The Virgin is shown
standing upright on top of thick, volumetric clouds,
her garments and veil fluttering in the wind, while
two angels and a group of chubby cherubs conduct
her up to the heavens, where she is welcomed by a
large chorus of singing and praying angels. Behind
her head a glowing orb of light emphasizes her
divinity, while two more cherubs part the heavens
like two curtains at the very top of the image. The
rich palette, deep shadows, and theatrical lighting,
as well as the swirling fabrics and undulating lines,
all serve to heighten the dramatic effect of the scene.
The trompe l’oeil barrier at the bottom edge of the
image, over which the cherubs spill into the viewer’s
space, serves to heighten the illusionistic effects of
the painting still further by self-​consciously blurring
the separation between pictorial and real space.
By contrast, traditional Byzantine representa-
tions of the Assumption, known in the Orthodox
Church as the Koimesis (e.g., fig. 7), typically show
the Virgin prostrate on a bier and surrounded by the
twelve apostles in different attitudes of mourning.
In the center of the exemplary image Christ is shown
receiving his mother’s tiny soul into his arms in the
form of a swaddled infant, as two or more angels

Fig. 6  Karl Briullov, Assumption of the Virgin, 1836–42. Oil on

canvas, 223 × 112 ½ in. (568 × 286 cm). Formerly in Kazan
Cathedral, St. Petersburg, now in the State Russian Museum,
St. Petersburg.

Byzantium Reconsidered 19
 Fig. 7  Koimesis, 1105–6. Fresco, Church of Panagia Phorbio-
tissa, Asinou, Cyprus.
descend from the heavens to carry the Virgin’s soul
up to God. In fact, after seeing Briullov’s painting,
the Slavophile Fedor Chizhov questioned whether
“anyone can really mistake Briullov’s picture for an
icon. . . . In front of the icon we pray to the holy face
of the Virgin . . . in front of Briullov’s Assumption,
forgive me, but you must agree that we honestly
think about a voluptuous, beautiful woman . . . and
that which ought to inspire prayer destroys holy
prayer.”5 Even in the royal doors of the iconostasis,
which symbolically function as the holiest part of
the church, traditional Orthodox icons have been
replaced by Borovikovksy’s glossy easel paintings
of Christ, the Virgin, and the Evangelists (fig. 8).
As with Saint Catherine, these works were executed
in an academic style with the figures shown in three-​
quarter profile and set within a three-​dimensional
illusionistic space. Although undoubtedly artistic
masterpieces in their own right, these works were
20 The Icon and the Square
subsequently vehemently criticized by thinkers such
as Pavel Florensky and Leonid Ouspensky, who,
much like Chizhov, contested their status as Ortho-
dox icons, arguing that their naturalistic rendering
violated the symbolic, ontological status of the icon
as a mysterious imprint of divine essence.6 More-
over, period commentators often equated the secu-
larization of icon painting with a broader decline in
religion, public morality, and Orthodox collectivity
and spirituality resulting from widespread modern-
ization. The debates on the place and function of
naturalism in sacred art thus extended far beyond
the realm of aesthetics to include larger questions of
national decay, disintegration, and spiritual degener-
ation (topics discussed in more detail in the last part
of this chapter).7
One of the central reasons for the predomi-
nance of neoclassical rather than medieval aesthetics
in the construction and decoration of the Kazan
Cathedral in the early nineteenth century was the
widely espoused belief that Byzantine artistic cul-
ture was crude, primitive, and unworthy of emula-
tion. Indeed, the ideas of prominent Enlightenment
thinkers such as Voltaire, Montesquieu, and Diderot
dominated Russian intellectual discourse through-
out the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries
and molded the public’s derisive attitudes toward
Byzantium—and by extension Russia’s medieval
past. In 1734 Montesquieu declared that “the his-
tory of the Greek Empire is nothing but a tissue
of revolts, seditions, and perfidies,” while Voltaire
pronounced it to be a “worthless collection” of
“orations and miracles. . . . a disgrace to the human
mind.”8 In his Lectures on the Philosophy of History,
Hegel described Byzantium as “a disgusting picture
of imbecility; wretched, nay insane, passions stifle
the growth of all that is noble in thoughts, deeds,
and persons. Rebellion on the part of generals,
depositions of the emperors by their means or
through the intrigues of the courtiers, assassinations
or poisoning of the emperors by their own wives
and sons, women surrendering themselves to lusts
and abominations of all kinds.”9 However, the most
influential text to shape public opinion on the Byz-
antine Empire was Edward Gibbon’s widely read
History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire,
from 1776, which remained the authoritative work
on Byzantium for several decades. Although it was
first translated into Russian only in 1883 by Mikhail
Nevedomskii, the History of the Decline and Fall of
the Roman Empire was already well known in Rus- Fig. 8  Vladimir Borovikovsky, Royal Doors with Christ, the
Virgin, the Archangel Gabriel and the Four Evangelists, 1804–9.
sian intellectual circles by the opening decades of
Medallions: oil on pressed cardboard, each 30 in. (73.5 cm) in
the nineteenth century by way of Leclerc de Sept-​ diameter. Formerly in Kazan Cathedral, St. Petersburg, now
Chenes’s French translation of 1788–90.10 Indeed, in the State Russian Museum, St. Petersburg.

even as late as the early 1900s, scholars such as

the renowned Byzantinist Nikodim Kondakov

Byzantium Reconsidered 21
 continued to cite Gibbon’s “tendentious attacks”
and “biased views” on Byzantium, suggesting that
the Russian public still viewed the latter’s work as
the definitive account of Byzantine history and
culture.11 In Gibbon’s narrative, Byzantium emerges
as a backward Asiatic despotism, devoid of all the
virtues of the Latin West, and one that had not left
posterity anything worthy of admiration or emula-
tion. Describing Constantinople’s most celebrated
architectural monument, the Hagia Sophia, Gib-
bon expresses nothing but disdain: “The eye of the
spectator is disappointed by an irregular prospect of
half-​domes and shelving roofs . . . destitute of sim-
plicity and magnificence . . . how dull is the artifice,
how insignificant is the labor.”12 In fact, on the rare
occasion that Byzantine monuments were invoked
in eighteenth-​century Russia for political and ideo-
logical reasons, the buildings on whose behalf they
were summoned were instead paradoxically based
on classical and Renaissance prototypes, since the
Byzantine ones were considered aesthetically infe-
rior.13 Thus, for example, the St. Sophia Cathedral
(1782) in Tsarskoe Selo, just outside of St. Peters-
burg, was meant to function as a miniature “copy” of
the Hagia Sophia Church in Constantinople, but in
reality Charles Cameron’s design was based more on
the Basilica of Maxentius, as well as on the Pantheon
and other Roman architecture, than on the Byzan-
tine original. As Anthony Cutler observes, “[T]he
interior quadrilobe, opened with lesser niches,
depends directly on Roman thermal architecture. . . .
The exterior, on the other hand, exhibits such dis-
crepancies as the Tuscan order of the columns and
pilasters . . . and neoclassical moldings, acroteria
and rosettes”—all architectural features that were
entirely foreign to Byzantine monuments but were
considered to be “improvements” on the Byzantine
22 The Icon and the Square
style by eighteenth-​century viewers.14 Constructed
on Catherine II’s direct orders, the St. Sophia Cathe-
dral was meant symbolically to reinforce Russia’s
territorial claims to Constantinople in the wake of
the first Russo-​Turkish War (1768–1774), whose
objective was the reestablishment of the Greek
Empire with Catherine as its empress. It was not
until the mid-​nineteenth century that Catherine’s
grandson Nicholas I would employ actual Byzantine
designs in the service of his expansionist politics.
Indeed, Gibbon’s and other Enlightenment
writers’ open contempt for the conservative and
religiously minded Byzantine Empire made such a
lasting impact on the way that the Russian public
perceived its own Byzantine heritage that prominent
nineteenth-​century thinkers and philosophers such
as Alexander Herzen (1812–1870) and Petr Chaa-
daev (1794–1856) blamed all of Russia’s political and
historical ills on its Byzantine past. Writing in 1829,
Chaadaev lamented: “Obedient to our fatal destiny,
we turned to the miserable, corrupt Byzantium,
ostracized by all peoples, for a moral code on which
to base our education. . . . Isolated by a fate unknown
to the universal development of humanity, we have
absorbed none of mankind’s ideas of traditional
transmission.”15 Almost two decades later Herzen
maintained an equally negative view of Byzantium:
Ancient Greece had lived out her life when the Roman
Empire covered and preserved her as the lava and ashes
of the volcano preserved Pompeii and Herculaneum.
The Byzantine period raised the coffin-​lid, and the dead
remained dead, controlled by priests and monks as every
tomb is, administered by eunuchs who were perfectly in
place as representatives of barrenness. . . .
Byzantium could live, but there was nothing for her
to do; and nations in general only take a place in history
while they are on the stage, that is, while they are doing
something. 16
It was not until the mid-​nineteenth century that
these long-​established negative views of Byzantine
history, art, and culture began to change in both
Europe and Russia.
From East to West: The Byzantine
Revival in Europe
As Robert S. Nelson and J. B. Bullen have convinc-
ingly demonstrated, the mid-​nineteenth century
witnessed the steady rise of a new public interest
in Byzantium across western Europe.17 In the wake
of the Romantic movement, Enlightenment values
were increasingly challenged by alternative sources
of knowledge, particularly those coming from the
East and the medieval past. As the quintessen-
tial representative of the “Eastern Middle Ages,”
Byzantium finally started to garner considerable
attention. In England, John Ruskin’s sympathetic
descriptions of Veneto-​Byzantine architecture in
his seminal publication of 1851–53, Stones of Venice,
led to a growing reappraisal of Byzantine history
and cultural production. At the same time, George
Finlay published his two-​volume History of the Byz-
antine Empire (1853), and in the years immediately
preceding, two important studies on Byzantine art
and architecture had appeared in the English press:
Lord Lindsay’s Sketches of the History of Christian Art
(1847) and Edward Freeman’s History of Architecture
(1849). In France, the architect André Couchaud
published Selection of Byzantine Churches in Greece
(Choix d’églises byzantines en Grèce, 1841), one of the
first books devoted solely to Byzantine architecture.
In 1845 Adolphe Didron and Paul Durand collab-
orated on the publication of the Painter’s Manual
of Dionysius of Fourna, which included multiple
illustrations of a number of important Byzantine
churches and became one of the principal sources
of information about Byzantine painting through-
out the second half of the nineteenth century.18
The archaeologist and historian Félix de Verneilh
published yet another important study of Byzan-
tine architecture in 1851, which claimed that French
ecclesiastical architecture was, in fact, deeply
indebted to Byzantine models.19 Lastly, in Germany,
the publication of Wilhelm Salzenberg’s Ancient
Christian Architecture in Constantinople from the
5th to the 12th Century (Alt-​christliche Baudenkmale
von Constantinopel vom v. bis xii. Jahrhundert)
in 1854 for the first time revealed the Byzantine
mosaics of the Hagia Sophia that were uncovered by
the Fossati brothers in Constantinople between 1847
and 1849.
However, despite this rising interest in Byzan-
tium, a large number of European scholars, as well
as members of the general public, continued to
view the Byzantine Empire as a barbaric and Ori-
ental “other,” whose “primitive” art and architecture
remained inferior to the more refined and sophisti-
cated forms of the Gothic style.20 Thus, for example,
Ruskin attributed the Byzantine use of polychromy
in architecture to a timeless “Oriental” impulse,21
while Edward Freeman observed in A History of
Architecture:
As a form of art, [the Byzantine] cannot claim a place
equal to those of Western Europe. . . .
. . . We have not to deal with Greeks or Romans,
Celts or Teutons. . . . It is a character fixed, staid, and
immutable; it is not Persian or Arabian, not even
Byzantium Reconsidered 23
 Fig. 9  Jean-​Joseph Benjamin-​Constant, The Empress Theodora
at the Coliseum, 1889. Oil on canvas, 62 × 52 1/2 in. (157.48 ×
133.35 cm). Private collection.

24
Caucasian or Mongolian; it is not ancient, modern,
or mediaeval; but, a term of all ages and races, it is
Oriental.22
According to Freeman, Byzantine monuments had
scarcely changed over the span of fourteen cen-
turies from their fifth- and sixth-​century variants,
leading him to conclude that “the structures reared
to this day by the Mahometans in India exhibit
far less deviation from the type of St. Sophia, than
exists between the Basilica of St. Clement and the
Cathedral of Sarum.”23 In other words, Byzantium
was seen as a distinctly separate civilization, charac-
terized by stasis and dogmatism in contrast to the
progressive, constantly evolving artistic culture of
western Europe.
Such an understanding—or rather misunder-
standing—of Byzantium persisted well into the late
nineteenth century, as evidenced by William Edward
Hartpole Lecky’s disparaging description of the
Byzantine Empire as constituting “the most thor-
oughly base and despicable form that civilization has
yet assumed . . . absolutely destitute of all the forms
and elements of greatness.”24 Although published
in 1870, Lecky’s History of European Morals from
Augustus to Charlemagne still echoed the Enlighten-
ment critiques of Voltaire and Montesquieu, who
portrayed Byzantium as a primitive and depraved
Oriental despotism. Indeed, a painting such as Jean-​
Joseph Benjamin-​Constant’s Empress Theodora at the
Coliseum (1889) (fig. 9) aptly visualizes these ideas.
In this work the Byzantine ruler is depicted as a
decadent, lethargic princess, who relishes a barbaric
form of entertainment. In the middle ground on
the right-​hand side of the painting, a tiger crouches
over two prostrate and motionless human bodies.
This tragic fate was typically reserved for Christian
martyrs in ancient Rome in the early days of Christi-
anity. However, in the sixth century, by the time that
Justinian and Theodora were in power, a scene such
as this one would have been impossible. At best,
Theodora might have attended chariot races at the
Constantinopolitan Hippodrome, but both gladi-
atorial combat and animal fights had been banned
during the reign of Constantine I, who considered
them to be vestiges of paganism and at odds with
Christian doctrine. And yet, in Benjamin-​Constant’s
painting, the uncivilized practices of what was often
understood to be a civilized and sophisticated cul-
ture—ancient Rome—were conveniently displaced
onto Byzantium, which had become a plausible set-
ting for such barbaric rituals.
The visual rhetoric of the painting further
emphasizes its narrative import. For example, the
swirling scarlet fabric behind the empress and the
predominantly red palette of the work underscore
the bloody scene unfolding in the arena, and Theo-
dora’s composed and relaxed demeanor reveal her
cruel, wanton nature as she remains indifferent to
the human misery before her eyes. A triumph of
glossy art pompier, Benjamin-​Constant’s artwork
draws heavily on all the standard tropes of Orien-
talist painting. The eroticized, semi-​reclining The-
odora, surrounded by vibrant colors, opulent furs,
and sumptuous fabrics, is reminiscent of the popular
depictions of harem scenes and odalisques. The
wide range of deep, rich hues of vermilion, auburn,
ochre, russet, and shimmering gold produce a visual
feast of color. Meanwhile, the luxurious textures of
the marble column, velvet draperies, fur blanket, and
Theodora’s silk garments all generate a seductive tac-
tility that is further augmented by the soft, smooth,
serpentine figure of the empress, whose silky peach
skin is offset with iridescent jewels. In this painting,
Byzantium Reconsidered 25
 decadence meets barbarism, tantalizing the viewer
both thematically and stylistically. Eschewing all
historical accuracy, Benjamin-​Constant produced an
image based on pure fantasy: a distant and foreign
milieu of unbridled luxury, savagery, and vice.
By contrast, a painting of a similar subject,
produced in the same year but by a Russian artist,
presents an entirely different view of Byzantium.
In Vasilii Smirnov’s Morning Visit of a Byzantine
Empress to the Graves of Her Ancestors (1889)
(fig. 10), the Byzantine empress is portrayed as a
virtuous and humble ruler. She begins her day by
honoring her ancestors, and her court is a place of
order, restraint, and respect for tradition. Unlike
Benjamin-​Constant, Smirnov set his scene in an
actual early Christian monument, the fifth-​century
Mausoleum of Galla Placidia in Ravenna. Given the
nature of the empress’s visit, it is only logical that
the action should take place in a well-​known ancient
mausoleum. However, as I have argued elsewhere,
an examination of the spatial layout and decoration
of the mausoleum indicates that Smirnov went to
great lengths to achieve archaeological accuracy
in his painting.25 During his three-​year stay in Italy
from 1884 to 1887, the artist had made numerous
studies and sketches of Byzantine art and architec-
ture, which he then used to inform the iconography
in this painting.26 For example, in the lunette imme-
diately above the heads of the Byzantine courtiers,
we recognize the image of Saint Lawrence from the
Galla Placidia (figs. 11 and 12), which depicts the
saint standing next to the burning gridiron on which
he was martyred. Above him, we see two white
doves next to the fountain of life and the feet of two
apostles (figs. 13 and 14). These images are almost
exact copies of the original Byzantine mosaics on
the walls of the Galla Placidia. Smirnov even went
26 The Icon and the Square
so far as to painstakingly reproduce the individual
mosaic tesserae in oil paint in order to achieve com-
plete verisimilitude.
The Byzantine courtiers in Smirnov’s painting
also radically depart from Benjamin-​Constant’s
Theodora. Depicted standing, in long robes and
with reverently bowed heads, these solemn, defer-
ential figures are a far cry from the languid, lounging
Theodora. The empress herself is dressed in a regal
maroon mantle with an embroidered golden hem
that Smirnov had copied directly from the sixth-​
century Byzantine mosaic of the empress Theodora
in the Ravenna Church of San Vitale (figs. 15 and 16).
Although the empress is not named in Smirnov’s
title, the fact that she is portrayed in Theodora’s
robes implies that her identity is indeed that of the
famous Byzantine empress. In addition, the jewelry,
colors, and patterns on the garments worn by her
attendants closely resemble those of the courtiers in
the San Vitale mosaic, again confirming her identity
as Theodora.
The Byzantium that emerges from Smirnov’s
image is neither barbaric nor decadent, but an
ancient civilization with its own particular customs,
traditions, and culture, all of which are intended to
be seen as worthy of respect and admiration. Instead
of the imaginary, seductive, and Oriental evocation
of Benjamin-​Constant’s work, Smirnov’s painting is
characterized by an attempt to achieve painstaking
archaeological accuracy and a Realist commit-
ment to reconstructing a plausible historical scene.
Although it is easy to dismiss these striking pictorial
and thematic differences as the logical result of the
disparate temperaments, styles, and artistic goals of
the individual artists, I believe that they are, in fact,
emblematic of a broader cultural politics that reflect
the distinct difference between Russia and her
Fig. 10  Vasilii Smirnov, The Morning Visit of a Byzantine
Empress to the Graves of Her Ancestors, 1889. Oil on canvas, 37 1/3
× 38 1/2 in. (95 × 98 cm). State Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow.

27
 Fig. 11  Detail of Vasilii Smirnov, The Morning Visit of a Byzan-
tine Empress to the Graves of Her Ancestors (fig. 10), 1889. State
Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow.

Fig. 12  Lunette Mosaic of Saint Lawrence, fifth century, Galla

Placidia Mausoleum, Ravenna.

28
Fig. 13  Detail of Vasilii Smirnov, The Morning Visit of a Byzan-
tine Empress to the Graves of Her Ancestors (fig. 10), 1889. State
Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow.

Fig. 14  Mosaic of Apostles with Fountain of Life, fifth century,

Galla Placidia Mausoleum, Ravenna.

29
 Fig. 15  Detail of Vasilii Smirnov, The Morning Visit of a Byzan-
tine Empress to the Graves of Her Ancestors (fig. 10), 1889. State
Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow.

Fig. 16  Detail of Mosaic of Empress Theodora and Her Retinue,

sixth-​century, Church of San Vitale, Ravenna.

30
European neighbors in their respective evolving
attitudes toward Byzantium. Neither an outlier nor
an exception, Smirnov’s portrayal of Byzantium
reflects the mainstream turn-​of-​the-​century views
of the Russian educated class and was the result of a
decadelong reorientation in the country’s political,
intellectual, and cultural life.
Changing Times, Changing Attitudes
The reevaluation of Byzantine art and culture began
in Russia at around the same time as it did in west-
ern Europe—in the 1840s and 1850s—but devel-
oped along markedly different lines. In the Russian
context, the rediscovery of Byzantium became
intimately linked with the rise of nationalism, the
imperial ambitions of the state, and the emergence
of the “Eastern Question.”27 The Napoleonic and
Crimean conflicts in particular prompted a large
sector of the Russian intelligentsia to reconsider
both Russia’s Byzantine past and its contempo-
rary relationship to western Europe. That said,
it is important to emphasize that even during the
Enlightenment period a number of dissenting voices
questioned the country’s deference to and emula-
tion of Western culture.28 For example, the historian
Nikolai Karamzin expressed considerable skepticism
toward Peter I’s sweeping reforms and his assault on
medieval Russo-​Byzantine culture, famously stating
that “we became citizens of the world, but ceased
in certain respects to be citizens of Russia.”29 Simi-
larly, Prince Mikhail Shcherbatov vocally criticized
what he saw as the widespread moral corruption
and “voluptuousness” engendered by Russia’s rap-
prochement with the West. Nonetheless, until the
reign of Nicholas I, these voices were by and large
marginalized in favor of a rationalist state-​sponsored
anticlerical and pro-​Western stance. Shcherbatov’s
passionate critical essays did not appear in print
until the mid-​nineteenth century; “in the eighteenth
century,” as Andrzej Walicki astutely observes, “the
old Russia was still too near in time, and the benefits
of Europeanization were too obvious from the point
of view of the general interest of the enlightened
class.”30 By the beginning of the 1840s, however,
the steady rise of Slavophile thought started to
stimulate a growing interest in Russia’s pre-​Petrine
past. The Crimean War (1853–56), which pitted
Russia against Britain, France, and the Ottoman
Empire, precipitated an especially painful rupture
with western Europe and a growing reorientation
toward the East. Both official state policy and the
public imaginary increasingly began to associate the
Byzantine political and cultural legacy with contem-
porary Russia. Prominent Slavophile thinkers such
as Aleksei Khomiakov (1804–1869), Ivan Kireevskii
(1806–1856), and Konstantin Aksakov (1817–1860)
argued that Russia’s Byzantine past was the source
of her national strength, rather than her weakness.
According to them, it was precisely this Byzantine
heritage that had ensured that Russia evolved a reli-
gious, political, philosophical, and aesthetic value
system that ran counter to the sterile materialism
and rationalism of Western culture, which had led
to the disastrous events of the French Revolution.
In 1850 the historian Timofei Granovskii (1813–1855)
published an eloquent apologia of Byzantium and a
plea for serious Byzantine studies:
We received from Constantinople the best part of our
national inheritance, namely, religious beliefs and the
beginnings of civilization. The Eastern Empire brought
a young Russia into the family of Christian nations. But
Byzantium Reconsidered 31

Fig. 17  Constantine Thon, Cathedral of Christ the Savior,
Moscow, 1837–82. Photographer unknown (Russian, nine-
teenth century). Private collection.
besides these connections, we are bound up with the fate
of Byzantium by the mere fact that we are Slavs. This side
of the question has not been, and could not be, fully appre-
ciated by foreign scholars. We have in a sense the duty to
evaluate a phenomenon to which we owe so much.31
Rather than a dark stain in Russia’s history, the
Byzantine epoch was increasingly understood as a
period of cultural flowering and the key to Russia’s
32 The Icon and the Square
salvation, having safeguarded the nation from the
political and religious turmoil associated with the
Catholic Church, such as the Crusades, the Refor-
mation, and the Inquisition. In 1859 Aleksei Kho-
miakov claimed that “to speak of Byzantium with
disdain is to disclose one’s own ignorance.”32 By the
mid-1860s, the idea of the Byzantine “East” as a
symbol of barbarism, ignorance, and backwardness
had increasingly given way to the notion of Byzan-
tium as the source of an uncorrupted Christianity,
civilization, and culture. To paraphrase the words of
the philosopher and poet Vladimir Soloviev (1853–
1900), Byzantium was no longer seen as the East of
Xerxes, but the East of Christ.
In many ways this ideological and cultural
reevaluation of Byzantium was stimulated by official
state policy and acquired a distinct political flavor
by the end of the Crimean War. By combining the
undisputed authority of the monarch with the
devout following of the Orthodox Church, the Byz-
antine political system and social order provided
Nicholas I with the perfect historical example on
which to base his own ideological dictum of “Ortho-
doxy, Autocracy, and Nationality.”33 Accordingly,
on March 25, 1841, an official decree was passed
ordaining that “the taste of ancient Byzantine
architecture should be preserved, by preference
and as far as is possible,” in the construction of new
ecclesiastical buildings.34 Although Nicholas I pur-
portedly disliked the Byzantine style personally,
he encouraged it out of political and ideological
considerations. Ivan Strom (1823–1888), one of the
architects of the revivalist St. Vladimir Cathedral in
Kiev, recalled Nicholas saying, “I cannot stand this
style, yet, unlike others, I allow it.”35
Thus, for example, the new Cathedral of Christ
the Savior in Moscow (1837–82) (fig. 17) was built in
an explicitly Russo-​Byzantine style, radically depart-
ing from the neoclassical model of the Kazan Cathe-
dral, completed only two decades before Christ the
Savior’s groundbreaking. Designed by Constantine
Thon, the Moscow cathedral was supposed to invoke
Constantinople’s Hagia Sophia both in grandeur
and monumentality.36 Unlike the Kazan Cathedral,
it was based on a Greek-​cross design and topped
with five cupolas, recalling the style of the medieval
Dormition Cathedrals of Vladimir (1158–61) and
Moscow (1475–79). Instead of neoclassical porticoes
and columns, Thon opted for gilded onion domes,
kokoshnik gables, tracery, and icons on the façade.
The interior decoration of Christ the Savior
was also meant to adhere to the Russo-​Byzantine
aesthetic canon.37 Instead of statuary and easel paint-
ings, the walls of the cathedral were to be adorned
with monumental frescoes of biblical stories and
scenes from early Christianity and Russian history.
As such, they were to visualize a clear political nar-
rative wherein “Holy Russia” was portrayed as the
descendant and rightful heir of early Christian Rome
and Byzantium and was therefore preordained to
preserve the Orthodox faith in modern times. Pre-
sided over by Christ, the Virgin, and the apostles,
this version of Christian history was represented as
part of an overarching divine plan. Although aca-
demically trained artists such as Fedor Bruni (1801–
1875), Aleksei Markov (1802–1878), and Petr Basin
(1793–1877) were originally selected to decorate the
interior of the cathedral, both stylistically and icono-
graphically their murals were meant to correspond
much more closely to the Orthodox pictorial canon
than had those in the Kazan Cathedral.38 Nicholas
himself insisted that he wanted the interior of the
cathedral to be decorated with murals painted in the
“ancient oriental, not in the new Western manner.”39
As evidenced by the intended pictorial program
in Christ the Savior, the strategic deployment of
the new Byzantine-​revivalist style had important
international implications in addition to legitimizing
Nicholas I’s domestic policy. It symbolized Constan-
tinople’s historical ties with Kievan Rus, which in its
turn served to bolster Russia’s expansionist policies
in eastern and central Europe. In his widely read
1869 book Rossiia i Evropa (Russia and Europe), the
Slavophile Nikolai Danilevskii (1822–1885) clearly
articulated these aspirations by arguing that Rus-
sia alone had the right to Constantinople and that
Russia’s historic mission was to restore the Eastern
Roman Empire, much as the Franks had restored the
Western Roman Empire. He advocated the creation
of a Slavic federation under Russia’s political lead-
ership, which would comprise the Slavic countries,
Greece, Romania, and the Magyars, with its capital
in Constantinople.40 As such, the espousal of Byzan-
tium was predicated on a profound paradox: it was
seen as both distinct and separate from the Latin
“West,” but it was simultaneously not “Eastern,” bar-
baric, or primitive. Instead, Russian discourse con-
structed Byzantium, rather than the Roman Empire,
as the legitimate heir to classical Greece—and by
extension as the guarantor of classical civilization.
In the wake of the Balkan uprisings (1875–76) and
the Russo-​Turkish War (1877–78), the question of
“safeguarding” the Byzantine legacy and “liberating”
the Christian Orthodox peoples of the Ottoman
Empire became even more urgent, as reflected in
Sergei Zhigarev’s claim that it was Russia’s imme-
diate imperative “to help her Eastern cobelievers
and kindred in their struggle against Islam, toward
national and religious self-​preservation, to remove
them from Turkish enslavement, and to bring them
into the family of cultured European peoples.”41
Byzantium Reconsidered 33
 Such passionate polemics fueled the Russo-​
Byzantine revival in art and architecture, and it was
not a coincidence that specifically Byzantine designs
were favored above all others in Russian colonial
outposts. Neo-​Byzantine monuments began to
appear all over central Asia, the northern Caucasus,
and the Black Sea region, along the Trans-​Siberian
Railway line. In recently conquered territories, the
imposing scale and rich decoration of these newly
built revivalist cathedrals functioned as material
reminders to local populations of the might and
wealth of tsarist Russia, particularly in regions that
had retained local traditions, such as the Baltic
provinces and Poland, where, as Richard Wort-
man observes, these “new churches and cathedrals
ensured that the inhabitants would not forget who
ruled their land.”42 Thus, for example, the massive
Alexander Nevsky Cathedral (1894–1900) in Reval
(Tallinn) was built on the Domberg, site of the city’s
most prominent neighborhood, and was specifically
constructed to tower above the numerous Lutheran
churches, occupying “a beautiful, dominating loca-
tion that is suitable for an Orthodox shrine in a Rus-
sian state.”43
Furthermore, imperial gains in the Balkans and
central Asia brought former Byzantine territories
under Russian influence and meant that ancient
Byzantine monuments could now be studied more
closely, providing fresh models for revivalist archi-
tects. This in turn “encouraged a kind of inverted
archaeology: monuments were constructed to resur-
rect an invisible national past, particularly in regions
deemed to need admonition and edification.”44 Byz-
antium was thus increasingly viewed in nationalistic
terms, and the construction of the “Oriental Other”
was displaced onto the Muslim populations of
central Asia and the Caucasus, while the Byzantine
34 The Icon and the Square
past occupied an entirely different imaginary space.
Kievan Rus was progressively understood as a flour-
ishing center of Byzantine culture and learning that
was prematurely crushed by the rapacious Mongo-
lian “hordes.” According to this premise, Byzantium
emerged as the definitive origin of a sophisticated
civilization in contrast to the subsequent barbaric,
primitive tribes arriving from the Far East.
Such ideas were already gaining currency in
the mid-​nineteenth century, as evidenced by Iakov
Kapkov’s 1840 painting Metropolitan Alexis Healing
the Tatar Queen Taidula of Blindness While Dzha-
nibeg Looks On (fig. 18). According to the Nikonian
Chronicle, in 1357 the metropolitan Alexis was sum-
moned to the Mongolian horde by the khan Dzha-
nibeg to pray for the health of his sick wife, Taidula,
who was afflicted with a debilitating eye disease.
After curing the Tatar queen, Alexis was rewarded by
the khan with lavish gifts and “high honors,” as well
as special concessions for the Orthodox Church.45
Kapkov appears to have based his composition
on one of the smaller scenes from the well-​known
fifteenth-​century vita icon of Alexis attributed to the
workshop of the master icon painter Dionysius and
housed in the Dormition Cathedral of the Moscow
Kremlin until 1945 (fig. 19).46 In the icon, the ailing
Taidula is propped up on her bed by an attendant
as Alexis blesses her with holy water from a litur-
gical bowl held by one of his helpers. Although an
academic painter, Kapkov seems to have relied on
this medieval Russo-​Byzantine image as a primary
source in his reimagining of the historical episode.
He repeats the overall structure and composition
of the iconic representation with a few significant
modifications. One of these is the addition of Dzha-
nibeg himself, who is portrayed in the shadowy
foreground of the painting, passively observing the

scene with his hands folded on his lap. Another
important addition is the centrally positioned
candle, held by Alexis, which serves as the main
source of light in the painting. As such, the visual
rhetoric of the work metaphorically articulates a
series of symbolic opposites: darkness is pitched
against light, blindness against vision, ignorance
against knowledge, and impotence against action.
Fig. 18  Iakov Kapkov, Metropolitan Alexis Healing the Tatar
Queen Taidula of Blindness While Dzhanibeg Looks On, 1840.
Oil on canvas, 22 1/3 × 26 1/4 in. (57 × 67 cm). State Tretyakov
Gallery, Moscow.
As a representative of the Orthodox faith, Alexis
miraculously delivers the Mongol infidels from the
“darkness” of their barbaric ways, bringing them into
the “light” of the Russo-​Byzantine faith and civiliza-
tion. Dzhanibeg can only passively observe Alexis,
who actively brings relief and salvation.
In fact, it was around this time in the mid-​
nineteenth century that icon painting was for the
Byzantium Reconsidered 35

Fig. 19  Dionysius and workshop, Metropolitan Alexis Healing
the Tatar Queen Taidula of Blindness, detail of Metropolitan
Alexis Vita Icon, 1480. Oil on wood, 77 ½ × 59 ¾ in. (197 ×
152 cm). State Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow.
first time introduced as a serious subject of study
at the St. Petersburg Imperial Academy of Arts.
Initiated by the energetic Prince Grigorii Gagarin,
the icon-​painting class was meant to train artists in
the technical skills and painterly methods of iconic
representation. Before being appointed vice presi-
dent of the academy in 1859, Gagarin had served as a
diplomat in Europe. In the late 1820s and early 1830s
he spent considerable time in Constantinople, where
he encountered important Byzantine monuments
such as the Hagia Sophia and the Kariye Camii first-
hand.47 In the 1840s Gagarin traveled in the Caucasus
and was especially taken with the medieval Arme-
nian and Georgian churches he saw in the region,
so much so that he even published an extensive study
36 The Icon and the Square
of these monuments, entitled Le Caucase pittoresque,
which included numerous reproductions of his own
sketches and architectural drawings (fig. 20).48
Gagarin believed that the new large-​scale
architectural projects that were being undertaken
by the state at this time, such as the construction of
the St. Isaac Cathedral in St. Petersburg (1818–58)
and the Cathedral of Christ the Savior in Moscow,
required artists who would be professionally trained
in the methods and techniques of icon painting and
monumental decoration, skills that a traditional
academic education did not provide. Accordingly,
Gagarin went to great lengths to secure an annual
sum of 4,000 rubles to support the needs of the
icon-​painting class.49 One of the main problems
he encountered at the academy was a lack of high-​
quality examples of medieval Russo-​Byzantine art
that students could use as models. As in the ven-
erable academic tradition of having students copy
Greco-​Roman plaster casts in order to improve their
figure-​drawing skills, Gagarin believed that the icon-​
painting class for like reasons needed a sizeable col-
lection of Russo-​Byzantine art objects. To this end,
he went about establishing a museum of Christian
antiquities at the academy in 1856 and personally
oversaw the acquisition of medieval Byzantine and
Russian icons, fragments of frescoes and mosaics,
facsimiles of illuminated manuscripts, and color
reproductions of the interior decoration of a number
of important Byzantine and medieval Russian mon-
uments, such as the Hagia Sophia in Constantinople,
the twelfth-​century Church of Christ the Savior on
the Nereditsa, the St. Theodore of Heraclea Church
in Novgorod, and the Betania and Gelati Monaster-
ies in Georgia.
A major donation in 1860 from the archaeol-
ogist and collector Petr Sevastianov (1811–1867)
significantly expanded the museum collection.
Returning to Russia from a fourteen-​month expe-
dition to Mount Athos, Sevastianov brought over a
large number of Byzantine artifacts, which included
150 twelfth-, thirteenth-, and fourteenth-​century
icons, a number of fresco fragments from the Panto-
crator and Philotheou Monasteries, 200 architectural
drawings, and 1,200 reproductions of icons, mosaics,
frescoes, and illuminated manuscripts.50 That same
year two additional important bequests were made
to the museum, further augmenting its holdings. The
first comprised a large number of applied-​art objects
from the eleventh-​century St. Sophia Cathedral in
Novgorod, including such rare pieces as the intri-
cately carved sixteenth-​century Sophia ambon and a
fifteenth-​century wooden sculpture of Saint George
on horseback.51 The second consisted of both orig-
inal artworks and high-​quality facsimiles of icons,
royal doors, and liturgical objects from several medi-
eval monasteries and churches in Pskov, Novgorod,
and Staraia Ladoga. Thanks to these and other dona-
tions, by the end of 1860 the academy museum had
received more than fifteen hundred new pieces of
Byzantine and medieval Russian art.52
The following year Gagarin appointed Vasilii
Prokhorov to oversee the collection, and in 1862
Fig. 20  Grigorii Gagarin, murals of the Betania Monastery,
the latter began to publish a luxuriously illustrated from Le Caucase pittoresque, 1847. Private collection.
journal, entitled Christian Antiquities and Archaeol-
ogy, which publicized the museum collection and
brought it to the attention of a broader public.53 icon-​painting class, which ceased to exist in 1859.
Until the founding of the Russian Museum of His From its inception the class had encountered
Imperial Majesty Alexander III in 1898, the acade- vehement opposition from the more conservative
my’s Museum of Christian Antiquities was the only members of the academy faculty, who claimed that a
major collection of medieval Russian and Byzantine return to Russo-​Byzantine pictorial traditions would
art in St. Petersburg—with the exception of the lead to a decline in Russia’s artistic culture.54 Gagarin
Hermitage—and as such played an important role recalled that whenever he mentioned the impor-
in the revival, even more so than the short-​lived tance of studying Byzantine art to his colleagues,

Byzantium Reconsidered 37
 he met with “ironic and disdainful” smiles and was
showered “with a heap of witty remarks about the
deformity of [Byzantine] proportions, the angularity
of forms, the clumsiness of poses, the awkwardness
and savageness of the compositions.”55
However, despite these setbacks, Gagarin’s and
Prokhorov’s efforts eventually led in 1873 to the
establishment at the academy of a permanent lecture
series on the history of medieval Russian art, which
were delivered by Prokhorov and were open to the
general public, as well as the academy faculty and
students. Not only was this the first course of its
kind ever to be taught in Russia, but in 1876 it was
made mandatory for all the students of the academy.
Indeed, by the 1870s and 1880s the appearance of a
new generation of dedicated scholars and profes-
sional restorers in the field of Russo-​Byzantine art
began profoundly to transform attitudes both in the
Imperial Academy of Arts and among the broader
public. The famous art critic Vladimir Stasov directly
attributed these changes to Gagarin’s activities,
which he believed had made a lasting impact on the
course of the Russo-​Byzantine revival. In 1885 Stasov
wrote that “thanks to Prince Gagarin and his sus-
tained efforts, in the practice of monumental reli-
gious art, we now have concepts and requirements
that previously did not exist at all. Now artists are
required to possess knowledge of archaeological,
historical, costume, and other technical details and
expertise, which were previously completely over-
looked. We began with the study of Byzantium and
finished with the study of all things Russian and
Slavic.”56 By the end of Gagarin’s tenure as the vice
president of the academy in 1872, the Museum of
Christian Antiquities comprised one of the biggest
collections of Byzantine and medieval Russian art
in the country. When it was formally handed over to
38 The Icon and the Square
the Russian Museum of His Imperial Majesty Alex-
ander III in 1898, it contained “1,616 ancient icons,
3,346 different wooden artifacts, 141 carvings, miters,
and liturgical objects.”57 Meanwhile, Gagarin’s vehe-
ment advocacy for both the preservation of ancient
Russo-​Byzantine monuments and the revival of
the Russo-​Byzantine style in contemporary archi-
tecture resulted in the advent of several major res-
toration and revivalist projects. For example, the
St. Sophia Cathedrals in Kiev and Novgorod and
the Assumption Cathedral in Moscow were cleaned
and restored. Likewise, the revivalist St. Vladimir
Cathedrals in Kiev (1862–82), Sevastopol (1862–88),
and Chersonesus (1861–91) and the St. Demetrius
of Thessaloniki Church (1861–66) in St. Petersburg
were constructed at this time.
Restoration, Archaeology, and Scholarship
A key figure in the restoration initiatives of the 1870s
and 1880s was the archaeologist and art historian
Adrian Prakhov. A professor at the St. Petersburg
University and a leading member of the Imperial
Russian Archaeological Society, Prakhov initiated a
number of important projects, the most significant
of which were the restorations of some of the old-
est medieval monuments in the Russian Empire:
the St. Sophia Cathedral, the Church of St. Cyril,
and the Monastery of St. Michael of the Golden
Domes in Kiev. From 1869 to 1873 Prakhov traveled
extensively throughout Europe, the eastern Medi-
terranean, and the Middle East, visiting France, Ger-
many, Italy, Greece, Turkey, Egypt, Palestine, and
Syria, among others, and went to great lengths to see
as many early Christian sites as he could. As a result
of these travels, he amassed an extensive collection
of drawings, sketches, photographs, and chromo-
lithographs of a number of important early Chris-
tian and Byzantine monuments. A fervent admirer
of Byzantine art and architecture, he at one point
proposed that the Imperial Russian Archaeological
Society sponsor an expedition to study the medi-
eval churches of Greece and to copy the mosaics
and frescoes in the monasteries of Daphni, Hosios
Lukas, Meteora, and Mystras.58 Unfortunately, this
ambitious project was never realized, and Prakhov
turned his attention to the study and preservation of
monuments closer to home.
In 1880 he secured from the state 10,000 rubles
for cleaning and restoring the twelfth-​century
frescoes of the St. Cyril Church in Kiev, a project
Prakhov described as “the first large-​scale archaeo-
logical undertaking begun in the prosperous reign of
the Sovereign Emperor [Alexander II].”59 With the
help of a team of artists from the Murashko School
of Drawing, Prakhov removed the layers of later
seventeenth-​century overpainting and reinforced
the original medieval frescoes with enamel varnish
and turpentine.60 Well-​preserved frescoes were left
untouched, while partially preserved frescoes were
retouched with minor additions. In places where the
original frescoes had been entirely lost, Prakhov had
the artist Mikhail Vrubel execute new ones (figs. 38
and 42) in a style meant to closely resemble that of
the twelfth-​century originals (a style discussed in
greater detail in the third chapter). In addition to
restoring the frescoes, Prakhov constructed a new
iconostasis for the church. In 1884 he had discovered
a number of twelfth-​century frescoes in the apse of
the altar depicting the life of Saint Cyril of Alexan-
dria, to whom the church was dedicated, but they
were completely obscured by a seventeenth-​century
Baroque iconostasis.61 To remedy this, Prakhov
proposed to construct a new single-​tier marble
templon above which the original frescoes could be
seen. He designed the structure for the new iconos-
tasis himself and commissioned Vrubel to paint for
it four large panel icons depicting Christ, the Virgin
and Child, and Saints Cyril and Afanasii.
Two years later Prakhov became involved in the
large-​scale restoration of the St. Sophia Cathedral,
where he personally uncovered four previously
hidden Byzantine mosaics: those of the Christ
Pantocrator (fig. 45), an archangel, and the apostle
Paul in the central dome of the church, and the fig-
ure of Saint Aaron on the triumphal arch. He also
discovered the twelfth-​century frescoes of Saints
Adrian and Natalia of Nicomedia, the martyrs Saint
Domnius and Saint Philippol, the Baptism of Christ,
and the eleventh-​century fresco of the Forty Mar-
tyrs of Sebaste in the apse of the baptistery.62 Lastly,
in 1888 Prakhov accepted a commission to clean and
restore the twelfth-​century mosaics and frescoes of
the Monastery of St. Michael of the Golden Domes.
An important aspect of Prakhov’s restoration activi-
ties was his practice of making high-​quality life-​size
copies in oil paint of all the frescoes and mosaics he
restored, a practice he followed in Kiev and in other
Ukrainian cities, such as Vladimir-​in-Volhynia and
Chernigov.63 He would also document the entire
restoration process with multiple photographs.
Almost two hundred of these life-​size color copies
were exhibited to the general public in St. Petersburg
in 1883 and then in Odessa the following year and
were accompanied by a comprehensive catalogue
with detailed descriptions and explanations of all the
images.64
As a celebrated expert of Russo-​Byzantine art,
Prakhov was also commissioned to oversee several
revivalist projects, the most important of which was
Byzantium Reconsidered 39

Fig. 21  Interior view of the Cathedral of St. Vladimir, Kiev,
1862–82.
the interior decoration of the St. Vladimir Cathedral
in 1885–96 (fig. 21). For this project Prakhov invited
a number of eminent contemporary artists from the
St. Petersburg Imperial Academy of Arts, including
Viktor Vasnetsov (1848–1926), Mikhail Nesterov
(1862–1942), Pavel Svedomskii (1849–1904), and
40 The Icon and the Square
Mikhail Vrubel, as well as a number of lesser-​known
Polish and Ukrainian artists, such as Wilhelm
Kotarbinskii, Mykola Pymonenko, Viktor Zamirailo,
Timofei Safonov, and Serhii Kostenko.65 Prakhov
wanted the cathedral to reflect the religious, ethi-
cal, and aesthetic ideals of the times and therefore
granted the artists a considerable degree of stylistic
and iconographic freedom in the execution of the
frescoes and mosaics. As a result, a striking feature of
the new cathedral was the predominance of stylized
ornamentation in the form of abstract, geometric
patterns, as well as sinuous vegetal and floral motifs
strongly reminiscent of international Art Nouveau,
or stil modern, as it was called in Russia at the turn
of the century.66 Accordingly, as this book contends,
the Russo-​Byzantine revival became intimately
linked with modern artistic expression and with the
advent of a new, distinctly fin de siècle style. In other
words, these new revivalist monuments became
aesthetic microcosms of Russia’s larger engagement
with and response to modernity, combining nos-
talgia for the past, traditionalism, historicism, and
nationalism, on the one hand, with technological
progress, artistic innovation, and avant-​garde experi-
mentation, on the other.
Perhaps the most instrumental figure in the
Byzantine revival was the art historian and archae-
ologist Nikodim Kondakov, who is known today as
one of the most celebrated founders of the modern
study of Byzantine art both in Russia and abroad.67
Although he trained under the famous Slavonic phi-
lologist and linguist Fedor Buslaev, Kondakov soon
turned his attention to the then-​nascent discipline
of Byzantine art history, investigating a wide range
of different media, including frescoes and mosaics,
miniatures and icons, architecture and the decora-
tive arts. His doctoral thesis, The History of Byzantine
Art and Iconography Traced in the Miniatures of
Greek Manuscripts, was first published in Odessa in
1876 and then again in an enlarged French edition
in 1886.68 This ambitious work challenged the idea
of a “frozen” and “unchanging” Byzantine pictorial
tradition by tracing an iconographic and stylistic
evolution in the development of Byzantine art over
the course of several centuries. It also attempted
to draw parallels between Byzantine, Carolingian,
and Renaissance art, arguing that Byzantium took
part in a broader cultural and artistic exchange and
was not as isolated and insular as was previously
assumed. In some of his later publications, such as
The Byzantine Churches and Monuments of Constan-
tinople (1886),69 Kondakov even went so far as to
claim that the Crusades had stimulated a renewal
in Western artistic practices by bringing Europeans
into direct contact with Byzantine art and architec-
ture. According to Kondakov, this formative encoun-
ter ultimately sowed the first seeds of the Italian
Renaissance.
Kondakov’s multiple pioneering publications—
The Ancient Architecture of Georgia (1876), The Min-
iatures of a Greek Manuscript: Psalter of the ixth
Century (1878), The Byzantine Mosaics of the Mosque
of Kariye Camii in Constantinople (1881), and Travels
to Sinai: The Antiquities of the Mount Sinai Monas-
tery (1882)70—earned him both a professorship at
St. Petersburg University (1888–97) and the position
of head curator of the medieval and Renaissance col-
lections at the Hermitage Museum (1888–93). The
curatorship brought Kondakov into close contact
with Byzantine decorative-​art objects, fueling his
interest in this art form and resulting in his seminal
1892 publication on Byzantine enamels, which was
simultaneously published in French and German.71
It was positively reviewed in both the Russian and
the foreign press, including by leading European
Byzantinists Charles Diehl and Paul Weber, and
cemented Kondakov’s international reputation.
In addition to being awarded a gold medal by the
Imperial Russian Archaeological Society, Kondakov
was made an honorary member of the European
Archaeological Society in Italy and a grand officier in
the Légion d’honneur in France.72
It was also at this time that Kondakov became
one of the founders of the Russian Archaeological
Institute in Constantinople, which was first con-
ceived in 1887 and opened on February 26, 1895.73
Headed by Fedor Uspenskii, the institute was
actively supported by the Russian ambassador to
Constantinople, Alexander Nelidov, who took a
keen interest in the enterprise and enthusiastically
promoted all of its activities. As a major research
center, the institute’s primary goal was to study the
art, architecture, history, and culture of Byzantium.
In the course of its existence, it managed to assemble
a significant library collection and to oversee a
number of important expeditions and excavations
throughout the Ottoman Empire, including in
Bulgaria, Macedonia, Syria, Palestine, and Mount
Athos, which led to the creation of a Cabinet of
Antiquities within the institute. With time, this cabi-
net gradually expanded into a small museum, whose
collection contained many important Byzantine
artifacts and works of art, such as the fourteenth-​
century icon of Saint Anastasia the Healer and a
sixteenth-​century icon of the Christ Pantocrator
from Mount Athos, both presently in the Hermit-
age Museum, as well as architectural fragments and
reliefs from the Kariye Camii, the Hippodrome,
and the Church of the Theotokos Chalkoprateia.74
The institute was open to all scholars of Byzantium,
both Russian and foreign alike, and oversaw the
Byzantium Reconsidered 41
 publication of sixteen scholarly volumes of Izvestiia
RAIK (News of the Russian Archaeological Institute
in Constantinople), which comprised essays on the
most recent discoveries and accomplishments of
the institute. Some of its findings were also regu-
larly featured in the Vizantiiskii vremennik, a leading
scholarly journal of Byzantine studies, which was
founded in 1894 and published by the St. Peters-
burg Imperial Academy of Sciences. In addition to
its research activities, the Russian Archaeological
Institute over the years adopted a more active role
of protecting and restoring surviving monuments of
Byzantine antiquity, which the Ottoman authorities
had neglected for centuries.
From Constantinople to Muscovy
As Stasov had already observed in 1885, the initial
scholarly and public interest in Byzantium gradu-
ally extended to Russia’s medieval artistic heritage
as well. Although some studies on Russian art had
already appeared in the mid-​nineteenth century,
such as Fedor Solntsev’s Antiquities of the Russian
State (1849–53), Ivan Sakharov’s Exploration of Rus-
sian Icon Painting (1849), and Dmitrii Rovinskii’s
History of the Russian Schools of Icon Painting Through
the End of the Seventeenth Century (1856), they
tended to be isolated endeavors undertaken by indi-
vidual enthusiasts.75 The rigorous and systematic
study of medieval Russian art as a field of serious sci-
entific inquiry only began in the late 1880s and was
largely brought about by Kondakov and his students,
who became progressively interested in the differ-
ences and similarities between medieval Russian
art and its Byzantine prototype. In 1888–89, Konda-
kov was personally involved in the archaeological
42 The Icon and the Square
excavations in Chersonesus, which brought him into
direct contact with the surviving monuments and
artifacts of the ancient Greek, Byzantine, and medi-
eval Russian settlements of the Crimean Peninsula.
As a result, he turned his attention to the exploration
of the gradual evolution of Greek and Byzantine
artistic forms into a recognizable, distinctively Rus-
sian pictorial tradition. Thus, for example, in 1888
Kondakov published a number of short studies on
the Russo-​Byzantine monuments of Kiev and Theo­
dosia. It was in the years immediately preceding
these new studies that Prakhov had first cleaned and
restored the frescoes and mosaics of the St. Sophia
Cathedral, the Church of St. Cyril, and the Monas-
tery of St. Michael of the Golden Domes and had
organized the accompanying exhibitions of life-​size
copies of this monumental art in St. Petersburg and
Odessa, attracting both scholarly and public interest
to these monuments, including that of Kondakov.
By the mid-1890s Kondakov had shifted his
attention almost exclusively to the study of the early
Byzantine influences on the monuments and art of
Kiev, Vladimir, Novgorod, and Pskov.76 These new
interests culminated in the publication of Russian
Treasures from the Period of the Kievan Dukedoms
(1896) and the definitive six-​volume encyclopedia
Russian Antiquities in Monuments of Art (1889–99),
which Kondakov co-​authored with Count Ivan Iva-
novich Tolstoy, the vice president of the St. Peters-
burg Imperial Academy of Arts.77 The latter was a par-
ticularly comprehensive survey of the art produced
in Russo-​Kievan territories from the Scythian era to
the fourteenth century, and was the first all-​inclusive
history of medieval Russian art ever to be published.
It contained more than a thousand illustrations and
was translated into French in 1891 so that it would be
accessible to a wider international audience.78
 In this publication Kondakov went to some
lengths to distinguish between “Byzantine,”
“Russo-​Byzantine,” and purely “Russian” pictorial
languages. Thus, for example, he identified a clear
artistic shift from the “Greek” mosaics and fres-
coes of the St. Sophia Cathedral in Kiev to those
of the Monastery of St. Michael of the Golden
Domes, arguing that the elongated proportions
and exaggerated movements of the figures depicted
in the latter betrayed a noticeable deviation from
the more static and stylized monumentality of the
St. Sophia representations. Kondakov concluded
that this demonstrated the involvement of Russian
craftsmen, who must have been enlisted in the
decoration of the monastery in addition to the Byz-
antine masters. Moreover, Kondakov considered
the monumental art in the cathedrals of Vladimir,
Novgorod, and Pskov to have significantly departed
from the recognizably Byzantine, or “Greek,” rep-
resentational mode of the Kiev monuments to
include purely Russian pictorial elements. This
novel methodological approach to the analysis and
categorization of medieval art and architecture in
Russia marked an important departure from the way
these monuments had been understood—or rather
misunderstood—in the early and mid-​nineteenth
century. As Iurii Savel’ev points out, the terms “Byz-
antine,” “Russo-​Byzantine,” “Byzanto-​Russian,” and
“pre-​Petrine” had been applied indiscriminately to a
vast number of early Christian and medieval mon-
uments throughout the Russian Empire without
due attention paid to their individual architectural
and pictorial characteristics.79 Accordingly, in many
nineteenth-​century Russian publications, the term
“Byzantine” was used loosely to describe all medie-
val architecture that was not recognizably “Gothic”
or “Romanesque.”
Kondakov’s scholarly contributions were thus
instrumental in transforming the ways in which Rus-
sia’s medieval artistic heritage was understood and
evaluated both in academic circles and among the
broader public. Following his lead, a younger genera-
tion of scholars such as Dmitrii Ainalov (1862–1939),
Egor Redin (1863–1908), Dmitrii Trenev (1867–?),
and Alexander Uspenskii (1873–1938) began to take
a keen interest in this subject matter, and a large
number of scholarly studies on medieval Russian art
were published at the turn of the century, includ-
ing The St. Sophia Cathedral in Kiev: A Study of Its
Mosaics and Frescoes, Ancient Monuments of Art in
Kiev, The Iconostasis of the Smolenskii Cathedral in the
Novodevichii Convent in Moscow, and The History of
the Frescoes of the Assumption Cathedral in Moscow,
among many others.80 All of these new publications
indirectly stimulated the creation of the first signifi-
cant public and private collections of Byzantine and
medieval Russian art, which were presented to the
general public in a number of watershed exhibitions
(discussed in more detail in chapter 2). Thus, for
example, in 1885 the Hermitage Museum acquired
the extensive Alexander Basilewsky (1829–1899)
collection of early Christian and Byzantine art
objects, and in the late 1880s and early 1890s Niko-
lai Likhachev (1862–1936) began to assemble what
eventually became one of the largest and most
important private collections of Byzantine and Rus-
sian icons in Europe.
Not only did these collections and exhibitions
shed new light onto Russia’s rich artistic past, but
they also began to stir a wider public interest in the
preservation and reinstatement of what was then
perceived to be a disappearing aesthetic tradition.
Since many of the original artworks had been lost
in the course of Russia’s Westernization, there was
Byzantium Reconsidered 43
 an increasing sense of urgency that the surviving
ancient frescoes and icons needed to be salvaged
for posterity, and the government launched several
conservation and restoration projects. By 1890 the
state had increased its annual subsidy to the Impe-
rial Russian Archaeological Society from 17,000
to 45,000 rubles. Similarly, in 1886 and 1888 the
government bequeathed 25,000 rubles and an addi-
tional annual subsidy of 5,000 rubles to the Imperial
Moscow Archaeological Society.81 This funding was
meant to support a number of different conser-
vation programs throughout the Russian Empire,
and by the close of the nineteenth century a large
number of medieval monuments had been cleaned
and restored, including the Church of the Tithes in
Kiev, the Assumption and St. Demetrius Cathedrals
in Vladimir, the Church of Christ the Savior on the
Nereditsa, the St. George Cathedral in Iuriev-Polskii,
and the Transfiguration Cathedral of the Mirozhskii
Monastery in Pskov, among many others.82 Lastly,
under Alexander II the state funded the establish-
ment of a number of workshops for the cleaning and
restoration of old icons.
All of these conservation activities further
fueled the discovery of a forgotten art: discovery in
the literal sense, for it was only after the removal of
numerous layers of varnish and repainting that the
importance of this art could be fully appreciated.
In addition to recovering the art of the past, the
government began to advocate the study of contem-
porary icon-​painting practices, which were seen to
be on a continuum with the past. The prevailing idea
was that by observing contemporary practices in
rural Russia and in the ancient centers of icon pro-
duction such as Vladimir and Novgorod, it would be
possible to regain some of this lost tradition. As part
of this initiative, in 1902–3 Kondakov went on an
44 The Icon and the Square
expedition through rural Russia to study current
practices in icon painting and was deeply disturbed
by what he considered to be its dismal state, on the
verge of complete disappearance. As a result, Konda-
kov founded the Committee for the Encouragement
of Icon Painting.83 This organization helped to open
schools for the better training of the craftsmen who
had preserved the icon-​painting tradition since the
Middle Ages but were now suffering from unfair
competition of chromolithography, which could
produce greater numbers of cheaper icons.
However, despite the long-​lasting impact of his
scholarly activities on the Moscow and St. Peters-
burg art worlds, Kondakov himself took little interest
in contemporary artistic movements. He remained
largely unaware of the connections between his
scholarship and the budding aspirations of a new
generation of avant-​garde artists, who began to look
to Russo-​Byzantine art as a divergent system of visu-
ality and a powerful pictorial alternative to the then-​
pervasive nineteenth-​century naturalism propagated
by the Imperial Academy of Arts in St. Petersburg
and the Moscow School of Painting, Sculpture, and
Architecture. Kondakov was first and foremost an
archaeologist and an art historian who was interested
in Byzantine and medieval Russian art as relics of the
past, not as revitalizing agents in a broader cultural
revival. Despite his close friendship with the highly
influential and nationalist critic Vladimir Stasov—
who had repeatedly championed Kondakov’s work
in the popular press—Kondakov himself did not
share Stasov’s call to arms for an artistic revival on
the basis of the medieval Russo-​Byzantine tradition.
Although Kondakov’s vast scholarly output signifi-
cantly contributed to the repositioning of Byzantine
and medieval Russian art in the national conscious-
ness and broader culture, Kondakov himself hated
the new “fashion” for icons that had arisen by the
1910s and that in many ways was brought about by
his own work. He had nothing but contempt for the
“aesthetes” and “dilettantes” who now scrambled to
amass vast collections of iconic and medieval art.
Furthermore, while not antinationalist, Kon-
dakov had little interest in any Slavophile agendas.
He valued Byzantine and medieval Russian art
not as unique repositories of a national artistic
genius but rather as important vessels of Hellenistic
forms, which had persisted since antiquity. Kon-
dakov believed that Byzantium, as the true heir of
ancient Greece, was the center of development for
all medieval art—Western and Eastern alike. Thus,
rather than being diametrically opposed, both the
Italian Renaissance and the Russian icon-​painting
tradition were simply two different branches of the
same Byzantine tree. In fact, instead of valuing the
nonrepresentational and abstract qualities of Russo-​
Byzantine art, Kondakov argued that the most suc-
cessful representatives of that artistic tradition were
formally akin to Italian Trecento paintings or Hel-
lenistic grave portraits, a contention that generated
violent polemics among the younger generation of
scholars and art historians who went on to challenge
his legacy in the subsequent decades.
New Criticism and Contemporary Art
Despite the considerable gains made in scholarship,
as well as in exhibition and restoration practices,
many twentieth-​century thinkers and critics still
felt that the Russo-​Byzantine representational tra-
dition was largely underappreciated aesthetically at
the close of the nineteenth century. Writing in 1923,
the art historian Pavel Muratov (1881–1950) stated:
“At the end of the nineteenth century, ancient Rus-
sian art did not yet have its own viewer, who could
appreciate it as a unique artistic phenomenon; it did
not have its own public, a sympathetic and apprecia-
tive milieu. Around 1910 this viewer appeared, this
public was found, and the sympathetic milieu came
into being.” Undoubtedly with Kondakov in mind,
Muratov continued:
There is no reason . . . to blame Russian scholars, Russian
archeologists—all of those who studied Russian antiq-
uities in the course of the preceding century—for “over-
looking” the magnificence and beauty of old Russian art
and failing to acquaint Europe with it. Those same objects
were viewed by the people of the previous century with
necessarily different eyes. In their judgments they relied
on different evaluative criteria: their imagination was
always predicated on a different aesthetic ideal.84
Muratov attributed this underestimation of medieval
Russian art to the dominant nineteenth-​century
taste for illusionistic and naturalistic depiction.
He argued that it was only thanks to the Russian
public’s exposure to and appreciation of modern
French art in the collections of Sergei Shchukin
(1854–1936) and Ivan Morozov (1871–1921) that it
was finally able to apprehend and properly value
the formal complexities and artistic intelligence
of Russo-​Byzantine representations: “Manet, the
Impressionists, and Cézanne were not only great
masters in their own art but also great civilizers . . .
educators of our eyes and sentiments.”85
Muratov’s pointed parallel between Russo-​
Byzantine visuality and modern European art was
neither accidental nor exceptional. Unlike Kon-
dakov and his contemporaries, the subsequent
generation of art historians and intellectuals, such
Byzantium Reconsidered 45
 as Nikolai Punin (1888–1953), Nikolai Tarabukin
(1889–1956), Iakov Tugenkhold (1892–1928), Igor
Grabar (1871–1960), Vladimir Markov (1877–1914),
and Aleksei Grishchenko (1883–1977)—to name but
a few—were deeply invested in both the present and
the future development of Russian art. Their interest
in the past and the Russo-​Byzantine tradition was
fueled not simply by historical curiosity but by a
deep-​rooted desire to effect change in the contem-
porary art world. Addressing his own generation of
art critics and art historians, Muratov advised that
“the work of the researcher” ought to be joined with
“the work of the theorist.”86
According to many of these thinkers, con-
temporary Russian art was in a state of crisis and
stultification as it followed one of three dead-​end
paths: the long-​impoverished naturalism of the
Peredvizhniki, the hollow decadence of the Mir
Iskusstva group, or the mindless subservient imita-
tion of the French avant-​garde—none of which had
produced original or innovative artwork. Writing
in 1913, the art historian and critic Nikolai Punin
pessimistically observed that Russian art had “lost
all of its meaning,” had become “unnecessary” and
“dead” for the majority of viewers.87 The artist Alek-
sei Grishchenko similarly stated that the Russian art
world of that year was characterized by “opacity and
confusion and a total disengagement with pictorial
form.”88 What had saved European art in a similar
“moment of darkness,” according to Grishchenko,
was the “innovative genius” of Cézanne, “which cat-
alyzed the experiments of Picasso and the Cubists.”89
However, since Russia lacked such a redemptive
equivalent, the only way for young Russian artists to
meaningfully contribute to international modern art
was to look back “to the golden age of the Russian
icon—the path to powerful painterly form.”90
46 The Icon and the Square
Punin and Tarabukin expanded on Grishchen-
ko’s arguments, claiming that European art was also
in a state of terrible decline and was moving in the
direction of a cold, rational, and empty formalism,
where artists congratulated themselves on “success-
fully combining several coloristic patches on the
behind of a prostitute.”91 Accordingly, Punin and
Tarabukin believed that the aesthetic and ideaistic
reevaluation of the Russo-​Byzantine tradition would
not only revive Russian contemporary art but could
actually pave the way for an international artistic
revolution: “We believe that the icon . . . will set
contemporary art on a path toward achievements dif-
ferent from those which have preoccupied European
art in the last decade . . . we are searching for differ-
ent values, a different inspiration, a different art.”92
As already mentioned, such frequent comparisons
between Russo-​Byzantine art and European mod-
ernism were neither coincidental nor unprecedented,
but were stimulated by a series of events in the years
1910–13. The first of these was Henri Matisse’s visit
to Moscow in October of 1911. The artist was hosted
by his patron Sergei Shchukin, a prominent art
collector, and received a warm welcome among the
Muscovite artistic and intellectual elites. By the time
of his arrival, both Matisse and his work were already
relatively well known in the Russian art world. About
thirty-​two of his paintings were in Moscow collec-
tions, twenty-​five of them in Shchukin’s, which had
been open to the public since 1907 and included such
modernist masterpieces as Statue and Vases on an
Eastern Carpet (1908), The Dinner Table (Harmony
in Red) (1908), Spanish Dancer (1909), Coffeepot,
Carafe, and Fruit Dish (1909), and the Dance and
Music panels (1910).93 Matisse’s work had likewise
been widely reproduced in various artistic journals
in the years 1908–10, and even translations of his
celebrated “Notes d’un peintre” had appeared in the
sixth issue of Zolotoe runo in 1909.94 It was in this
critical context that Benois first labeled Matisse a
“Byzantinist,” describing his art as the new “Byzan-
tinism of our age.” Emphasizing that few contempo-
rary artists had been able to achieve such widespread
renown and recognition during their lifetimes as
Matisse, Benois observed that an “entire school
of artists in St. Petersburg” were following in the
Frenchman’s footsteps.95
Consequently, at the time of his visit, Matisse
was already enough of a celebrity in Russia to gen-
erate a considerable media flourish, and his stay was
closely documented in Russkie vedomosti, Utro rossii,
Rannee utro, Protiv techeniya, and Zerkalo, among
other major newspapers. Of particular interest were
Matisse’s comments on contemporary art and his
responses to early Byzantine and Russian icons,
which he had seen for the first time. The artist was
repeatedly quoted as praising the icons’ aesthetic
qualities and their superiority to the Western artistic
tradition:
Yesterday I saw a collection of old Russian icons. They are
really great art. I am in love with their moving simplicity
which, to me, is closer and dearer than Fra Angelico.
In these icons the soul of the artists who painted them
opens out like a mystical flower. And from them we ought
to learn how to understand art.96
The Russians do not suspect what artistic treasures they
possess. I am familiar with the ecclesiastical art of several
countries and nowhere have I seen such expressivity. . . .
Your students have here, at home, incomparably better
specimens of art (with respect to icon-​painting) than
abroad. French artists should come to learn in Russia.
Italy has less to offer in this sphere.97
On October 27, 1911, Matisse visited the Tretyakov
Gallery, where he saw a special exhibit of early icon
painting. The newspaper Utro rossii reported the
following morning that “yesterday the French artist,
Henri Matisse, visited the Tretyakov Gallery where
he got to know works by Russian icon-​painters. . . .
Apparently, the pictures produced a great impres-
sion on the French artist. . . . Matisse grants decisive
priority to the Russian icon over the ecclesiastical
painting of the Italian Renaissance.”98 Matisse’s pos-
itive commentary on medieval Russian art—hyper-
bolically ventriloquized by the Russian press—dra-
matized the connections between the trajectory of
modern art and the iconic tradition, already hinted
at by Benois in his 1910 article for the journal Rech’.99
For a Russian audience the approval of a promi-
nent French artist meant that the appreciation of
icons was not simply the result of a circumscribed
regional chauvinism or sentimental revivalism but
had international relevance. Russia’s long-​neglected
indigenous artistic tradition suddenly seemed to
point the way forward to the most radical modernist
innovation—and not just in Moscow but in Paris.
In his 1917 publication The Russian Icon as the Art of
Painting, Grishchenko went so far as to claim that
Matisse, upon his return to Paris from Moscow, was
so dissatisfied with his use of color that he cut up
several of his works.100
Claims such as Grishchenko’s became even
more prevalent after the 1913 Exhibition of Ancient
Russian Art (discussed in greater detail in the next
chapter). Organized by the Moscow Archeolog-
ical Institute in 1913 in celebration of the three-​
hundredth anniversary of the Romanov dynasty,
the exhibition stayed open for five months and
showcased a vast array of icons, illuminated man-
uscripts, metalwork, and embroidery. It received
Byzantium Reconsidered 47
 widespread coverage in the Russian press, with
prominent art historians and critics, such as Dmitrii
Ainalov, Alexander Benois, Pavel Muratov, Niko-
lai Punin, and Iakov Tugenkhold, writing lengthy
laudatory reviews of the exhibition: “The current
Moscow exhibition is a major step forward and
is acquainting large sectors of the Russian public
with the art of icon painting. Of course, in three or
four years Europe will also be dreaming of a similar
exhibition, and Russian icon painting will enter the
collections of Western museums as a time-​honored
guest.”101 At the same time as the exhibition, Sergei
Shchukin collaborated with the art historian Iakov
Tugenkhold on a major publication that catalogued
the former’s entire collection of modern French
art and paid special tribute to his recently acquired
Cubist paintings by Picasso.102 The coincidence of
the exhibition of ancient icons and the publication
of Shchukin’s modern-​art catalogue did not pass
unnoticed, prompting intellectuals to embark on
the most diverse interpretations and comparisons of
the ancient and the modern. Pavel Muratov’s journal
Sofia launched the debate by juxtaposing an article
by art historian Alexander Anisimov (1877–1937)
on medieval Novgorod icons with a critique of
Picasso by Nikolai Berdiaev (1874–1948), in which
the latter described the artist as a “magnificent” and
“deeply affecting” genius, whose art symbolized a
deeper crisis in modernity, where everything was
moving toward “decrystallization, dematerialization,
and disincarnation.”103 Philosopher, theologian, and
scientist Pavel Florensky responded to the debate
with the 1914 publication The Meaning of Idealism,
in which he vehemently censured Picasso for the
cold and detached rationality with which the artist
deconstructed objects, entirely removing spirituality
and cohesion from art. As a result, Florensky argued
48 The Icon and the Square
that Picasso’s still lifes of musical instruments from
1912–13 were nothing more than mechanical “images
of a four-​dimensional perception from the poisoned
soul of a great artist.”104 By contrast, Florensky saw
medieval icons as the ideal form of art, antithetical
to Picasso’s “dead” paintings both in their formal
structure and in their transcendental subject matter.
In a similar vein, in his essay “The Corpse of Beauty,”
Sergei Bulgakov (1871–1944) described Picasso’s
Cubist works as “black icons” that were symptom-
atic of a crisis in Western civilization and ominously
prefigured the outbreak of the First World War.105
However, not all of the comparisons between
the icon exhibition and Picasso’s Cubist paintings
that appeared in the press at this time were dispar-
aging of the latter, and several accounts were highly
laudatory. For example, Grishchenko claimed that
“in a strange way twentieth-​century Paris echoes
medieval Muscovy,” emphasizing what he saw as
meaningful formal resonances between the two:
“it is wonderful [to see] that in several Moscow
icons, such as the Deeses nos. 125–127, the coloris-
tic problem of combining three different tonalities
is masterfully solved, [a problem] only recently
explored by Picasso in his famous portrait Woman
with a Fan from S. I. Shchukin’s collection.”106 Sim-
ilarly, Benois published two articles in the journal
Rech’, “Letters on Art: Icons and the New Art” and
“Russian Icons and the West,” in which he—like
Muratov—credited Picasso and his contemporaries
for opening the public’s eyes to the aesthetic merit
of icons: “Not only does the fourteenth-​century
Nicholas the Miracle Worker or Nativity of the Mother
of God help us to understand Matisse, Picasso,
Le Fauconnier or Goncharova; but through Matisse,
Picasso, Le Fauconnier and Goncharova, we feel
the great beauty of these Byzantine pictures much
better, the fact that they have youth, power and ani-
mation.” Furthermore, Benois claimed that beyond
the aesthetic and formal affinities between modern
French art and medieval icons, they possessed a
deeper internal coherence, which imbued them with
metaphysical significance beyond the purely visual:
In the works of the Cubists, just as in icons, the “advice of
good sense” ends, while a mad dream begins—the logic of
the irreal—and art returns in full to its mystic meaning.
. . . what we admire in icons today is not simply
their bright colours, their wonderful graphic sense, their
incomparable technique but the depth of the spiritual life
depicted in them.
. . . for contemporary art to develop for itself an
essence like that of icons, a spiritual metamorphosis
would be necessary, and not only of individuals but of
artistic creation as a whole.
Benois saw a historical imperative behind the “highly
significant meeting” of these two ostensibly disparate
pictorial traditions. Describing it as an “intervention
of fate” and a “preordained coincidence,” he argued
that the Russo-​Byzantine revival would prove to be a
vital catalyst for rejuvenating contemporary art, both
in Russia and in Europe, by allowing “even the most
ardent and daring innovators [to] see a valuable sign
for themselves in something which up until now had
appeared to have died away hopelessly.”107
Florensky, Punin, Tarabukin,
and the Philosophy of the Icon
By 1915 both specialists and the general public alike
increasingly viewed the Russo-​Byzantine artistic tra-
dition as representative of a national creative genius
that could rival that of the Italian Renaissance. How-
ever, Pavel Florensky, Nikolai Punin, and Nikolai
Tarabukin went even further in their writings, assert-
ing that Russo-​Byzantine art was by far superior
to that of the Italian Renaissance and subsequent
European painting on the basis of its transcendental
and ideaistic supremacy. Constructing the icon pri-
marily as a cipher of an alternate reality, these three
authors attempted to analyze its role not just as a
visual image but as a universal symbol of metaphys-
ical, utilitarian, aesthetic, and cultural significance.
In short, the icon was presented as an invaluable tool
with which society could fashion a new philosophi-
cal and spiritual consciousness in the face of moder-
nity’s constant flux, instability, and fragmentation.
These ideas were in large part shaped by the reli-
gious humanism and romantic nationalism that had
flourished in Russia at the turn of the century and
subsequently came to be known as the Russian Reli-
gious Renaissance.108 Central to this discourse were
the writings of the nineteenth-​century philosopher
and poet Vladimir Soloviev and the authors of the
Vekhi, or Landmarks, publication (1909) (discussed
in more detail in chapter 4).
Generally acknowledged to be the founder of
Russian sophiology, Soloviev believed in the spir-
itualization of matter and the universal presence
of divine wisdom in all of creation.109 In addition,
he maintained that Russia had a unique historical
mission to unite the tradition of Western ratio-
nal philosophy with the spiritual wisdom of the
East.110 In many ways Soloviev was heir to the mid-​
nineteenth-​century Slavophile school of thought,
translating their political-​historical arguments into
theological-​philosophical ones. He contended that
the once-​formidable school of European philoso-
phy had exhausted itself in the modern age through
Byzantium Reconsidered 49
 “decomposition” into different subdisciplines, such
as metaphysics, ethics, and aesthetics, and stressed
the need to reintegrate the materialist, intellectual,
spiritual, and religious aspects of human thought
into a single dynamic whole, which he called “inte-
gral life.”111 He argued that spiritual cognition was
by far superior to analytical rationalism, writing
that “truth is contained neither in the logical form
of knowing nor in its empirical content; in general,
it does not belong to theoretical knowledge in its
separateness or exclusiveness—such knowledge is
not genuine. Knowledge of truth is only that which
corresponds to the will for good and to the feeling
for beauty.”112 Since beauty was a central tenet in
Soloviev’s philosophy, he believed that art could
“become a theurgic force capable of transforming
and ‘transilluminating’ the human world.”113 Art had
the potential to rejuvenate and reintegrate an alien-
ated and moribund society, and artists “could once
again become high priests and prophets.”114 Soloviev
fundamentally rejected the idea of “art for art’s sake”
and instead called on contemporary art to become
“an instrument in the realization of the Kingdom
of God on earth.”115 In other words, art could reveal
the fundamental spiritual essence that permeates
all material reality and in so doing help mankind to
achieve a truly enlightened modernity through the
fusion of religion and philosophy, rationality and
faith, and the secular and the sacred. As loci of the-
ophany, or divine presence, iconic representations
embodied “the incomprehensible interpenetration
of the divine and the material”—a theme that had
preoccupied Soloviev throughout his career.116
By simultaneously participating in the physical and
the spiritual, and the concrete and the symbolic
realms, icons bore direct witness to a deified cre-
ation—and by extension eternal truth—and could
50 The Icon and the Square
thus function as vehicles of universal salvation, help-
ing humanity to attain theosis, the ultimate unifica-
tion with the divine energies of the Creator.
As Andrzej Walicki astutely notes, Soloviev
“became a bridge, as it were, across which the liberal
Russian intelligentsia were able to move from ‘legal
Marxism’ to a Slavophile interpretation of Ortho-
doxy,” thus paving the way for a younger generation
of religious humanist thinkers.117 In The Russian Idea
Nikolai Berdiaev observes that Soloviev “had an
enormous influence upon the spiritual renaissance
at the beginning of the twentieth century.”118 The
impact of his far-​reaching theories can be traced in a
number of different twentieth-​century philosophical,
theological, literary, and art-​historical texts, not least
in those written by Florensky, Punin, and Tarabukin.
The latter two thinkers in particular used them to
construct a robust theory of twentieth-​century art
and are now widely acknowledged to be the founders
of a rigorous analytical tradition of modern Russian
art criticism. Maria Gough describes them as the
two “staunchest defenders of the avant-​garde,” best
known for their writings on nonobjective, Construc-
tivist, and Productivist art.119 Similarly, Florensky’s
steadfast dedication to scientific knowledge—his
pursuit of the logical, the mathematical, and the
rational—underpinned all of his aesthetic and theo-
logical inquiries. In many ways, Punin’s, Tarabukin’s,
and Florensky’s theories of the icon emblematize
one of the principal themes that continue to intrigue
historians of Russian art: the coexistence of transcen-
dental thinking and historical materialism, which
persisted throughout the late 1910s and well into the
1920s, and according to some scholars even informed
the dialectical ideology of Socialist Realism.
Father Pavel Florensky was an ordained priest
in the Russian Orthodox Church and was one of
the most influential thinkers of his time. He was
exceptionally well versed in multiple disciplines,
including biology, physics, mathematics, psychology,
theology, philosophy, literature, and art history, and
published on the most diverse subjects, ranging
from imaginary numbers in geometry to onomat-
odoxy in philosophy. Although not an art historian
by training, he was extremely erudite in the fields of
archaeology, art history, modern art historiography,
and criticism. As Nicoletta Misler points out, his art-​
historical writings demonstrate a striking similarity
to the most up-​to-​date European scholarship: “his
analysis of spatiality betrays a close resemblance to
the theories of Ernst Cassirer, Erwin Panofksy and
Alois Riegl; his investigations into iconography and
anthropology bring to mind the conclusions of Fritz
Saxl and Aby Warburg, while his personal elabora-
tion of what could be called a Formalist methodol-
ogy indicates a clear recognition of Conrad Fiedler,
Heinrich Wolfflin and Wilhelm Worringer.”120 In fact,
his knowledge of art—and Byzantine and medieval
Russian art in particular—was so extensive that he
was invited to teach courses on this subject first at
the MIKhIM (Moscow Institute of Historical and
Artistic Researches and Museology) in 1920 and
then at the VKhUTEMAS from 1921 to 1924.121
According to Misler, “Florensky believed that his
generation had attained a new, post-​Kantian and post-​
Euclidean conception of life and art, one that corre-
sponded more closely to the vision of the Ancient
World and the Middle Ages than to that of post-​
Renaissance Europe.”122 Indeed, for Florensky, the
Middle Ages were a “contemplative and creative” era,
in contrast to the “predatory and mechanical” moder-
nity of recent times, and especially the modernity of
the late nineteenth century.123 It was modernity that
had glorified a positivist vision of the world and had
produced the cult of a “false” Realism, by which Flo-
rensky meant the illusionism of nineteenth-​century
naturalism. This “false” Realism signified the arrogant
“subjectivism of modern man,” as the image unfolded
from the single, dominant viewpoint of the artist/
viewer.124 By contrast, the icon was objective, col-
lective, and universal. It not only employed inverse
perspective and polycentrism but was also produced
“collaboratively,” as “in earlier periods . . . [there was]
greater cultural cohesion than in ours.”125 The icon
was thus the “true” Realist work of art inasmuch as it
adhered to a transcendental and unbiased truth:
Obviously, realism is in any event a kind of tendency that
affirms some kind of realia or realities—in contrast to
illusions—in the world, in culture, and particularly in art.
In realism that which genuinely exists is opposed only to
what seems to exist, the ontologically solid to the spectral,
the essential and stable to the easily scattered conglomera-
tion of random encounters. . . .
. . . The illusion that comes closest to reality is in
essence the furthest removed from it. “You want to reach
out and touch it,” when what is before us is a flat canvas—
isn’t this triumph of naturalism a fraud that temporarily
succeeds and shows what does not in fact exist? . . .
. . . [Illusionistic] art does not express a cognition of
the truth of things, it obscures it.126
Accordingly, for Florensky the ideal form of visual
representation was expressed in medieval art, and
especially in the Orthodox icon, rather than in nat-
uralistic easel painting. In his two most widely read
essays, “Reverse Perspective” (1920) and “Iconos-
tasis” (1922),127 the author elaborates on the subtle
complexities of the medieval image, tracing the
development of art from antiquity to modernity and
arguing that in its espousal of pictorial illusionism
Byzantium Reconsidered 51
 “from the Renaissance on, the religious art of the
West has been based upon esthetic delusion” rather
than on the objective rendition of reality.128 Analyz-
ing a variety of artistic masterpieces by celebrated
artists, including Leonardo da Vinci, Raphael,
Michelangelo, Rubens, and Rembrandt, Florensky
observes that almost all ostensibly perspectival
works of art actually violated mathematical perspec-
tive and employed multiple viewpoints, contradict-
ing registers, and instances of reverse perspective.
He therefore concludes that
a representation is a symbol, always, every representation,
whether perspectival or non-​perspectival, no matter what
it is, and works of art differ from each other not because
some are symbolic and others are ostensibly naturalistic,
but because, since all are equally non-​naturalistic, they are
symbols of various aspects of an object, of various world
perceptions, various levels of synthesis. Different methods
of representation differ from each other, not as the object
differs from its representation, but on the symbolic plane.
Some are more crude, some less so; some are more or less
complete; some are common to all mankind, some are
less so. But all are symbolic in nature.129
The ideas expressed here closely resemble some of
the concepts articulated by Erwin Panofsky in his
celebrated essay “Perspective as Symbolic Form,”
except that Florensky’s “Reverse Perspective” actu-
ally predated the former by four years.130
Florensky also dismisses the idea that the
Russo-​Byzantine “world perception” was somehow
“naïve” or “primitive” or that the absence of linear
perspective in the iconic image was a result of igno-
rance or lack of artistic ability. Instead, he argues that
the greater the skills of the iconic artist, the more
radical were his “violations” of linear perspective:
52 The Icon and the Square
It may be suggested here that it is not actually the means
of depiction as such that are found pleasing, but the
naivety and primitive quality of the art, which is still child-
ishly carefree in regard to artistic literacy. There are even
connoisseurs inclined to proclaim that icons are charming
childish babbling. But no: the fact that icons which violate
the laws of perspective are actually the work of first rank
artists, whereas a less extreme transgression of these same
laws is primarily characteristic of second- and third-​rate
artists, prompts one to consider whether the opinion
that icons are naive is not itself naive. On the other hand,
these transgressions against the laws of perspective are so
persistent and frequent, so systematic I would say, and so
insistently systematic moreover, that the thought invol-
untarily arises that these transgressions are not fortuitous,
that there is a special system for the representation and
perception of reality as it is represented in icons.131
Using the language of rejection, revolution, and
“rule breaking” typical of avant-​garde polemics,
Florensky goes on to claim that Russo-​Byzantine art
consciously discarded linear perspective—presum-
ably after its initial invention and proliferation in the
fifteenth century—in order to communicate a more
complex and sophisticated idea than the mere sim-
ulacrum of the external world: “all the schoolroom
rules are overturned with such daring, their violation
is masterfully emphasised, and the resulting icon
conveys so much about itself and its artistic achieve-
ments to a spontaneous artistic taste, that there can
no longer be any doubt: the ‘incorrect’ and mutually
contradictory details of drawing represent a complex
artistic calculation which, if you wish, you may call
daring, but by no means naive.”132 After all, Floren-
sky reminds us that the essence of iconic art was
not merely to duplicate reality or to concern itself
with visual aesthetics; that was the role erroneously
adopted by art during the Renaissance period,
which had led to its inevitable decline. In other
words, religious art—the kind produced during the
Renaissance—was fundamentally different from
sacred art—embodied by iconic representations.
The latter ought to be thought of as visualized the-
ology or God’s words materialized as images, whose
true function hinged on the articulation of what
Florensky called a “divine reality.” Although “con-
temporary empirical positivism underestimates the
icon,” considering it “pure art”—to which modernity
ascribes the lowly role of cultural curiosity or visual
entertainment—the icon is, in fact, an “energy” that
allows humans to “attain ontological contiguity with
the prototype itself.”133 This conception of iconic rep-
resentation dates all the way back to the early church
fathers, such as Saint John of Damascus (675–753)
and Saint Theodore the Studite (759–826), who dis-
cussed iconic images in precisely these terms:
The nature of the flesh did not become divinity, but as the
Word became flesh immutably, remaining what it was,
so also the flesh became the Word without losing what it
was, being rather made equal to the Word hypostatically.
Therefore I am emboldened to depict the invisible God,
not as invisible, but as he came visible for our sake, by par-
ticipation in flesh and blood.
So material things, on their own, are not worthy of ven-
eration, but if the one depicted is full of grace, then they
become participants in grace, on the analogy of faith.
These and suchlike I reverence and venerate and every
holy temple of God and every place in which God is
named, not because of their nature, but because they are
receptacles of divine energy and in them God was pleased
to work our salvation.134
Florensky thus believed that iconic representa-
tions had survived through the ages not merely as
circumscribed objects of church ritual or popular
superstition but because of their powerful salutary
effect on the human psyche and their ability to tran-
scend time and space. He contended that “eternity
must be witnessed in and through the icon”; and it
was precisely this invaluable transcendental qual-
ity that art had complacently abandoned over the
centuries, being satisfied with nothing more than
its own “thingness.”135 This line of reasoning recalls
Soloviev’s earlier writings on the metaphysical role
and crucial spiritual function of art in society, and
together they can be said to constitute a modern
theological iconology that went hand in hand
with the better-​known formal accounts of Russo-​
Byzantine art expressed by the likes of Alexander
Benois, Sergei Makovsky, and Pavel Muratov.
In many ways Nikolai Punin and Nikolai Tara-
bukin too combined the theological and formal
interpretations of the icon in their respective publica-
tions, and more importantly, the two theorists linked
them to contemporary artistic practices and the
burgeoning Russian avant-​garde movements. Both
shared Florensky’s ideas on the exceptional nature
and significance of iconic art. In his Philosophy of the
Icon Tarabukin credited Florensky with influencing
much of his thinking on the subject and explicitly
cited several of the latter’s works throughout his own
account.136 Like Florensky, Punin and Tarabukin
attacked what they saw as the lingering dominance
of naturalism and the prevailing “art for art’s sake”
credo in the Russian art world. Having studied at the
St. Petersburg University under Kondakov’s student
Dmitrii Ainalov, Punin was well versed in the history
and development of Russo-​Byzantine art, and his first
publications dealt exclusively with this subject matter.
Byzantium Reconsidered 53
 However, his deep investment in contemporary art
meant that he soon abandoned purely academic
inquiry into past artistic traditions in favor of analyz-
ing the most recent trends and developments in the
visual arts of his own day. In several of the 1913 essays
that Punin published in the journal Apollon, he out-
lined two key ideas that came to structure his subse-
quent body of scholarship on the theory of modern
art.137 The first of these was the notion that contem-
porary art found itself in a state of decline due to its
continued reliance on either nineteenth-​century nat-
uralism or a derivative, Western-​inspired formalism:
And now—a strange phenomenon—naturalistic art returns
us to the past, after five centuries of searching [it] brings us
to the sources, on the banks of which it has stagnated, con-
stantly admiring its own reflection. Naturalism becomes for
us a period of bygone art and a period of decline.
what is the art of the second half of the nineteenth cen-
tury—Impressionism!—in it everything is dead, every-
thing is formal, everything external has its crown, its best
expression. Never before had art been as cold and as vain
as the moment when Impressionism gained the right to be
an obligatory artistic school.
Is it possible . . . to doubt that Russian icon painting is for
us a vital and deeply important historical fact, to which we
will be forced to return for many years to come? [We face]
either emaciation, the formalism of art, or its rebirth
through the revival of forgotten traditions.138
Punin contended that most European art since the
Renaissance aspired solely toward elegance, bal-
ance, and beauty and that an obsession with form
and aesthetics at the exclusion of all else linked
Salon painting, Impressionism, and even Cubism.
54 The Icon and the Square
He considered the latter to be the conclusion to an
artistic tradition, rather than a departure point for
a new art. For Punin, a new art could only be born
out of the Russo-​Byzantine artistic heritage, which
possessed both a symbolic integrity and a spiritual
dynamism in addition to its pictorial accomplish-
ments. Not only were the fresco and the icon com-
pelling aesthetic examples for contemporary art,
but they also signaled the importance of surpassing
the simple appeal to the senses and the intellect by
affecting the human consciousness on a much more
profound psychological level:
On the walls of the churches of Ravenna, Venice, Palermo,
Constantinople, and Phocis, we witnessed over the course
of ten centuries those ideas and states of consciousness
that were subsequently embraced and transformed in
Russian icon-​painting and that we would like to see in
contemporary explorations [of art].
we need to reject from the outset the idea of seeing in the
icon exclusively artistic characteristics—such as color,
style, design. . . . In the present case, we are not interested
in the aesthetics of icon painting; the icon for us is not so
much a work of art as it is a living organism, a vessel . . .
of unique spiritual values, embodied in a form as extraor-
dinary as it is expressive. The monuments of ancient
Russian icon painting do not teach us to paint or to draw
better, but to think better, to view the concept of art differ-
ently, and to find alternative ways of articulating it.139
Central to Punin’s second key idea was what he
perceived to be a fundamental opposition between
the individualism and subjectivity of Western artistic
culture and the collective anonymity of Byzantine
and Russian icon painting. The author emphatically
condemned the gap between contemporary art and
the masses, claiming that a truly living art had to be
accessible and meaningful to all: “[In Byzantium] . . .
art did not appear to be the property of a few closed
and isolated circles; it was accessible to all.”140
According to Punin, the universal, metaphysical
symbolism of icons was antithetical to the super-
ficial “private fantasies” of contemporary Russian
Symbolist art, exemplified in the works of the Mir
Iskusstva and Blue Rose groups.141 In contrast to the
latter, iconic representations employed a symbolism
that was relevant to and understood by all view-
ers, regardless of their education and social class:
“[I]n this wise and living symbolism there was noth-
ing subjective, nothing solitary, nothing estranged.”142
Almost identical ideas are articulated in Nikolai
Tarabukin’s Philosophy of the Icon written three years
later, in 1916, the same year the author moved to
St. Petersburg and devoted himself exclusively to the
study of art history and theory. That year Tarabukin
met Punin, who, like Florensky, exerted considerable
influence on the development of his theories on
art.143 Much like Punin and Florensky, Tarabukin
believed that
a work of art expresses genius not because of its artistic,
that is to say, ultimately formal, qualities, but because
of the depth and breadth of the worldview it reflects . . .
thanks to the attributes of its religious-​philosophical
order. The author’s genius is not that of a master artist, but
of a philosopher. As an artist he may possess more or less
technical skill. Genius is a philosophical category, talent is
a technical [one] . . .
. . . artistic skill can be learned. Hence the existence
of art schools is legitimate.144
Embracing Hegel’s idea that the “true beautiful . . .
is spirituality given shape,” Tarabukin believed that
the ultimate goal of art was to express the spiritual
in material form.145 According to Tarabukin, how-
ever, beauty was, beginning with the Renaissance,
increasingly equated with formal—that is, “exter-
nal”—harmony. Thinkers such as Kant, Schiller,
and Winckelmann saw beauty in the expression of
material perfection, paving the way for a formalist
and positivist theory of aesthetics, which in turn led
Tarabukin to conclude that the “Renaissance epoch
and subsequent centuries already carry the signs of a
gradual degeneration, bringing art to a total impov-
erishment of both content and form. . . . Twentieth-​
century art is worthless because it is devoid of any
meaningful content.”146 Tarabukin identified the
exclusive equation of beauty with aesthetics as a
western European concept of the Enlightenment,
which he argued was in direct opposition to antiq-
uity, where beauty was inextricably tied to morality,
ethics, and religion, as evidenced in Plato’s writings.
The Christian thinkers and writers of Byzantium
inherited this Greek tradition, which they passed
on to medieval Russia and which Tarabukin traced
back to Fyodor Dostoyevsky and Vladimir Soloviev,
whose theories about the theurgic properties of
art and their capacity to transform society closely
paralleled many of Tarabukin’s own views on art.
He accordingly concluded that “the Middle Ages
produced an art of unsurpassed value, in terms of
both the depth of its content and its formal mastery,”
and cited as examples the mosaics of San Vitale,
Hagia Sophia, Kariye Camii, and the St. Sophia
Cathedral in Kiev; the frescoes in the Church of
Christ the Savior on the Nereditsa and those of
Theophanes the Greek (1340–1410) and Dionysius
(1440–1502); and finally the icons of the Virgin of
Vladimir and Andrei Rublev’s Old Testament Trinity:
this was “great” art produced by a powerful, religious
Byzantium Reconsidered 55
 zeitgeist that had yet to be surpassed in modernity.147
However, it is important to emphasize that, despite
the aforementioned examples, Tarabukin did not
limit his definition of “true” art to art with only reli-
gious content. Instead, he argued that all art must
contain a profound philosophical and metaphysical
“ideal” that transcends the base dictum of “art for
art’s sake.”
As with Florensky, Tarabukin completely
rejected the “primitivist” interpretation of Russo-​
Byzantine art. Instead, he went to great lengths to
demonstrate the formal complexity and intricacy of
iconic spatial structure and composition. Tarabukin
asserted that, contrary to popular opinion, iconic
space was not flat but spherical:
As for the question of the “flat” style in icon painting. . . .
[it] is not as straightforward as is presented by historians
of ancient art. An icon painter has an approach to pla-
narity completely different from that, for example, of an
Egyptian artist or a Greek vase painter. . . . An icon painter
conceptualizes the space he depicts not only three-​
dimensionally but also, so to speak, four-​dimensionally . . .
his pictorial language is not at all flat like that of an Egyp-
tian artist. The latter translates the three-​dimensional
figure of a human being into two-​dimensional terms.
An icon painter, thinking “four-​dimensionally,” constructs
the concept of a kind of “spherical” space, relying on two-​
dimensional flatness as a substructure. The difference here
is one not of form but of essence. This can be explained
by referring to architectural drawings. After all, no one
would argue that the architect’s concept of space is flat.
Nevertheless, his constructions in architectural plans are
rendered as flat planes.148
Relying on Florensky’s Imaginary Numbers in
Geometry, Nikolai Lobachevsky’s non-​Euclidean
56 The Icon and the Square
hyperbolic geometry, and Albert Einstein’s theory
of relativity, Tarabukin postulated that the most
recent breakthroughs in European science—not
the “restrictive-​positivist” variety of the nineteenth
century but rather the “new science” of the early
twentieth century—confirmed the validity of the
“religious view of the structure of the universe” as
simultaneously finite and infinite, a concept that was
first intuitively conceived in the Middle Ages.149 As a
finite microcosm that contains in itself the infinite
macrocosm, the iconic image is thus more “mod-
ern” and “concrete” in its worldview than what was
subsequently espoused in the Renaissance period
and later centuries. Much like Florensky, Tarabukin
concluded that, “in contrast to commonplace termi-
nology, it could be said that the icon painter, as an
artist and thinker, is far more realistic than all the
secular art of western European culture, beginning
with the Renaissance and up to the present day, typ-
ically referred to as ‘realistic’ and even naturalistic.
The existence depicted in naturalistic painting—
[is] phantasmagoric. . . . The world of religious con-
sciousness, rendered by the icon painter, is real.”150
Two years after completing the Philosophy of the
Icon, Tarabukin wrote another theoretical treatise
on iconic art, The Genesis and Development of the Ico-
nostasis. At the same time, he also wrote the essays
“Contemporary Art: The Language of Forms” and
On the Theory of Painting, which demonstrated the
convergence of his interests in medieval and con-
temporary art and paved the way for his subsequent
turn to Productivist theory, exemplified by the well-​
known essays From the Easel to the Machine (1923)
and The Art of the Day (1925).151 After the Bolshevik
Revolution, Tarabukin, like Punin, did not return
to the topic of Russo-​Byzantine art, which can be
partially explained by the antireligious climate of the
early Soviet years. Nonetheless, for both Punin and
Tarabukin, the philosophical and theoretical engage-
ment with the Russo-​Byzantine artistic tradition
came to profoundly influence and structure their
thinking and writing on the vanguard, nonobjective
art of the late 1910s and early 1920s. Arguably, one
can even postulate that it was precisely during the
time of writing and thinking about Russo-​Byzantine
art that the two authors formulated some of their
most radical and pioneering theories on modern
Soviet art.
Both Punin and Tarabukin participated in the
new revolutionary formations of Proletkult (Pro-
letarian Culture), VKhUTEMAS, and INKhUK
(Institute of Artistic Culture) in the early 1920s.
Along with a number of other theorists, Punin and
Tarabukin developed a new analytical approach to
art that discarded the narrative, literary tradition of
art criticism in favor of a formal, medium-​oriented
one. Reconceptualizing the icon for a new, secular
context, the two thinkers employed it as a discursive
device for ideological, materialist, and utilitarian
ends. Moving beyond the purely formal and aes-
thetic, the novel Soviet avant-​garde art object was
meant to educate the proletariat and forge a new
Soviet cognition, recalling the ways in which the
iconic image was espoused as a means of generating
a new philosophical and spiritual consciousness. Just
as Florensky had described the icon as a “true” Real-
ist work of art, so the new Constructivist object was
being fashioned as a “new realism”—an “honest,”
proletarian artwork, which plainly revealed its mate-
rial structure, instead of being deceptively illusion-
istic. Lastly, the notions of anonymous production
and communal consumption associated with iconic
and monumental religious art directly encapsulated
the ethos of Productivist art, an art made by the col-
lective for the collective. In short, the new Soviet art
was functional, transpersonal, transparent, and ideo-
logical, recalling Florensky’s characterization of the
icon as objective, collective, and universal. In a twist
of irony, the icon became the perfect conceptual
model for the new Soviet art object (a development
discussed in more detail in the ensuing chapters).152
Byzantium Reconsidered 57
2
FROM CONSTANTINOPLE TO MOSCOW AND ST. PETERSBURG
Museums, Exhibitions, and Private Collections
Scholars of the Russian avant-​garde have often
discussed the 1913 Exhibition of Ancient Russian Art
as the first major presentation of medieval icon
painting and works of liturgical art to the general
public.1 However, as the Russian art historian Ger-
old Vzdornov has demonstrated, several important
exhibitions had already preceded it in the nineteenth
century.2 Indeed, the collecting, institutionalization,
and exhibition of medieval art had begun as early as
the 1840s and 1850s, culminating in the early 1910s.
Private patrons such as Nikolai Rumiantsev (1754–
1826), Alexander Basilewsky, Petr Sevastianov, and
Nikolai Likhachev had assembled vast collections of
Byzantine and medieval Russian art before the turn
of the century, which ultimately formed the bases of
a number of museum departments, including those
at the Hermitage, the Moscow Public and Rumian­
tsev Museum, the Russian Museum of His Imperial
Majesty Alexander III, and the Imperial Russian
Historical Museum. In some cases established
scholars and critics like Nikodim Kondakov, Aleksei
Uvarov (1825–1884), Ivan Zabelin (1820–1908), Pavel
Muratov, and Nikolai Punin were directly involved
in systematizing, cataloguing, and organizing these
collections, which led to a widespread reconceptual-
ization of these artworks as aesthetic masterpieces in
their own right instead of archaeological curiosities
or church relics. As the early twentieth-​century art
historian Nikolai Sychev has noted, for a long time
the general public believed that Russian icon paint-
ing had been directly inherited from Byzantium and
was “acquired by [the Russians] together with [Byz-
antium’s] religion and church rites, an inheritance
that did not find fertile soil [in Russia] for further
development, quickly succumbing to vulgarization
in provincial workshops.”3 However, by the turn
of the century, such opinions began to change as
new museum installations emphasized the dynamic
relationship between Byzantine and Russian icon
painting, and the latter’s progressive evolution away
from slavish imitation of Byzantine prototypes and
toward new modes of artistic expression. Instead
of being perceived as objects of mass production,
executed by groups of anonymous craftsmen in an
assembly-​line manner, individual artworks and even
schools of icon painting were increasingly attributed
59
 to master artists such as Andrei Rublev, Theophanes
the Greek, Dionysius, and Simon Ushakov. Follow-
ing Kondakov’s lead, more and more art historians
and critics began to identify a “golden age” of artistic
flourishing in Russia around the fourteenth and
fifteenth centuries and likened it to the Italian and
German Renaissances of the same time period.4
The rise of nationalist sentiment during the reign
of Alexander III (1881–94) meant that what were
initially viewed as purely aesthetic categories were
increasingly recast in ideological terms to include
notions of national originality and spiritual superior-
ity, so that the stylistic differences between the Byz-
antine and ancient Russian schools of icon painting
took on a new set of cultural, historical, and political
meanings. In fact, the very creation of new museums
dedicated exclusively to national art and national
history highlighted the growing desire of both
government officials and private individuals alike
to assemble tangible displays of material objects
that seemed to advance the popular “Third Rome”
doctrine, which was freshly revived in the wake of
the Balkan Crisis and the Russo-​Turkish War of the
1870s.5 Originating in the early sixteenth century, the
phrase was first used in a letter by the monk Filofei
of Pskov, who famously wrote to the Grand Prince
of Muscovy that “two Romes have fallen, the third
endures, and a fourth there will not be.”6 According
to this formulation, after the fall of Constantinople
to the Ottoman Turks in 1453, the leadership of the
Christian Orthodox world had naturally passed
to Russia, Byzantium’s true and rightful successor,
the inheritor of its religion and culture, its political
and social structure. However, the fact that a fourth
Rome “will not be” also implied that Russia had a
messianic mission to safeguard Orthodoxy for future
generations and therefore could not falter in the way
60 The Icon and the Square
that Byzantium had done. Russia was thus cast as a
younger and more robust Orthodox nation, one that
was not tainted by Byzantium’s decadence, corrup-
tion, and ultimate weakness and would therefore not
fall victim to the older empire’s tragic fate, thanks to
its unique spiritual, moral, and civic fiber—superior
national qualities that, according to turn-​of-​the-​
century commentators, were directly reflected in
the Russian art and architecture of the late medieval
period.
In reality, however, the cultural and artistic ties
that bound Byzantium and medieval Russia were
not so easy to separate.7 As Robin Cormack writes,
“[F]or [several] centuries the monumental art of
the Russian lands was less a response to Byzantium
than an extension of the working area of Byzantine
artists, who regularly came for work to Rus up to
the fifteenth century.”8 The 1991 blockbuster exhi-
bition Byzantium, Balkans, Russia: Icons of the Late
Thirteenth to the First Half of the Fifteenth Century,
organized at the State Tretyakov Gallery in Moscow,
presented a similar narrative, where, as Olga Popova
writes, “all medieval Russian art [was] seen as part
of Byzantine culture. Every Russian work, regard-
less of its content, its quality, or even its place of
origin, [was] interpreted as a reflection of Byzantine
ideas. . . . As a result, the whole of Russian painting
[was] simply seen as Byzantine.”9 This interpretation
is supported by a number of early chronicles, which
record that Byzantine workers built and decorated
the St. Sophia Cathedrals in Kiev and Novgorod in
the eleventh century. Byzantine painters also exe-
cuted all of the interior decoration of the Church of
the Mother of God in Moscow in 1344, and Isaias the
Greek was commissioned by Prince Basil to paint
the Church of the Entry into Jerusalem in Novgorod
in 1348.10 Theophanes the Greek, a Byzantine artist
who had trained in Constantinople and moved to
Novgorod in 1370, decorated a number of different
churches and cathedrals, including the Church of
the Nativity of the Mother of God, the Archangel
Cathedral, and the Cathedral of the Annunciation
in the Moscow Kremlin, as well as the Church of
the Transfiguration in Novgorod. Several famous
portable icons, such as The Transfiguration (1403)
and the double-​sided icon showing on one side Our
Lady of the Don and on other the Koimesis of the
Virgin Mary (1390s), are also attributed to his hand.
Perhaps even more importantly, Andrei Rublev, the
preeminent exemplar of Russia’s original medieval
artistic genius, studied and worked with Theopha-
nes for several years in the early 1400s. Similarly,
a vast number of portable panel icons from the pre-​
Mongol period originate from Byzantine sources,
and even Russia’s most holy and revered icon,
The Virgin of Vladimir, was painted in Constanti-
nople and brought over to the city of Vladimir in the
1160s. Both in the early Kievan period (1000–1200s)
and following the fall of Constantinople in 1453,
numerous Byzantine artists, architects, and crafts-
men had settled in Russian territories, merging their
artistic techniques and predilections with local prac-
tices. Needless to say, this productive synthesis often
generated novel iconographies and forms, resulting
in original ornamental programs and new decorative
values. However, not only does the establishment of
precise categories and strict demarcations between
the purely “Byzantine” and purely “Russian” modes
of representation remain a contentious issue among
Byzantinists and scholars of medieval Russian art
to this day, but it is also not the principal objective
of the present study. Instead, I am more concerned
with showing how nineteenth- and early twentieth-​
century audiences understood, constructed, and
From Constantinople to Moscow and St. Petersburg
deployed these classifications in the context of their
own contemporary culture and in the service of bur-
geoning modern-​art practices. John Lowden sums
it up best: “[T]he art of Russia or of Venetian Crete
[is] unimaginable without the activities of Byzan-
tine artists. But at what point did such art and the
artists who produced it become ‘Russian,’ ‘Cretan’ or
‘Venetian’ rather than ‘Byzantine’? These are ques-
tions worth pondering, but best left open.”11
Aside from the advances in modern archaeology
and secular scholarship on Byzantine and medieval
Russian art outlined earlier, novel curatorial prac-
tices and methods of museum display and installa-
tion played an equally significant role in the aesthetic
reevaluation of this pictorial tradition. The opening
decade of the twentieth century also witnessed a
widespread initiative aimed at the cleaning of ancient
portable panel icons in both museum and private
collections, in addition to the monumental resto-
ration projects discussed in the previous chapter.
Thus, for example, in 1904–6 Andrei Rublev’s Old
Testament Trinity icon (fig. 1) was cleaned for the first
time. In the course of the seventeenth and eighteenth
centuries, it had been repeatedly repainted in line
with the more illusionistic tastes of those epochs.12
Furthermore, as evidenced by surviving black-​and-​
white prerestoration photographs (figs. 22 and 23),
the icon was covered by a gilded metallic oklad,
or revetment, that had obscured its entire painted
surface except for the angels’ faces, hands, and feet.
Accordingly, although certainly well known, the icon
was not actually seen by most viewers in all of its
painterly splendor until 1906. Led by the renowned
Moscow icon painter Vasilii Gurianov, a team of
restorers removed centuries of overpaint and var-
nish to reveal Rublev’s original vibrant colors and
innovative composition. Instead of the dull browns
61

Fig. 22  Prerestoration photograph of Andrei Rublev’s Old
Testament Trinity, with its oklad, or revetment, dating from the
reign of Boris Godunov (1551–1601), 1904. From V. P. Guri-
anov, Dve mestnye ikony Sv. Troitsy v Troitskom sobore Sviato-​
Troitsko–Sergievoi lavry i ikh restavratsiia (Moscow: Pechatnia
A. I. Snegirevoi, 1906).
and faded yellows of the subsequent overpainting,
Rublev’s electric blue, rich coral, bright green, and
vivid ochre hues were revealed to the public for the
first time, creating something of a sensation. Numer-
ous articles celebrating this sudden rediscovery of a
long-​neglected master appeared in the Russian press.
In 1908–10, following this exemplary conser-
vation success, a large number of ancient icons in
62 The Icon and the Square
various museum departments, as well as in the vast
private collections of Ilia Ostroukhov (1858–1929),
Stepan Riabushinsky (1874–1942), and Nikolai
Likhachev, were also cleaned. By uncovering
the earlier forms of thirteenth-, fourteenth-, and
fifteenth-​century icon painting for the first time,
these restoration efforts significantly contributed to
the reconceptualization of iconic representation as
“high” rather than “low” art. Discussing the recently
cleaned icon collection of the Russian Museum
of His Imperial Majesty Alexander III, Sychev
observed that those viewers who “saw for the first
time the wonderful brightness of ancient icons,
cleaned from century-​old dirt, soot, and darkened
varnish, now assert that these days ancient icons
are completely repainted anew.”13 Indeed, in their
pronounced degree of “abstraction” and use of flat
fields of pure, vibrant color and nonillusionistic spa-
tial structure, these previously hidden works struck
many viewers as anachronistically “modern.”
Furthermore, the direct involvement of
modern-​art scholars and young leftist critics like
Pavel Muratov and Nikolai Punin in the daily work
of major museums, such as the Moscow Public and
Rumiantsev Museum and the Russian Museum of
His Imperial Majesty Alexander III in St. Petersburg,
meant that their collections of icons were featured
regularly in the popular art journals of the time,
including in Apollon, Vesy, Starye gody, and Zolotoe
runo.14 In these publications, Byzantine and medi-
eval Russian art was systematically discussed in
relation to the most recent currents in contemporary
Russian and European painting. As a result, instead
of being viewed as antiquated repositories of archaic
relics from a distant and inaccessible past, the medi-
eval art departments of these museums were increas-
ingly understood as “temples of novel aesthetic
revelations for [contemporary] artists,” ones that
had revitalized for modern viewers a long-​neglected
artistic tradition.15
Accordingly, the present chapter examines the
role of museums, private collections, and tempo-
rary exhibitions in the presentation of Byzantine
and medieval Russian art and culture to a broader
museum-​going public in Moscow and St. Petersburg
in the years 1860 to 1913. More specifically, it argues
that widespread awareness and appreciation of
these previously reviled representational traditions,
coupled with a growing understanding of their
importance to the dynamic development of contem-
porary Russian art, were already well under way in
popular consciousness at the turn of the century and
before the advent of the historical avant-​garde.

Byzantium on the Neva: The Hermitage

and the Russian Museum of His
Imperial Majesty Alexander III

The first Byzantine artifacts in the Hermitage

Museum were acquired during the reign of Cather-
ine the Great (1729–1796). The empress took a keen
interest in Greco-​Roman and medieval cameos and
intaglios and purchased several important collec-
Fig. 23  Photograph of Andrei Rublev’s Old Testament Trinity,
without its revetment, before removal of layers of later over-
painting. From V. P. Gurianov, Dve mestnye ikony Sv. Troitsy v
Troitskom sobore Sviato-​Troitsko–Sergievoi lavry i ikh restavratsiia
(Moscow: Pechatnia A. I. Snegirevoi, 1906).

tions from all over Europe, including those of Baron

de Breteuil (1782), Lord Beverley (1786), the Duke
of Orleans (1787), and Giovanni Battista Casanova
(1792).16 By the end of Catherine II’s reign, the
Hermitage owned more than ten thousand cameos,
and in a letter to the French diplomat Baron Fried­
rich Melchior Grimm, the empress boasted that
“all the collections of Europe, compared to ours,
are mere childish amusements.”17 A large portion of
this collection comprised Byzantine cameos dating
from the sixth to the thirteenth centuries, including
such notable works as a sixth-​century Annunciation
and a bust representation of Christ Emmanuel, the
tenth-​century depictions of Saint Basil the Great and
Saints George and Demetrios, the eleventh-​century
Christ the Merciful and Virgin Orans cameos, and the
thirteenth-​century rendition of Daniel in the Lion’s
Den.18 Many of these works were already carefully

From Constantinople to Moscow and St. Petersburg 63

 catalogued during Catherine’s lifetime by her impe-
rial librarian, Alexander Luzhkov, and the collection
continued to be augmented throughout the first half
of the nineteenth century.19
A large number of rare and valuable artifacts
came to the Hermitage from archaeological finds in
Siberia and the Crimea, and especially from the leg-
endary town of Chersonesus, where state-​sponsored
excavations began as early as the 1820s. The objects
that were unearthed included weaponry, jewelry,
silver plates and chalices, liturgical crosses and rel-
iquaries, icons, precious coins, ancient ceramics,
architectural fragments, reliefs, and the remains of
ancient murals. For instance, in 1853 Count Alek-
sei Uvarov (1825–1884) discovered the remains of
a sixth-​century Byzantine basilica that retained
some of its original floor mosaic in the central
nave. Uvarov had the entire mosaic removed and
transported to St. Petersburg, where it was placed
in the Hermitage and remains to this day. Another
noteworthy piece of monumental Byzantine art that
entered the Hermitage collection around this time
was a fragment of a sixth-​century Ravenna mosaic
depicting Saint Peter the Apostle, which was given
to Tsar Nicholas I as a gift. In 1854 the museum
also received from Chersonesus a large collection
of silver brooches and buckles dating from the
fourth to the seventh centuries, as well as various
sixth- and seventh-​century silver plates and chalices
from Count Sergei Stroganov.20 Lastly, the Imperial
Russian Archaeological Society donated a significant
number of Byzantine and medieval Russian artifacts
from the different excavations it conducted through-
out the 1850s and 1860s in southern Russia and west-
ern Siberia, including in the Kerch, Perm, and Viatka
provinces.
64 The Icon and the Square
However, the most important acquisition,
which entirely transformed the Hermitage’s hold-
ings in medieval art, was the purchase of Alexander
Basilewsky’s extraordinary collection in December
of 1884. A Russian diplomat to Vienna and then to
Paris, Basilewsky began to collect medieval artifacts
from all over Europe as early as the 1850s. Between
1860 and 1875 he acquired the collections of Albert
Germeau, Achille Fould, Alessandro Castellani, Petr
Saltykov, and Count James-​Alexandre de Pourtalès,
among others, and by 1878 his collection contained
an impressive 550 objects of medieval and Renais-
sance art.21 Indeed, an 1870 watercolor depicting
Basilewsky’s Parisian residence (fig. 24), executed by
the well-​known artist Vasilii Vereshchagin, shows an
elaborate repository of medieval caskets, crucifixes,
reliquaries, chalices, goblets, gilded and silver plates,
wooden sculptures, carved ivory diptychs, enameled
icons, Renaissance majolicas, and Venetian glassware.
Objects in this collection spanned several centuries
of Christian artistic production, ranging from antiq-
uity to the late Renaissance, and represented a broad
range of different geographies. Of particular value was
Basilewsky’s vast collection of Byzantine ivories, dat-
ing from the sixth to the fourteenth centuries; a num-
ber of early mosaic fragments, like the sixth-​century
angel from the San Michele Church in Ravenna;
as well as several rare enamel and mosaic icons from
the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, such as
Saint Theodore the Dragon Slayer (fig. 25) and Saint
Theodore Stratelates.22 Aside from the various early
Christian and Byzantine artifacts, Basilewsky’s collec-
tion contained exceptional examples of Romanesque,
Gothic, Venetian, Coptic, and Syrian art.
The collection was bought in its entirety by the
Russian government and promptly transported to

St. Petersburg, where it officially opened to the pub-
lic on January 14, 1885.23 At first it was temporarily
displayed on the second floor of the Old Hermitage
building, but in 1888 it was moved to the first floor
and reinstalled in twenty newly renovated exhibition
halls under the direction of Nikodim Kondakov,
who was appointed the head curator of the Depart-
ment of Medieval and Renaissance Art earlier that
year. Kondakov entirely rearranged both the visual
and chronological narrative of the display, adhering
to a geographical and historical logic, rather than a
From Constantinople to Moscow and St. Petersburg
Fig. 24  Vasilii Vereshchagin, A Room in Alexander Basilewsky’s
Residence in Paris, 1870. Watercolor on paper. The State Her-
mitage Museum, St. Petersburg.
purely “decorative” one. In a letter to Count Sergei
Trubetskoi, Kondakov explained that he was dis-
satisfied with the original design of the exhibition
because there were
omissions, gaps, and the mixing of objects for decorative
purposes. Next to the early Christian monuments of the
first centuries of our era, without any transition, was a
display of antiquities from the ninth to the thirteenth cen-
turies under the name “Byzantium in Russia”; these were
directly followed by Russian and Polish artworks from the
65

Fig. 25  Saint Theodore the Dragon Slayer, thirteenth century.
Cloisonné and champlevé enamel on copper and silver, 9 1/2
× 8 1/2 in. (24.3 × 21.5 cm). The State Hermitage Museum,
St. Petersburg.
preceding and current centuries. But even more impor-
tantly: in the rooms were assembled objects that were
anachronistic, quite disparate in character, and incom-
patible with each other. On account of this . . . the dignity
of the Imperial Hermitage required the systemization of
objects into historical and stylistic groupings.24
Kondakov organized the installation to show the full
complexity and range of the evolution of Christian
art from antiquity to the early Renaissance across
a number of different regions, including Russia,
66 The Icon and the Square
Europe, and the Middle East. The exposition began
with a room of “Christian antiquities from the first
eight centuries of our era,” predominantly composed
of Byzantine artworks, including liturgical silver-
ware, mosaic fragments, and icons. Basilewsky’s
collection of carved ivories was exhibited in a sep-
arate room, followed by a display of early Limoges
enamels. These, in turn, were succeeded by rooms
with “Byzantine monuments of the Latin West,”
“the art of Byzantine and post-​Byzantine Italy,” and
“Russian antiquities before the Mongol conquest.”25
Such an arrangement of objects reflected Konda-
kov’s own belief in the centrality of Byzantine art to
the subsequent development of both the Russian
and the western European representational tra-
ditions. Kondakov clearly articulated this idea in
his seminal 1886 study The Byzantine Churches and
Monuments of Constantinople: “We are certain that
the study of the ancient Byzantine capital will even-
tually be commensurate with scholarship on pagan
and early Christian Rome and in the fecundity of
its results will occupy one of the most important
places in the study of the medieval past in general
and the Christian East in particular.”26 He elaborated
this idea in his 1891 catalogue for the collection of
the Department of Medieval and Renaissance Art,
explaining that within the larger layout of the Her-
mitage Museum the halls with medieval and Renais-
sance art were purposely set up to follow the rooms
of Eastern Art and to precede those of subsequent
western European painting. This organizational
logic was meant to illustrate the greater flow of ideas
and influence from East to West and the corollary
importance of medieval Byzantium and the Middle
East as the conduits of Hellenistic thought and
culture to western Europe: “Such an arrangement
of the displays corresponds to the historical role
of the East, beginning with the fall of the Western
Roman Empire and ending with [the onset of] the
Crusades. The era of the great migration of peoples
entailed the movement of peoples and culture
from East to West. . . . Recent studies of the Middle
Ages increasingly lead us to Eastern sources.”27 The
wealth, diversity, and geographical and chronolog-
ical range of Basilewsky’s collection allowed Kon-
dakov to fully materialize some of these concepts in
the museum’s displays, presenting the general public
with novel and original ways of seeing and thinking
about medieval and Renaissance art in general,
and Byzantine art in particular. In the Hermitage
catalogue, Kondakov concluded that Basilewsky’s
exceptional collection allowed the Department of
Medieval and Renaissance Art finally to attain equal
standing with the corresponding departments of the
Louvre, the Kensington, and the Berlin Museums.28
Between 1888 and 1913 the Hermitage holdings
of Byzantine and medieval Russian art continued to
expand thanks to both private and institutional dona-
tions. Vladimir Bok, Countess Maria Sherbatova, and
the Stroganov family, as well as the Imperial Archaeo-
logical Commission and the Russian Archaeological
Institute in Constantinople, bequeathed a number of
rare and valuable art objects to the Hermitage, such
as two sixth-​century plates depicting the Feeding of
a Snake and Two Angels Flanking a Cross; a large
collection of sixth and seventh-​century jewelry from
Mersin; a seventh-​century censer with Christ, the
Virgin, Angels, and Apostles; an eleventh-​century
enamel icon reliquary portraying the Crucifixion,
Saints, and Feast Scenes; a twelfth-​century bowl with
repoussé scenes of an empress’s banquet; twelfth-​
century marble reliefs depicting Apostles Peter and
Paul; and two bronze icons of the Anastasis and the
Mother of God and Child; among other notable
From Constantinople to Moscow and St. Petersburg
objects.29 Consequently, by the opening decade of
the twentieth century, St. Petersburg was home to
one of the world’s most diverse and comprehensive
collections of Byzantine and medieval Latin and
Russian art, one that was carefully and thoughtfully
curated by a leading expert in the discipline to reflect
some of the most up-​to-​date and groundbreaking
thinking in the field of medieval and Byzantine stud-
ies. This unique collection was complemented by
the opening of the Russian Museum of His Imperial
Majesty Alexander III in 1898 (henceforth referred to
as the Russian Museum).
The idea for the creation of a museum in the
imperial capital dedicated exclusively to Russian
art originated with Tsar Alexander III (1845–1894).
A Slavophile and an ardent supporter of the Russo-​
Byzantine revival, Alexander III, much like Nich-
olas I before him, believed in the importance of
establishing and maintaining a strong national and
religious identity throughout the Russian Empire.
To this end, he actively encouraged and funded
the construction of new ecclesiastical buildings
in the Russo-​Byzantine style and gave preference
to indigenous rather than western European art.
In fact, during his reign Alexander III managed to
accumulate a sizeable collection of Russian paint-
ings, sculptures, and iconic and applied art, which
ultimately formed the basis of the Russian Museum.
Although the tsar had articulated the idea for the
establishment of a museum of national art as early as
1889, he died before he was able to realize his lifelong
dream, and the founding of the Russian Museum fell
to his eldest son, Tsar Nicholas II (1868–1918), who
issued a royal decree on April 13, 1895:
Our Revered Parent, in his wise solicitude for the devel-
opment and prosperity of indigenous art, determined the
67
 need for the establishment of an extensive St. Petersburg
museum in which would be concentrated exceptional
works of Russian painting and sculpture. This highly
worthy intention of the late monarch, however, was not
destined to be realized during his lifetime. Now, respond-
ing to the urgent spiritual need to fulfill the stated will
of the deceased monarch, We recognize the necessity of
establishing an institution under the name of the Russian
Museum of His Imperial Majesty Alexander III.30
The royal decree also specified that the new museum
was to be housed in the Mikhailovskii Palace (1819–
25), located on the Arts Square in central St. Peters-
burg, between Inzhenernaia and Italianskaia Streets.
The collection was meant to reflect the formation
and evolution of Russia’s artistic culture from the
early Middle Ages to the late nineteenth century and
was assembled from a variety of different sources,
including the Imperial Academy of Arts, the Her-
mitage, and the Alexander and Anichkov Palaces.
Together with a large number of eighteenth- and
nineteenth-​century paintings, the academy donated
the complete contents of its Museum of Christian
Antiquities, which were transferred to the Russian
Museum in 1897. Other prominent gifts came from
private donors such as Vasilii Prokhorov, Count
Aleksei Lobanov-​Rostovskii, and Countess Maria
Tenesheva, so that by the time the museum officially
opened to the public, on March 7, 1898, it contained
445 paintings, 111 sculptures, 981 works on paper, and
more than 5,000 artifacts of Byzantine and medie-
val Russian art, including icons, church relics, and
decorative-​art objects.31
The museum’s collection was displayed in
thirty-​seven spacious halls, with the Museum of
Christian Antiquities occupying four large rooms
on the first floor of the palace (fig. 26). Immediately
68 The Icon and the Square
adjoining them was a hall containing religious
revivalist works by Mikhail Nesterov and Viktor
Vasnetsov, including the latter’s large-​scale Lamen-
tation mural (1896), which was originally designed
for the St. Vladimir Cathedral in Kiev.32 To a turn-​
of-​the-​century audience, such a “juxtaposition of
authentic antiquity with the most novel revival of
Byzantine traditions on the basis of new techniques”
highlighted the important role of the museum not
simply as a static repository of the art of the past
but as a dynamic catalyst for contemporary artistic
production.33 Various commentators expressed their
hopes that exposure to several centuries of Russo-​
Byzantine visual culture would encourage the next
generation of artists to pursue new and unconven-
tional directions in their works instead of passively
imitating the latest trends of western European
painting. For example, one reviewer enthusiastically
observed that the new museum would become
that place where we will finally grow to love our antiquity,
where we will not cease to discover new enchantments
in our native [heritage], where our artists will draw inspi-
ration and, leaning on the old, produce new creations,
without departing from popular, national origins but only
advancing their evolution further in adapting them to new
conditions. Finally, we are left to hope that the present
museum will become the first place for the dissemination
of the love of art . . . into those broad circles where this
love, together with the awareness of one’s connection to
our native antiquity, has yet to penetrate.34
As such comments clearly manifest, the Russian
Museum, from the moment of its inauguration,
garnered considerable attention from both the
press and the general public alike, with one critic
writing that the institution “would have the same

high-​cultural significance for Russia, as the National
Museum in Paris and the British Museum in Lon-
don have for France and England.”35 Indeed, within
the first year of its opening, the museum was visited
by over one hundred thousand people, and by 1915
that figure had more than doubled.36
During this time the museum also managed to
increase its holdings nearly twofold, especially in
medieval art, leading Nikodim Kondakov to observe
that the latter collection had evolved into “an exten-
sive Christian museum,” the likes of which were
“neither known nor owned by virtually any other
From Constantinople to Moscow and St. Petersburg
Fig. 26  Installation view of Christian antiquities in the Rus-
sian Museum of His Imperial Majesty Alexander III, 1898.
European nation.”37 Spanning several centuries of
artistic production in a variety of different media,
it contained a number of famous Byzantine and
medieval Russian masterpieces. Among the most
valuable Byzantine works were the twelfth-​century
icons depicting the Pentecost, the Anastasis, Saint
Gregory the Miracle Worker, the military saints
George, Theodore, and Demetrios; the thirteenth-​
century icons of Saint Mamas and the archangel
Michael; and finally the majestic Christ Pantocrator
icon (1363) (fig. 27), as well as fourteenth-​century
fresco fragments from the Pantocrator Monastery in
69
 Fig. 27  Christ Pantocrator, 1363. Tempera on wood, 42 × 31 ×
1 3/4 in. (106 × 79 × 2.8 cm). The State Hermitage Museum,
St. Petersburg.

Fig. 28  Andrei Rublev, Virgin of Vladimir, fifteenth century.

Tempera on wood, 11 1/2 × 6 3/4 in. (29 × 17.5 cm). State Rus-
sian Museum, St. Petersburg.

70
Mount Athos.38 The museum’s holdings in medieval
Russian art were even more diverse and represented
a broad range of different regions, materials, and
artistic schools. By 1910 the museum owned such
rare works as the fourteenth-​century Miracle of
Saint George icon and the fifteenth-​century Virgin of
Vladimir icon attributed to Andrei Rublev (fig. 28);
a number of carved and painted wooden icons
such as the Appearance of the Virgin to Saint Sergius
of Radonezh and Saint George and the Dragon with
Saints (1500s); various large-​scale vita icons and sets
of royal doors from Novgorod, Pskov, and Iaroslavl;
and finally masterpieces of applied art such as the
embroidered icon Saint Nicholas the Miracle Worker
(1400s), the Korsun Panikadilo (1400s), and the
Arkhangelsk “Emaciated” Chandelier (1600s).39
One of the most significant acquisitions of
Byzantine and medieval Russian art entered the
museum in 1913 from the renowned collection of
Nikolai Likhachev, which comprised 1,431 icons and
34 works of applied art.40 Along with major mas-
terpieces of Russian icon painting from Novgorod,
Vladimir, Suzdal, and Muscovy, such as the
fourteenth-​century Boris and Gleb (fig. 30) and Anas-
tasis and Deesis icons, Likhachev’s collection con-
tained a large number of important Byzantine and
Greco-​Italian icons, including the eleventh-​century
Archdeacon Stephen icon, the thirteenth-​century
Saint Theodore Stratelates and Christ Pantocrator
icons, the fourteenth-​century Saint John the Baptist
icon, and the fifteenth-​century Old Testament Trinity
icon, as well as Andreas Ritzos’s Virgin of the Passion
(1450s), Angelo Bizamano’s Holy Family (1532),
Emmanuel Lampardos’s Crucifixion (1600s), and
Emmanuel Tzanes’s Virgin from a Deesis (1681).41
The addition of this extensive collection led
to a complete reconceptualization of the museum’s
From Constantinople to Moscow and St. Petersburg
medieval-​art sections, under the direction of Petr
Neradovskii (1875–1962), who was appointed head
curator in 1909.42 As a result, between 1913 and 1914
the rooms of medieval art were rearranged to reflect
the gradual historical evolution of Russian visual rep-
resentation from predominantly Byzantine styles and
techniques to specifically Russian modes of artistic
expression, with special attention paid to the stylistic
and iconographic variations among the different
regional schools of Muscovy, Novgorod, Pskov, Vlad-
imir, Suzdal, Staraia Ladoga, Vologda, and Iaroslavl,
among others. To this end, the exposition began with
some of the oldest examples of Byzantine art from
Sevastianov’s and Likhachev’s collections and con-
tinued chronologically with displays of early Russo-​
Byzantine works from the age of Kievan Rus (988–
1240), the various icon-​painting traditions of the
Mongolian and post-​Mongolian duchy period (1240–
1547), and finally the sixteenth- and seventeenth-​
century Stroganov School of icon painting.43 One of
the hallmarks of the new installation was the so called
Novgorod Icon Chamber (fig. 29), which meticu-
lously re-​created the interior of a medieval Orthodox
church, complete with an iconostasis placed along the
eastern wall, an analogion, a suspended chandelier,
and tall vitrines containing multiple large and small
icons, including Saints Boris and Gleb (fig. 30), the
Mandylion, and the Virgin Hodegetria. According
to Nikolai Sychev, in this room the viewer “entered
another world . . . [one that was] rich with the diver-
sity and beauty of the monuments of ancient icon
painting.”44As a curator, Neradovskii strongly believed
in creating a sense of organic continuity between the
exhibited artworks and their immediate surroundings
and attempted to integrate both fine- and applied-​art
objects into unified, holistic displays. He invited lead-
ing medievalists, such as Nikodim Kondakov, Aleksei
71

Fig. 29  Installation view of the Novgorod Icon Chamber in
the Russian Museum of His Imperial Majesty Alexander III,
1914.
Sobolevskii, and the revivalist architect Aleksei
Shchusev to advise him on the classification and rein-
stallation of the medieval works in order to maintain
the highest scholarly standards.45
At this time the newly renamed Department of
Monuments of Russian Icon Painting and Church
Relics also created a special research group, headed
by Nikolai Sychev and Nikolai Punin, that was tasked
with the cataloguing of Likhachev’s collection.
72 The Icon and the Square
Sychev was a medieval-​art specialist who had studied
under Dmitrii Ainalov and Nikodim Kondakov at
the St. Petersburg University and had accompanied
Kondakov on several research expeditions.46 Punin
had also recently graduated from St. Petersburg
University, and by 1915 he had already managed to
establish a serious scholarly reputation for himself
thanks to his numerous publications of the early
1910s. These included a number of articles on Byzan-
tine and medieval Russian art, a substantive mono-
graph on Andrei Rublev, multiple essays on modern
and contemporary art, and lengthy overviews of the
icon collections of Nikolai Likhachev, Ilia Ostrouk-
hov, and Stepan Riabushinsky. He was also an active
member of the editorial board of the journal Russ-
kaia ikona, or Russian Icon, the secretary of the Soci-
ety for the Research of Medieval Russian Art, and a
regular contributor to the popular cultural journals
Apollon and Severnye zapiski. His involvement with
the latter two publications meant that artworks from
the museum’s collections could reach a larger audi-
ence by being featured regularly in these journals.
As discussed in the first chapter, most of Punin’s
theories on art were shaped by his interest in the
Russo-​Byzantine representational tradition, the rising
avant-​garde movements of the early twentieth cen-
tury, and his museum and research work. It is there-
fore hardly a coincidence that in the immediate after-
math of the Bolshevik Revolution, after being closed
for more than a year, the Russian Museum initially
reopened only two of its sections in 1918: the rooms
with medieval art and the newly constituted halls of
contemporary painting, which included works by
Vasily Kandinsky, Vladimir Tatlin, Kazimir Malevich,
Mikhail Larionov, Natalia Goncharova, and Marc
Chagall, among others.47 Punin was directly respon-
sible for the organization of this new installation,
having been appointed the head commissar of the
Russian Museum in February of 1918.48 Instead of the
nineteenth-​century revivalist works of Vasnetsov and
Nesterov, which were originally placed next to the
medieval-​art sections in the first decade of the muse-
um’s existence, by 1920 it was the radical experiments
of the most cutting-​edge avant-​garde that were con-
sidered to be in direct dialogue with the aesthetic and
conceptual traditions of medieval icon painting.
Unlike the Hermitage Museum, which still
largely privileged the art of western Europe, or the
Tretyakov Gallery in Moscow, which was dominated
by the Realist paintings of the Peredvizhniki from
the 1860s and 1870s, the Russian Museum attempted
to construct a rich and complex narrative of the
trajectory of Russia’s artistic development, one in
which medieval art was granted an important and
formative role. As a result, by the end of the tsarist
regime, the Russian Museum contained 6,100 works
of applied ecclesiastical art and 3,141 icons, of which
1,841 were permanently on display at any given
time.49 This became, by and large, one of the most
comprehensive and important collections of Byzan-
tine and medieval Russian art in the entire country
and one that was readily accessible to a broad public.

From “Second Rome” to “Third

Rome”: The Moscow Public and
Fig. 30  Saints Boris and Gleb, fourteenth century. Tempera on
Rumiantsev Museum and the Imperial wood, 56 × 37 in. (142.5 × 94.5 cm). State Russian Museum,
Russian Historical Museum St. Petersburg.

Akin to St. Petersburg, Moscow in the second half

of the nineteenth century also witnessed the estab- the Tretyakov Gallery (1893). The former, in par-
lishment of several influential public museums and ticular, warrants special attention as one of the first
galleries, such as the Rumiantsev Museum (1862), public museums in the city, becoming an important
the Imperial Russian Historical Museum (1883), and repository of Byzantine and medieval Russian art.

From Constantinople to Moscow and St. Petersburg 73


Fig. 31  Saint John the Evangelist and Prochorus, from the Zara-
isk Gospel, 1401, fol. 157v. Ink and tempera on parchment,
6 ½ × 5 in. (17 × 12.5 cm). Russian State Library, Moscow.
It evolved from the personal library and art col-
lection of Count Nikolai Rumiantsev, who was a
prominent statesman and Russia’s foreign minister
and imperial chancellor from 1808 to 1812. At the
time of his death, in 1826, Rumiantsev’s library con-
tained more than twenty-​nine thousand volumes.50
Among these were seventy-​six medieval manuscripts
dating from the twelfth to the fifteenth centuries,
which included such well-​known works as the illu-
minated Dobrila Gospel (1164) and Zaraisk Gospel
(1401) (fig. 31), as well as 190 facsimiles.51 In addi-
tion, Rumiantsev had assembled a large number of
sixteenth- and seventeenth-​century incunabula and
ancient maps from all over Europe and the Russian
74 The Icon and the Square
Empire and a sizeable collection of rare coins, eth-
nographic artifacts, and a mineralogical cabinet.52
Rumiantsev bequeathed this entire collection to the
state, and on March 22, 1828, Tsar Nicholas I signed
a ruling for the establishment of the Rumiantsev
Museum in St. Petersburg. In 1831 the Rumiantsev
collection was officially opened to the general pub-
lic. It was housed in the Rumiantsev Mansion on
the English Embankment and was formally affiliated
with the Imperial Public Library.
However, due to an acute lack of funds, the
museum was by 1860 in a state of considerable
decline and disrepair. Accordingly, on the initiative
of the prominent statesman and head of the Moscow
Education Division, Nikolai Isakov (1821–1891),
a government decision was made to transfer the
museum from St. Petersburg to Moscow. It was to be
housed in the elaborate eighteenth-​century Pashkov
House on Mohovaia Street, not far from the Moscow
Kremlin (fig. 32). Various state organizations and
private individuals pledged to support the institution
financially. For instance, in January 1861 the Moscow
governor general Pavel Tuchkov promised to allocate
to the museum an annual sum of 3,000 rubles from
the city’s municipal funds.53 The wealthy aristocrat
Alexander Koshelev likewise agreed to donate 25,000
rubles over the course of ten years; the entrepreneur
and collector Kozma Soldatenkov pledged another
3,000 rubles for the initial establishment of the
museum and an additional 1,000 rubles annually
until his death; the merchant N. N. Kharichkov
assumed all the costs of transferring the museum
collections from St. Petersburg to Moscow.54 With
the help of these generous bequests, the newly
renamed Moscow Public and Rumiantsev Museum
(henceforth referred to as the Rumiantsev Museum)
officially opened to the public on May 6, 1862.

Shortly after its opening, the museum collection
was augmented by several important donations from
the Imperial Academy of Arts, the Moscow Univer-
sity, the Hermitage Museum, the royal family, and a
number of private patrons. As a result, although the
museum had only 54,160 objects in its holdings at the
moment of its inauguration in Moscow, it received an
additional 116,617 art objects and artifacts as perma-
nent gifts and another 109,225 objects on long-​term
loan within a year and a half of its opening.55 Conse-
quently, by 1864 the Rumiantsev Museum contained
an impressive 280,000 items, arranged across seven
From Constantinople to Moscow and St. Petersburg
Fig. 32  The Pashkov House, Moscow, 1784–86. Photograph
from Piatidesiateletie Rumiantsevskogo muzeia v Moskve 1862–
1912: Istoricheskii ocherk (Moscow: Skoropech. A. A. Leven-
son, 1913).
departments: Rare Books and Manuscripts, Fine
Arts and Classical Antiquities, Christian and Russian
Antiquities, the Ethnographic Department, the Min-
eralogical and Zoological Cabinets, and the Public
Library.56 Thanks to a continued flow of donations,
gifts, and acquisitions over the ensuing decades, the
museum managed to increase its collection almost
fourfold by the time of its fiftieth anniversary, in 1913.
In particular, it acquired a large amount of Byzantine
and medieval Russian artworks.
The Department of Rare Books and Manu-
scripts increased its holdings from 2,295 objects in
75
 1864 to 9,723 in 1913 by obtaining the collections
of Vukol Undolskii and Avram Norov, which con-
tained several exceptional Byzantine and medieval
Russian, Bulgarian, Serbian, and Moldovan illumi-
nated manuscripts, ranging from the ninth to the
sixteenth centuries.57 Accordingly, by the early twen-
tieth century the museum possessed such valuable
works as the eleventh-​century Codex Marianus
and Arkhangelsk Gospel, the fourteenth-​century
Norov Psalter, the Moscow Apostol (1564), and
the Ostrog Bible (1581).58 Meanwhile, by 1872 the
Department of Christian and Russian Antiquities
managed to assemble an impressive 22,150 objects,
which included mosaic and fresco fragments,
Byzantine and medieval Russian icons, works of
applied and folk art, devotional objects and litur-
gical vestments.59 In 1862 Petr Sevastianov gave to
the museum one of the largest and most important
donations, largely composed of the Byzantine works
he had brought back to Russia from his expeditions
to Mount Athos in 1858–60. On his initiative, these
works were first displayed as part of a temporary
exhibition that included both original works of art
and a large number of color copies, tracings, casts,
and photographic reproductions. Sevastianov deliv-
ered several public lectures and tours of the exhi-
bition, which was generally viewed as a big success
and garnered considerable attention both from the
press and the general public.60 Three years later Sev-
astianov permanently bequeathed to the museum
his entire collection, which, in addition to the
Mount Athos works, contained notable examples of
medieval Russian, Greco-​Italian, and Middle Eastern
art. Museum records indicate that it received from
Sevastianov a total of “fifty-​five Byzantine icons from
Mount Athos, fifteen Greco-​Italian icons, thirty
medieval Russian icons, ten Bulgarian-​Moldovan
76 The Icon and the Square
icons, five Arabic icons, and five works of religious
art executed on marble, copper, and wood.”61 The
museum also acquired almost eighteen thousand of
Sevastianov’s reproductions and facsimiles of fres-
coes, mosaics, and illuminated manuscripts, as well
as architectural drawings and moldings.62
Among the most valuable masterpieces in
this collection were three mosaic fragments from
St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome, dating from the eighth
to the thirteenth centuries, and the thirteenth-​
century icons of Christ Emmanuel and the Virgin of
Sorrows. Other major works included fourteenth-​
century icons of the Koimesis, Virgin and Child, and
Saint John the Baptist and a thirteenth-​century Ital-
ianate vita icon of the Virgin and Child Enthroned,
attributed to the workshop of Coppo di Marco-
valdo.63 Apart from Sevastianov’s gift, important
donations of Byzantine and medieval Russian arti-
facts came from the collections of Anna Raevskaia,
Elpidifor Barsov, Iurii Filimonov, Lev Dal’, Mikhail
Pogodin, Andrei Muraviev, the Moscow Synod, and
the Kremlin Armory Chamber.
The Department of Christian and Russian
Antiquities systematized all of its holdings into three
discrete categories: prehistoric antiquities, Christian
antiquities, and Russian antiquities, and the objects
on display were arranged according to a chronolog-
ical and geographical logic, by century, region, and
excavation site. Along with Byzantine and medieval
Russian artworks, the Department of Christian and
Russian Antiquities contained a number of Gothic,
Romanesque, and other medieval European arti-
facts, reflecting the same overarching organizational
logic as the one employed in the Hermitage. How-
ever, despite being housed in the same department,
the medieval art of the Latin West was nonethe-
less presented as distinctly different from that of
Byzantium and Russia, which were understood to be
on a cultural and historical continuum and part of a
single representational tradition. Consequently, Byz-
antine and medieval Russian artifacts were arranged
in such a way as to demonstrate their conceptual,
stylistic, and iconographic similarities. According
to the 1913 publication The Fiftieth Anniversary of the
Rumiantsev Museum in Moscow, one of the museum’s
principle goals from the first year of its existence was
to promote the “history of Byzantine art and the
corollary history of Russian icon painting that was
inextricably tied to it.”64
To this end, the Department of Christian and
Russian Antiquities launched several important
publication projects that were intended to docu-
ment, systematize, and popularize the Byzantine
and medieval Russian artworks in the museum’s
collections. The first of these was overseen by the
paleography specialist Aleksei Viktorov (1827–1883)
and involved the photographic reproduction of min-
iatures in illuminated Byzantine manuscripts from a
number of different Moscow collections. As a result,
between 1862 and 1865 more than 150 reproductions
were published in three consecutive volumes.65 The
museum also published several scholarly studies
on the illuminated-​manuscript collections of Vukol
Undolskii, Dementii Piskarev, Viktor Grigorovich,
Fedor Beliaev, and Petr Sevastianov between 1871
and 1881.66 Lastly, from 1901 to 1906 the Department
of Christian and Russian Antiquities published four
comprehensive scholarly catalogues documenting all
of the Russo-​Byzantine artworks in its possession.67
The Society of Ancient Russian Art, which
was founded under the auspices of the Rumian­
tsev Museum in 1864, directly oversaw many of
these publications and facilitated the depart-
ment’s research initiatives and collecting activities.
From Constantinople to Moscow and St. Petersburg
Members of the society included prominent scholars
of Byzantine and medieval Russian history, art, and
culture, such as Fedor Buslaev, Nikodim Kondakov,
Aleksei Viktorov, Ivan Zabelin, Dmitrii Rovinskii,
Petr Sevastianov, and Kozma Soldantenkov.68 In its
founding charter the society outlined three main
goals: the first was “the assembling and scientific
elaboration of monuments of Russian antiquity and
ancient Russian church and folk art in all of their
manifestations”; the second was the advancement
of “archaeology, especially of the Byzantine Empire,
insofar as it can contribute to the development of a
native archaeology”; and the third was “the dissem-
ination of both scholarly and practical information
about ancient Russian art.”69 The Society of Ancient
Russian Art thus functioned as an independent
cultural research institute within the museum, one
that promoted its collections, sought donations on
its behalf, and advanced its scholarly output. For
example, the society featured many of the museum’s
objects in its own publications, namely the Sbornik
drevnerusskogo iskusstva and the Vestnik Obshchestva
drevnerusskogo iskusstva, as well as essays and articles
written by members of the museum staff, such as
Georgii Filimonov’s exhaustive study of Simon Ush-
akov and the icon-​painting practices of seventeenth-​
century Russia.70
Along with the popularizing endeavors of the
Society of Ancient Russian Art, popular art journals
like Sofia, Apollon, Vesy, Starye gody, and Zolotoe runo
also frequently mentioned the Rumiantsev Museum’s
medieval art collection, thanks to the efforts of one
of its employees, the young art historian and critic
Pavel Muratov. Muratov joined the museum as a
curatorial assistant in 1910 and worked there for three
consecutive years.71 During this time he became
intensely interested in Byzantine and medieval
77
 Russian art, and in 1912 he made an extensive trip to
Novgorod, Pskov, Iaroslavl, Vologda, and the Kirillo-​
Belozerskii and Ferapontov Monasteries, where he
studied and documented various medieval frescoes
and icons. Upon his return to Moscow, he collabo-
rated with the artist and art historian Igor Grabar on
the latter’s multivolume History of Russian Art. Mura-
tov authored the entire sixth volume of the publica-
tion, entitled The History of Painting: The Pre-​Petrine
Epoch, in which he discussed a number of medieval
artworks from the Rumiantsev Museum, such as the
fourteenth-​century icon of the Twelve Apostles and
the Zaraisk Gospel, as well as a variety of artworks
from the private collections of Ilia Ostroukhov, Ste-
pan Riabushinsky, and Nikolai Likhachev.72 In 1914,
together with his friend Konstantin Nekrasov, Mura-
tov founded the artistic and literary journal Sofia,
which was primarily dedicated to the rediscovery of
medieval Russian art and culture and also featured
objects from the museum’s collections.
Much like Punin, Muratov was a keen follower
of the latest trends in Russian and European modern
art and wrote reviews of contemporary-​art shows
in Paris, London, Moscow, and St. Petersburg,
including those at the Salon des indépendants,
the New Gallery, and the New English Art Club,
and the Venok-​Stefanos, Soiuz, and Zolotoe runo
exhibitions.73 He also authored a monograph
on Paul Cézanne, as well as a plethora of articles
on the works of Mikhail Vrubel, Valentin Serov,
Natalia Goncharova, Mikhail Larionov, Edouard
Manet, Vincent van Gogh, Henri Matisse, and
Pablo Picasso, among others. Given his sustained
interest in modernist painting, it is not surprising
that Muratov was one of the first Russian critics to
discuss the purely formal qualities and aesthetic
achievements of iconic representation and to draw
78 The Icon and the Square
attention to what he considered striking pictorial
parallels between Russo-​Byzantine art and French
and Russian modernism. Having participated in the
organization of both the 1913 Exhibition of Ancient
Russian Art and The Exhibition in Commemoration
of the Fiftieth Anniversary of the Rumiantsev Museum,
Muratov was able to convey some of these ideas to a
broader public through his curatorial work as well as
in his numerous publications.
However, even before Muratov’s publicizing
efforts in the 1910s, the Rumiantsev Museum had
already developed a robust educational mission
and public outreach program in the preceding
decades. According to museum records, in 1862 it
was visited by 50,355 people, and by 1912 that number
had almost doubled, reaching 98,819.74 One visitor
observed that “whole families would stroll through
the spacious halls of the museum. Here one could
see government officials, officers and merchants,
simple folk, women, children—in short, people of
every rank, age, and gender.”75 In order to facilitate
public understanding of the artworks and artifacts
on display, the museum conducted daily tours
through its various collections, which were free and
open to all. In the space of only five years, between
1907 and 1912, it organized 2,478 guided tours for
70,442 visitors.76 The museum also held regular
classes both for university students and for school
groups, many of whom came from all over the Rus-
sian Empire beyond the precincts of Moscow. For
example, along with groups from secondary and ter-
tiary institutions in Moscow and St. Petersburg, the
Rumiantsev Museum hosted groups from Kazan,
Kursk, Vologodsk, Kharkov, Sebastopol, Tashkent,
Warsaw, Vilnius, Baku, and Tiflis.77
Furthermore, it encouraged students from the
various Moscow art schools, including the Moscow
School of Painting, Sculpture, and Architecture
and the Stroganov School for Technical Drawing,
to make studies and copies of the different mas-
terpieces in the museum’s holdings. This policy
was a radical departure from the practices of other
Moscow museums, like the Tretyakov Gallery,
where copying of artworks was strictly prohibited.78
According to a report from 1901, as many as 977
visitors had engaged in copying activities in the
Rumiantsev Museum that year.79 Even established
artists such as Vasilii Surikov, Victor Borisov-​
Musatov, and Valentin Serov frequently copied
museum objects for use in their own works.80 The
art historian and head curator of the Department
of Christian and Russian Antiquities, Giorgii Fili-
monov, went so far as to claim that “not a single
serious project of restoration in the ancient Russian
style nor a single serious painting on the subject of
ancient Russian life could be executed without the
more or less strong assistance of the Department of
Christian and Russian Antiquities of the Moscow
Public and Rumiantsev Museum.”81 Indeed, over
the course of several decades, artists, icon painters,
restorers, and architects from all across the Russian
Empire made regular use of the museum’s collec-
tions and library holdings. As such, the role of the
Rumiantsev Museum as a major public repository
of Russo-​Byzantine art was especially critical in
the decades leading up to the establishment of the
Tretyakov Gallery, the Russian Museum, and the
Russian Historical Museum.
First conceived in 1872, the latter institution was
perhaps as important as the Rumiantsev Museum,
if not more so, in acquainting the broader public
with the architectural and pictorial traditions of Byz-
antium and medieval Russia. According to the muse-
um’s founding charter, which was drafted in 1873
From Constantinople to Moscow and St. Petersburg
by Count Aleksei Uvarov, its principle goal was to
“serve as a visual history of major epochs of the Rus-
sian state and to advance distribution of information
about facts of national history.” More specifically,
it aimed to collect
all memorabilia of notable events in national history.
Those objects—in originals, copies, or replicas—arranged
in chronological order [had to] represent, as fully as
possible, a comprehensive picture of each epoch: with
its monuments of religion, law, science, and literature;
with objects of arts, crafts, and trades; and, in general,
with all objects of everyday Russian life, as well as with
military and naval items. Outstanding events and major
figures of every epoch [would] be shown in painting and
sculpture.82
The charter received royal approval on August 2,
1874, and the museum was allocated a plot of land
on the northern side of Red Square. In the spring of
the following year, Vladimir Sherwood and Anatolii
Semenov’s revivalist architectural design (fig. 33) was
selected from a number of other proposals, and
construction of the museum began on July 8, 1875.
Once completed, the 200,000-square-meter building
consisted of a large basement, a ground floor with
an additional story above it, two floors of exhibition
rooms, a large library, and an auditorium that could
accommodate up to five hundred people.83 The
latter was meant to host regular lectures and public
readings “on the subjects of national history and
antiquities.”84 Akin to the Russian Museum and the
Rumiantsev Museum, the sequencing and design
of the exhibition rooms in the Historical Museum,
as well as the objects on display, were arranged in
such a way as to show Russia’s initial reliance on and
imitation of Byzantine representational techniques,
79
 Fig. 33  Vladimir Sherwood and Anatolii Semenov, Approved
Design of the Historical Museum Building, 1875. Watercolor and
India ink on paper. State Historical Museum, Moscow.
followed by what were presented as novel and
purely Russian pictorial and architectural idioms.
The museum thus constructed a manifestly nation-
alistic narrative, wherein Russia was presented as
Byzantium’s immediate heir and successor, on the
one hand, and a mighty civilization in its own right,
on the other—a veritable “Third Rome.”
Almost half of the museum exhibition spaces
were dedicated to Russia’s early Christian and medi-
eval history, and out of the seven museum depart-
ments, five oversaw the artifacts and installations of
the pre-​Petrine period, which meant that the Middle
Ages were given prominence above all other histor-
ical epochs. This setup can be partially explained
80 The Icon and the Square
by the fact that the two principle founders and sub-
sequent directors of the museum, Aleksei Uvarov
and Ivan Zabelin, were both specialists of medieval
Russian history, culture, and archaeology and were
accordingly invested in representing Russia’s Byz-
antine and post-​Byzantine past as comprehensively
as possible. To this end, the interior decoration of
the museum was conceived as a visual continuation
of the objects and artifacts on display, and each
exhibition room was designed in the architectural
style of the epoch whose monuments it contained.
Consequently, in addition to leading historians and
archaeologists, including Ivan Mansvetov, Dmitrii
Anuchin, and Vladimir Sizov, prominent revivalist

architects and academy artists such as Nikolai Sul-
tanov, Alexander Popov, Viktor Vasnetsov, Ivan
Aivazovsky, Henryk Siemiradzki, Valentin Serov,
Ilia Repin, and icon painters from Nikolai Safon-
ov’s renowned Palekh workshops participated in
the design and decoration of the exhibition halls.85
As a result, the final displays were both original and
unprecedented in their visual splendor and curato-
rial ambition.
For example, the stucco cornices and mosaic
decorations in the Stone Age Room were modeled
after the ornamental patterns on the Neolithic
pottery found near the Volosovo village on the
Oka River, and Viktor Vasnetsov between 1882 and
1885 painted the monumental frieze with scenes
depicting the various daily activities of prehistoric
man.86 Similarly, the Byzantine Room was modeled
after the central nave of the Hagia Sophia Church
From Constantinople to Moscow and St. Petersburg
Fig. 34  Emperor Leo VI Prostrated Before Christ Pantocrator,
1880s, restored 1986–2002. Mosaic, Byzantine Room, State
Historical Museum, Moscow.
in Constantinople, while its floor was decorated
with replicas of extant mosaics from the Roman
catacombs and the St. Costanza Mausoleum.87 The
walls and ceiling were adorned with mosaics from
famous early Christian and Byzantine monuments,
like the fifth-​century Christ as the Good Shepherd
mosaic from the Mausoleum of Galla Placidia and
the tenth-​century mosaic over the imperial door of
the Hagia Sophia in Constantinople, representing
most likely the emperor Leo VI prostrated before
an enthroned Christ (fig. 34). Ironically, the repro-
duction of the Hagia Sophia mosaic was based on an
1848 chromolithograph by the German civil servant
Wilhelm Salzenberg rather than on the Byzantine
original, which Salzenberg had seen and reproduced
during its restoration by the Fossati brothers in
1847–49, before it was covered up again by Ottoman
authorities.88
81

Fig. 35  Saint George, eleventh century. Paint on ceramic tile.
From Chersonesus, Crimea, now in the State Historical
Museum, Moscow.
In fact, the museum relied quite extensively
on high-​quality copies and facsimiles of medieval
artifacts and molded replicas of architectural details,
which supplemented its collection of original
artworks. As discussed in the first chapter, excava-
tions and restoration works were well under way
throughout the 1880s and 1890s in Chersonesus,
Kiev, Novgorod, Suzdal, Pskov, Vladimir, and Iaro-
slavl, and many of the copies and replicas that were
made of the newly uncovered frescoes, mosaics, and
decorative-​art objects were donated to the Historical
Museum. For instance, the two rooms dedicated to
Kievan Rus were adorned with copies of mosaics
and frescoes from the Monastery of St. Michael of
82 The Icon and the Square
the Golden Domes and the St. Sophia Cathedral
in Kiev, which included the Eucharist mosaic from
the latter building’s main altar—a mosaic whose
copy was personally executed by Adrian Prakhov—
and copies of frescoes of dancers and musicians
from its western tower.89 Display cases containing
early Byzantine works of art, such as the eleventh-​
century ceramic icons of Saint George (fig. 35),
Saint Elizabeth, and the archangel Michael, as well
as twelfth-​century gold and bronze encolpia, litur-
gical crosses, and enameled jewelry, were arranged
alongside reproductions of illuminations from the
Ostromir Gospel (1056), the Izbornik of Prince Svi-
atoslav (1073), and the thirteenth-​century Radziwill
Chronicle, which portrayed important scenes from
the history of Kievan Rus.90
Similarly, in addition to display cases containing
icons, illuminated manuscripts, and precious works
of applied art, the Novgorod Room was decorated
with life-​size copies of the twelfth-​century frescoes
from the Church of Christ the Savior on the Nere­
ditsa. These included the large Ascension mural from
the central vault of the church, depicting Christ
in Majesty surrounded by angels; the Archangel
Selaphiel from the central lunette on the western
wall; Prince Iaroslav Vsevolodovich Presenting a
Model of the Church to Christ; and medallion images
of Saints Catherine, Cyril, Barbara, Theodore,
Domentian, and Euphrosyne of Polotsk. The room
also contained casts of the cornices and porticos
from the eleventh-​century St. Sophia Cathedral in
Novgorod, an enlarged landscape of Novgorod from
a seventeenth-​century icon, and a monumental ver-
sion of the famous fifteenth-​century icon The Battle
of Novgorod with Suzdal (fig. 36), which portrays the
siege of Novgorod in 1169 by the army of the Grand
Prince of Vladimir-​Suzdal, Andrei Bogoliubskii

(1111–1174). According to legend, the inhabitants of
Novgorod were miraculously rescued by an icon of
the Virgin of the Sign, which is shown in the center
of the image. One of the principle centerpieces of
the Novgorod Room was a life-​size replica of the
bronze gates from the western portal of Novgorod’s
St. Sophia Cathedral. Depicting in relief stories from
the Old and New Testaments, allegorical scenes and
portraits of the bishops of Magdeburg and Plock,
this door is believed to have been fabricated origi-
nally in western Europe in the twelfth century, then
brought over to Russia and further embellished in
the fourteenth century by local Novgorod craftsmen.
The replica was made specifically for the Historical
From Constantinople to Moscow and St. Petersburg
Fig. 36  The Battle of Novgorod with Suzdal, 1880s, restored
1986–2002. Ceiling of the Novgorod Room, State Historical
Museum, Moscow.
Museum in the early 1880s under the direction of
Adrian Prakhov, who was involved in restoration
works in Novgorod at the time.91
The Vladimir and Suzdal Rooms were analo-
gously adorned with copies of frescoes and molded
replicas of architectural details from the Assump-
tion (1189) and St. Dimitrii (1197) Cathedrals in
Vladimir and the St. George Cathedral (1234)
in Iuriev-​Polskii. The ornamental patterns on the
floor and ceiling of the Vladimir and Suzdal Rooms
were based on the recently discovered twelfth- and
fifteenth-​century frescoes in the Assumption Cathe-
dral, which were copied in May of 1882 by Nikolai
Safonov and a team of craftsmen from his Palekh
83
 Fig. 37  Alabaster figures of prophets and peacocks, 1880s,
restored 1986–2002. Vladimir Room, State Historical
Museum, Moscow.
studios and used in the interior decoration of the
museum.92 Meanwhile, the blind arches decorating
the façade of the St. Dimitrii Cathedral, with relief
figures of prophets and peacocks, were re-​created
as alabaster copies along the entire perimeter of the
Vladimir Room (fig. 37).93 Above the two entrances
to the room were relief replicas of the narrative
scenes depicting King David on his throne and the
ascension of Alexander the Great from the western
and southern porticos of the St. Dimitrii Cathedral.
The Suzdal Room, in turn, was decorated with a
84 The Icon and the Square
nearly life-​size copy of the carved southern portal
from the St. George Cathedral and with relief images
of saints, warriors, animals, birds, and monsters from
its façade.94 It also contained twelfth-​century fresco
fragments, a monumental embroidered icon of the
Eucharist with scenes from the lives of the Virgin
and Saints Joachim and Anne (1410–1416), and a
life-​size replica of the famous Golden Gates from the
Suzdal Cathedral of the Nativity of the Virgin (1222).
Although the nineteenth-​century practice of
combining authentic artworks with copies may
seem peculiarly antiquated now, at the turn of the
century it was considered to be state of the art
museology and was adopted by some of the world’s
leading institutions, such as the Victoria and Albert
Museum, the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, and
the Musée des monuments français in Paris, which
contained copies of medieval church sculpture from
all over France. In Russia these display strategies
were crucial in acquainting a broader public with the
visual traditions of Russo-​Byzantine art, which were
otherwise inaccessible due to the remote locations
and often poor state of preservation of the original
medieval monuments. In a letter to Adrian Prak-
hov, the well-​known art historian and Byzantinist
Fedor Schmidt wrote that he was “amazed” by many
aspects of the museum, including “its interior deco-
ration, the wealth of its collection, and the insightful
principle by which copies are incorporated”:
This is the first time I have seen exhibition rooms them-
selves decorated in the styles of their [respective] eras,
which their artifacts represent. . . . Only in this way can
one create a complete picture of the evolution of Russian
art and, more importantly, make it accessible for further
study. After all, such works of art as miniatures, borders,
historiated initials, and marginalia from illuminated man-
uscripts cannot be made publicly available, given their
susceptibility to deterioration. Here [in the Historical
Museum] the collection of copies in the display cases can
be studied by anyone who wishes to do so.95
In addition to the high-​quality copies and replicas
described above, the Historical Museum possessed
an impressive collection of authentic medieval arti-
facts. The royal family and Aleksei Uvarov made
some of the first bequests, which included a large
collection of bronze items from Ossetia, a number of
From Constantinople to Moscow and St. Petersburg
illuminated manuscripts, and almost three hundred
icons dating from the sixteenth and seventeenth
centuries. Other important donations were made
by Ivan Zabelin, who left to the museum his entire
library of medieval manuscripts, maps, and prints,
as well as a sizeable collection of icons, and by Petr
Shchukin, who in 1905 bequeathed to the museum
around three hundred thousand items, including
jewelry, embroidery, manuscripts, and more than
one hundred icons. Significant gifts also came from
various aristocratic Russian households, including
from the Golitsin, Bobrinskii, Kropotkin, Obo-
lenskii, Olsufiev and Shcherbatov families.96 In the
first decade of its existence, the museum likewise
received a large variety of precious objects from
monasteries, convents, spiritual academies, and
archaeological societies, including the St. Pantelei-
mon Monastery in Mount Athos, the Florishchev
Dormition Monastery, the Archangel Cathedral of
the Moscow Kremlin, the Imperial Archaeologi-
cal Commission, and the Moscow Archaeological
Society. Between 1881 and 1883, at Uvarov’s request,
the latter donated a number of rare artifacts to the
museum, such as tenth-​century drinking horns from
the Black Grave burial mound in Chernigov, twelfth-​
century arches from the Vzhishch Church, and fresco
fragments from the twelfth-​century Transfiguration
Cathedral in Pereslavl’-Zalesskii .97 Lastly, thanks to
Zabelin’s successful efforts in securing an annual sum
of 10,000 rubles from the state treasury in 1887, the
museum was able to develop a robust acquisition
program that enabled it to purchase both individual
works of art and entire collections from specialized
sellers, antique auctions, and private owners.98
As a result, between 1881 and 1917 the Histori-
cal Museum managed to expand its holdings from
2,443 to more than 300,000 objects, which included
85
 more than 1,200 icons dating from the early Middle
Ages to the nineteenth century.99 Among these
were such unique artistic masterpieces as the tenth-​
century Byzantine ivory plaque of Christ crowning
Constantine VII Porphyrogennetos emperor, the
fourteenth-​century Virgin of Tenderness and Nativity
of the Virgin with Saints icons, the sixteenth-​century
Novgorod icon of Saints Basil the Great, Nicholas
the Wonder-​Worker, John the Baptist, and Leo the
Pope, and the icon-​parsuna portraits Saint Basil the
Great and the Grand Duke Vasilii III and Tsar Fedor
Alekseevich.100 In addition, the museum accumulated
a large collection of Byzantine, Russian, Bulgarian,
Serbian, and Georgian illuminated manuscripts
dating from the sixth to the eighteenth centuries,
including the renowned ninth-​century Chludov
Psalter, the twelfth-​century Mstislav Gospel, and
the fourteenth-​century Tomich Psalter.101 Lastly, the
museum amassed a vast collection of applied-​art
objects, comprising more than one thousand pieces
of religious and secular jewelry, embroidery, and
wooden carvings, as well as several thousand articles
of precious metalwork, including liturgical vessels,
reliquaries, altar crosses, censers, tabernacles, and
ornate icon cases. Among its most important pieces
were such rare objects as an eleventh-​century Byzan-
tine pendant cross with the four Evangelists, a mon-
umental embroidered icon of the Mandylion with
the Virgin, angels, and saints (1389), and a carved
fifteenth-​century double-​sided wooden icon of the
synaxis of the Mother of God.102
The Imperial Russian Historical Museum
officially opened to the public on June 2, 1883, and
was visited annually by as many as forty thousand
people. On November 2, 1889, the auditorium was
also officially opened for public use and over the
ensuing decades hosted up to 120 meetings per year,
86 The Icon and the Square
which included lectures, readings, concerts, conven-
tions, and assemblies of various scholarly societies.103
Much like the Rumiantsev Museum, the Historical
Museum encouraged architects, artists, and design-
ers to study and copy the artworks in its collections,
and museum records from 1910 to 1915 mention a
number of well-​known individuals who regularly
frequented its exhibition spaces. For example, Vasi-
lii Surikov sketched a variety of household items,
weapons, costumes, icons, and liturgical objects
from the seventeenth century while working on his
paintings Stepan Razin (1906) and The Tsarevna’s
Visit to the Convent (1912). Viktor Vasnetsov copied
the miniatures and border decorations of several
illuminated manuscripts in 1907 and collected
information on the life and iconography of Prince
Oleg Romanovich of Briansk in 1915; Natalia Gon-
charova studied the museum’s vast holdings of folk
prints and made sketches of various icons, objects
of ancient embroidery, and Scythian stone statues
between 1910 and 1915.104 Although not explicitly
mentioned in museum records, it is not hard to
imagine that in the early 1900s a young Vasily Kan-
dinsky would also have consulted the museum’s col-
lection of Byzantine and ancient Russian art, given
his long-​standing interest in Russia’s pre-​Petrine
past and medieval mythology, as reflected in his
Arrival of the Merchants (1903), Sunday (Old Russia)
(1904), and Colorful Life (Motley Life) (1907) (see
fig. 72) paintings.
Aside from fine artists, the Historical Museum
became a valuable source of raw material for archi-
tects, stage and costume designers, and furniture and
jewelry makers. Revivalist architects such as Aleksei
Shchusev, Vladimir Adamovich, and Vladimir Maiat
mined the museum’s collections of manuscripts, rare
books, and archival materials for plans and drawings
of pre-​Petrine architecture. They likewise studied
its rich ensemble of replicas of medieval architec-
tural patterns and motifs in developing novel design
solutions for their own construction projects, such
as the Trinity Cathedral in the Pochaev Monastery
(1905–12) in Ukraine and the Church of the Inter-
cession of the Mother of God (1908–10) in Moscow.
Leading designers from Karl Fabergé’s firm, as well
as the celebrated court jewelers Gustaf and Edward
Bolin and Mikhail Ovchinnikov, also frequented
the museum on a regular basis in order to study its
holdings of church antiques, jewelry, and applied-​art
objects, whose intricate ornamentation and decora-
tion techniques they would often incorporate into
their own designs. Lastly, various stage and costume
designers would habitually use the museum’s collec-
tions in preparation for different theater, ballet, and
opera productions, including Alexander Ostrovsky’s
False Dmitrii and Vasilii Shuiskii, Mikhail Saltykov-​
Shchedrin’s Death of Pazukhin, Anton Rubinstein’s
Demon, and Modest Mussorgsky’s Boris Godunov
and Khovanshchina operas.105 As a result, by the mid-
1910s not only did the Historical Museum serve as
a rich repository of precious objects through which
national history was powerfully visualized, but it
also became a vibrant cultural and artistic center that
inspired and sustained a number of revivalist and
modernist projects across a diverse range of media.
Moreover, at the turn of the century, since not
all of the museum’s exhibition halls were used to dis-
play its permanent collection, several empty rooms
on the first and second floors were made available
for temporary exhibitions of both historical artifacts
and contemporary art. For example, in 1890 the
museum hosted the Eighth Archaeological Conven-
tion with its accompanying exhibition of medieval
art (discussed in more detail in the next section).
From Constantinople to Moscow and St. Petersburg
Additionally, exhibitions of important private collec-
tions, such as those of Dmitrii Postnikov and Natalia
Shabelskaia, were held at the museum throughout
the late 1880s and 1890s.106 Meanwhile, exhibitions of
contemporary art included both group shows orga-
nized by artists’ societies, such as the Peredvizhniki
Association, the St. Petersburg Artists’ Society, the
Moscow Artists’ Association, the Moscow Society
of Art Lovers, and the Imperial Watercolor Society,
and solo exhibitions of works by artists like Ilia Repin
(1892) and Viktor Vasnetsov (1904).107 It was here
that Kazimir Malevich first made his Moscow debut
in 1906, displaying some of his early works as part of
the 25th Periodical Exhibition of the Moscow Society
of Art Lovers.108 Furthermore, certain rooms in the
museum were turned over to a number of artists to be
used as temporary studio and storage spaces for their
artworks. Thus, for example, Vasilii Vereshchagin and
Mikhail Nesterov kept their large-​scale canvases there
between 1906 and 1909, while Vasilii Surikov, Valen-
tin Serov, and Sergei Korovin used some of the empty
museum rooms as makeshift studios.109 Accordingly,
by the opening decade of the twentieth century,
the Historical Museum had become a dynamic and
interactive cultural space, where contemporary art
continually interfaced with medieval representational
traditions in a way that made a significant and lasting
impact on the Russian art world.
Presenting the “Icon Pompei”:
Art, Archaeology, and the Politics
of Display Within the Context
of Temporary Exhibitions
Besides the major museums discussed above in the
metropolitan centers of Moscow and St. Petersburg,
87
 it is important to note that between 1870 and 1890 a
total of about eighty museums appeared in different
provincial and regional districts across the Russian
Empire.110 For instance, on the initiative of the gov-
ernor of Tver, Count Petr Bagration, a small archae-
ological museum opened there on August 9, 1866;
by 1872 it had managed to accumulate up to fifteen
thousand rare objects of ecclesiastical art, including
various liturgical items, icons, and illuminated man-
uscripts.111 Similarly, on October 28, 1883, a museum
of church antiquities opened in the city of Rostov,
in the Iaroslavl district, which also accrued a sizeable
collection of medieval art and contained such
famous masterpieces as the fifteenth-​century icons
of the archangel Michael and Saints Boris and Gleb,
now in the Tretyakov Gallery collection.112 Other
notable regional museums that were opened at this
time include the Novgorod Museum (1865), the
Pskov Museum (1876), the Trinity Lavra Museum in
Sergiev Posad (1880), the Tula Museum of Church
Antiquities (1885), the Vologda Museum of Church
Antiquities (1886), the Vladimir Museum of Church
Antiquities (1886), the Arkhangelsk Museum of
Church Antiquities (1886), the Iaroslavl Museum of
Church Antiquities (1895), and the Kiev Museum of
Antiques and Art (1899).
In addition to the proliferation of provin-
cial museums, temporary exhibitions of Russo-​
Byzantine art often accompanied large archaeo-
logical conventions that were held once every two
to three years in different cities across the Russian
Empire throughout the second half of the nine-
teenth century. First initiated in 1869 by the Moscow
Archaeological Society, these conventions brought
together a large number of archaeologists, histori-
ans, and Russo-​Byzantine specialists from across
the country and served as important forums for
88 The Icon and the Square
scholarly debate and discussion. Over the course of
four decades their proceedings were published in
the form of forty-​five scholarly volumes, many of
which contained groundbreaking research on Byz-
antine and medieval Russian art and architecture.
Before the outbreak of World War I, a total of fifteen
archaeological conventions took place in Moscow
(1869, 1890), St. Petersburg (1876), Kiev (1874,
1899), Kazan (1877), Tiflis (1881), Odessa (1884),
Iaroslavl (1887), Vilnius (1893), Riga (1896), Khar-
kov (1902), Ekaterinoslav (1905), Chernigov (1908),
and Novgorod (1911).113 This constant geographical
variation ensured that the exhibitions of medieval
art accompanying the conventions reached a broad
audience beyond the capital cities of St. Petersburg
and Moscow, especially since the exhibitions were
open not only to specialists but to the general public.
The objects on display were typically drawn from
the host cities or provinces and were either recent
discoveries of the respective regional archaeological
societies or special loans from local ecclesiastical
institutions and private collectors.
For example, the exhibition held during the
Fifteenth All-​Russian Archaeological Convention
in Novgorod consisted of 1,640 objects, which
included a large number of ecclesiastical antiquities
and icons from the Novgorod St. Sophia Cathedral
(1050), the Tikhvin Assumption Monastery (1560),
and the Ustiug Cathedral of the Nativity of the Vir-
gin (1690), as well as rare books, documents, and
church artifacts from the Solovetskii Monastery
(1436) and several illuminated manuscripts dating
from the twelfth to the seventeenth centuries that
were sent over by the St. Petersburg Theological
Academy.114 Among the most valuable pieces in the
exhibition were a tenth-​century carved ivory casket,
an eleventh-​century staff that belonged to Bishop
Nicetas of Novgorod, the famous fifteenth-​century
icon of the Battle of Novgorod with Suzdal, a large
sixteenth-​century vita icon of Saint Barlaam, the
abbot of Khoutyn, and a rare icon commissioned
by the house of Tsar Boris Godunov depicting
Mary Magdalene, Saint Boris, Saint Xenia the Righ-
teous of Rome, and Saint Theodotos, the bishop of
Kyrenia (1590s).115 To supplement the exhibition,
the convention organizers also arranged a series
of lectures on the cultural and artistic history of
Novgorod, as well as guided tours to important
medieval sites, such as the St. Sophia Cathedral
(1050), the St. Nicholas Cathedral (1113), the
Iuriev Monastery (1119), the Antoniev Monastery
(1117–27), the Church of Christ the Savior on the
Nereditsa (1198), St. Theodore’s Church (1361), the
Church of the Transfiguration of the Savior (1374),
which contained frescoes by Theophanes the Greek,
and the Novgorod Kremlin (1484). The convention
was extensively discussed in the local press over
the course of several months, and the exhibition
in particular was repeatedly singled out for special
praise.116
Although smaller in scope and scale than the
Novgorod exhibition, other noteworthy regional
exhibitions took place in Kiev, Kharkov, Odessa, and
Chernigov, where local antiquities, artworks, and
precious artifacts were displayed alongside large-​
scale copies and reproductions of recently restored
monumental art. For instance, at the Eleventh All-​
Russian Archaeological Convention in Kiev (1899),
segments of iconostases, liturgical embroideries,
and icons from the Kamenets-​Podolsk Museum,
as well as 190 illuminated manuscripts, rare books,
and maps dating from the fifteenth to the eighteenth
centuries, were displayed alongside Vasilii Geor-
gievskii’s series of photographs of the Cathedral of
From Constantinople to Moscow and St. Petersburg
the Nativity of the Virgin (1222), the Deposition
Monastery (1207), and the Intercession Convent
(1364) in Suzdal.117 Similarly, at the exhibition of the
Twelfth All-​Russian Archaeological Convention in
Kharkov (1902), organized by Nikodim Kondakov’s
student Egor Redin, major works of medieval art
were presented in conjunction with photographs,
drawings, and color reproductions both of architec-
tural monuments and of individual artifacts from the
region, which together produced a comprehensive
narrative of the artistic evolution of Ukrainian art
from the early Middle Ages to the eighteenth cen-
tury.118 In total, the exhibition contained 604 objects
of ecclesiastical art in various media and was accom-
panied by a colossal nine-​hundred-​page scholarly
catalogue and a separate album with illustrations.119
According to contemporary reports, the exhibition
was extremely popular with local audiences and
attracted as many as eight thousand visitors per day,
who would queue patiently for hours outside of the
exhibition venue.120
The largest and perhaps most significant of
these temporary convention exhibitions took place
in Moscow, in the Historical Museum. Organized
by the Moscow Archaeological Society as part of
the Eighth All-​Russian Archaeological Convention,
it opened with great fanfare in January of 1890. The
exhibition occupied eleven large halls and consisted
of a rich variety of medieval artworks that included
recent archaeological discoveries, rare illuminated
manuscripts, embroideries, metalwork, carved
ivory and wood, and a large number of important
icons drawn from several monasteries, the Tver and
Ryazan Museums, the Historical Museum, and the
private collections of Aleksei Uvarov, Ivan Silin,
Tihon Bolshakov, Ivan Zaitsevskii, and Nikolai Post-
inkov.121 The Kiev Theological Academy sent several
89
 early Byzantine icons in its possession, including
the sixth-​century encaustic Two Martyrs (Saints
Plato and Glykeria) icon from the Holy Monastery
of St. Catherine on Mount Sinai. Other well-​known
masterpieces included the twelfth-​century Byz-
antine mosaic icon of Saint Nicholas the Miracle
Worker, the thirteenth-​century Georgian icon of
Saint George, the monumental embroidered icon
of the Assumption of the Virgin (1560) from the
workshop of Countess Efrosinia Staritskaia, the
sixteenth-​century illuminated manuscript of the life
of John the Apostle from Tihon Bolshakov’s collec-
tion, and a number of signed icons by Simon Ush-
akov, including his famous version of the Virgin of
Vladimir (1652).122 The exhibition was accompanied
by an extensive seven-​hundred-​page catalogue that
meticulously chronicled all the pieces on display.
Moreover, convention delegates and leading experts
in the fields of archaeology and medieval history and
art delivered a series of public lectures that focused
on the various objects on display and discussed
them in relation to the broader development of Byz-
antine and medieval Russian visual culture.
Although not directly related to the archaeo-
logical conventions discussed above, another note-
worthy temporary exhibition of Russo-​Byzantine
art took place in St. Petersburg in December of
1898, organized by the Imperial Archaeological
Institute.123 In contrast to the Moscow show, where
all kinds of medieval artifacts were mixed together,
including metalware, woodwork, textiles, and icons,
the St. Petersburg exhibition primarily focused
on icon painting and was accordingly named an
“artistic-​archaeological” exhibition.124 The works on
display were meant to highlight “the transition from
ancient icon painting to the new art in the academic
sense” and were therefore arranged chronologically
90 The Icon and the Square
in order to show the iconographic and stylistic vari-
ation across three major periods of Russian icon
painting, namely the Novgorod, Muscovy, and Stro-
ganov Schools.125 More specifically, the exhibition
organizers aimed to demonstrate the striking formal
evolution of iconic representation from the four-
teenth century to the nineteenth so as to challenge
the long-​standing public misconception of icon
painting as timeless and unchanging. Containing
a total of 532 objects, the exhibition also included
early Byzantine enamel icons from Ivan Balashev’s
collection and several late Byzantine icons of the
so-​called Cretan School from Nikolai Likhachev’s
collection, which were meant to illustrate both the
similarities and differences between the Byzantine
and Russian representational traditions.126 Finally,
the exhibition incorporated some examples of con-
temporary church art in the form of sketches and
studies for the newly constructed Church of the Sav-
ior on Spilled Blood (1883–1907) by revivalist artists
such as Viktor Vasnetsov, Mikhail Nesterov, Nikolai
Kharlamov, Valerian Otmar, Andrei Riabushkin, and
Vasilii Beliaev. Consequently, unlike the exhibitions
accompanying the archaeological conventions, this
show followed a purely art-​historical organizational
logic and signified the beginning of an important
shift in the presentation of icon painting: away from
an archaeological perspective and toward a primarily
aesthetic one.
In fact, several other exhibitions of Russo-​
Byzantine art held at this time adopted a similar art-​
historical approach. For instance, in 1896 and 1897
the Moscow Society of Art Lovers organized two
shows, whose purported goal was to demonstrate the
iconographic evolution of representations of Christ
and the Virgin Mary respectively over the course
of multiple centuries. In addition to borrowing
medieval icons from the Imperial Russian Archaeo-
logical Society and the Historical Museum, the soci-
ety requested later paintings from the Imperial Acad-
emy of Arts.127 Furthermore, both of these shows
contained facsimiles, casts, and watercolor reproduc-
tions of famous works of Byzantine, Gothic, Renais-
sance, and Baroque art, including copies of monu-
mental mosaics, frescoes, reliefs, and sculptures.128
As a result, instead of being labeled “ecclesiastical”
or “church” antiquities and being grouped together
with liturgical objects, the icons in these exhibitions
were treated as examples of fine art aesthetically and
conceptually comparable to the major masterpieces
of western European painting by celebrated artists
such as Giotto, Masaccio, Michelangelo, Leonardo
da Vinci, Raphael, Dürer, Rubens, and Rembrandt.129
Moreover, university professors Dmitrii Ainalov
and Alexander Kirpichnikov were invited to speak,
throughout the duration of both exhibitions, about
the numerous stylistic and iconographic variations in
the portrayals of Christ and the Virgin Mary in early
Christian, Byzantine, medieval Russian, and subse-
quent western European art. These lectures were so
popular with the general public that, according to
the society’s records, large numbers of people had to
be turned away due to a lack of space in the audito-
rium.130 Consequently, although rarely discussed in
scholarship on the iconic revival, such nineteenth-​
century shows not only set an important precedent
for the ensuing twentieth-​century exhibitions of
icons but also clearly demonstrate that the aesthetic
reappraisal of Russo-​Byzantine art was already well
under way before the turn of the century. Indeed,
despite the later claims of the next generation of
artists and critics, both the conceptual and material
foundations for the 1913 Exhibition of Ancient Russian
Art—and the avant-​garde polemics that surrounded
From Constantinople to Moscow and St. Petersburg
it—were already laid in the closing decades of the
nineteenth century.
“A Russian Renaissance”: The 1913
Exhibition of Ancient Russian Art
Described as “an aesthetic revelation,” “the begin-
ning of a new artistic consciousness in Russia,”
the unveiling of a Russian “Quattrocento,” the 1913
Exhibition of Ancient Russian Art became a major
cultural event in the Russian art world.131 Organized
by the Moscow Archaeological Institute in honor
of the three-hundredth anniversary of Romanov
rule, the exhibition opened on February 13, 1913,
in the Moscow Business Court complex Delovoi
Dvor on Varvarskaia Square and stayed open for
four months. Although it consisted of four sections:
Icons, Illuminated Manuscripts, Metalwork, and
Embroidery, the icon section was by far the largest,
comprising 147 icons, which spanned the thirteenth
through seventeenth centuries. The vast majority
of the icons came from the extensive private collec-
tions of Stepan Riabushinsky, Nikolai Likhachev, Ilia
Ostroukhov, and Dmitrii Silin, among others, and
had recently been cleansed of multiple layers of dirt,
soot, and overpainting to reveal some of the most
ancient Russian icon painting ever to be seen by the
general public.132 The most notable masterpieces in
the exhibition belonged to the Novgorod School
and included such famous works as the thirteenth-​
century Virgin of Smolensk icon, the fourteenth-​
century John Chrysostom, Archangel Michael, Saints
Boris and Gleb (fig. 30), and Nativity icons, as well as
several important fifteenth-​century icons portraying
the Presentation of Christ at the Temple, the Miracle
of Saint George, Christ’s Entry into Jerusalem,
91
 the Virgin’s Assumption, and the Forty Martyrs
of Sebaste.133 The exhibition likewise contained a
considerable number of sixteenth- and seventeenth-​
century icons executed by master icon painters from
the Stroganov School, such as Procopius Chirin
(1570s–1620s) and Nikephoros Savin (1590s–1650s).
Installed in the large, spacious halls of the
newly built Delovoi Dvor (1911–13), the exhibition
attracted vast audiences and received widespread
coverage in the Russian press. A comprehensive
scholarly catalogue was written specifically for the
exhibition and contained multiple illustrations and
detailed descriptions of each artwork, as well as a
short introductory essay by Pavel Muratov, in which
the author praised the aesthetic achievements of
icon painting in general and identified the Novgorod
School in particular as a highly sophisticated and
elaborate form of visual representation: “Nobody
can call Russian icon painting—as they had often
done in the past—dark, monotonous, and unskilled
in comparison to its Western counterparts. On the
contrary, in front of us is an art that possesses great
strength of color, refinement in its compositions,
and has attained the highest level of mastery in its
execution.”134 Although many of the objects on dis-
play at the 1913 exhibition were presented to the pub-
lic for the first time, a significant number of icons
from Likhachev’s and Riabushinsky’s collections
had already been exhibited in St. Petersburg the
previous year at the Exhibition of Icon Painting and
Artistic Antiquities, which accompanied the Second
All-​Russian Congress of Artists.135 The congress was
held in the Imperial Academy of Arts from Decem-
ber 27, 1911, to January 15, 1912, and aimed, on the
one hand, to address questions about conservation
of Russia’s medieval artistic heritage and, on the
other, to provide a detailed overview of all aspects
92 The Icon and the Square
of Russian contemporary visual culture. To this end,
it was divided into eight sections, each of which
involved prepared lectures, reports, and discussions:
(1) Problems of Aesthetics and Art History, (2) Art
Education in the Family and at School and the
Teaching of the Graphic Arts, (3) Painting and Its
Technique, (4) Architecture and the Artistic Aspect
of Cities, (5) Russian Antiquity and Its Preservation,
(6) Industrial Art and Handicrafts, (7) Art in the
Theater, (8) General Meetings.136
One of the most striking features of the con-
gress was the continuous interface between the old
and the new. Reports on archaeological excavations
and restoration initiatives by distinguished scholars
of Russo-​Byzantine art such as Nikodim Kondakov,
Dmitrii Ainalov, and Alexander Anisimov were
delivered alongside manifestos and pronouncements
on contemporary painting practices by the likes of
Ilia Repin, Vasily Kandinsky, Ivan Kulbin, and Ser-
gei Bobrov. The latter presented the aesthetic views
of the Donkey’s Tail group and especially those of
Mikhail Larionov and Natalia Goncharova. As part
of his opening speech at the congress, Dmitrii Ain-
alov identified two major trends he believed charac-
terized the Russian art world of those years:
Let us glance around . . . that which until recently has
been the subject of specialized study in the chambers of
the rare archaeologist and scholar now suddenly interests
society [at large], which lovingly turns its attention to this
antiquity and, so to speak, absorbs the beauty of native,
previously familiar forms and styles. . . . Never before have
the interests of the broader sectors of society been turned
with greater love toward our artistic antiquity and our
recent artistic past. This is a marker of our times.
At [contemporary] art exhibitions society witnesses
the still more vivid features of modern art. This art is new,
previously unseen, unknown. . . . The passionate presen-
tation of novel forms confronts both art criticism and
society with the new objectives of contemporary artistic
creativity; it demands a new ideology, a new understand-
ing, which is being sought out with equal passion in the
various currents of contemporary thought.137
Drawing a direct link between these two cultural
developments, Ainalov concluded that contem-
porary Russian art was in a state of transition and
that artists’ and critics’ understanding of medieval
representation was shifting away from a purely “for-
mal idea of native art” and toward a much deeper
appreciation of “its essence.”138 Here Ainalov was
undoubtedly referring to the gradual reconceptu-
alization of the icon as a unique philosophical and
ontological entity whose aesthetic qualities were
inseparable from its religious, social, and historical
functions. It was precisely this evolving understand-
ing of iconic representation that ultimately led to the
development of novel theories of the image by the
likes of Florensky, Punin, and Tarabukin a few years
later.
Given the discursive framework of the congress,
the accompanying Exhibition of Icon Painting and
Artistic Antiquities aimed to present Russian icon
painting as a sophisticated “form of high art with
its own history, evolution, and periods of flower-
ing and decline.”139 In order to achieve this goal,
the exhibition was composed exclusively of newly
restored icons, which included several major mas-
terpieces, such as the fourteenth-​century icon of
Boris and Gleb (fig. 30) and the seventeenth-​century
icon of John the Warrior by Procopius Chirin from
Likhachev’s collection, the fifteenth-​century icons
of the Ascension and the Virgin of Georgia from
Riabushinsky’s collection, a sixteenth-​century
From Constantinople to Moscow and St. Petersburg
version of The Battle of Novgorod with Suzdal from
Viktor Vasnetsov’s collection, and a number of
reproductions of frescoes from the Church of Christ
the Savior on the Nereditsa, the Church of St. Theo­
dore Stratelates on the Stream (1360), and the
Ferapontov Convent (1398).140 In his overview of the
exhibition, Vasilii Georgievskii dwelt extensively on
the stylistic features of the individual icons, praising
their “brilliant colorfulness,” “refinement,” and “high
aesthetic achievement.”141 Consequently, both the
content of the Exhibition of Icon Painting and Artistic
Antiquities and the theoretical debates that pre-
vailed at the Second All-​Russian Congress of Artists
anticipated and set the tone for the 1913 Exhibition
of Ancient Russian Art and the critical response it
engendered.
Although many critics claimed that the
1913 exhibition marked the “beginning,” “birth,”
or “dawn” of public awareness and appreciation of
the iconic pictorial tradition, it ought to be viewed
as more of a culmination of a decadelong process
that originated in the nineteenth century. Indeed,
some commentators grudgingly conceded that
“thanks are due to the scientists . . . their painstak-
ing efforts [formed] the foundation on which we
can now build.”142 After all, it was the scientific,
positivist ethos of the second half of the nineteenth
century that first enabled scholars to examine iconic
artworks in purely secular terms as important his-
torical and archaeological artifacts—and not merely
religious or cult objects—leading to their initial
liberation from indefinite neglect in moldy church
attics and basements. Moreover, the progressive
political reforms that were undertaken at the turn
of the century, such as the 1905 Act of Toleration,
not only led to greater religious freedom throughout
the Russian Empire but resulted in the reopening of
93
 hundreds of Old Believer churches, which in turn
was accompanied by the cleaning and restoration
of earlier icons that predated Patriarch Nikon’s
ecclesiastical reforms.143 The latter were enacted
between 1654 and 1666 and entailed a series of new
requirements for liturgical rituals, service books, and
religious representations, the most famous of which
was the modification of the two-​fingered blessing to
a three-​fingered one. Since the Old Believers refused
to accept these new regulations, they were formally
excommunicated by the Russian Orthodox Church,
and hundreds of their icons were either destroyed or
entirely repainted to reflect the new church doctrine.
The triumphant reinstatement of Old Believer prac-
tices in the early 1900s after centuries of repression
and persecution meant that for many viewers and
thinkers the rediscovery of the iconic tradition was
necessarily aligned with secularism, progress, and
modernity rather than with “medieval” barbarism,
religious dogmatism, and extremism. For example,
Iakov Tugenkhold wrote that
Nikon’s reforms, having ripped an abyss between Russian
national piety and the state church, delivered a blow to
ancient icon painting. . . . The reigning church did not con-
sider herself at all responsible to our people for the preser-
vation of icons. Several rotted in church storages; others,
having stood on ancient iconostases for entire centuries,
were covered with new layers of varnish or mercilessly
worked anew in crude painting to achieve superficial gran-
deur and please changing taste. 144
By contrast, other commentators saw the iconic
tradition in more quixotic terms as the mystical anti-
dote to arid Western rationalism and materialism.
Viewed as a kernel of living spirituality that had per-
sisted throughout the centuries to modern times, the
94 The Icon and the Square
icon was perceived by some as the ultimate restor-
ative elixir to the horrors and excesses of ruthless
capitalist modernity. For instance, Makovksy argued
as follows:
Here, centuries ago, anonymous masters brought about
that which we have dreamed of from the moment when
the rationalist art of the nineteenth century stopped
pleasing us—that which has been missing for us faithless,
crippled contemporaries of Edison: the symphony of
color combinations, the wise convention of contours, the
painterly rhythm of composition, and—most of all—the
magnificent spirituality of art, its depth of meaning, its
serene eloquence, in an inseparable unification with the
perfection of hieratic form. . . . It fills us with hope for the
future of Russian painting.145
In his review of the exhibition, Punin went
even further and claimed that the icon’s status as an
indexical trace of the divine was fundamental to its
aesthetic impact and metaphysical presence and that
purely stylistic comparisons between iconic repre-
sentation and modern French art were both superfi-
cial and limited:
It seems dangerous to embark on a path of risky com-
parisons, a path that is, in our view, almost sacrilegious
in its parallelisms, as one undoubtedly cannot point to
the hand of the Mother of God and talk about Gauguin
[or] contemplate the green tones of her tunic [and]
invoke Cézanne. . . . Even though, in their sustained
exploration of painterly problems, nineteenth-​century
artists approached Russian icon painting very closely, the
spiritual impulses underpinning their works are so dis-
similar that we Russians, who to this day still experience
the powerful religious impact of our enduring culture,
cannot allow such a frivolous attitude toward our ancient
traditions . . . the cause of artists (future or contempo-
rary . . .) is to find the means to inspire in us a similarly
affecting experience.146
Ironically, Punin’s argument echoes both Ainalov’s
earlier statement and Kondakov’s idea that an exclu-
sively aesthetic or formalist response to icons was
“absolutely wanting in any scientific consistency
or philosophical content.”147 This unexpected res-
onance between the seemingly outdated views of
a nineteenth-​century scholar and one of the most
radical leftist critics of the twentieth century demon-
strates that the reappraisal of iconic representation
remained contested and open-​ended for many
turn-​of-​the-​century thinkers. While icons were uni-
versally seen to open novel aesthetic and conceptual
possibilities to contemporary artists, many commen-
tators considered negation of the icon’s metaphysical
reality a limitation on its potentiality as a system of
thought and representation alternative to western
European painting. Accordingly, any discussion of
the Russo-​Byzantine revival must go beyond a mere
consideration of stylistic influence or art-​historical
affinity to consider the complex philosophy set forth
by Orthodox theologians with regard to presence,
representation, and signification of the iconic image.
Writing from the vantage point of 1923, Pavel
Muratov claimed that “interest [in the icon] had
reached its apogee by the spring of 1914” and that
“among the artists . . . the 1913 Exhibition of Ancient
Russian Art had had the most success.”148 Indeed,
many promising young talents, as well as established
masters from the Imperial Academy of Arts, were
enlisted both in the restoration initiatives and in the
interior decoration of the new revivalist churches
From Constantinople to Moscow and St. Petersburg
and public museums. Viktor Vasnetsov, Mikhail
Nesterov, Mikhail Vrubel, Kuzma Petrov-​Vodkin,
Pavel Kuznetsov, and Nikolai Roerich, to name but
a few, all worked on various projects throughout
Russia. Even artists who were not directly involved
in restoration and revivalist projects began to make
tours of rural Russia in order to discover the coun-
try’s rich Russo-​Byzantine artistic legacy. Vasily
Kandinsky, Natalia Goncharova, Mikhail Larionov,
Olga Popova, and Vladimir Tatlin, among others,
toured the Golden Ring, making numerous sketches
and studies of the frescoes, icons, and decorative
objects they encountered on their trips. Last but not
least, as the present chapter demonstrates, both the
temporary exhibitions and the permanent collec-
tions of the Hermitage, Rumiantsev, Russian, and
Historical Museums all provided valuable public
access to major masterpieces of Byzantine and medi-
eval Russian art from the 1860s onward.
As a result, in the period spanning 1870 to 1920,
few Russian artists managed to escape the pervasive
influence of the Russo-​Byzantine artistic tradition,
whose lasting impact on avant-​garde practice ranged
from thematic borrowings and crude adaptations
of iconic forms to a profound reconceptualization
of the appearance and function of art in modernity.
Although the vast range of extant material makes
it possible to consider a great multiplicity of iconic
iterations and reiterations, in the subsequent chap-
ters I focus my inquiry on the theories and artworks
of Mikhail Vrubel, Vasily Kandinsky, Kazimir Male-
vich, and Vladimir Tatlin, who adopted the “Russo-​
Byzantine” both as form and as methodology and
whose respective artistic projects altered the course
of modern art both in Russia and abroad.
95
3
ANGELS BECOMING DEMONS
Mikhail Vrubel’s Modernist Beginnings
In his 1911 biography of Mikhail Vrubel (1856–1910),
the artist Stepan Iaremich (1869–1939) recounts
a telling episode. In the spring of 1901 Iaremich
had accompanied Vrubel to the twelfth-​century
Church of St. Cyril in Kiev, where in 1884 the latter
had both restored and re-​created a large number
of frescoes under the direction of Adrian Prakhov.
Standing in front of his Angels’ Lamentation mural
(fig. 38), Vrubel observed: “In essence, this is the
kind of work to which I should return.”1 At that
point, Vrubel was based in Moscow and had already
painted some of his most celebrated masterpieces:
Seated Demon (1890), Portrait of Savva Mamontov
(1897), Pan (1899), Lilacs (1900), and The Swan Prin-
cess (1900). However, Vrubel himself felt that he had
produced his best work during his stay in Kiev in the
1880s, a period largely dominated by his restoration
work in the Church of St. Cyril and his sketches for
the unrealized murals in the revivalist Cathedral
of St. Vladimir. Nikolai Punin would subsequently
agree with the artist’s self-​assessment, praising
Vrubel’s Kievan frescoes as some of his best work,
in which he had “touched upon the known problems
of painting” with “such strength of spirit and
insight . . . that the few existing pages that narrate
Vrubel’s Kievan period of creativity should . . . grow
into a huge body of literature, exclusively dedicated
to [examining] the meaning and significance of
these compositions.”2 Although a number of excel-
lent scholarly monographs have discussed this for-
mative stage in Vrubel’s career in considerable detail,
few of them have situated it within the broader
context of the Russo-​Byzantine revival.3 Neither
have they considered how and why Vrubel’s preoc-
cupation with religious subject matter came to influ-
ence his artistic outlook, evolving into an important
subtheme within his oeuvre and culminating in the
intriguing cycle of biblical paintings at the end of his
life, which have typically been dismissed as his weak-
est work and the result of the onset of mental ill-
ness.4 And yet, in their unusual combination of mod-
ernist forms with mystical, transcendental themes,
these works ought to be understood as nineteenth-​
century precursors to a strain of visionary modern-
ism that found its full expression in the twentieth-​
century paintings of artists such as Pavel Filonov,
97
 Fig. 38  Mikhail Vrubel, Angels’ Lamentation, 1884. Oil on plas-
ter, Church of St. Cyril, Kiev.
Vasily Kandinsky, and Kazimir Malevich, to name
but a few. More importantly, period commentators,
such as Stepan Iaremich, Vsevolod Dmitriev, Naum
Gabo, Nikolai Punin, and Nikolai Tarabukin, all rec-
ognized Vrubel as an important forerunner, whose
sustained engagement with the Russo-​Byzantine
pictorial tradition both anticipated and shaped the
avant-​garde espousal of icons by nearly thirty years.
The present chapter thus repositions Vrubel as a key
artistic figure in the emergence of a distinctive Rus-
sian modernist style around 1900 and recuperates a
period view of his oeuvre that in the course of the
twentieth century became somewhat attenuated in
favor of other interpretations of his work. It likewise
challenges the perceived binary categories of “new”
98 The Icon and the Square
and “old,” “vanguard” and “rearguard,” and “innova-
tive” and “traditional” as they have too often been
assumed, if not directly declared, in histories of turn-​
of-​the-​century Russian art.
In fact, Vrubel’s trajectory toward a modernist
style was redolent with inherent contradictions,
which simultaneously both reflect and complicate
the avant-​garde paradigm. On the one hand he
was a trained academician, while on the other he
was largely rejected by official critical and artistic
establishments as a “decadent.” In his choice of
subject matter Vrubel eschewed both the political
radicalism of the Peredvizhniki and the modern
cityscape and urbanized social environment of
Impressionism. He was not interested in portraying
young revolutionaries and the suffering lower classes
as the Peredvizhniki had done, nor was he drawn to
celebrating Moscow and St. Petersburg as modern
metropolises. Instead, he turned to largely meta-
physical, esoteric, and Symbolist subject matter, and
especially to Apocryphal themes of the demonic,
angelic, and prophetic. In many ways his painterly
explorations can be understood as visual analogues
or antecedents to the later literary preoccupations
of writers such as Alexander Blok, Osip Mandel­
stam, Mikhail Kuzmin, Mikhail Bulgakov, and Anna
Akhmatova, whose works epitomized the modern
move away from institutionalized religion and
toward new spiritual and theistic possibilities.5
Born in Odessa in 1856 into the family of a
military lawyer, Vrubel was intimately familiar with
both Roman Catholicism and Russian Orthodoxy
due to his mixed parentage—his father was of Polish
descent, while his mother came from an old noble
Russian family. However, he found organized reli-
gion to be restrictive and oppressive and in the late
1880s began to voice profound doubts about the
Christian faith. Instead, Vrubel increasingly came to
believe that the free pursuit of one’s artistic calling
and individual creativity was the most direct route
to spiritual attainment and fulfillment, famously
stating toward the end of this life: “Art—this is
our religion.”6 At first Vrubel pursued the study of
law, graduating from the St. Petersburg University
in 1880, but already during his university years he
started to express a keen interest in art and attended
evening drawing classes at the Imperial Academy of
Arts from 1877 to 1879. Almost immediately upon
graduating from the law faculty, Vrubel enrolled
as a full-​time student at the academy, where he
trained for four years under the direction of Pavel
Chistiakov (1832–1919), eventually gaining the title
of “academician of painting” in 1905. Even during
his early training at the academy, Vrubel was never
a devoted follower of the academic style. His early
nude studies demonstrate much looser brushwork
and freer handling of paint than was typically prac-
ticed in the academy at this time. Nonetheless, it was
not until his restoration experiences in Kiev that
Vrubel began to develop a fragmentary brushstroke,
unusual viewpoints and cropping devices, and a dis-
tinctive compression of the pictorial surface.
In 1884, while still a student at the academy,
Vrubel was approached by Adrian Prakhov, who was
looking for a young artist to help him carry out the
large-​scale restoration of the Church of St. Cyril.
In order to secure the commission, Vrubel had first
to produce a small work in the Byzantine manner.
He painted an Annunciation scene (fig. 39), which
unfortunately has not survived, except for a small
black-​and-​white photograph originally reproduced
in Iaremich’s biography.7 Based on the Byzan-
tine iconographic type of the “spinning Virgin,”
Vrubel’s work demonstrates an intimate familiar-
ity with medieval prototypes, such as The Virgin
Mary mosaic in the St. Sophia Cathedral in Kiev
(fig. 40) and the twelfth-​century Ustiug Annunciation
icon from the Assumption Cathedral of the Mos-
cow Kremlin. As a student at the academy, Vrubel
would have had access to its Museum of Christian
Antiquities, which at that point housed a vast col-
lection of Byzantine and Russian icons, including
those brought over by Petr Sevastianov from Mount
Athos. Among these were several Annunciation
icons, which Vrubel could have used as his models.
In addition, the academy (as discussed in the first
chapter) possessed a large arsenal of copies and
photographs of the mosaics in the Hagia Sophia
Church in Constantinople, Manuel Panselinos’s
Angels Becoming Demons 99
 Fig. 39  Mikhail Vrubel, Annunciation, 1884. Watercolor and
oil paint, dimensions unknown. Location unknown. From
Stepan Iaremich, Mikhail Aleksandrovich Vrubel': Zhizn i
tvorchestvo (Moscow: Knebel', 1911), 22.

Fig. 40  The Virgin Mary, eleventh-​century mosaic, St. Sophia

Cathedral, Kiev.

100
thirteenth-​century frescoes in Mount Athos, as well
as copies of the icons and frescoes in the twelfth-​
century Betania and Gelati Monasteries in Georgia.
The academy also owned a Russian translation of
Adolphe Didron and Paul Durand’s famous icono-
graphic manual of Byzantine art, the Manuel d’icono-
graphie chrétienne, grecque et latine; traduit du manus-
crit byzantin “Le guide de la peinture” (Paris, 1845).8
Purportedly compiled in the eighteenth century by
Dionysius of Fourna, a monk on Mount Athos, the
manual explained techniques of Byzantine painting
and described in detail the various iconographies of
different religious figures and scenes.9 Lastly, Vrubel
may have seen life-​size color copies of frescoes and
mosaics from the eleventh- and twelfth-​century
monuments of Kiev at an exhibition Prakhov had
organized in St. Petersburg in 1883.
Although it is now difficult to determine which
specific work Vrubel had used as a model for his
Annunciation, it is clear that he must have based it
on an actual medieval prototype. A comparison
between the famous twelfth-​century Annunciation
icon (fig. 41) from the Monastery of St. Catherine
on Mount Sinai and Vrubel’s version demonstrates
how intuitively the artist had understood the formal
and symbolic language of icons without any official
training in icon painting.10 Instead of inhabiting the
pictorial space of the image, Vrubel’s figures seem
Fig. 41  Annunciation, late twelfth century. Tempera and gold
to float against an infinite, continuous background on panel, 24 13/16 × 16 5/8 × 1 1/4 in. (63.1 × 42.2 × 3.2 cm). Holy
that signifies a sacred, symbolic, and timeless realm. Monastery of St. Catherine, Mount Sinai, Egypt.

Vrubel avoided any directional lighting or shadows

in his Annunciation, and his elongation of the figures,
the linear dynamism of their draperies, and the
serpentine twisting of the angel all closely resemble
Byzantine originals. In lieu of altering the image
along naturalistic lines with traditional modeling of
the faces and the use of chiaroscuro, as was practiced
at the time by academy-​trained artists, Vrubel
adhered much more closely to the formal language
of the medieval icon. It is therefore not surprising
that Vrubel’s subsequent firsthand engagement with
the monumental medieval art of Kiev allowed him

Angels Becoming Demons 101

 Fig. 42  Mikhail Vrubel, Two Angels with Labara, 1884. Oil on
plaster, Church of St. Cyril, Kiev.
to internalize the iconic mode of representation still
further and in a way that continued to shape his art-
work throughout his career.
As part of the St. Cyril commission, Vrubel was
tasked with restoring close to 150 fragmented figures.
In a period of just seven months, with the help of
student assistants from the Murashko School of
Drawing, Vrubel repainted large sections of severely
damaged murals, such as The Annunciation, The Entry
into Jerusalem, and The Dormition of the Virgin, and
created several wholly new compositions in place
of the old ones that had perished. The Descent of
102 The Icon and the Square
the Holy Ghost (Pentecost), the Angels’ Lamentation,
a medallion Head of Christ, Two Angels with Labara
(fig. 42), and the figure of Moses all seem to have
been entirely Vrubel’s own creations. The artist
prepared for the commission by studying both the
surviving medieval murals in St. Cyril and the paint-
ings and mosaics in the Monastery of St. Michael of
the Golden Domes and the Cathedral of St. Sophia.
He also had access to Prakhov’s large collection of
drawings, sketches, photographs, and chromolitho-
graphs of Byzantine and medieval Russian art, which
the latter had acquired during his travels throughout
the Russian Empire, Europe, the Middle East, and
other formerly Byzantine territories.11 Vrubel would
spend many hours in Prakhov’s house studying
these images and making copies from them, which
he would then incorporate into his designs for the
Church of St. Cyril. For example, Vrubel based his
Two Angels with Labara fresco (1884), located on the
arch of the baptismal chapel, on the angels in the
Last Judgment mosaic in the Santa Maria Cathedral
in Torcello (fig. 43).12 Although Vrubel’s composi-
tion is entirely his own original creation, he adopted
many of the formal features of the medieval work,
including the agitated fluttering of the draperies, the
linear stylization of the folds, the dynamic move-
ments and even the facial features of the angels. Sim-
ilarly, both the iconography and the composition for
the Descent of the Holy Ghost mural were inspired by
a combination of original and photographic sources.
Vrubel’s semicircular arrangement of the disciples,
as well as his stylized streams of divine light emanat-
ing from the Holy Spirit in the form of a dove, recalls
the Pentecost mosaic in the Cathedral of Monreale in
Italy. However, the fluidity, linearity, and movements
of the figures seem more akin to the Pentecost fresco
in the Cathedral of St. Sophia in Kiev. Analogous to
his first Annunciation painting, Vrubel’s St. Cyril fres-
coes make manifest how closely the artist adhered
to the medieval prototypes, imitating their penchant
for bright color, pronounced outlining, and spatial Fig. 43  Angels, detail of Last Judgment, twelfth-​century
mosaic, Cathedral of Santa Maria Assunta, Torcello, Venice.
ambiguity.
Even outside of the St. Cyril commission,
Vrubel began increasingly to incorporate these
newfound pictorial techniques into his other works, richly ornamented tulup, or traditional Russian
developing an unusual syncretic modernist style in overcoat. The figure is abruptly cropped just above
the process. For example, in A Man in a Russian Old-​ the eyes, so that the top of his head and forehead are
Style Costume (Ivan Tereshchenko) (1886) (fig. 44), entirely cut out of the picture frame. Although the
Vrubel depicted a seated man in an archaizing and slanted armrests together with the man’s reclining

Angels Becoming Demons 103


Fig. 44  Mikhail Vrubel, A Man in a Russian Old-​Style Costume,
1886. Watercolor, pencil, and whitewash on paper, 10 5/6 ×
10 1/2 in. (27.8 × 27 cm). State Museum of Russian Art, Kiev.
posture and bent elbows suggest spatial recession,
the large flat decorative motifs on his garments push
forward to the picture surface and undermine the
illusion of a convincingly three-​dimensional space.
Vrubel’s intentional obscuring of a legible anatomy
and convincing foreshortening makes the man’s
body appear strangely contorted and compressed,
augmenting the fragmented quality of the image.
Finally, the back of the chair on which the man sits
is rendered entirely parallel to the picture plane as a
completely flat, rectangular form. In its pronounced
two-​dimensionality, it seems to push forward rather
than recede into the background. Additionally, the
104 The Icon and the Square
contours of the man’s left arm and shoulder seem
to dissolve into the back of the chair, destabilizing
the figure-​ground relationship. Strikingly modernist
both in its structure and composition, this work
radically departed from some of Vrubel’s earlier
paintings, such as Romans Feasting (1883), which the
artist had produced in St. Petersburg the year before
he came to Kiev.
Upon completion of the restoration works in
St. Cyril, Prakhov asked Vrubel to repaint three
mosaic archangels in the central dome of the
St. Sophia Cathedral (fig. 45). Prakhov had uncov-
ered the one surviving archangel together with the
Christ Pantocrator mosaic in 1884 (as discussed in
the first chapter). Since the extant angel had retained
almost all of its original mosaic tesserae, it served as
a model for the other three, which had been entirely
lost over the centuries. Vrubel was tasked with imi-
tating the mosaic tesserae in oil paint so that, from
below, the restored angels would be impossible to
differentiate from the original mosaic composition.13
This experience was undoubtedly formative for the
artist, who proceeded to adapt this technique as part
of his own signature style. For example, in one of
his most significant works, Seated Demon (fig. 46),
which Vrubel began immediately after his sojourn in
Kiev, the plethora of tiny blocklike impasto brush-
strokes, particularly on the right side of the painting
(fig. 47), recall mosaic tesserae and suggest depth
and volume while simultaneously emphasizing the
flatness of the picture plane. The monumental figure
of Satan is depicted in the immediate foreground
of the painting, occupying a compressed, almost
claustrophobically shallow space with very little
by way of perspectival recession. Although Vrubel
included a diminutive mountain and sunset in the
distant background, the large geometrized flowers

on the right-​hand side of the painting emphasize the
flatness of the canvas, breaking down the impression
of three-​dimensional space. The disintegration of
their legible forms approaches abstraction so closely
that at first glance it is difficult to identify the indis-
tinct angular shapes as flowers. By contrast, Vrubel’s
treatment of the demon’s torso and tensely clasped
hands accentuates the heavy solidity of the figure.
The demon’s body registers as a bulky, imposing
Fig. 45  Christ Pantocrator with Archangels, eleventh century,
St. Sophia Cathedral, Kiev.
form, reminiscent of Michelangelo’s nude figures on
the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. As Robert S. Nel-
son has convincingly shown, this inherent interplay
between flatness and corporeality, stylization and
individuation, and abstraction and concreteness
was a defining feature of many works of Byzantine
art as well.14 Indeed, the understanding of Byzan-
tine images as entirely flat and two-​dimensional
was the result of persistent period misreadings by
Angels Becoming Demons 105
 Fig. 46  Mikhail Vrubel, Seated Demon, 1890. Oil on canvas,
45 1/2 × 84 in. (116 × 213.8 cm). State Tretyakov Gallery,
Moscow.
Byzantium’s critics and enthusiasts alike, misread-
ings that were successfully challenged by artists such
as Vasily Kandinsky and Vladimir Tatlin and by
thinkers such as Florensky, Punin, and Tarabukin, all
of whom grasped the spatial complexities, nuances,
and ambiguities of iconic representations.
In his Portrait of Savva Mamontov (fig. 48),
painted several years later, Vrubel similarly com-
bined a number of contradictory viewpoints and
emphasized the underlying geometrical structures
of different objects. For example, rather than recede
106 The Icon and the Square
into the background space, the rug by Mamontov’s
feet is tipped upward, while the square tabletop on
the right-​hand side of the painting is depicted on a
plane markedly different from that of the rug. The
sculpture above Mamontov’s right shoulder seems
to occupy yet another spatial register. Even the
armrests of the armchair are not rendered parallel to
each other but instead point in two different direc-
tions. Mamontov’s head and face are composed of
interlocking contrasting tonal patches that meet at
right angles, producing a particularly constructed
effect. His clenched fists and uneasy glance almost
prophetically portend the devastating financial
troubles that the industrialist was to face just two
years later.15 Most striking of all is Mamontov’s
emphatically flat white dickey, which seems to be
the focal point of the portrait. Rather than being
painted, the form of the dickey is created by an
expanse of unpainted canvas, a feature that led most
of Vrubel’s contemporaries to conclude that the
portrait was unfinished. A comparison with Anders
Zorn’s Portrait of Savva Mamontov from the previous
year clearly reveals the radical nature of Vrubel’s
treatment of form and space in his version of the
portrait. Unlike Vrubel’s shifting volumes, spatial
complexity, and psychological tension, Zorn’s flat-
tering depiction of a genteel bourgeois gentleman is
much more conventional.
Owing to his masterly combination of pictorial
flatness with depth and volumetric solidity, Vrubel
has often been compared to Paul Cézanne both in
his own time and in more recent scholarship. For
instance, the Russian art historian Mikhail Alpatov
wrote that “the problems that [Vrubel] solved very
much recall the ones constantly faced by Cézanne.
A textured painterly surface was elaborated by
these masters so definitively—as though they were Fig. 47  Detail of Mikhail Vrubel, Seated Demon, 1890. State
both charged with a similar goal—to create shift- Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow.

ing forms that produce contrasts. A constructive

composition, the shifting of different objects across
the picture plane—this was what preoccupied
Vrubel. And in this he anticipated his colleagues
both in Russia and in the West.”16 In his 1962 book,
Of Divers Arts, the Constructivist artist Naum Gabo
similarly suggests not only that Vrubel’s radical
formal innovations in works such as Seated Demon
were akin to those of Cézanne but that the former
had in fact anticipated the latter by almost fifteen
years in his formulation of a “new pictorial vision
and . . . technique.”17 In the illustration section of
Of Divers Arts, Gabo strategically juxtaposes one of
Cézanne’s Mont Sainte-​Victoire paintings from 1905
with a study that Vrubel had executed for the Seated
Demon in 1890–91 (fig. 49), in order to demonstrate
that the brushwork of the two artists was nearly
identical; Gabo concludes that “at the beginning of
[the twentieth] century, [when] many of us came

Angels Becoming Demons 107


Fig. 48  Mikhail Vrubel, Portrait of Savva Mamontov, 1897. Oil
on canvas, 73 1/2 × 56 in. (187 × 142.5 cm). State Tretyakov
Gallery, Moscow.
in contact with Western European art, we did not
come to a foreign land: we came back home, and
Cézanne was accepted by us quite naturally. It was
not an accident that Russian collectors were the first
to understand and accept the new trend in Western
art which was inspired by Cézanne. They were the
same patrons who . . . belonged to the circle of those
who, in Vrubel’s time, kept him alive.”18 Indeed,
108 The Icon and the Square
in paintings such as Seated Demon and Portrait
of Savva Mamontov, Vrubel’s crystalline textured
brushstrokes bear some resemblance to the modular
color patches and tectonic facture that Cézanne had
developed in his late works, such as his series of self-​
portraits from 1890–98 and his Mont Sainte-​Victoire
paintings (1900–1904). Both artists employed flat
overlapping planes to create volume and space out of
coloristic contrasts.
Nevertheless, a closer analysis of Cézanne’s and
Vrubel’s brushwork reveals significant structural
differences. Unlike Cézanne’s reliance on a system-
atized grid and passage, which involved the seamless
blending of intersecting perpendicular planes into
one another, Vrubel’s brushstrokes tended to vary in
size and direction, depending on their structural role
in the image (fig. 47). As such, they differed from
Cézanne’s regularized and geometrized blocks of
color, functioning more like the individual tesserae
in a mosaic composition. A few years after he had
completed the St. Cyril project, Vrubel explained to
Iaremich that his fascination with the materiality of
the painted surface had evolved out of his encounter
with Byzantine art, which had taught him to achieve
“an ornamental distribution of forms in order to
emphasize the flatness of the wall.” However, Vrubel
did not see this as a leveling or flattening-​out of
the image. On the contrary, he maintained that the
“chief mistake of the contemporary artist who tries
to revive the Byzantine style lies in the fact that
he replaces the folds of the garments, in which the
Byzantines demonstrate so much dexterity, with a
mere bed sheet.”19 For Vrubel, then, the ingenuity
of the Byzantine artist lay in his ability to create
pictorial dynamism, animation, and corporeal
presence without relying on the mimetic effects of
three-​dimensionality.

Consequently, in contrast to Gabo and Alpatov,
Pavel Muratov contended that Vrubel and Cézanne
were two very different types of artists, both stylis-
tically and conceptually.20 According to Muratov,
Cézanne was primarily interested in transcribing
the “mundane” realities of everyday provincial life
and in emphasizing their materiality and solidity.
He “painted uncomplicated portraits, landscapes of
his homeland, and elementary, simple still lifes.”21
Vrubel, on the other hand, aspired toward capturing
the immaterial, the supernatural, and the divine in
concrete pictorial form. His works were meant to be
monumental and larger than life, at once reflecting
novel painterly concepts and timeless, universal
Fig. 49  Reproductions of Paul Cézanne’s Mont Sainte-​Victoire
and Mikhail Vrubel’s Demon Looking at a Dale. From Naum
Gabo’s Of Divers Arts (New York: Pantheon Books, 1962),
168–69.
themes.22 Muratov concluded that these antithetical
artistic goals necessarily resulted in significant differ-
ences on the level of form. Indeed, as Aline Isdebsky-
Pritchard has argued, “The near-​impossibility
of Vrubel having seen Cézanne’s work . . . when
[Vrubel’s] manner became fully developed . . . pre-
cludes his dependence on the French artist’s work.”23
On his trips to Europe, Vrubel appears to have missed
both the first and third Impressionist exhibitions
(1874 and 1877), in which Cézanne had participated,
and Cézanne’s works did not enter Russian collec-
tions until 1904.24 Accordingly, Vrubel seems to have
developed his peculiar modernist syntax simultane-
ously with but independently of the French master
Angels Becoming Demons 109
 by incorporating the lessons he had learned from
medieval representation into his own work. As Nina
Dmitrieva aptly observes, “[I]n Kiev, Vrubel was
the first [artist] to cast a bridge from archaeological
research and restoration to a dynamic modern art.”25
Vrubel as Modernist “Martyr”:
Misunderstanding, Rejection, and the Lost
Commission for the St. Vladimir Cathedral
Vrubel’s modification of his own painterly style in
response to his encounter with medieval art radically
departed from the practice of many of his contem-
poraries and fellow academicians, such as Viktor
Vasnetsov and Mikhail Nesterov, who also worked
on church commissions and restoration projects but
tended to transform the iconic idiom into a more
naturalistic style, rather than the other way around.
Although Vasnetsov and Nesterov adopted the
iconography of the Orthodox canon, their pictorial
language remained principally that of academic illu-
sionism. Shedding what they considered to be the
“primitive” stylizations of medieval icons and fres-
coes, these artists saw themselves as modernizing
and improving the religious simplicity and naïveté of
Orthodox imagery. Thus, for example, in Vasnetsov’s
painting of the Holy Trinity (1907) (fig. 50) for
the Alexander Nevsky Cathedral in Warsaw, God
and Christ are portrayed in a three-​dimensional,
perspectival space. Their faces are modeled along
naturalistic lines, their bodies are carefully fore-
shortened, and there is an illusionistic distribution
of light and shadow throughout the image, all of
which produce an almost trompe l’oeil effect. God
and Christ are, as it were, emerging out of the heav-
enly realm into the human world through a ring of
110 The Icon and the Square
intertwined seraphim. Similarly, in his 1892 fresco of
the Virgin Mary with Christ Child for the Cathedral
of St. Vladimir, Nesterov depicted the figures within
an illusionistically rendered niche, complete with
atmospheric background and perspectival recession.
Instead of being shown frontally, both the Virgin and
Christ Child are rotated in space and do not return
the viewer’s gaze. Typical of narrative easel painting,
their actions are circumscribed within the frame of
the image and do not engage the outside world as do
the iconic portrayals of the Virgin and Child.26
Vrubel, on the other hand, understood that
iconic visuality was part of a single, holistic aesthetic
and ideological system, which could not be altered
without violating the very essence of the iconic
image. Almost forty years later Pavel Florensky
clearly articulated this idea in his Iconostasis:
In . . . norms of Church consciousness, secular historians
and positivist theologians see this unique conservatism of
the Church as the variety they know: a senile sustaining of
habitual forms in the circumstances of Church art having
ended, seeing the norms as obstacles that are preventing
the emergence of new religious art. This fundamental
misunderstanding of the Church’s conservatism is, simul-
taneously, a misunderstanding of artistic creativity itself.
To the truly creative, the presence of a canonical tradition
is never a hindrance . . . [it is] not an enslavement but a
liberation. . . .
The immediate task, then, is to understand the
canon, to enter into it as an essential rationality of human-
kind . . . wherein our individual reason enters into the
universal forms, opens the source of all creation. . . .
When contemporary artists look about for human
models in order to paint sacred images, then they are
already proving that they do not clearly see the sacred
person their imagery depicts.27

However, in the late 1880s and early 1890s the
entrenched dominance of the Imperial Academy of
Arts, coupled with the newfound popularity of the
Peredvizhniki, ensured that the general public, the
Holy Synod, and the official artistic establishment
all favored a more naturalistic representational
mode when it came to contemporary church art.28
It is important to emphasize, however, that the
Orthodox Church did not indiscriminately accept
all Realist representations of biblical subjects. For
example, Ivan Kramskoi’s Christ in the Wilderness
(1872), Vasilii Polenov’s Christ and the Adulteress
(1886), and Nikolai Ge’s What Is Truth? (1890)
Fig. 50  Viktor Vasnetsov, Holy Trinity, 1907. Preparatory
sketch for the Alexander Nevsky Cathedral in Warsaw. Oil
on canvas, 105 1/2 × 157 1/2 in. (268 × 400 cm). State Russian
Museum, St. Petersburg.
were viewed as deeply problematic—if not outright
blasphemous—from an ecclesiastical standpoint
because they reinterpreted the Christian narrative
from historical, archaeological, secular, and sub-
jective perspectives that were often at odds with
established theological doctrine.29 By contrast,
although Vasnetsov replaced the hieratic qualities of
Russo-​Byzantine art with mimetic pictorial effects,
he nonetheless closely adhered to officially approved
Orthodox iconographies and compositions. More-
over, he repeatedly claimed that he was a “sincere
Orthodox believer” who was genuinely committed
to ensuring that his religious paintings “did not in
Angels Becoming Demons 111
 any way contradict either the High Christian or
the [Orthodox] Church ideal.”30 In other words,
his works were “new” and “up-​to-​date” in form but
“traditional” and “timeless” in content and could
therefore be sacralized as modern iterations in the
icon’s long evolution from the Middle Ages to the
present moment. One period commentator even
went so far as to praise Vasnetsov’s ability to “free”
medieval iconic representations “from anatomical
deformities, which gave the figures their hideous
aspect.” He continued: “The infantile art of our
ancient icon painters was, of course, powerless
in managing this impossible task [of naturalistic
representation], due to ignorance and ineptitude.
In the drawings of Vasnetsov all of ancient antiquity
attained new form and a new hue. And from here his
art connects contemporaneity with the centuries-​
old history and past of the people, the poetry of its
infancy with the perfection of new art.”31 Vasnetsov’s
paintings simultaneously upheld the authority of
the church and that of the Imperial Academy of Arts
without deviating too much in the direction of the
latter, as earlier eighteenth- and nineteenth-​century
artists had done in their depictions of religious sub-
jects. By synthesizing modern aesthetic sensibilities
with the traditional Orthodox canon, Vasnetsov
ostensibly resolved an enduring problem for the
Russian ecclesiastical establishment: he bridged the
long-​standing rift between sacred and secular art
and was accordingly “designated as the heir appar-
ent to centuries of religious painting in Russia.”32
Paradoxically, however, to the devout “simple folk,”
who worshipped in the new revivalist churches,
Vasnetsov’s images did not register as “icons.” Thus,
Rosa Newmarch reported that when a group of
“peasants” were asked how they liked the “splendid”
112 The Icon and the Square
new Cathedral of St. Vladimir and the “wonderful
pictures in it,” they responded that they “like[d] the
old icons best” because Vasnetsov’s works had “too
much life in them,” affirming Florensky’s critique
that naturalistic rendition obscured the religious
symbolism and sanctity of the holy figures depicted
in the iconic images.33
Vrubel’s religious artworks, on the other hand,
were both aesthetically and theologically deviant.
They violated the authority of the Imperial Academy
of Arts and that of the church on the level of style
and iconography and were accordingly censured.
The St. Cyril frescoes were repeatedly criticized for
being overly archaizing, and even anachronistic,
since they did not reflect the most up-​to-​date, fash-
ionable realist style but instead appeared to hark
back to an earlier, outmoded representational idiom.
Vrubel’s figures were deemed to be anatomically
incorrect and poorly executed. They seemed per-
versely and deliberately to repeat the “hideousness”
and “deformation” of the twelfth-​century originals.
Ironically, it was Vrubel’s ostensible “medievalism”
that affronted nineteenth-​century viewers. With
the exception of a very small circle of admirers
and supporters, these and Vrubel’s other artworks
were largely misunderstood, underappreciated, and
rejected during his lifetime.
For instance, when the jubilee edition of
Mikhail Lermontov’s celebrated poem The Demon:
An Eastern Tale was published in 1891 with twenty-​
two of Vrubel’s illustrations on the theme of Satan’s
doomed love affair with the young Georgian prin-
cess Tamara, the artist was widely censured and dis-
paraged in the Russian press. In these illustrations,
Vrubel had further developed some of the radical
stylistic innovations he had already begun to explore
in the Seated Demon the previous year. The descrip-
tion published in the journal Artist was a typical
response to these works:
Mr. Vrubel, apparently, does not even feel that his figures
resemble rag dolls and not people. . . . In many drawings it is
even impossible to make out where the hands and legs are
or the head, and one must admire only the play of several
“artistic” dabs which, in Mr. Vrubel, replace drawing and
plasticity and beauty. Apparently Mr. Vrubel makes a pre-
tense to “mood,” but he forgets that where a neck is longer
than a hand or an arm looks more like a leg, it is silly to look
for mood, and without drawing there is no illustration. 34
Similarly, Vladimir Stasov wrote that with these
illustrations “Vrubel . . . has given us the most awful
examples of revolting and repulsive decadence.”35
The persistent accusation of “decadence” was to
dog Vrubel his entire life and became especially
strident in the Stalinist era, when—in a twist of
irony—Vrubel was consistently identified as an ally
and advocate of “degenerate” Western artistic ideals
instead of “indigenous” representational traditions.
Such ideas and language were already ominously
present in Stasov’s 1898 review of Sergei Diaghilev’s
ambitious monthlong Exhibition of Russian and Finn-
ish Artists at the Stieglitz Museum in St. Petersburg:
What has been given first place in this hall, what has the
greatest sympathy of the organizer? It is the painting by
Mr. Vrubel called Morning—Decorative Panel. It is an enor-
mous painting, and it now hangs in the most noticeable,
central portion of the whole room. . . . Oh, how can we
avoid these sorts of exhibitions and not see such “Morn-
ings,” such “Demons,” even in our dreams! Indeed, even
among the most outrageous French Decadents, has anyone
ever seen anything worse, more clumsy, and more repellent
than that which is offered us here by Mr. Vrubel?36
Such recurring instances of critical misunderstand-
ing coupled with a largely conservative public
taste left Vrubel severely restricted in his activities.
He had precious few public commissions, and often-
times patrons would either entirely reject or insist
on significant alterations to his designs. In the words
of Nikolai Tarabukin:
[Vrubel was] a master who possessed the gift of monu-
mental painting like no other [artist] since the fifteenth
century [but] was barred from the decoration works in
the St. Vladimir Cathedral in Kiev. . . . An artist who had
an astonishing talent for decorative sculpture, [he] was
unable to execute a single monumental creative idea,
which required public buildings, streets, and squares for
its realization. . . . A master who possessed in equal mea-
sure with [his] painterly talent an architectural vision,
a sense of large-​scale proportions and architectonic rela-
tionships, was able to execute his design for only a small
extension . . . to the mansion of virtually his sole patron.37
Given this state of affairs, it is hardly surprising that
Vrubel failed to secure the prestigious and highly
publicized St. Vladimir commission.
The idea for the cathedral was first conceived
by Nicholas I, who issued an order for its construc-
tion on July 23, 1853. It was initially designed by
Ivan Strom in a Neo-​Byzantine style but was sub-
sequently redesigned by Pavel Sparro (1814–1887)
and Alexander Beretti (1816–1895). Construction of
the cathedral began in July 1862 and was supposed
to be completed by 1888, in time for the nine-hun-
dredth anniversary of the conversion of Russia to
Angels Becoming Demons 113
 Christianity. However, owing to shortages in sup-
plies and engineering miscalculations, construction
was paused for a period of ten years and was only
restarted again in the late 1870s. In 1882, under the
auspices of the recently crowned tsar Alexander III,
Adrian Prakhov was placed in charge of the inte-
rior decoration of the cathedral, which he claimed
would become a major “monument of Russian art,”
reflecting “an [aesthetic] ideal that would inspire a
generation.”38 Having already worked with Vrubel
on the restoration of the St. Cyril Church, Prakhov
again invited the artist to submit his designs for
the new cathedral. Vrubel set to work immediately
and produced a large number of pencil sketches
and watercolor studies. Among them were some of
Vrubel’s most innovative and radical images, from
both a formal and a conceptual point of view.
However, when submitted to the jury, these
works were deemed too stylistically and iconograph-
ically unconventional to be included in the project
and were promptly rejected. Instead, the commis-
sion was given to Vasnetsov, Nesterov, the brothers
Pavel and Alexander Svedomsky, and the now
largely forgotten Polish artist Wilhelm Kotarbinsky,
while Vrubel was invited to execute only a few small
decorative ornaments on the interior columns of
the cathedral. Retrospectively, it is not hard to see
why the conservative jury found Vrubel’s studies so
problematic. In their compositional simplicity and
modernist succinctness, Vrubel’s unprecedented
designs stood apart from the mainstream of Russian
nineteenth-​century church decoration. Unlike the
St. Cyril frescoes, where Vrubel adhered much more
scrupulously to the medieval originals, the St. Vlad-
imir sketches betray a focused search for a stylistic
and conceptual breakthrough. In these works, as in
the Seated Demon, Vrubel employed medieval means
114 The Icon and the Square
to modernist ends. Prakhov himself recognized the
originality of Vrubel’s proposed fresco cycle, observ-
ing that his “superb sketches” required a cathedral in
an entirely different and “exceptional style.”39
For example, in one version of the Lamentation
(1887) (fig. 51), Vrubel depicted the seated Virgin
against a low horizon, towering above the flat, pros-
trate body of Christ, which is virtually reduced to a
single white line. A diminutive cross is visible against
the setting sun in the distant background, referenc-
ing the Crucifixion. Two cypress trees on the right-​
hand side of the image rhythmically repeat the ver-
tical silhouette of the Virgin’s body. The resolutely
perpendicular placement of the Virgin in relation to
the horizontal Christ echoes the configuration of the
cross, signaling the underlying spiritual geometry of
the composition. Although Vrubel did not portray
Christ and the Virgin with traditional haloes, the
setting sun on the horizon, strategically rendered
just above Christ’s head, metaphorically doubles as
a luminous nimbus. Instead of employing standard
Orthodox iconography, Vrubel relied on purely
compositional devices to signal the sacred nature of
the depicted scene. Similarly, in place of emphatic
gesturing and outward signs of emotion, typical of
lamentation scenes, Vrubel portrayed the Virgin
with a stoic facial expression in a moment of quiet
meditation, exemplifying a particularly modern sen-
sibility of interiority and controlled grief. The solid,
vertical, upward thrust of the Virgin’s body is strik-
ing in its reticent minimalism, while the entire scene
is executed with just a few unmodulated strokes of
color within a flattened, shallow space.
In another variant of the Lamentation (1887)
(fig. 52), Christ and the Virgin are situated indoors
with two windows just above the Virgin’s head dom-
inating the entire design.40 Instead of occupying the

center of the image, Christ and the Virgin are again
relegated to the bottom edge of the composition.
In his treatment of the Virgin’s garments and face,
Vrubel has already begun to experiment with the
mosaiclike fragmentation of form into distinct color
patches, a technique he would develop more fully in
his subsequent paintings such as the Seated Demon
and the Portrait of Savva Mamontov. The two win-
dows, rendered as flat white geometric planes against
a monochromatic dark background, have an almost
Fig. 51  Mikhail Vrubel, Lamentation i, 1887. Sketch for a
mural in the St. Vladimir Cathedral in Kiev. Pencil, water-
color, and whitewash on paper, 17 × 23 1/4 in. (43.4 × 59.2 cm).
State Museum of Russian Art, Kiev.
proto-​Suprematist quality. Composed of passages
of negative space—brilliantly white blank paper—
they become the visual focal point of the composi-
tion. Their role as “windows” suggests an opening
into another spatial register, inviting the viewer to
look through them but simultaneously frustrating
this desire with their flat opacity. Since Vrubel did
not submit this particular work to the jury for the
St. Vladimir commission, these blank windows can-
not simply be understood as architectural features in
Angels Becoming Demons 115

Fig. 52  Detail of Mikhail Vrubel, Lamentation ii, 1887. Sketch
for a mural in the St. Vladimir Cathedral in Kiev. Pencil,
watercolor, and whitewash on paper, 17 × 23 1/4 in. (43.4 ×
59.2 cm). State Museum of Russian Art, Kiev.
the cathedral around which the artist structured his
design. Rather, they seem to serve a purely pictorial
and metaphorical purpose in the image. In their strik-
ing white luminosity, they were perhaps intended to
function symbolically as gateways into the holy realm,
to which human beings do not have direct access
except through the mediation of Christ and the Vir-
gin, who are accordingly depicted in the immediate
foreground of the image and closer to the viewer.
Akin to the gold background of icons, these windows
operate as a material reminder of the separation
116 The Icon and the Square
between this world and the one that lies beyond.
In his choice of stark rectangular forms, Vrubel may
have been drawing on the holy geometries of Ortho-
dox iconography, where Christ is often portrayed
enthroned against a background of three large geo-
metrical shapes: a red diamond, a blue-​black oval, and
a red rectangle. Vrubel repeated the same visual effect
in his design for the Resurrection, in which Christ is
shown emerging out of a grave, framed by a stylized
mandorla of simplified geometric shapes.
Lastly, the visual impenetrability of the windows
in the Lamentation scene may also suggest the essen-
tial unknowability of the realm beyond, signaling
Vrubel’s own existential doubts and long-​term inter-
est in the writings of Friedrich Nietzsche.41 Unlike
Vasnetsov’s fanciful starry night sky in the Holy Trin-
ity, Vrubel’s designs gesture toward a Nietzschean—
and by extension a quintessentially modern—atti-
tude toward faith and religion, marked by doubt,
ambiguity, self-​questioning, and introspection.
Needless to say, this stance was antithetical to official
Church doctrine, which demanded that iconic repre-
sentations affirm rather than question the metaphys-
ical realities they depict. And yet, in the twentieth
century it was Vrubel’s searching, dialectical, “free”
approach to religious representation that struck view-
ers as more sincere, substantive, and resonant with
modern reality, as well as paradoxically closer to the
spiritual ethos of the medieval prototypes, than what
was perceived as Vasnetsov’s and Nesterov’s passive,
mechanical imitation of ossified Orthodox dogma.
Thus, writing in 1900, Alexander Benois expressed
his profound disappointment with the works of Vas-
netsov and Nesterov in the St. Vladimir Cathedral:
[At the time of their creation] the St. Vladimir frescoes
aroused considerable pride among the Russian public as
only the contemporaries of Raphael and Michelangelo
might have been proud of these masters’ creations in the
Vatican. . . . However, once I encountered the St. Vladimir
murals in situ, I abandoned all of my previous illusions.
I was deeply saddened . . . the problem was that [Vas-
netsov] took more upon himself than he could man-
age! . . . The falsehood inherent in the St. Vladimir murals
signified not the personal deception on the part of the
artist but rather the deception, deadly and terrible, of our
entire spiritual culture.
I was even more disappointed with the frescoes of
my “friend” Nesterov. His Nativity altarpiece betrayed
both flagrantly bad taste and a sweet and flabby sensibility,
which the artist tried to mask as something delicate and
fragrant. . . . However, after having seen this Nativity, I fully
understood that Nesterov was irretrievably lost to genuine
art.42
Only Vrubel received unconditional praise from
Benois:
I went . . . to the St. Cyril Church, specifically for the
purpose of acquainting myself with Vrubel’s works.
I dedicated almost three hours to the close scrutiny of his
frescoes, and even if I did not leave the church with some
kind of sense of indefinable joy, I was nonetheless amazed
by the sheer technical mastery with which the very
unusual “local images” of the iconostasis were painted . . .
and by what I would call the “inspired intelligence” with
which [Vrubel] restored the old Byzantine frescoes . . . and
created entirely new ones. . . . Everywhere a deep rever-
ence toward antiquity is harmoniously combined with the
creative outbursts of a free imagination. 43
If Vrubel, instead of Vasnetsov, would have been able to
execute on a monumental scale his ideas [for the Cathe-
dral of St. Vladimir] . . . then probably . . . we would have
been the only place in the world, in contemporary times,
where on the walls of God’s cathedral there would have
appeared truly living and truly inspired logos.44
More than a decade later, the art historian and critic
Vsevolod Dmitriev (1888–1919) made similar obser-
vations, writing that Vrubel’s Kievan works were
“not the theatrical extras of Vasnetsov, dressed up in
Byzantine costume and adopting a Byzantine pose,”
but instead indicated “a genuine path toward the
revival of ancient Russian icon painting.”45 Dmitriev
contended that it was precisely because Vrubel “had
approached icon painting so wonderfully closely” in
his own works that his oeuvre was reassessed at the
exact moment when the Russo-​Byzantine revival
had reached its apogee, in the years 1912–15:
We are witnesses of and participants in a remarkable
reevaluation: ancient Russian icon painting, till quite
recently dead and superfluous for us, today attracts us
with ever greater force as a wellspring of living and imme-
diate beauty. This reevaluation, which has fundamentally
transformed our tastes and our requirements [of art],
has also extended to Vrubel. . . . The mural paintings in
the Church of St. Cyril, the studies for the Cathedral of
St. Vladimir, Vrubel’s late “Byzantine” works, which were
previously understood only as the prelude and conclusion
to the more important Moscow period in the artist’s oeu-
vre, we now want to put forward as Vrubel’s most funda-
mental, his most vital, aspect.46
Nikolai Tarabukin went even further in his
estimation of Vrubel’s Kievan works, claiming that
the artist was directly responsible for the aesthetic
reevaluation of the iconic representational tradition:
“At the time that Vrubel began his works [in Kiev],
there were no archaeological discoveries of . . . nor
Angels Becoming Demons 117
 scholarship on ancient mural painting, which are
accessible to us today. The turning point in attitudes
toward the ancient past of Russian art occurred after
Vrubel. In his art, Vrubel himself turned out to be a
pioneer of the heritage of Russo-​Byzantine art, as a
result of which the [art of the] past appeared to the
contemporary gaze in an entirely different light.”47
Tarabukin’s assertion betrays a biased twentieth-​
century outlook and is of course inaccurate, given
that scholars such as Kondakov and Prakhov had
already begun to publish their research on Byzantine
and medieval Russian art and architecture as early as
the 1870s and 1880s. However, as already mentioned,
at that moment public taste was still largely rooted
in a naturalistic tradition of painting, and it was
not until the early 1910s that iconic representations
began to enjoy a much broader aesthetic apprecia-
tion. As Jane Sharp astutely explains, “[V]anguard
parallelisms of the ancient and modern [were]
rejected outright in favor of a unified narrative that
accounted for the icon’s stylistic evolution, not its
literal continuation.”48 Consequently, Tarabukin was
not entirely wrong in claiming that Vrubel’s artistic
consciousness and worldview already belonged to
the twentieth rather than the nineteenth century.
From Angels to Demons:
Toward a New Iconography
Vrubel’s exposure to medieval mosaics and frescoes
in Kiev not only influenced his oeuvre stylistically
but also made a lasting thematic impact on his art.
During his student years at the Imperial Academy
of Arts in St. Petersburg, Vrubel had predominantly
depicted literary, historical, and classical subject
matter. It was only after his time in Kiev that the
118 The Icon and the Square
artist devoted himself almost exclusively to uncanny
and supernatural themes. Even long after the com-
pletion of the St. Cyril project, Vrubel continued
to depict biblical and religious subjects, developing
his own particular brand of symbolism filled with
celestial and mythological beings, fairies, woodland
creatures, seers, angels, and demons. In fact, after the
rejection of his sketches from the St. Vladimir proj-
ect, Vrubel appears to have transferred his frustrated
aspirations for monumental religious painting into
his Demon series. In a telling letter to Vrubel’s sister,
the artist’s father explained that Vrubel conceptu-
alized the demon not so much as an “evil spirit” as
one “that is suffering and insulted, but nevertheless
a spirit that is powerful . . . noble”—a being that
Vrubel’s subsequent biographers and critics would
come to read as an avatar for the artist himself.49
Vrubel produced his first demon sketches
in 1885, while he was still restoring the Church of
St. Cyril. In his monograph on the artist, Tarabukin
argues that there was a direct correlation between
the demon paintings and the St. Cyril frescoes, even
on the level of iconography. According to Tarabukin,
the physiognomy of the St. Cyril Virgin gradually
evolved into that of the demon, and he postulated
that the latter became the antithesis of the former.50
Indeed, a comparison between Vrubel’s sketches
of the Virgin’s head and the demon’s (figs. 53 and
54) reveals shared facial features such as the down-
ward slant of the large round expressive eyes, the
long uneven ridge of the nose, the full plump lips,
and even the tilt of the head. It is as though Vrubel
progressively transformed the Virgin’s face into
the slightly hardened and more virile visage of the
demon. By contrast, Iaremich believed that the facial
features of Vrubel’s Moses (1884), rather than those
of the Virgin, were directly translated into the early
Fig. 53  Mikhail Vrubel, Study for the Virgin, 1884. Pencil and
gouache on paper, 17 × 12 3/4 in. (43 × 32.3 cm). State Tretya-
kov Gallery, Moscow.

Fig. 54  Mikhail Vrubel, Head of Demon, 1890. Watercolor on

cardboard, 9 × 14 in. (23 × 36 cm). State Museum of Russian
Art, Kiev.

119

Fig. 55  Mikhail Vrubel, Head of an Angel, 1887, or Head of the
Demon, 1890. Charcoal and red crayon on paper, 16 × 26 3/4 in.
(41 × 68 cm). State Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow.
demon works.51 In either case, there seems to be an
explicit link between the iconographic types that
Vrubel developed for the St. Cyril commission and
that of the demon. As a matter of fact, in the years
1887 to 1900 Vrubel’s work underwent a stylistic and
thematic evolution wherein the figure of the demon
became an amalgamation of all the artist’s previous
experiences with religious art and monumental
painting. The lines of demarcation between the
angelic, the demonic, and the Christological became
increasingly blurred in these years, to the point of
being wholly interchangeable.
For example, Vrubel gradually transformed the
iconographic and physiognomic type of the angel,
which he had initially developed for the St. Vladimir
project in 1887, into the prototype for the demon.
120 The Icon and the Square
In fact, subsequent scholars have alternatively
labeled Vrubel’s Study of a Head (fig. 55) as either
Head of an Angel, dated 1887, or Head of the Demon,
dated 1890.52 Similarly, a pencil drawing from 1904
(fig. 56) has been variously titled The Standing
Demon or Seraph in different publications, indicating
the slippage in iconographic meaning.53 Of course,
given the fact that the demon was himself an angel at
one point, this iconographic continuity was certainly
appropriate to the subject matter and the duality
already implicit in the nature of the “fallen” angel.
It is therefore not surprising that these subjects
continued to overlap in Vrubel’s oeuvre from the
beginning to the end of his career, becoming more
prominent in his late paintings. For instance, the
largest of Vrubel’s late works, the Six-​Winged Seraph
of 1904, is closely related to his 1902 magnum opus,
the Demon Cast Down (fig. 57). In these paintings
the protagonists have almost identical facial features,
and there is a marked visual emphasis on the agi-
tated swirl of beautiful colored wings, which envelop
both figures.
However, the Demon Cast Down also alludes
to Christ’s suffering and sacrifice by showing the
demon wearing what looks like a crown of thorns
on his head, a traditional symbol of Christ’s Passion.
Moreover, according to the reports of his friends,
Vrubel was planning to exhibit his Demon Cast
Down in Paris under the title Icône, clearly aligning
this work with the spiritual and aesthetic realm of
religious art.54 Even on the level of form, Vrubel had
wanted the Demon Cast Down to resemble an icon,
and he had meticulously applied to the demon’s
wings a metallic bronze powder that would catch the
light, producing a glowing, reflective effect typical of
an icon. As the artist Konstantin Bogaevskii wrote in
1941, recalling when he saw the painting on the first
day of its display at the World of Art exhibition in
1902: “It produced a strong impression on me, which
I can compare to no other. It glowed as if it were
made of precious gems, so that everything around it
seemed gray and unsubstantial. . . . Vrubel’s ‘Demon’
has darkened severely, the colors that once shone on
the canvas have paled; the bronze powder that was
used for the peacock feathers has become green.”55
References to Christ have also been read into
Vrubel’s Seated Demon, whose intense self-​reflection,
clasped hands, and poignant isolation in an empty
landscape have often been compared to Ivan
Kramskoi’s painting Christ in the Wilderness (1872),
which shows an emaciated and haggard-​looking
Christ, deep in thought and contemplating his oner-
ous fate in a rocky desert setting.56 In his later years
Vrubel claimed to greatly admire this work, as well
as Nikolai Ge’s Christ in the Garden of Gethsemane
(1888), because of its “demonic” qualities.57 Vrubel’s
unconventional blurring of the conceptual and
formal boundaries between Christ and Satan, the
angelic and the demonic, the sacred and the profane,
and damnation and redemption reflects a particu-
larly modern, fin de siècle mentality, characterized
by a feeling of alienation from the Christian expe-
rience and a sense of disintegration of previously
fixed and stable identities and institutions, including
those of conventional morality and the religious
establishment.
Furthermore, it was precisely in the years that Fig. 56  Mikhail Vrubel, The Standing Demon (also known as
Vrubel first began to work on his demon, in the mid- Seraph), 1904. Pencil on paper, 11 1/3 × 7 1/6 in. (29.1 × 18.3 cm).
State Russian Museum, St. Petersburg.
1880s, that he also produced a series of paintings
illustrating Christ’s Passion, which he subsequently
destroyed, leaving only a charcoal sketch of Christ
in the Garden of Gethsemane (1887) and a small oil
painting of the head of Christ (1888). With his dark
hair, fiery eyes, and brooding, somber expression,

Angels Becoming Demons 121

 Fig. 57  Mikhail Vrubel, Demon Cast Down, 1902. Oil on can-
vas, 54 3/4 × 152 1/4 in. (139 × 387 cm). State Tretyakov Gallery,
Moscow.
the image of Christ in the latter work closely
resembles Vrubel’s numerous studies of the head
of the demon, executed in the same years. In fact,
it was at this moment that Vrubel first experienced
something of a personal religious crisis. Writing to
his sister Anna in December of 1887, he complained
that while he was working on his paintings of Christ
“with all his might,” he began to feel a profound
sense of malaise and estrangement from his Chris-
tian identity, an emotion that continued to plague
him until the end of his life and especially during
his illness.58 Given Vrubel’s long-​standing interest
in the writings of Nietzsche, it would seem that in
his conception of Christ, the demon, and the figure
of the prophet, Vrubel envisioned a heroic individ-
ual—even a martyr—whose rebellion against the
conventional morality and dominant trends of his
times mirrored Vrubel’s own artistic struggles. From
122 The Icon and the Square
his university years the artist had rejected main-
stream religiosity and especially its formulation in
the works and theories of Leo Tolstoy, which Vrubel
claimed resulted in the oppression of the human
spirit and the creative impulse. Whether Vrubel saw
himself in prophetic terms as an avant-​garde martyr
to conservative artistic tastes is unclear, but he was
certainly understood as such by many of his contem-
poraries, such as Alexander Blok, Alexander Benois,
and Pavel Muratov. Blok’s articles “To the Memory
of Vrubel” and “On the Present State of Russian
Symbolism” imply that Vrubel combined prophetic
vision with self-​sacrifice in his art, as well as in his
life. Muratov articulated an analogous idea in his
essay “About High Art.”59 Similarly, in his 1910 article
on Vrubel for the journal Rech’, Benois concluded
that “Vrubel was more than just an artist—he was a
prophet, a seer, a demon.”60
 Vrubel’s dedication to the prophetic, the vision-
ary, and the iconic climaxed in the years leading
up to his premature death, in 1910, and nearly all of
his major late works deal almost exclusively with
biblical subjects and supernatural themes. In the
years 1904 to 1906 he painted the Six-​Winged Seraph
(1904) (fig. 59), Angel with a Sword (1904), Head
of the Prophet (1904–5), Prophet (1904–5), Head of
John the Baptist (1905) (fig. 58), and The Vision of
the Prophet Ezekiel (1906) (fig. 61), among others.
In many ways, this final cycle of religious works can
be interpreted as a symbolic summation or culmi-
nation of the central stylistic and thematic preoccu-
pations that characterized Vrubel’s entire career. For
example, in its iconic frontality, pronounced linear-
ity, and vivid palette, the watercolor of the head of
John the Baptist (fig. 58) recalls the artist’s St. Cyril
murals, such as his frescoes of Moses and the head of
Christ. Similarly, the Six-​Winged Seraph (fig. 59), also
known as Azrael or the Angel of Death, harks back
to Vrubel’s Demon paintings in its striking grandeur,
monumentality, and ambiguous duality. In terms
of iconography, the Six-​Winged Seraph closely
resembles the Demon in its subject’s long black hair, Fig. 58  Mikhail Vrubel, Head of John the Baptist, 1905. Water-
powerful neck, blue-​gray complexion, hollow eyes, color and pencil on paper, 8 1/4 × 7 in. (21.3 cm × 17.6 cm).
State Russian Museum, St. Petersburg.
and large peacock wings. Akin to Vrubel’s demon,
Azrael is an ambiguous, conflicted figure. Crowned
with a lustrous diadem and holding a glowing red
censer in his left hand, the angel is the source of and damnation. On a formal level, the Six-​Winged
heavenly light and salvation. However, wielding a Seraph combines many of the techniques Vrubel
large ominous dagger in his right hand, signifying first used in Seated Demon and Demon Cast Down.
suffering and destructive intent, he is simultaneously His modeling of form on the angel’s face and neck
the harbinger of death. Just like the demon, who repeats the interlocking contrasting color patches
was once an angel, Azrael is a liminal figure, who he used to build up the bulky body of the seated
stands on the threshold of heaven and hell, embody- demon (fig. 47), and in their regularity and geomet-
ing both the angelic and the demonic, redemption ricity, these blocks of paint resemble mosaic tesserae

Angels Becoming Demons 123

 Fig. 59  Mikhail Vrubel, Six-​Winged Seraph (Azrael), 1904.
Oil on canvas, 51 1/2 × 61 in. (131 × 155 cm). State Russian
Museum, St. Petersburg.

124

even more than in the demon picture and appear to
have been applied with a palette knife, rather than a
paintbrush (fig. 60). Meanwhile, the expressive swirl
of crystalline brushstrokes on the angel’s wings and
garments recalls the fragmented, chaotic mass of
peacock feathers in Demon Cast Down (fig. 57). Mea-
suring 131 by 155 centimeters, the Six-​Winged Seraph
is one of the largest of Vrubel’s late paintings—his
penultimate, poignant attempt at monumental reli-
gious art.
The Vision of the Prophet Ezekiel (fig. 61) is
considered to be one of Vrubel’s last works and
Fig. 60  Detail of Mikhail Vrubel, Six-​Winged Seraph (Azrael),
1904. State Russian Museum, St. Petersburg.
approaches near abstraction in its radical dissolution
of form. Executed on cardboard in mixed media—
charcoal, watercolor, and gouache—it depicts a
heavenly vision as described in the Old Testament
book of Ezekiel. In the bottom right-​hand corner of
the image, the face of a bearded man—presumably
Ezekiel—is depicted looking up at a tall, fearsome
angel who holds a downward-​pointing sword in his
right hand. Next to the angel is another floating mas-
culine face, but one that lacks a clearly identifiable
body. The pronounced spatial ambiguity of this work
is produced by a multiplicity of layered, shifting
Angels Becoming Demons 125
 Fig. 61  Mikhail Vrubel, The Vision of the Prophet Ezekiel,
1905. Charcoal, watercolor, and gouache on cardboard,
40 1/5 × 21 1/2 in. (102.3 × 55.1 cm). State Russian Museum,
St. Petersburg.

126
fragments of form that splinter into infinite depths
and yet insist on returning to the surface of the pic-
ture plane. An explosion of angular faceted shapes
destabilizes the figure-​to-​ground relationship so that
it becomes difficult to tell where one form projects
forward and another one recedes into the back-
ground, producing a dynamic allover effect. The only
stable visual anchor in the whole composition is the
angel’s dark head, in the center of the image’s upper
register. Otherwise, the intermingling of segments of
wings, limbs, and dissolving faces creates a compli-
cated, disorienting web of virtually abstract forms.
In fact, it is as though Vrubel’s initial experi-
mentation with the “abstract” qualities of Russo-​
Byzantine art in the Church of St. Cyril had come
full circle and had reached its most logical con-
clusion in terms of both style and subject matter,
heralding a new era in Russian art. Adrian Prakhov’s
son, Nikolai Prakhov, went so far as to read the
beginnings of Rayonism in the fragmented, linear
shards of The Vision of the Prophet Ezekiel, and Lar- Fig. 62  Mikhail Larionov, Blue Rayonism (Portrait of a Fool),
ionov himself claimed that Vrubel exerted more 1912. Oil on canvas, 27 1/2 × 25 1/2 in. (70 × 65 cm). Private
collection, Moscow. © ADAGP, Paris, 2017.
influence on him than Cézanne (fig. 62).61 Whether
Vrubel’s late religious works contributed to the
advent of nonobjective painting in Russia in the new
century is impossible to ascertain with any certainty. anyone else. . . . Vrubel, in the last years of his life,
However, what is clear is that Vrubel’s radical rewrit- had already arrived at a conception of art that we are
ing of the Russo-​Byzantine artistic idiom, as well as only now beginning to approach. Consequently, our
his combination of formal innovation with visionary reappraisal is not the result of the fashion of the day.
transcendentalism, paved the way for a number of We are merely trying to follow the path that Vrubel
twentieth-​century artists for whom spirituality and indicated to us.”62 Indeed, as paradoxical as it may
abstraction came to represent two sides of the same sound, Vrubel, by embracing the artistic traditions
modernist coin. Vsevolod Dmitriev summed it up of the past, was able to anticipate and enable many
best in 1913, describing Vrubel as “an artist who man- of the formal and conceptual innovations of the
aged to raise above the heads of his contemporaries future and was accordingly espoused by the subse-
the future ‘necessity’ of art . . . [he] already perceived quent generation of artists and critics as the “father”
his significance before and more astutely than of the Russian avant-​garde.

Angels Becoming Demons 127

 From Art Nouveau to Soviet Productivism:
Vrubel and the Avant-​Garde
As outlined in the first chapter, the first two decades
of the twentieth century witnessed the rise of a new
generation of Russian art critics and theorists who
were well versed in the latest artistic trends of both
Russia and Europe. Unlike their nineteenth-​century
predecessors and subsequent Soviet successors,
they were deeply invested in the rise of international
modernism and Russia’s historical contribution to
it. Art historians and critics such as Igor Grabar,
Pavel Muratov, Nikolai Kulbin, Iakov Tugenkhold,
Nikolai Tarabukin, and Nikolai Punin rejected art-
works that unabashedly delivered overt political and
ideological messages without paying due attention
to form. Until this time, the criticism of art had been
overseen primarily by men of letters such as Leo
Tolstoy and Vladimir Stasov, who approached paint-
ing from a literary perspective and evaluated a work
of art based on its content and narrative, rather than
its pictorial qualities. By contrast, younger critics
such as Nikolai Punin and Nikolai Tarabukin called
for an art that would be in dialogue with the latest
international technical innovations but would simul-
taneously preserve a national specificity. What they
hoped for was an entirely new type of representation
that would move beyond a purely mechanical imita-
tion of French modernism and would reflect Russia’s
unique history in the visual arts while maintaining
international relevance and significance.
For Punin and Tarabukin, among others, Vrubel
typified this perfect union of a distinctly national
art, rooted in ancient, indigenous traditions, with
a formally forward-​looking visual vocabulary. The
Peredvizhniki had adopted national themes and
subjects in their paintings but were stylistically
128 The Icon and the Square
retrograde. Conversely, French Impressionism and
Postimpressionism were formally progressive but
were alien and emptied of meaning in a Russian
context. Parisian promenades, boulevards, and night
cafés had little resonance in the less urbanized envi-
rons of Moscow and St. Petersburg. A comparison
between Vasily Polenov’s Moscow Courtyard (1878)
(fig. 63) and Gustave Caillebotte’s Paris: A Rainy Day
(1877) (fig. 64) makes these differences manifest.
In his portrayal of a Moscow courtyard, Polenov
included a wooden well, dilapidated wooden build-
ings, chickens, a horse and cart, a woman carrying
a bucket, and children playing on the sunlit grass.
The Moscow skyline is predominantly composed
of church spires and low-​storied buildings. The
overall impression is that of a rural idyll rather than
an urbanized metropolis. By contrast, Caillebotte’s
Paris: A Rainy Day presents an image of a busy, mod-
ern city with expansive paved boulevards and gas
lighting, inhabited by fashionable, urbane city dwell-
ers, each carrying one of the nineteenth century’s
most modern emblems: an umbrella.
In the absence of these external and localized
markers of modernity, Vrubel’s art offered a different
model of modernist painting. His distinctly fin de
siècle reformulation of traditional, folkloric, and
Russo-​Byzantine themes and subjects into an unset-
tling dialectic of alienation and liminality closely
resembled the parallel efforts of artists such as Gus-
tav Klimt, Edward Munch, Max Klinger, and Odilon
Redon. Much like these artists, Vrubel attempted to
capture the disorienting, phantasmagoric, and hallu-
cinatory effects of modernity through the portrayal
of the deviant and the uncanny. By the same token,
his numerous still lifes, portraits, and nature studies,
with their sustained exploration of pictorial struc-
ture and optics, recall the interests of leading French
modernists such as Edouard Manet, Paul Cézanne,
and Georges Seurat. Consequently, in the eyes of
a younger generation of Russian theorists and crit-
ics, Vrubel’s work seemed to combine the best of
both worlds: on the one hand it was appropriately
national, while on the other it was suitably modern
and progressive in its style. To quote Tarabukin:

Vrubel frees art from genre elements, raising the down-

fallen techniques of painting to the height of the best
European masters, [all the while] remaining throughout
all the periods of his oeuvre in [his] most profound
essence a realist.63

In the painting of Cézanne, Vrubel could have found an

interrelation of color and volume akin to his [own]. . . .
However, for Vrubel, Cézanne’s art was unacceptable in its
“still-​life” view of the world.64

For Tarabukin, Vrubel was a “realist” because he had

rejected academic illusionism in favor of asserting
the material “reality” of paint on canvas. However,
he had simultaneously “surpassed” Cézanne by
moving beyond the base transcription of external
phenomena, which in the end was merely the con-
tinuation of the dead-​end naturalism that was so
deplorable in the art of the Peredvizhniki. On the
contrary, Vrubel’s imaginary, often discordant and
disturbing works seemed to presage a number of
subsequent modern artistic movements such as
Expressionism, Pittura Metafisica, and even Surreal-
Fig. 63  Vasilii Polenov, Moscow Courtyard, 1878. Oil on can-
ism. In their ominous palettes, unorthodox human vas, 25 1/3 × 31 1/2 in. (64.5 × 80.1 cm). State Tretyakov Gallery,
anatomies, and unconventional subject matter, his Moscow.
paintings frequently elicited a powerful sense of
Fig. 64  Gustave Caillebotte, Paris: A Rainy Day, 1877. Oil on
malaise and psychological tension in their viewers, canvas, 83 1/2 × 108 3/4 in. (212.2 × 276.2 cm). Art Institute of
which led many younger artists and theorists to Chicago, Charles H. and Mary F. S. Worcester Collection.

see in Vrubel’s art the seeds of a variety of different

Angels Becoming Demons 129

 twentieth-​century artistic currents. Indeed, to a
certain degree, Vrubel’s preoccupation with the
otherworldly signaled the beginning of the modern
obsession with dreams, hallucinations, and the sub-
conscious. Sigmund Freud’s Interpretation of Dreams
was published in 1899, the same year that Vrubel
began active work on his Demon Cast Down, a paint-
ing that marked the onset of his own mental illness
and subsequent hospitalization.
By the same token, Vrubel’s attempts to por-
tray dynamism and rapid motion in works such as
The Rider (1890) and Robert and the Nuns (1896)
seemed to prefigure the twentieth-​century experi-
ments of the Futurists. In the former work, the diag-
onal thrust of the rider in combination with the bro-
ken, striated contours of the man and horse produce
a compelling impression of fast-​paced movement.
As a result, in their efforts to construct a specifically
Russian prehistory for the bourgeoning new move-
ments of Cubo-​Futurism, Rayonism, Suprematism,
Constructivism, and Productivism, various art
theorists and critics found a natural nineteenth-​
century forebear in Vrubel, whose versatile, multi-
valent art could support a wide variety of modernist
“beginnings.”
Thus, for example, in his 1915 article simply
entitled “Cubism,” the art critic Nikolai Kulbin
boldly asserted that the founders of Cubism were
Cézanne in France and Vrubel in Russia:
Almost contemporaneously with Cézanne, but inde-
pendently, Vrubel was working in Russia. Cubism was
first expressed openly in Vrubel’s work in his studies for
The Demon. . . . With equal brilliance Cubism was mani-
fested in other works of his as well. In Vrubel’s paintings
are elucidated both the plastic values of surfaces and the
role and interrelationship of straight and curved lines.
130 The Icon and the Square
Along with the harmonious crystallization of forms,
we also see a complex harmony that takes the form of
excrescences like clinker.65
The artist Sergei Sudeikin went even further, claim-
ing that Vrubel directly influenced Pablo Picasso.
Recalling what he had personally observed at the
Russian section of the 1906 Salon d’automne in Paris,
Sudeikin recounted that “in the Vrubel hall . . . Lari-
onov and [he] would invariably meet a stocky little
man who looked like a young Serov and who would
spend hours standing in front of Vrubel’s works.
It was Picasso.” Sudeikin therefore provocatively
concluded that “all the principles of Cubism, Con-
structivism, and Surrealism were founded and devel-
oped by Vrubel. And, despite our respect for Picasso,
the founder of modern painting was Vrubel.”66
Subsequent Russian art historians, such as Mikhail
Alpatov, have even gone on to imply that Picasso’s
celebrated modernist masterpiece the Demoiselles
d’Avignon (1907)—which was begun by the artist
in 1906—may have evolved out of his formative
encounter with Vrubel’s art earlier that year.67 While
such exaggerated claims for Vrubel as a proto-​Cubist,
proto-​Constructivist, and proto-​Surrealist betray an
inflated national pride, if not chauvinism, they simul-
taneously show how readily Vrubel was repositioned
by twentieth-​century art criticism as the founder of a
national school of modern art, which existed simul-
taneously with—but independent of—the French
tradition. Consequently, within just a few years
Vrubel’s name became ubiquitous in Russian artistic
discourse, and an intimate acquaintance with his
oeuvre seemed to be the universal prerequisite for
the next generation of Russian avant-​garde artists.
Accordingly, in 1909, when Liubov Popova
traveled to Kiev to see Vrubel’s St. Cyril frescoes,
she claimed she was left “vanquished” by the artist’s
“incinerating” talent.68 Similarly, Alexander Rod-
chenko asserted that in the early 1910s he “painted
like Vrubel,” while Vladimir Tatlin prized and avidly
collected Vrubel’s artwork.69 Other budding avant-​
garde talents who had encountered Vrubel’s work in
Kiev in the early 1900s include Natalia Goncharova,
Mikhail Larionov, Alexandra Ekster, Alexander
Archipenko, David Burliuk, and Kazimir Male­
vich. Naum Gabo summarized the pervasiveness of
Vrubel’s influence on his generation: “Vrubel freed
the arts of painting and sculpture from the academic
schemata . . . his influence on our visual conscious-
ness was as decisive as Cézanne’s, and equivalent
to the latter’s on the trend of painting in western
Europe. . . . Even Cubism was not entirely a surprise
to us.”70 Indeed, it is not hard to see how Gabo might
have drawn inspiration from Vrubel’s oeuvre in his
own Constructivist works (fig. 65). In a piece such
as the latter’s Head of a Lion (1891) (fig. 66), the
protruding geometrized planes and shifting volumes
explicitly emphasize the underlying structural arma-
ture of the represented animal and reflect Vrubel’s
deconstructive and analytical approach to form—
an approach that subsequently became one of the
central tenets of Constructivist art. John Bowlt spe-
cifically attributes Gabo’s, Rodchenko’s, and Tatlin’s
interest in Vrubel’s art to this unique “constructive”
method: “There are two very distinctive properties
in Vrubel’s painting—his ‘broken’ composition
divided into geometric patterns . . . and his very
conscious use of texture (facture or faktura). . . .
Thanks to these two essential properties, Vrubel’s
painting often produces a peculiarly ‘constructive’
effect as if the artist has built the canvas vertically,
horizontally and in relief . . . it seems [his forms are]
about to move outwards from the pictorial surface.”71
In his attempt to demonstrate just how far Vrubel
anticipated twentieth-​century developments in art,
Tarabukin even insinuated that it was Vrubel who
first prophetically grasped the concept that Viktor
Shklovsky was to term ostranenie, or defamiliariza-
tion, decades later and Rodchenko so successfully
put into practice in his formalist photography of the
late 1920s and early 1930s. Analyzing Vrubel’s paint-
ing Eastern Tale (fig. 67), Tarabukin wrote:
The first impression of Eastern Tale is of absolutely stun-
ning brightness, ringing, diversity of color, and nonobjec-
tivity. The eye is incapable of discerning the outlines of
figurative form. . . . However, as the eye gradually becomes
accustomed to the range of colors, the contours of the
drawing become clearer, and finally, the image emerges in
all of its plasticity, and one is astonished at . . . [not having
originally seen] the harmoniously balanced composition,
in which the sculptural rendition of the figures is almost
palpable. . . .
In the given case we encounter a characteristic
trait of Vrubel’s art: the symbolic, fantastic, and abstract
elements of his works take as their source fully concrete
reality . . . the realistic features [of which] are subsequently
rendered abstract through ostranenie [defamiliarization].72
Not only was Vrubel rediscovered and refashioned as
a convenient predecessor to the historical avant-​garde
in the early 1910s, but engagement with his work
continued to influence leftist art criticism and theory
well into the 1920s. However, Punin’s and Tarabukin’s
writings on Vrubel—and nineteenth-​century Russian
art more broadly—have typically been dismissed
as an early and somewhat “embarrassing” youthful
phase, to be replaced by their ensuing “mature”
work on the Soviet avant-​garde. Almost never have
these earlier interests been seriously considered as
Angels Becoming Demons 131

Fig. 65  Naum Gabo, Head No. 2 (1916), enlarged version,
1964. Steel, 69 × 52 3/4 × 48 in. (175.3 × 134 × 122 cm). Tate
Modern, London, Collection Miriam Gabo.
important factors in shaping and directing Punin’s
and Tarabukin’s views on Constructivism and Pro-
ductivism. Needless to say, Vrubel’s artworks have
likewise rarely been discussed in relation to these
movements. Of course, at a time of fast-​paced change
and innovation—where one avant-​garde trend was
rapidly replaced by another—arguably the inter-
ests and commitments of art critics and theorists
evolved along similar lines. While such a strictly
132 The Icon and the Square
linear narrative of progressive “isms” certainly serves
to reinforce a particular modernist teleology, it does
not reflect the much more complex and symbiotic
reality of the historical moment under consideration.
Instead, as already briefly touched upon in the first
two chapters, the Constructivist and Productivist
theories of Punin and Tarabukin—even in their most
radical phases—always coincided and coexisted with
their work and interests in earlier Russian art.73
Thus, in his 1923 polemical essay From the
Easel to the Machine Tarabukin declared the death
of painting and the triumph, in its place, of mecha-
nized, utilitarian, and collective forms of production
and distribution. However, that same year he also
wrote an essay on “rhythm and composition in
ancient Russian icon painting” and founded a group
at the State Academy of Artistic Sciences in Moscow
for the study of Vrubel’s art in order to “present
Vrubel in a new light, by removing the ‘decadent’
and ‘mystical’ stigma imposed on the artist by crit-
ics.”74 Similarly, while Punin was participating in the
radical avant-​garde activities of Apartment No. 5
alongside Vladimir Tatlin, Nadezhda Udaltsova,
Vladimir Mayakovsky, and Velimir Khlebnikov in
the years 1914–15, he was simultaneously penning
articles on medieval art and was an active member
of the Department of Monuments of Russian Icon
Painting and Church Relics in the Russian Museum
of His Imperial Majesty Alexander III. It was also
in these years that Punin published a lengthy study
of Vrubel’s drawings and observed in a letter to his
future wife: “Today, I thought a lot about art because
I spent a long time looking at the [museum] halls of
the modern masters. Not a single one of them satis-
fies me, except for Vrubel.”75
Three years later, in 1917, Punin published in
the journal Apollon a polemical article rhetorically
titled “In Defense of Painting,” in which he fervently
endorsed easel painting as a form of artistic pro-
duction.76 And yet, at exactly the same time, Punin
declared his passion for “Tatlinian Constructivism,”
“living materials,” and “living space” and claimed
that Tatlin’s influence on him in the years 1915–17
was “boundless.”77 In his famous monograph on
Tatlin’s art, provocatively titled Tatlin (Against
Cubism) (1921), Punin rooted Tatlin’s artistic prac-
tice in the ancient iconic tradition, rather than in
contemporary French Cubism. As elaborated in the
first chapter, Punin believed that the icon offered
contemporary art enormous possibilities of develop-
ment beyond the formalist hermeticism of Cubism
and that the first artist to have discovered its bound-
less potential for modernist artistic practice was
Vrubel. As opposed to modern French art, which
Punin considered fatally individualistic, Tatlin’s Fig. 66  Mikhail Vrubel, Head of a Lion, 1891. Glazed majol-
ica, 18 × 18 3/4 × 11 in. (45.5 × 47.5 × 28 cm). State Russian
works were communal and useful, in the same way Museum, St. Petersburg.
that Vrubel’s St. Cyril frescoes, created for public
rather than private consumption, had a functional
devotional purpose. It was perhaps no accident that As already mentioned, Tarabukin insisted that
as late as 1923 Punin noted in his diary that he took Vrubel was above all a “Realist”—in the materialist
his VKhUTEMAS students to the Russian Museum sense of the word—and that the artist resorted to
to study Vrubel’s paintings, among others, and con- “cheap Symbolism” in only a few of his paintings.80
cluded that “in ‘new art’ there is not a single new For the most part, however, according to Tarabukin,
formal element that was not already present in the Vrubel’s art was “concrete,” “simple,” “straight-
old [art]; but ‘new art’ is a genuinely novel sense of forward,” and “true,” just as the icon and the new
the world: the form is not new, the content is new.”78 Constructivist object were “honest” and “realist,”
Tarabukin, even more than Punin, attempted in opposition to dissembling illusionistic painting.81
to build a conceptual and historical bridge between In addition, Tarabukin maintained that in his applied
Vrubel, medieval Russo-​Byzantine art, and Con- works Vrubel demonstrated an extraordinary sense
structivism and Productivism. In his 1928 mono- both of architectonics and of the all-​encompassing
graph on Vrubel, Tarabukin observed that the artist social role of art. Vrubel’s oeuvre thus anticipated
was “a traditionalist and an innovator simultane- the two central principles underpinning Construc-
ously . . . [who], by drawing inspiration from the tivist and Productivist art: first, the radical departure
Byzantines, opened new paths in Russian art.”79 from two-​dimensional surfaces and, second, the

Angels Becoming Demons 133

 Fig. 67  Mikhail Vrubel, Eastern Tale, 1886. Watercolor and
gouache on paper, pasted on cardboard, 10 2/3 × 11 in. (27.8 ×
27 cm). State Museum of Russian Art, Kiev.

functional, utilitarian role of the art object, which
led Tarabukin to conclude that the artist “had always
aspired to go beyond the limitations of easel paint-
ing. Vrubel had always dreamed of an art that would
be monumental, socially important, that would
enter daily life, that would be connected to its envi-
ronment; an art of active social impact and [capable
of] transforming life.”82 With this Productivist
rhetoric, Tarabukin transformed Vrubel’s interest in
decorative projects and Art Nouveau into radical,

134 The Icon and the Square

leftist avant-​gardism. Needless to say, the terms “Art
Nouveau” and “Productivism” are rarely, if ever,
used in the same sentence. And yet, as Punin himself
wrote: “[O]ur generation, which came out of ‘Art
Nouveau’ . . . has every basis for being interested in
its origin,” which, according to Punin, marked the
beginning of modernism.83 Consequently, while
conventional histories of Russian art tend to empha-
size the diametric contrasts between the traditional
and the innovative, the derivative and the original,
the retrospective and the forward-​looking, and the
sacred and the secular, I would like to complicate
these binary categories by highlighting the multiple
connections that obtained between images, audi-
ences, institutions, and individuals across ostensibly
antithetical cultural spheres, which I believe were
more porous and mutually generative than is gener-
ally assumed. Though typically viewed as a radical
break from and rejection of the prerevolutionary
period, the Soviet avant-​garde project was in many
respects deeply indebted to the former in both its art
and its criticism. It was, in fact, the revivalist impulse
of the late nineteenth century—as exemplified in
the art of Mikhail Vrubel—that first spurred artists
and theorists to envisage the formal and conceptual
possibilities of the twentieth.
Angels Becoming Demons 135
4
VASILY KANDINSKY’S ICONIC SUBCONSCIOUS AND
THE SEARCH FOR THE SPIRITUAL IN ART
In his autobiography, the Russian artist Viktor
Ufimtsev describes a memorable modern art exhi-
bition that he attended in the early years of the
Soviet regime. Organized in a disused church in
the Siberian town of Barnaul, the display “started
at the porch, and the further one went, the more
unexpected, the more shocking it was. Hanging
near the Royal Doors, in the choirs and the chancel
were works by objectless painters: by Kandinsky,
Malevich, Rozanova.”1 Although unsure about how
to respond to these abstract works, members of the
public nonetheless observed: “[T]hey do give us the
feeling of being inside a church.”2 In 1913 Kandinsky
could scarcely have imagined that only a decade later
his paintings would be exhibited in such a setting.
By the same token, it is hard to envision a more
appropriate environment for the works of an artist
who believed that the fundamental goal of his art
was to awaken people’s “capacity for experiencing
the spiritual in material and in abstract phenom-
ena.”3 From the earliest stages of his artistic career,
Kandinsky had a messianic conception of the artist’s
role in society and believed that only a new type of
modern painting, born of “inner necessity,” could
rejuvenate a moribund Western culture mired in
rationalism.4
Although Kandinsky was unquestionably a
pioneer of nonobjective painting, he has often been
seen as something of a black sheep in modernist
historiography. His insistence on the “spiritual”
dimension of his artworks, as well as his association
with occult movements such as Theosophy, has
retrospectively appeared to be hermetic and idio-
syncratic when compared to the deconstructive,
materialist approaches of French Cubism and Soviet
Constructivism. Moreover, in contrast to the daring
geometric solutions of Kazimir Malevich and Piet
Mondrian, the lyrical, subjective abstraction that
Kandinsky developed in the early 1910s seems to be
more indebted to the Symbolist impulse of the nine-
teenth century than to the new mechanistic spirit
of the twentieth. Lastly, Kandinsky’s florid language
and his insistence on using poetic terminology such
as “soulful vibrations,” “inner sound,” and “the Great
Spiritual” have often led scholars to dismiss him as
an antiquated, sentimental artist, who lacked the
137
 daring vision and radicalism of later, Soviet avant-​
garde artists. As early as 1919 Nikolai Punin called
on modern artists to effect a “mechanization of the
soul” in place of the “organicism” of their paintings.5
An avid supporter of the Russian Cubo-​Futurist and
Constructivist movements, Punin harshly criticized
Kandinsky as “not only a poor master, but simply a
vulgar and most ordinary artist.”6 According to the
critic, there was no place for superficial “private fan-
tasies” in contemporary art. Twentieth-​century art
had to be objective, accessible, and universal and not
“subjective, remote, [and] estranged.”7
In the present chapter I challenge such (mis)in­-
terpretations of Kandinsky’s art by demonstrating
that it was neither “remote” nor “estranged”; on the
contrary, it aspired to be universal, timeless, and res-
onant, with a broad, international public. By encod-
ing “veiled” Christian iconography into many of
his ostensibly nonobjective paintings, Kandinsky
intended his art to have transcendental signification
beyond its own materiality. That is not to imply that
Kandinsky’s mode of abstraction was somehow reac-
tionary or not “truly” abstract. Rather, he arrived at
a nonfigurative visual vocabulary via a conception
of abstraction’s role in modernity alternative to
the one advocated by the later Soviet avant-​garde.
Accordingly, Kandinsky’s artistic practice resisted
the reductive and purely formalist interpretation
subsequently developed by the art critic Clement
Greenberg in the mid-​twentieth century. The artist
equally objected to Alfred Barr’s famous flowchart
of modern art, which graced the catalogue cover of
MoMA’s 1936 exhibition Cubism and Abstract Art.
Instead, in his formulation of a new “spiritual” art for
the twentieth century, Kandinsky seemed to rely on
the image philosophy of the icon and the dual nature
of the ancient Christian archetype.
138 The Icon and the Square
Moving beyond the established theosophical
and primitivist readings of Kandinsky’s early works,
I resituate his art within the rigorous philosophical,
political, and aesthetic debates that accompanied
the rediscovery of the iconic tradition in Russia.
In doing so, I propose a new set of cultural and his-
torical coordinates, largely overlooked by scholars,
within which to understand Kandinsky’s paintings.
Challenging Punin’s now widely accepted critique of
Kandinsky as an “estranged” and idiosyncratic artist,
I demonstrate that his artistic and theoretical output
from the early teens was very much shaped by and
in dialogue with the rich and complex discourse sur-
rounding the iconic revival. By the same token, I do
not mean to claim that Kandinsky’s paradigmatic
move to nonobjectivity was a direct response to the
Russo-​Byzantine revival. As with most paradigm-​
shifting breakthroughs, Kandinsky’s was most
certainly the result of a combination of extremely
complex psychological, social, cultural, and aesthetic
shifts rather than any one stimulus.
Accordingly, this chapter aims to achieve a
number of different objectives. First, it traces Kan-
dinsky’s interest in and exposure to the iconic tradi-
tion. Second, it demonstrates how his works from
1908 to 1913 engaged with iconic representation on
both formal and theoretical levels. Third, it exam-
ines Kandinsky’s aesthetic philosophy from this
period within the context of the Russian Religious
Renaissance, and especially the writings of Pavel
Florensky. In particular, it explores the theoretical
parallels between Florensky’s and Kandinsky’s
so-​called medievalism and their respective con-
ceptualizations of the role of religion in modernity,
while also highlighting key differences in their ideas.
Finally, and most importantly, this chapter chal-
lenges the prevalent interpretation that Kandinsky’s
engagement with icons was nothing more than a
passing romantic interest in primitive art, mysticism,
and occultism. Instead, it positions Kandinsky’s
pre–World War I body of work as manifesting an
alternative theorization of art’s role in modernity,
countering the louder claims of the formalist and
materialist avant-​garde that are generally privileged
by modernist historiography. Whether consciously
or not, Kandinsky’s formulation of a new spiritual
art was steeped in Eastern Orthodox ideology and
aesthetics. As such, he essentially conceptualized a
“modern icon” for the twentieth century.
The Iconic Subconscious
According to the reports of his relatives and friends,
Kandinsky was a practicing member of the Russian
Orthodox Church and an avid collector of old icons.
Photographs of Kandinsky’s Munich apartment
and his house in Murnau show a rich array of Chris-
tian images. For example, in the well-​known 1911
photograph of Kandinsky sitting at his desk in his
Munich apartment at 36 Ainmillerstraße (fig. 68),
there is a prominent image of an angel, three Ortho-
dox crosses, two small brass icons, a Crucifixion
scene, and a statue of the Virgin Mary. Kandinsky
continued to be interested in iconic representation
throughout his lifetime, as evidenced by Nina Kan-
dinsky’s description of his studio in their Neuilly
apartment at 135 boulevard de la Seine: “Since
Kandinsky died, I have changed hardly anything
in the apartment . . . the antique icons in his studio
continue to hang where he hung them. He did not
want anything but those icons in his studio, and
especially not his own creations; nothing was sup-
posed to distract him from his work; with bare trails
he was sure he would be able to concentrate.”8 In the
various statements that Kandinsky made throughout
the course of his career, he repeatedly attributed
a central role to iconic representation in his artis-
tic formation. For example, in his Reminiscences
(Rückblicke), from 1913, Kandinsky claimed that
his first experience of synesthesia occurred “in the
Moscow churches, and especially in the cathedral
of the Assumption and the Church of St. Basil the
Blessed.” This experience, as he himself recognized,
later became a central concept in his aesthetic the-
ory: “It was probably through these impressions,
rather than in any other way, that my further wishes
and aims as regards my own art formed themselves
within me.”9 Citing an even more direct influence,
Kandinsky states boldly: “There is no other type of
painting that I value as highly as our icons. The most
valuable things that I have learned, I learned from
our icons, and not only in terms of art, but also in
terms of religion.”10 Even as early as the 1880s—long
before Kandinsky took up painting—he already
expressed a latent interest in the way that icons
mediated spirituality and religious experience in
everyday life. A sketch that Kandinsky produced
during an ethnographic trip to the Vologda region
in northern Russia depicts a group of peasants
kneeling in front of icons, absorbed in prayer and
meditation (fig. 69). Almost a decade after this trip,
Kandinsky famously asserted that his first intimation
of the potential of abstract painting had occurred as
early as 1896, when his exposure to Impressionism
encouraged him to look at the art of icons “with new
eyes”: “I ‘acquired eyes’ for the abstract element in
this kind of painting.”11 In this last statement Kan-
dinsky was merely echoing the dominant discourse
in Russia at the time, wherein French modern
art was repeatedly aligned with Russian medieval
Kandinsky ’s Subconscious and the Spiritual 139

Fig. 68  Gabriele Münter, Vasily Kandinsky at His Desk in His
Apartment at 36 Ainmillerstraße, Munich, June 1911. Gabriele
Münter- und Johannes Eichner-​Stiftung, Munich.
representation. In 1913, the same year that Kandinsky
published his Reminiscences recounting his fateful
encounter with Claude Monet’s Haystacks, the artist
Aleksei Grishchenko wrote that “in a strange way
twentieth-​century Paris echoes medieval Muscovy,”
and Alexander Benois claimed that icons “help us
to understand Matisse, Picasso, Le Fauconnier.”12
Moreover, as a fervent admirer of Matisse, Kan-
dinsky would certainly have paid close attention to
the French artist’s laudatory comments on Russia’s
iconic tradition during the latter’s visit to Moscow
in October of 1911. In On the Spiritual in Art Kan-
dinsky describes Matisse as “one of the greatest of
the modern French painters,” an artist who “seeks to
140 The Icon and the Square
reproduce the divine” in his art.13 Accordingly, when
Matisse asserted that “from [the Russian icons]
we ought to learn how to understand art,”14 Kandin-
sky must have taken his suggestion to heart.
Indeed, it is precisely in these years that Kan-
dinsky’s theoretical and pictorial output reveals a
sustained preoccupation with religious thought
patterns and iconic themes. It was at this time that
Kandinsky published the essays “Content and
Form” (Inhalt und Form), “Whither the ‘New’ Art?”
(Kuda idet ‘novoe’ iskusstvo), and On the Spiritual
in Art, all of which employ messianic language and
announce the coming of a new “Spiritual Epoch.”15
Kandinsky believed that this new epoch would be
the third and final revelation—the Revelation of
the Spirit—following the revelation of the Father
in Old Testament times and that of the Son in the
Christian era.16 Kandinsky also produced a series
of paintings on biblical themes, such as the Last
Judgment, Last Supper, Sound of Trumpets, All Saints,
and Saint George cycles, in which the individual
works ranged from easily legible figurative repre-
sentations to increasingly dissolved and abstracted
imagery (figs. 78, 79, 83, 87). More importantly,
these years marked both a distinct transformation
in Kandinsky’s painterly style and a concretization
of his program for a new theory of modern art.
As Reinhold Heller points out, at this moment “the
synthetic flatness akin to Jugendstil which [Kan-
dinsky] had sought during 1908–09 gives way to a
nascent sense of pictorial or painterly space, and the
identity of forms in an illusionistic sense becomes
more and more disguised. . . . A radical transforma-
tion of his ideas and art is taking place. Precisely
what motivated it is unknown.”17 One explanation
that is typically advanced to explain Kandinsky’s
sudden interest in religious subject matter at this
time is his involvement in a collaborative project.
Together with Franz Marc, Alfred Kubin, Paul Klee,
Erich Heckel, and Oskar Kokoschka, Kandinsky
wanted to create a series of illustrations for a new
edition of the Bible.18 However, Klaus Lankheit dates
the inception of this project to the spring of 1913.19
Meanwhile, religious and iconic motifs had already
begun to appear in Kandinsky’s work as early as 1908
and 1909. It is much more plausible that Kandinsky’s
steady interest in religious imagery prompted him
to evolve the idea of the biblical illustrations in 1913
rather than the reverse. Since the years 1908 to 1913
coincide with the height of the iconic revival in Rus-
sia (as demonstrated in the first two chapters), it is
logical to assume that this would have been the most Fig. 69  Vasily Kandinsky, The Blessing of the Bread, 1889.
immediate stimulus for Kandinsky, especially as the Watercolor and graphite on paper, 7 1/6 × 9 1/2 in. (18.3 ×
24.6 cm). State Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow.
artist made repeated trips to Russia in these years
and even lived in Moscow for several months in the
autumn of 1910. In fact, Kandinsky never severed his
connection to Russia during his stay in Germany and tradition.21 Moreover, as John Bowlt has already
remained attentive to all that was new and exciting demonstrated, this first version of the text differed
in contemporary Russian art and thought. While in significantly from the more well-​known German
Munich, he was a columnist for the Russian art jour- edition of 1912.22 The Russian version of On the Spir-
nals Mir iskusstva and Apollon, and he continually itual in Art was much more direct, clear, and laconic
corresponded with Russian artists, critics, and exhi- than the German one and omitted many of the more
bition organizers. It is therefore not coincidental that obscure and cryptic references to Theosophy that
Kandinsky ensured that the first draft of On the Spir- subsequently appeared in the German publication.
itual in Art was publicly presented in Russia rather Given the academic nature of the St. Petersburg
than Germany. The text was read by his close friend congress and its predominantly scholarly audience,
Nikolai Kulbin at the 1911 All-​Russian Congress it becomes increasingly clear that, at least on this
of Artists in St. Petersburg, where it was fervently occasion, Kandinsky consciously attempted to ally
discussed alongside scholarly tracts that called for his aesthetic theories with the broader concerns of
the preservation and restoration of Russia’s ancient the Russo-​Byzantine revival that dominated much of
icons and monuments.20 Kandinsky’s call for a new the discourse at the congress.
spiritual and transcendental art was undoubtedly In addition to this Russian context, Kandin-
attractive to an audience likely to see his project as a sky would also have had considerable exposure
contemporary reiteration of an age-​old, disappearing to Byzantine art and theory within his Munich

Kandinsky ’s Subconscious and the Spiritual 141


Fig. 70  Vasily Kandinsky, Untitled, 1906–7. Inscription:
“La nuit dans la miniature grec du x siècle / colorée en gris-​
violet / le nimbe est bleu / (Kondakoff); in Bibliothèque
Nationale de Paris! / (Miniature Byzantine).” Pencil on
ruled paper, 8 1/4 × 5 1/4 in. (20.9 × 13.4 cm). Gabriele Münter-
und Johannes Eichner-​Stiftung, Munich.
142 The Icon and the Square
environment. It was precisely at the moment of his
arrival in Munich in 1896 that Byzantine studies
were becoming institutionalized as a discipline in
Germany, and various publications on Byzantine
art and architecture began to appear throughout the
1890s and early 1900s.23 The prominent Byzantinist
Karl Krumbacher became the first chair of Byz-
antine studies at the University of Munich in 1891,
inaugurating the Munich School of Byzantinology
and launching a leading journal of Byzantine studies,
the Byzantinische Zeitschrift, in 1892. Unlike many
of his fellow artists, Kandinsky actually read Byzan-
tine scholarship and quoted Nikodim Kondakov’s
Histoire de l’art byzantin considéré principalement
dans les miniatures in his notes to On the Spiritual
in Art.24 He even went so far as to copy one of the
Byzantine miniatures from the Paris Psalter that
were reproduced in Kondakov’s book (figs. 70–71).25
In addition, for the second volume of the Blaue
Reiter Almanac Kandinsky was actively planning
to invite scholars to contribute articles and essays,
writing in 1935 that the editors “intended to draw
upon scholars as collaborators in order to expand
the earlier basis of art and in order to show how the
work of the artist and the scholar is related and how
close together their two spiritual fields are.”26 More
importantly, beyond academic circles, Byzantine
art was increasingly discussed in both the popular
press and the most progressive art criticism of the
day. For example, in his 1904 book Modern Art: Being
a Contribution to a New System of Aesthetics, Julius
Meier-​Graefe devoted an entire section to a discus-
sion of Byzantine mosaics, which he considered to
be important precursors to modernist aesthetics.27
Similarly, Wilhelm Worringer saw a powerful drive
toward abstraction in Byzantine art, which he
Fig. 71  Isaiah’s Prayer with Dawn, from the Paris Psalter, tenth
century, fol. 435v. Tempera and gold leaf on vellum, 14 1/8
× 10 1/4 in. (36 × 26 cm). Bibliothèque nationale de France,
Paris, ms gr. 139.

143
 defended as a valid alternative to naturalism in his
Abstraction and Empathy from 1908:
During the Theodosian age abstract tendencies, as
expressed in the geometrization of decoration . . . and in
the diminution of feeling for form, enjoyed a pronounced
supremacy. Instead of sculptural modeling, we find flat
engraving with a pattern-​like alternation of light and
dark. . . .
Artistic estimation of this art is of very recent date.
Previously its conscious artistic volition was almost com-
pletely overlooked, and nothing was seen in it but lack of
artistic power, the epithets “schematic” “lifeless” “rigid”
were not only statements of fact, but also the expression
of unfavorable value-​judgment. This was because every-
one was completely under the spell of a view of art which
had derived its aesthetic from the Antique and the Renais-
sance, and had consequently made the organic-​true-​to-​life
the criterion of its evaluation. The supposition that the
goal of art might be sought in the lifeless, in the rigid, was
out of the question from the standpoint of the earlier sci-
ence of art.28
Kandinsky was intimately familiar with both
texts and was planning to invite Worringer to write
an essay for the second edition of the Blaue Reiter
Almanac. Moreover, in addition to all of these
textual references, Kandinsky also had an indirect
connection to Byzantine art through his friend and
colleague Franz Marc. Marc’s brother, Paul, was a
Byzantine scholar, and in April of 1906 Franz had
accompanied him on a three-​week research trip to
the monasteries of Mount Athos to study medieval
Byzantine frescoes and icons.29 Ironically, some six
years later Franz discovered “a huge collection of
panel paintings from Athos” at an art dealer’s shop
in Berlin and wrote to Kandinsky that they should
144 The Icon and the Square
reproduce some of these works in the second vol-
ume of the Blaue Reiter Almanac.30 It was probably
around this time that Franz sent a small tempera-​
and-​oil study of a seated Byzantine saint to Kandin-
sky in the form of a postcard.31
However, long before the watershed years of
1910–13, Kandinsky had already repeatedly demon-
strated a latent interest in medieval culture and rep-
resentation. During his sojourn in Paris in 1906–7,
Kandinsky produced a series of tempera paintings
and woodcuts on the theme of medieval Russian life,
including Volga Song (1906), The Funeral (1906–7),
Riding Couple (1907), The Morning Hour (1907),
and Colorful Life (Motley Life) (1907) (fig. 72). Set
in a distant, medieval past, these works are replete
with an imaginative array of national characters
in archaic costumes: Slavic knights on horseback,
boyars and merchants in tall fur hats, rosy maidens
in kokoshniks, Orthodox priests, monks, and ascet-
ics—all surrounded by white-​walled Kremlins with
onion-​domed churches.32 Although these works
betray more of an ethnographic—than an iconic—
approach to image making, in many of them, and in
Motley Life in particular, the mosaic construction of
the image already hints at the disembodied, planar
pictorial structure that Kandinsky would actively
pursue in his later works. The figures are distributed
seemingly haphazardly across the entire surface
of the picture plane without a dominant narrative
focus. Meanwhile, the uneven scale of the different
figures and the lack of clear perspectival recession
produce a symbolic, otherworldly quality rather
than a documentary one. Accordingly, both in
their mosaic structure and medieval subject matter,
these tempera works clearly testify to Kandinsky’s
growing interest in Russia’s premodern history and
visual culture. It is also noteworthy that Kandinsky

produced these retrospective Slavic-​themed
works at exactly the same time as he discovered
Matisse and the Fauves, as well as Picasso, Braque,
Metzinger, and Rousseau, all of whom seemed to
make a strong impression on him.33 Consequently,
even at this early stage of his career, Kandinsky
had already begun to intimate the “strange” con-
nections between “twentieth-​century Paris” and
“medieval Moscow” while simultaneously seeking to
Fig. 72  Vasily Kandinsky, Colorful Life (Motley Life), 1907.
Tempera on canvas, 51 × 64 in. (130 × 162.5 cm). Bayerische
Landesbank, on permanent loan to the Städtische Galerie im
Lenbachhaus, Munich.
differentiate his artistic practice from the vanguard
of French modernism by explicitly aligning it with a
particularly Russian native tradition.
However, in an odd act of disavowal, scholars
such as Will Grohmann and Johannes Eichner,
writing in the 1950s, at the height of modernist dom-
inance, dismissed Kandinsky’s medievalizing motifs
russes as merely an inconsequential “outlet for home-
sickness” and a “nostalgic quirk” that stood entirely
Kandinsky ’s Subconscious and the Spiritual 145
 outside of the mainstream of his own artistic devel-
opment.34 Disregarding Kandinsky’s own repeated
assertions that the tempera pictures and woodcuts
of 1906–7 played an important role in his ongoing
and “consistent” development toward abstraction,
Eichner wrote that “in the overall art-​historical evo-
lution . . . they [the temperas] were an appendage to
the late-​Impressionist technique and to the formal
language of Jugendstil, not children of a new spirit
but only ‘apart.’ ”35 And yet, in his introduction to
On the Spiritual in Art, Kandinsky wrote that he first
began to make notes for this work some five to six
years earlier, which places the origins of the treatise
roughly at the time that Kandinsky was living and
working in Paris.36 Needless to say, Kandinsky’s
exposure to contemporary French art certainly had
a major impact on his subsequent artistic devel-
opment, as evidenced by his Murnau landscapes
of 1908–9. Several publications, and in particular
Jonathan David Fineberg’s exhaustive study of Kan-
dinsky’s activities in Paris, have already adequately
explored all the possible French influences on
Kandinsky’s early artistic development.37 However,
scholars have largely overlooked the artist’s exposure
to medieval Russian and Byzantine art during his
stay in Paris, even though it must have significantly
contributed to his burgeoning interest in medieval
Russia, so clearly expressed in his tempera works.
While in Paris, Kandinsky continued to move
in Russian émigré circles, and he would likely have
been aware of the two major Russia-​related events
that took place in the French capital in 1906. The
first of these was Sergei Diaghilev’s Russian section
at the 1906 Salon d’automne. Although the show
was mounted separately from the rest of the Salon
exhibition, visitors to the Grand Palais could view
it free of charge. Diaghilev was allocated ten large
146 The Icon and the Square
rooms—later increased to twelve—where he dis-
played more than 750 works of art ranging from the
Middle Ages to the contemporary period. Among
these were a large number of ancient icons from
Nikolai Likhachev’s vast collection, as well as a rich
selection of eighteenth-​century Russian paintings,
and some of the most radical art from the youngest
generation of Moscow avant-​garde artists such as
Mikhail Larionov and Natalia Goncharova.38 The
exhibition was opened with great fanfare by French
president Fallières on October 6, 1906, and received
widespread coverage in the local press. Le Figaro
in particular devoted a long article to it, singling
out various artists for special praise. Diaghilev was
made an honorary member of the Salon, along with
the artists Leon Bakst, Alexander Benois, Nikolai
Roerich, and Mikhail Vrubel. After the Salon closed,
the Russian exhibition traveled on to Berlin, where
it also met with great success, according to Diaghi-
lev, who wrote in a letter to Walter Nouvel: “The
Germans like it. There have been hordes of visitors.
We’ve done it again!”39 Kandinsky had contributed
twenty-​one of his own works to the same Salon
d’automne—four paintings, five temperas, five
woodcuts, and seven applied artworks—and was
awarded a grand prix on this occasion.40 It is there-
fore highly unlikely that he would have missed the
Russian exhibition, given both his steady interest in
contemporary Russian art and his own involvement
in the 1906 Salon d’automne.
The year after the Russian exhibition of 1906,
another important exhibition of medieval Russian
art was organized by Princess Maria Tenisheva,
a major proponent of the Russian medieval revival
and a patron of the Russian Arts and Crafts move-
ment. In the years 1905 to 1908 Tenisheva began an
active campaign to promote Russian culture in Paris
and mounted a series of small exhibitions of medi-
eval Russian art in her Parisian home. These shows
eventually attracted the attention of the French
minister of fine arts, who offered Tenisheva four
halls in the Musée des arts décoratifs at the Louvre
and all the display cases in the Pavillon de Marsan.
In 1907 she organized a major exhibition of medieval
Russian art objects, which were largely drawn from
the collections of the Smolensk Museum of Russian
Antiquities and were specifically loaned to her for
the occasion. The exhibition ran for five consecu-
tive months from May 10, 1907, until October 10,
1907; and according to Tenisheva, it was “the most
successful exhibition of the whole season and was
widely discussed and written about. There were
78,000 visitors.”41
It is difficult to determine with any certainty
whether Kandinsky saw this exhibition, since he did
not explicitly mention it in any of his memoirs or his
correspondence from this period. However, it was
precisely at this time that he immersed himself in
scholarship on Russo-​Byzantine art, and the sketch
of the Paris Psalter miniature from Kondakov’s His-
toire de l’art byzantin considéré principalement dans les
miniatures was executed during his stay in Paris (figs.
70–71). An inscription in Kandinsky’s handwriting
on the right-​hand side of the drawing states that the
original tenth-​century Byzantine manuscript is in
the “Bibliothèque Nationale de Paris!,” suggesting
that Kandinsky may even have gone to the trouble of
seeing it in person during his stay in Paris. All of this
implies that despite his constant contact with and
exposure to contemporary French art, the Russo-​
Byzantine representational tradition was never far
from Kandinsky’s mind. Moreover, given his explicit
interest in medieval subject matter and his exper-
imentation with medievalizing stylistic elements
in the years 1905–7, it is clear that long before his
artistic breakthroughs of 1910–13 Kandinsky had
already begun to meditate on the parallels between
contemporary art and his native artistic tradition.
Several years later he observed in On the Spiritual in
Art that in contrast to the “soulless” art produced in
ancient Greece and Rome, medieval representation
had a profound philosophical and “spiritual” affinity
with modern times:
It is impossible for our inner lives, our feelings, to be like
those of the ancient Greeks. Efforts, therefore, to apply
Greek principles, e.g., to sculpture, can only produce
forms similar to those employed by the Greeks, a work
that remains soulless for all time. This sort of imitation
resembles the mimicry of the ape. . . .
There exists, however, another outward similarity
of artistic forms that is rooted in a deeper necessity. The
similarity of inner strivings within the whole spiritual-​
moral atmosphere—striving after goals that have already
been pursued, but afterward forgotten—this similarity of
the inner mood of an entire period can lead logically to
the use of forms successfully employed to the same ends
in an earlier period. Our sympathy, our understanding,
our inner feeling for the Primitives arose partly in this way.
Just like us, those pure artists wanted to capture in their
works the inner essence of things, which of itself brought
about a rejection of the external, the accidental.42
Here it is important to clarify that Kandinsky used
the term “primitive” to refer not only to tribal,
popular, and folk art but also to medieval Christian
imagery. In On the Spiritual in Art he identified
“the Primitives” as “the ancient Germans and Ital-
ians,” a designation that was often employed in the
nineteenth century to describe European art before
the advent of the Renaissance and the development
Kandinsky ’s Subconscious and the Spiritual 147
 of linear perspective.43 This conception of the
“primitive” closely related to that of the German
Nazarenes and the British Pre-​R aphaelites, who
valued early Christian art for its purity, sincerity,
and spirituality, in contrast to the overly refined,
mathematical, and corrupt art of the Renaissance
and post-​Renaissance periods. It is no accident that
Kandinsky specifically mentioned Dante Gabriel
Rossetti and Edward Burne-​Jones as exemplary
“artists who [sought] the internal in the world of the
external” and “turned towards Raphael’s forerunners
and tried to reanimate their abstract forms.”44 It is
equally telling that out of the five illustrations by
artists other than himself that Kandinsky included in
On the Spiritual in Art, four were religious artworks
from the premodern period, which seems to sug-
gest that Kandinsky saw in medieval representation
an important aesthetic and conceptual precedent
to his own artistic and theoretical project. Lastly,
as Andrew Spira writes, “Kandinsky tended to read
some Orthodox imagery” as “Christianized repre-
sentations of a far deeper psychic and preconceptual
dynamic that was rooted in the shamanistic cultures
of northern Russia and Siberia.”45 Consequently,
Kandinsky did not view Christian art as antithetical
to that of the “primitive” pagan past, but instead
considered the two to be on a continuum—avatars
of formidable spiritual energies—linked together by
“internal necessity.”46
Alone Among the “Savages”
Most of the scholarship published on Kandinsky to
date contends that his interest in medieval represen-
tation hinged almost exclusively on the “primitive”
form of the medieval image. However, I would like
148 The Icon and the Square
to propose that, in addition to form, Kandinsky was
also interested in the transcendental dual nature of
the iconic image as it was theorized by Byzantine
theologians during the iconoclastic controversies
of the eighth and ninth centuries. In addition to the
mystical, theosophical, and apocalyptic explana-
tions discussed in existing scholarship, I would like
to advance the possibility that Kandinsky’s ideas
about the inner and outer nature of the image were
at least partly shaped by the dualism inherent in
iconic representations.47 In On the Spiritual in Art
he contended that “the two kinds of resemblance
to forms of past ages which modern art contains
are diametrically opposed—which is immediately
obvious. The first kind is an outward resemblance
and, therefore, has no potential. The second kind
is an inward resemblance and, therefore, contains
the seeds of the future.”48 This distinction between
“outward” and “inward” resemblance was crucial
to Kandinsky’s project and set him apart from the
majority of his European and Russian avant-​garde
contemporaries such as Mikhail Larionov and Nata-
lia Goncharova. In contrast to the latter, Kandinsky
maintained that art was “one of the most powerful
agents” of “the spiritual life” and sincerely believed
in its ability to revitalize the waning religious sen-
sibilities of late modernity.49 Larionov and Gon-
charova, on the other hand, “took an active part in
[the] desanctification of high art” and employed a
number of different strategies to expose and critique
“high/low stratification, be it in art or in social cate-
gories.”50 For example, Larionov deployed a provoc-
ative iconographic program of dubious, lower-​class
characters such as soldiers, gypsies, barbers, and
prostitutes and adorned his paintings with deliber-
ately misspelled and semiliterate graffiti of vulgar
words as a subversive parody of the holy inscriptions
on icons and frescoes. Similarly, as John Malm­
stad points out, Larionov’s infamous nudes from
the Seasons cycle (1912–13) blasphemously adopt
“poses reminiscent of Christian . . . art.” For instance,
in Autumn, the female figure is depicted with “hands
upraised as though in prayer, cop[ying] the Mother
of God Orant.”51 Instead of treating icons as sacred
objects and exemplars of an indigenous “high-​art”
tradition—in the way that Benois and Muratov had
done—Larionov contended that icons were in the
same artistic category as the cheap, mass-​produced
broadsheet, or lubok, as well as the base patterns on
gingerbread. To underscore this point, he organized
an exhibition titled Genuine Icon Painting and Lubki
in February of 1913, which contained more than 170
lubki and icons, 129 of which came from Larionov’s
personal collection. In the accompanying catalogue
Larionov wrote: “The lubok . . . was printed on
cloth, stenciled, stamped on leather and broadsheet
icon cases made of brass, beads, glass . . . sewing,
stamped pies and dough (an art which continues to
be practiced in our bakeries). All this is the lubok in
the widest sense of the word and it is all great art. . . .
Such a miracle of painterly mastery and inspiration
as the icon of the Smolensk Virgin of the thirteenth
century and the Archangel Michael at the exhibition
of Russian Ancient Art also have qualities which one
can attribute to the copy and lubochnost.”52 Rather
than focus on differences, Larionov repeatedly
emphasized both the “outward” resemblance and the
equivalent intrinsic value of various national forms.
Goncharova similarly fused the pictorial lan-
guages of ancient icons and frescoes with those of
lubki, traditional folk embroideries, wooden toys,
stone statuettes, and commercial signboards, all with
the explicit and transgressive purpose of “neutral-
izing hierarchies of value and originality.”53 Thus,
in a work such as Religious Composition: Virgin (with
Ornament) (1910) (fig. 73), the thick contouring,
robust brushwork, and exaggerated facial features of
the Virgin and Christ Child recall the graphic visual
language of the lubok while simultaneously employ-
ing traditional Orthodox iconography. The merging
of the profane pictorial mode of mass-​produced,
printed broadsheets with the sacred subject matter
of holy icons was perceived by many of Goncharo-
va’s contemporaries as sacrilegious, and she was
accused of blasphemy and subsequently fined and
censored.54 What seemed to offend the public the
most was not what Goncharova had depicted but
how she had depicted it. After all, various members
of the Peredvizhniki had also painted religious
subjects in a Realist mode, which departed from
the Orthodox canon just as much as Goncharova’s
work. However, in the latter case it was the perceived
“crudeness” and “vulgarity” of the popular “primi-
tive” lubok in contrast to the sacredness and refine-
ment of the icon that resulted in the notorious “slap
in the face of public taste.”55 Even a sympathetic art
critic such as Iakov Tugenkhold attributed her work
to “cynical irony” and “demonic possession,” while
Alexander Benois viewed it as a “deliberate effort . . .
to rid [herself] of virtuosity.”56 These and other
equally negative critical responses recalled the anal-
ogous accusations that almost three decades earlier
were hurled at Vrubel, whose St. Cyril frescoes and
“unorthodox” St. Vladimir sketches were likewise
perceived as “hideous” and “deformed.” However,
because the aesthetic estimation and national value
of the Russo-​Byzantine representational tradition
had evolved so dramatically between the 1880s and
the 1910s, what was qualified as poor craftsmanship
and an error in artistic judgment on Vrubel’s part
was viewed in Goncharova’s work as a conscious
Kandinsky ’s Subconscious and the Spiritual 149

Fig. 73  Natalia Goncharova, Religious Composition: Virgin
(with Ornament), 1910. Central panel of a triptych. Oil on
canvas, 38 1/2 × 35 in. (98 × 89 cm). State Tretyakov Gallery,
Moscow. © ADAGP, Paris, 2017.
and irreverent provocation, aimed at shocking polite
society and affronting public morality. Hers and
Larionov’s approach to art making was therefore
primarily understood as fundamentally iconoclastic:
a deliberate debasing of holy images and “high” art
in the service of secular, avant-​garde polemics.
By contrast, Kandinsky considered himself an
iconophile and hoped to return art to its original,
primeval role as the anchor of spirituality, unity, and
transcendence, rather than the mere secular object
150 The Icon and the Square
of aesthetic contemplation and entertainment.
He thus aimed to achieve an “inward” rather than
an “outward” resemblance to the art of the past.57
As evidenced by his earlier tempera works, Kan-
dinsky longed to return to a harmonious, utopian,
medieval “golden age,” where the spiritual bonds of
an organic, cohesive culture were consolidated by
the collective veneration of the icon. Although Kan-
dinsky—like Larionov and Goncharova—also col-
lected folk and popular art, including Russian lubki
and Bavarian glass paintings, he tended to gravitate
toward overtly religious rather than secular subject
matter. Furthermore, although Kandinsky retrospec-
tively claimed that he wanted to “demolish the walls
that existed between one art and another, between
official and rejected art,” the vast majority of his own
work remained firmly rooted in the traditional media
of high art: oil painting, tempera, watercolor, and
woodblock printing.58 Instead of the transgressive
collapsing of artistic categories and the mixing of
sacred and profane elements as means of effecting
institutional critique, Kandinsky’s interest in “prim-
itive” art seemed to be largely motivated by a nostal-
gic, utopian interest in a distant Christian past, where
a “spiritual” holistic art was not yet fragmented into
different categories of high and low, predicated on
class divisions. This fragmentation was the result of
modernization, with its emphasis on classification,
partition, and materialism. Unlike Larionov’s and
Goncharova’s subversive impulse to demonstrate
the lubochnost or popular roots of the “elite” icon,
Kandinsky’s interest was primarily in the seeming
universality of medieval artistic production. Given
his familiarity with Byzantine scholarship, he would
most certainly have known that in the medieval con-
text iconic and monumental art was largely produced
by master artists for aristocratic audiences and
royal patronage. In his review of the 1913 Exhibition
of Ancient Russian Art, Pavel Muratov insisted that
medieval Novgorod icons “undoubtedly answered
to some exclusive and aristocratic demands of taste
and imagination” and that the icon painters who
produced them were not humble artisans carrying
out conventional tasks but instead “genius” artists
experiencing divine inspiration.59 It is precisely this
medievalizing conception of the divinely inspired
artist or visionary that Kandinsky considered the
paradigm for artistic production, a paradigm that had
largely been lost under the conditions of modernity,
where artists had become trained professionals. With
his characteristic prophetic flair, Kandinsky wrote in
On the Spiritual in Art:
And then, without fail, there appears among us a man
like the rest of us in every way, but who conceals within
himself the secret, inborn power of “vision.” He sees and
points. Sometimes he would gladly be rid of this higher
gift, which is often a heavy cross for him to bear. But he
cannot . . . he continues to drag the heavy cartload of
struggling humanity, getting stuck amidst the stones, ever
onward and upward. 60
First of all, then, the artist must . . . [recognize] his duty
toward art and toward himself, regarding himself not as
master of the situation but as the servant of higher ends,
whose duty is precise and great and holy.61
In these and other passages Kandinsky’s language
is overtly religious. Throughout On the Spiritual in
Art he employs Christian metaphors and biblical
allusions. Accordingly, both in his interest in medi-
eval religious imagery and in his understanding of
the artist’s role in contemporary society, Kandinsky
radically departed from the younger Russian avant-​
garde artists. Although he participated in their
exhibitions and was briefly associated with the Jack
of Diamonds group, Kandinsky was, as one period
commentator astutely observed, by and large “alien
and alone” and did not belong with the “savages” of
Russia.62 Furthermore, Kandinsky always remained
vehemently against the iconoclastic and antagonis-
tic stance of the more radical avant-​garde factions.
When four of Kandinsky’s prose poems from Sounds
(Klänge) were reprinted in the Futurist pamphlet
A Slap in the Face of Public Taste, he hastily sent to
the editor of the newspaper Russkoe slovo an open
letter of complaint in which he emphatically stated:
From the prospectus for the book A Slap in the Face of
Public Taste, I learned quite by chance that my name and
my texts had been published both in the prospectus and
in the book itself. Both the former and the latter were
done without my permission. I warmly condone every
honest attempt at artistic creativity, and I am prepared to
forgive even a certain rashness and immaturity of young
authors. . . . But under no circumstances do I consider the
tone in which the prospectus was written permissible.
I condemn the tone categorically no matter whose it is.63
In contrast to Goncharova and Larionov, who defi-
antly attacked bourgeois tastes and sensibilities,
Kandinsky maintained a romantic, sacralizing atti-
tude toward art making. His insistence on the “spir-
itual” value of art and his claim that “the question
of art is not that of form but that of artistic content”
align his ideas more with Eastern Orthodox aesthet-
ics than with the formalist tradition of the European
avant-​garde.64
Kandinsky ’s Subconscious and the Spiritual 151
 Kandinsky’s “Byzantinism”
The Russian scholar Viktor Bychkov has persua-
sively argued that in the Eastern Orthodox tradi-
tion “aesthetics” has a connotation fundamentally
different from that in Western thought.65 Unlike
the discrete secular system of aesthetics developed
by Kant and Hume, aesthetics in Eastern Ortho-
doxy are closely linked to theology. As such, both
representation and visuality in Orthodoxy extend
far beyond appearances and immediate sensory
experience. In her influential essay on the Russian
philosopher, theorist, and semiotician Mikhail
Bakhtin, Caryl Emerson argues that Orthodoxy has
traditionally been “less an intellectual system than
an observation of proper liturgical procedures, a field
of vision wherein all things on earth are seen in their
relation to things in heaven.” To Bakhtin and other
influential twentieth-​century Russian thinkers and
philosophers, the “proper spiritual orientation is as
much a matter of the eye as of the book.”66 Accord-
ingly, in the Russo-​Byzantine tradition images are
at the core of the Orthodox belief system, while
religious ritual and spirituality are intimately linked
with the practices of image making. Discussing
the fundamental differences between Eastern and
Western Christianity in their respective approaches
to biblical meaning and scriptural revelation, the
scholar, theologian, and ordained Orthodox deacon
Anthony Ugolnik suggests that “in the Western
encounter with the Word of God, Christians relate
to a text. The central quest is to wrestle meaning
from the Book.” By contrast, in the Eastern Ortho-
dox tradition “the Book is regarded and treated as
if it were itself an image begetting images . . . trans-
forming dead matter into the reflected image of Jesus
Christ.” Ugolnik thus concludes that “the East and
152 The Icon and the Square
the West clothe the Word in different manifesta-
tions. . . . [Western] Christians obey the Augustinian
injunction ‘Take up and read!’ Their Russian coun-
terparts are apt to concentrate upon the insight that
follows the imperative ‘Look up and see!’ ”67 Conse-
quently, in the Orthodox context images have always
been intimately connected to religious cult and rit-
ual, transcendence and divinity. Bychkov contends
that “the aesthetic, characterized by the notions of
beauty and pleasure[,] is . . . a most important com-
ponent of social and cosmic being (along with truth
and love, or the gnoseological and the ethical). . . .
In other words, the concept of the aesthetic is inti-
mately linked with a spiritual transformation of the
viewing subject.”68 This spiritual transformation of
the viewing subject lay at the core of Kandinsky’s
theoretical and artistic project. Although Kandinsky
was also interested in the art of the medieval West,
it was specifically the Eastern Orthodox tradition
that provided him with the necessary philosophical
and theoretical framework within which to formu-
late his theories of transcendental abstraction.
It is worth mentioning that in the first two
decades of the twentieth century many German
art critics considered Kandinsky’s output to be dis-
tinctly different from that of his fellow Blaue Reiter
colleagues because of his specifically “Eastern”
background. According to them, the Russian artis-
tic tradition was in its essence much more closely
aligned with the great cultures of the Orient than
those of Germany and western Europe. On a formal
level, icons were repeatedly compared to Persian and
Indian miniatures, and Kandinsky’s brand of abstrac-
tion was curiously associated with the “arabesque”
and a specifically “Eastern” mystical spirituality. For
example, in German Expressionist Culture and Paint-
ing, Eckart von Sydow wrote: “But where . . . is the
breakthrough of abstract tendencies taking place
today? . . . Out of the Russian spirit the new Euro-
pean religiosity has grown. . . . From Russian artistry
the longing for the pure arabesque as an expressive
art form has arisen: Kandinsky! And now: is the
Russian spirit not the shelter of mystic spirituality of
all kinds and variations?”69 Such commentary makes
manifest that in the minds of his German contem-
poraries, Kandinsky’s movement toward abstraction
seemed to evolve organically out of his artistic, cul-
tural, and religious heritage as a Russian Orthodox
believer.
Against Abstraction: Kandinsky’s
“Hidden Construction”
Although Kandinsky retroactively claimed that he
painted his First Abstract Watercolor in 1910, in 1912
he cautioned: “Today, the artist cannot manage
exclusively with purely abstract forms. These
forms are too imprecise for him. To limit oneself
exclusively to the imprecise is to deprive oneself of
possibilities, to exclude the purely human and thus
impoverish one’s means of expression.”70 In Kandin-
sky’s understanding the “human” element involved
an interactive, intuitive, and visceral response to an
artwork, which was more valuable than a detached
and purely retinal or cerebral one. Accordingly,
as Rose-​Carol Washton Long explains in her
seminal study of Kandinsky’s oeuvre, Kandinsky:
The Development of an Abstract Style, the artist would
systematically hide the physical aspect of objects in
his paintings through a process of “veiling and strip-
ping.” Veiling involved “placing the object where it
would not be expected or blurring its outline with
unrelated colors. The process of stripping involved
simplifying the object to a partial outline.” Employ-
ing this method, Kandinsky produced what he called
“the hidden construction,” with which he hoped to
void both the materialism of representational art and
the opacity of nonrepresentational art by providing
the spectator “with familiar key motifs.”71 In Kandin-
sky’s mind, religious imagery in particular could trig-
ger certain subconscious associations in the viewer,
allowing him or her to engage with an image on a
deeper level than mere aesthetic contemplation.
The idea that a “veiled” image could penetrate
the viewer’s consciousness much more effectively
than either a fully representational or a nonobjective
form in many ways prefigured the central tenets
of Surrealism and must have been stimulated by
Kandinsky’s active interest in psychology. Already
in On the Spiritual in Art Kandinsky devoted an
entire section to “the psychological working of
color,” and in his later position as the vice president
of the newly formed RAKhN he both established
and headed the Physico-​Psychological Department,
which staged elaborate experiments on the psycho-
logical effects of visual representation.72 Although
Kandinsky never openly espoused Freudian psy-
choanalysis in the same way that the Surrealists did,
he was nonetheless interested in some of its funda-
mental principles, and while in Munich, he would
regularly attend debates on Freud at the Café Ste-
fan.73 Subsequently, during his tenure at the RAKhN
in the early 1920s, Kandinsky closely followed—and
sometimes even participated in—a number of differ-
ent research projects that examined human psychol-
ogy and explored psychoanalytical theory. To a cer-
tain degree, Kandinsky’s concept of the “the hidden
construction” was analogous to the Freudian—and
subsequently Jungian—theory of the “archetype,”
which postulated a universally shared psychic
Kandinsky ’s Subconscious and the Spiritual 153
 repository of “mythological motifs or primordial
images” that are responsible for “the whole spiritual
heritage of mankind’s evolution.”74
More precisely, Kandinsky’s “veiled” iconic
motifs could potentially tap into millennia of accu-
mulated Christian imagery on the level of the “col-
lective unconscious,” which in turn could produce
a transformative psychic or “spiritual” experience in
his audience. Accordingly, the artist contended that
it was “not the immediately obvious, eye-​catching
type of ‘geometrical’ construction” that was “the
richest in possibilities” or “the most expressive, but
rather the hidden type that emerges unnoticed from
the picture and thus is less suited to the eye than to
the soul.”75 Here it is important to emphasize that
both the German word Seele and the Russian word
dusha are not adequately translated by the English
word “soul,” because they combine the concepts of
both “psyche” and “soul” in a single word and there-
fore carry the dual connotation of the subconscious
and the spiritual. In a letter to his biographer, Will
Grohmann, Kandinsky wrote that he wanted people
to see “what lay behind his circles and triangles,” and
he later began to describe his paintings as “concrete”
rather than “abstract.”76 Consequently, despite claim-
ing later in life that he was the founder of abstract art,
in the years 1910 to 1913 Kandinsky was still largely
wary of embracing purely nonobjective painting.
In On the Spiritual in Art he warned artists: “If, even
today, we were to begin to dissolve completely the
tie that binds us to nature, to direct our energies
toward forcible emancipation and content ourselves
exclusively with the combination of pure color and
independent form, we would create works having
the appearance of geometrical ornament, which
would—to put it crudely—be like a tie or a carpet.
Beauty of color and form (despite the assertions of
154 The Icon and the Square
pure aesthetes or naturalists, whose principal aim is
‘beauty’) is not a sufficient aim of art.”77
The Icon Reimagined
Both in Byzantium and in medieval Russia the iconic
image was believed to be the “energetico-​material
bearer” of the divine archetype rather than simply
its “sign” or “symbol.”78 This meant that the mere
depiction of the divine already ensured its spiritual
presence in the material object, which may explain
why Kandinsky continued to encode Christian—
and more specifically Russo-​Byzantine—iconog-
raphy in many of his works throughout his career.79
A close analysis of Kandinsky’s artworks shows that
he continued to rely on iconic iconography and com-
position well into the mid-1910s and even as late as
the 1930s and 1940s. As Peg Weiss has persuasively
demonstrated, the motif of Saint George—most
likely inspired by a nineteenth-​century Russian icon
in Kandinsky’s possession (fig. 74)—first appeared in
the artist’s work in the early 1900s and recurred per-
sistently throughout the various stages of his career.80
Even in Kandinsky’s tightly structured geometric
compositions of the Bauhaus period, many of the
forms seem to morph into the motif of Saint George.
For example, in his ostensibly “abstract” works such
as In the Black Square from 1923 (fig. 75) and Yellow-​
Red-​Blue from 1925 (fig. 76), the heroic attributes
of Saint George are clearly perceptible, such as his
lance, shield, and galloping horse, as well as the
writhing figure of the vanquished dragon.81 In the
former work one can distinguish a plumed helmet
in the form of a green semicircle, bisected by a series
of short black parallel lines. A curved arc in the left-​
hand side of the picture plane doubles as the neck of

the horse, whose front legs rear upward in the shape
of an angular, three-​pronged brown-​and-​blue form.
Saint George’s sharp lance darts diagonally across the
canvas as a black sliver, while the round shield in the
form of a yellow circle inscribed with a triangle occu-
pies the center of the work. The irregular trapezoidal
shape of the white support further augments the
dynamism of the rider, emphasizing his movement
from right to left.
In the Black Accompaniment of 1924 we recog-
nize the same motif of a rider and horse bounding
diagonally across the picture plane. In this case
Saint George is depicted with outflung arms atop
his valiant steed, who rears up on his hind legs, his
patterned, multicolored equine cover fluttering
Fig. 74  Saint George and the Dragon, nineteenth century. Oil
on wood, 11 1/2 × 8 3/4 in. (29.5 × 22.5 cm). Formerly in Kan-
dinsky’s personal collection, now in the Musée national d’art
moderne, Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris.
Fig. 75  Vasily Kandinsky, In the Black Square, 1923. Oil on can-
vas, 38 3/8 × 36 3/4 in. (97.5 × 93 cm). Solomon R. Guggenheim
Museum, New York. Solomon R. Guggenheim Founding
Collection, by gift (37.254).
in the wind. A miniaturized, diminished dragon
thrashes about in the lower left corner. Here the
rider’s body—or perhaps his shield—is rendered
as a brown circle inscribed with a white border. His
head is shown in profile as a pink-​and-​gray irregular
quadrilateral, punctuated by a circular white eye and
decorated with a yellow feathered headdress in the
Kandinsky ’s Subconscious and the Spiritual 155
 Fig. 76  Vasily Kandinsky, Yellow-​Red-​Blue, 1925. Oil on can-
vas, 50 1/4 × 79 1/4 in. (128 × 201.5 cm). Musée national d’art
moderne, Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris.
form of three flying triangles. A lavender triangle
forms the horse’s head, while his arched neck and
fluttering mane are depicted as a curved green line,
punctuated by a succession of short red stripes. The
horse’s erect tail flies out behind the rider in a series
of thin black lines surrounded by a white amorphous
contour. In both the Black Accompaniment and
In the Black Square the intentional arrangement of
disparate forms into an abstracted but still legible
motif of Saint George clearly manifests Kandinsky’s
reluctance to abandon figuration completely. Even
in his uncanny proto-​Surrealist, biomorphic forms
of the 1940s, such as L’élan brun, one can still detect
the motif of an armored rider on horseback in a
156 The Icon and the Square
plumed helmet and with a long lance, leaping above
a defeated serpent, who coils at bottom left.
In addition to Saint George, Kandinsky revis-
ited several other iconic motifs throughout his
career, including the Ascension of the Prophet Elijah
(fig. 77), Christ’s Entry into Jerusalem, the Resurrec-
tion, and the Last Judgment.82 As with Saint George,
Kandinsky owned a nineteenth-​century icon of
Elijah’s ascension, in which the prophet is depicted
upright in a horse-​drawn carriage that speeds across
a fiery, vermilion firmament. According to the Old
Testament account, as he departed, Elijah dropped
his mantle to his successor, Elisha; in the icon, Eli-
sha is indeed shown holding the mantle by its edge.
Fig. 77  The Fiery Ascension of the Prophet Elijah, Novgorod
icon, fifteenth century. Tempera on wood, 26 1/2 × 22 1/5 in.
(67.5 × 54 cm). Location unknown.

157
 Fig. 78  Vasily Kandinsky, All Saints i, 1911. Oil on card, 19 1/2 ×
23 1/4 in. (50 × 64.5 cm). Städtische Galerie im Lenbachhaus,
Munich.
Although Elijah is frequently represented in Byzan-
tine iconography as a standing figure with a scroll
in his hand or seated in the desert with a raven, the
Ascension of Elijah was a less common type and was
more typical of Russian icon painting. As discussed
by Washton Long and Sarabianov, Kandinsky repro-
duced this motif in several of his All Saints paintings
from 1911 (figs. 78–79), where a simplified, schematic
form of Elijah’s burning chariot drawn by three white
horses is distinctly visible in the upper left corner of
both works. However, I would like to propose that in
158 The Icon and the Square
addition to these obvious citations, Kandinsky also
used these motifs as “hidden constructions” in several
other works. For example, in Red Spot ii (fig. 80) Kan-
dinsky seems to have transplanted Elijah’s fiery, scar-
let cloud, spherical black cave, and flowing stream
into his painting after subjecting them to a system
of geometrization akin to his treatment of the Saint
George motif in Black Accompaniment and Yellow-​Red-​
Blue. A glass painting of All Saints ii from 1911 (fig. 79),
which depicts Elijah’s fiery ascension on the left-​hand
side of the image, suggests that the rounded triangular
Fig. 79  Vasily Kandinsky, All Saints ii, 1911. Tempera and oil
on glass, 12 1/4 × 18 7/8 in. (31.1 × 47.8 cm). Städtische Galerie
im Lenbachhaus, Munich.

159
 Fig. 80  Vasily Kandinsky, Red Spot ii, 1921. Oil on canvas, 54
× 71 1/6 in. (137 × 181 cm). Städtische Galerie im Lenbachhaus,
Munich.

160
form of Elijah’s fiery cloud directly evolved into the
central red “spot” of the later work. Similarly, the
angel’s curved green trumpet with a series of orange
striations seems to have migrated from the upper
register of All Saints ii to the bottom left corner of
Red Spot ii. In addition, the overall color scheme and
especially the striking rich blues, deep greens, vibrant
yellows, and passages of white and black in Red Spot ii
appear to have been directly drawn from the earlier
work. Lastly, the suspended, disembodied aspect
of Kandinsky’s abstract forms in All Saints ii, and
even more so in Red Spot ii, visually recalls the same
incorporeal quality of the spatial arrangement of the
icon, where Elijah, his chariot, and the angel all seem
to hover in space above the gilded surface of the icon.
Even the black-​and-​white patterns in the upper right
corner of Red Spot ii bring to mind the hallowed cor- Fig. 81  Vasily Kandinsky, Impression iv (Gendarme), 1911. Oil
ner of the icon, where the hand of God reaches down and tempera on canvas, 37 1/3 × 42 1/4 in. (95 × 107.5 cm). Städ-
to welcome Elijah into heaven. tische Galerie im Lenbachhaus, Munich.

Analogous to Red Spot ii, Kandinsky’s Impres-

sion iv (Gendarme) (fig. 81), which depicts a
mounted figure against a steep terrain, also seems to
structurally rely on iconic sources and in particular
Christ’s Entry into Jerusalem (fig. 82). The centrally
placed mounted figure in Kandinsky’s foreground,
the walled city in the background, the hilly land-
scape, and the crowd of onlookers all seem to be
based on the well-​known iconic representation
of Christ riding into Jerusalem astride a donkey.
Although Kandinsky obscured his source images by
rearranging certain elements of the original com-
position, blurring outlines, dissolving easily recog-
nizable forms, juxtaposing fields of unrelated color,
and bleeding different colors into each other, the
overall spatial arrangement and structure of Impres-
sion iv betrays the original iconic point of departure.
Moreover, in his own explanation of the gestation
of several of his abstract paintings, Kandinsky
stressed the importance of traditional iconography.
He explained in “Three Pictures” that he gradually
“dissolved” into “abstract” forms recognizable motifs
that he lifted from religious imagery. Describing
Composition vi, he wrote:
My starting point was the Deluge. My point of departure
was a glass-​painting that I had made more for my own satis-
faction. Here are to be found various objective forms, which
are in part amusing (I enjoyed mingling serious forms with
amusing external expressions): nudes, the Ark, animals,
palm trees, lightning, rain, etc. When the glass-​painting was
finished, there arose in me the desire to treat this theme as
the subject of a Composition, and I saw at that time fairly
clearly how I should do it. . . . In a number of sketches I

Kandinsky ’s Subconscious and the Spiritual 161


Fig. 82  Christ’s Entry into Jerusalem, fifteenth century. Tem-
pera on wood, 11 3/4 × 9 5/6 in. (30 × 25 cm). State Tretyakov
Gallery, Moscow.
dissolved the corporeal forms; in others I sought to achieve
the impression by purely abstract means.83
Similarly, in his description of the artistic process
involved in the creation of Picture with the White
Edge, Kandinsky explained:
For this picture, I made numerous designs, sketches,
and drawings. I made the first design immediately after
162 The Icon and the Square
my return from Moscow in December 1912. It was the
outcome of those recent, as always extremely powerful
impressions I had experienced in Moscow. . . . This first
design was very concise and restricted. But already in the
second design, I succeeded in “dissolving” the colors and
forms of the actions taking place in the lower right-​hand
corner. In the upper left remained the troika motif, which
I had long since harbored within me and which I had
already employed in various drawings.84
One such preparatory pencil drawing
(fig. 83) survives in the collection of the Centre
Georges Pompidou. It depicts a segment of a
painted mural, showing scenes from the Last Judg-
ment, which Kandinsky must have copied from a
church interior. Although the sketch is undated and
does not stipulate a particular location, the image
looks very similar to the seventeenth-​century Last
Judgment scenes in the St. Sophia Cathedral in
Vologda (figs. 84–85), which Kandinsky would have
seen during his ethnographic trip to northern Rus-
sia. Another possible source for Kandinsky’s sketch
is the Last Judgment fresco in the Dormition Cathe-
dral of the Moscow Kremlin, which the artist would
have known as well. In fact, such scenes were fairly
widespread in Russian Orthodox monumental dec-
oration and were typically painted on the west walls
of churches. Accordingly, Kandinsky could have
encountered them in a number of different churches
or cathedrals in the Moscow, Iaroslavl, Novgorod,
or Suzdal regions. In this sketch Kandinsky depicted
the large coils of a serpent, the prominent figure of
a prophet gesturing up to the heavens, a number of
praying and kneeling figures, and an archangel with
a spear—all of which have antecedents in monu-
mental fresco cycles. The motif of the serpent came
to feature prominently in several of Kandinsky’s
Fig. 83  Vasily Kandinsky, Last Judgment, undated. Ink and
watercolor on paper, 8 × 6 in. (20.4 × 15.2 cm). Musée natio-
nal d’art moderne, Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris.
works, such as his Composition v (fig. 86) from 1911,
where its winding, serpentine black form dominates
the entire upper half of the painting. Similarly, akin
to the figure of Saint George, the trumpeting angels
who first appear in Kandinsky’s Last Judgment and
All Saints paintings of 1911 and 1912 (figs. 78, 79, and
87) continue to populate his works well into the
1920s. Thus, for example, the left-​hand side of Yellow-​
Red-​Blue (fig. 88) is dominated by what is evidently
a schematized figure of an angel. Surrounded by a
radiant glow of warm yellow and ochre hues, the
body of the angel consists of a large yellow rectangle,
while the head is signified by a small pale-​blue rect-
angle inscribed with a white circle. The most telling
Kandinsky ’s Subconscious and the Spiritual 163
 Figs. 84 and 85  Details of Last Judgment, seventeenth-​century
fresco, St. Sophia Cathedral, Vologda.

Fig. 86 (bottom)  Vasily Kandinsky, Composition v, 1911.

Oil on canvas, 74 2/3 × 108 1/6 in. (190 × 275 cm). Private
collection.

164
feature is the narrow red triangle floating just above
the left side of the angel’s head, which clearly con-
notes a trumpet. Meanwhile, the black semicircle
dissected with a series of thin black lines on the
right-​hand side of the yellow rectangle stands in for
the angel’s wings.
Other motifs that are typically depicted in
Orthodox frescoes and icons and that Kandinsky
portrayed in several of his own works include figures
enclosed in circular nimbi (fig. 89) and the sacred
triangle used to depict the Trinity, to which Kandin-
sky referred as a “mystical” form and which became
a central conceptual paradigm in his theories on
art. Meanwhile, the nimbus—which in Orthodox
iconography symbolizes the inner radiance of a holy
figure—repeatedly appears in several of Kandinsky’s
paintings, such as Black Lines (1913), Composition vii
(1913) (fig. 90), and most prominently Concentric
Circles (1913) (fig. 91) and Several Circles (1926).
As these examples demonstrate, the sacred geom-
etries of the Orthodox canon clearly held a special
appeal for Kandinsky, who continued to employ
them as important leitmotifs throughout his career.
This does not, however, imply that Kandinsky
resisted nonfigurative art or that he continued to
cling to representation. After all, he was one of the
first modern artists in Europe to advocate the com-
plete rejection of direct references to external reality.
Rather, there is a complex duality at play in many of
Kandinsky’s works that is almost entirely lost with a
purely materialist or formalist reading.
Fig. 87  Detail of Vasily Kandinsky, All Saints i (fig. 78), 1911.
Städtische Galerie im Lenbachhaus, Munich.

Spiritual Versus Empiricist Vision Fig. 88  Detail of Vasily Kandinsky, Yellow-​Red-​Blue (fig. 76),
1925. Musée national d’art moderne, Centre Georges Pompi-
In his 1945 “Obituary and Review of an Exhibition of dou, Paris.
Kandinsky” Clement Greenberg accused the artist

Kandinsky ’s Subconscious and the Spiritual 165

 Fig. 89  Last Judgment, Novgorod icon, sixteenth century.
Tempera on wood, 63 3/4 × 45 1/6 in. (162 × 115 cm). State Tre-
tyakov Gallery, Moscow.

166

of being a “provincial” who had failed to under-
stand the essence of modern painting, namely “the
sensuous facts of its own medium.”85 According to
Greenberg, in contrast to Picasso’s Analytical Cubist
works or the vast Abstract Expressionist canvases
of Jackson Pollock, Kandinsky’s paintings failed to
acknowledge the continuous, uniform flatness of
the pictorial surface. Instead, Kandinsky ruptured
the homogeneous shallowness of Cubist space by
reintroducing a figure-​ground relationship into
his canvases and filling them with “an aggregate of
discrete shapes . . . so that the picture plane became
pocked with holes.” He thus reversed the “all-​over”
effect achieved by the School of Paris, and ultimately
Fig. 90  Vasily Kandinsky, Composition vii, 1913. Oil on can-
vas, 78 2/3 × 118 in. (200 × 300 cm). State Tretyakov Gallery,
Moscow, Russia.
negated the materiality of the canvas, reintroducing
“illusionistic depth by a use of color, line, and per-
spective that were plastically irrelevant.”86
What Greenberg considered to be neglect or
provincialism on Kandinsky’s part was in fact the
result of an alternative understanding of the role and
function of art. Kandinsky feared that emphasizing
the two-​dimensionality of the canvas would only
serve to reinforce its material—even ornamental—
effect and by extension its objecthood.87 Abstract
painting would thus be just as prone to seducing
the viewer with its base materiality as a traditional
illusionistic work: both fetishized the object and
surface values, albeit in antithetical ways. Although
Kandinsky ’s Subconscious and the Spiritual 167

Fig. 91  Vasily Kandinsky, Concentric Circles, 1913. Watercolor,
gouache, and black crayon on paper, 9 3/8 × 12 3/8 in. (24.9 ×
31.5 cm). Städtische Galerie im Lenbachhaus.
Kandinsky believed that it was important to “retain
the material surface [of the canvas]” and to “fix the
latter as a flat plane,” it was likewise crucial to create
a sense of depth by manipulating the “thinness or
thickness of a line” and superimposing “one form
upon another.” In doing so, Kandinsky hoped to
“constitute an ideal surface” and to “exploit it as a
three-​dimensional space”—a theorization of pic-
torial spatial structure that closely aligned with
Tarabukin’s ideas on the way space was conceived
and constructed in iconic representations.88 An exact
contemporary of Kandinsky, Tarabukin explained in
Philosophy of the Icon that
flatness for an icon painter is not a self-​sufficient value
but only a starting point, which to some extent deter-
mines the spatial features of his composition. An icon
painter conceptualizes the space he depicts not only
168 The Icon and the Square
three-​dimensionally but also, so to speak, “four-​
dimensionally.” . . . Nonetheless, in his composition,
he proceeds from flatness, he accepts the preconditions
of the flat plane. However, his pictorial language is not
at all two-​dimensional. . . . [By contrast,] a western
European perspectival artist, beginning with the Renais-
sance epoch, simply excludes flatness from his artistic
inventory. He constructs an illusionistic deep space in
opposition to the flat plane, destroying the impression of
two-​dimensionality.89
In other words, the icon painter represents space
schematically or symbolically, rather than illusion-
istically. Kandinsky’s practice of overlapping shapes
and depicting simultaneous planes in many of his
works is typical of iconic structure. For example,
in his glass painting of Saint George from 1911, Kan-
dinsky rendered the figure of the rider from above,
while portraying the horse in profile. Similarly,
in Impression iv (Gendarme) from the same year, the
central figure on the horse is depicted slightly from
below, while the two figures in the bottom left-​hand
corner of the canvas and the architectural structures
in the background are shown from above. Although
such pictorial techniques were employed by a num-
ber of German, French, and Russian avant-​garde
artists in this time period, in Kandinsky’s case they
may have carried additional meaning beyond purely
formal experimentation.
In her study of iconic space and medieval visu-
ality, Clemena Antonova explains that, according to
mystical theology, art has the potential to allow the
beholder to “imitate,” or approach the experience
of, “divine vision.”90 More specifically, she con-
tends that the use of simultaneous planes in icons
assumes an omnipresent universal “eye” that sees all
aspects of an object at all times. This vision would
be comparable to that of “a timelessly eternal God
to whom all moments in time exist simultaneously
[and who] should be able to see all points in space
simultaneously as well.”91 A similar idea is articulated
by Bychkov, who explains that “the [iconic] repre-
sentation is a certain synthetic image of [an object]
which emerges in the process of its comprehensive
examination. Living perception—it is precisely this
that constitutes the life of such a synthetic image,
ever changing, pulsating, sparkling, turning its vari-
ous facets.”92 Unlike the momentary, static viewpoint
dictated by Renaissance art or nineteenth-​century
naturalism, the multiple viewpoints employed
in the icon presuppose an active viewer, moving
through space in time.93 Thus, for example, in Andrei
Rublev’s Old Testament Trinity (fig. 1) the small
platforms under the angels’ feet are depicted along
two planes different from that of the central table,
which is slightly tilted upward. Rather than follow
the diagonal delineated by these platforms, the ver-
tical sides of the chairs occupy yet another spatial
register. The feet of the two side angels are simulta-
neously portrayed from the side and from the front
in a physically impossible configuration. Finally, the
architectural structure in the upper left corner of the
icon is at once shown from the side and from below,
with the hanging canopy flipping up and revealing
yet another viewpoint, which seems at odds with the
rest of the composition. These multiple simultane-
ous viewpoints allow the beholder to experience—
at least temporarily—a mobile, disembodied, the-
ophanic perception, which “transcends the human
constraints of space and time.”94
As Cornelia Tsakiridou notes, medieval Byz-
antine theologians such as Saint Symeon the New
Theologian (949–1022) and Saint Gregory Pala-
mas (1296–1359) believed that theophany—or the
revelation of God in the world—was “a reality to
which all beings are attuned.” She explains:
Palamas borrows the Areopagite notion of “spiritual sen-
sation (pneumatiken aisthesin)” that is, sensation infused
with the Holy Spirit. He describes it in terms of “partici-
pation (methexis),” “reception (lepsis)” and “divinization
(ektheosis).”
. . . Those who sense spiritually do so because their
senses have come alive in grace and are looking at the
world with new eyes. “Ektheosis” implies divinization from
within: one becomes a God by reaching out for God. . . .
. . . Objects are typically positioned in our visual field
according to proximity, distance, sequence and succes-
sion. . . . In theophany this order is inverted: “even things
far off are accessible to the eyes, and the future is shown as
already existing (os onta deiknytai).” . . .
. . . According to Palamas, theophany de-​materializes
objects . . . [they] are seen through each other and on
an equal scale—perhaps without the usual divisions of
foreground and background that order our perception of
things. Vision becomes panoramic, and perspectives mul-
tiply. Tensions that usually result from the arrangement of
objects in space are eliminated. The relationships between
solids and voids that define space and help orientate per-
ception are suspended. Simple, ethereal and evanescent
forms appear as integral expressions of the luminous field
that envelops them.95
Palamite theology and hesychast spirituality not
only were highly influential in Byzantium but also
made a considerable impact on fourteenth- and
fifteenth-​century Russian religious thought and
artistic practice, finding direct expression in the
works of Theophanes the Greek and Andrei Rublev,
among others.96 Consequently, in both form and
iconography, images such as Theophanes’s Holy
Kandinsky ’s Subconscious and the Spiritual 169
 Trinity (Hospitality of Abraham) (1374) and Rublev’s
Old Testament Trinity aspire to convey a theophanic
reality in material form, which is meant to effect a
spiritual transformation in the viewer and to help
him or her attain theosis, or union with God. Iconic
representations were thus direct articulations of
Orthodox theology in visual form, and not merely
its extensions or appendages.
Although Kandinsky was familiar with current
Byzantine scholarship, it is unlikely that he would
have been aware of the sophisticated theological
nuances of iconic space and form outlined above.97
However, he nonetheless seems already to have intu-
ited in 1911 that iconic spatial structure demanded
a different kind of perception from its viewers:
a disembodied, antimaterialist, and more “spiri-
tual” vision. Kandinsky’s abstraction is therefore
an inversion of Greenbergian theory, wherein an
artwork’s abstract surface announces its own mate-
riality. On the contrary, Kandinsky’s compositions
were meant to suggest depth and to create a sense of
unbounded, dynamic, transcendental space, which
in its turn aimed to stimulate a more contemplative,
self-​reflecting, and “spiritual” perception.
Kandinsky’s Art and Theories
Within the Context of the Russian
Religious Renaissance
As a latecomer to art—Kandinsky only took up
painting at the age of thirty—the artist was nearly
twenty years older than the majority of his fellow
Russian avant-​gardists such as Natalia Goncharova,
Mikhail Larionov, Alexander Rodchenko, Kazimir
Malevich, El Lissitzky, and Vladimir Tatlin. As such,
in his mentality and worldview, Kandinsky was
170 The Icon and the Square
much closer to the Symbolist generation of the 1890s
and early 1900s than to the young artists and theo-
rists who came to dominate the Soviet art scene in
the late 1910s and early 1920s. Accordingly, his rejec-
tion of nineteenth-​century positivism, his interest in
spirituality, and his utopian belief that art could heal
social ills corresponded more closely to the ideas
of older thinkers such as Vladimir Soloviev, Nikolai
Berdiaev, Petr Struve, Semen Frank, Mikhail Ger-
shenzon, and Sergei Bulgakov. In the first decade of
the twentieth century the publications and activities
of these theorists and philosophers came to form
what later became known as the Russian Religious
Renaissance.98
The spring of 1909 saw the publication of a col-
lection of their essays under the title Vekhi, or Land-
marks, which almost immediately became a major
literary and political event.99 In this work the authors
forcefully criticized the positivist, materialist, and
largely anti-​Christian stance of the Russian intelli-
gentsia and called for a change in attitudes toward
Christianity in general, and to the Orthodox Church
in particular.100 “Our task was to denounce the spiri-
tual narrow-​mindedness, ideological deficiency, and
dullness of the traditional outlook,” Semen Frank
wrote in his biography of Petr Struve.101 Rejecting
the Marxist stance of the previous generation, these
self-​proclaimed religious humanists advocated a
new direction for Russian revolutionary liberalism,
one that would abandon class antagonism, political
violence, and sacrificial nihilism in favor of a new
social cohesion, spiritual idealism, and religious
philosophy. In particular, the Vekhi authors indicted
the liberal intelligentsia for borrowing “the empty
shell of atheistic socialism from the West, without
its important Christian substratum or heritage of
law, order, and social morality.”102 In particular,
they believed it was the irresponsible radicalism
of the leftist intelligentsia that had led to the tragic
events of Bloody Sunday and the failed Revolution
of 1905. As a result, the innocent lives of the lower
classes had been callously sacrificed for the sake of
abstract concepts such as “freedom,” “equality,” and
“democracy.” Berdiaev recalled in 1935 that with the
publication of Vekhi “a battle was declared in support
of the individual spirit, inner life and creativity, and
their independence from social utilitarianism. At the
same time this was a struggle for individualism and
the integrity of the creative life of the individual,
which had been suppressed by socialism.”103 Within
a year the book had gone through five editions and
had elicited hundreds of reviews, commentaries,
and analyses. Although some commentators saw
the Vekhi group as reactionary, the authors vehe-
mently espoused social and political change, but
they believed that the best way to achieve this was
through a return to conciliatory Christian traditions
and widespread moral and spiritual reforms. Kan-
dinsky, who had just spent much of the autumn of
1910 in Moscow, was clearly aware of the Vekhi group
and their philosophy, not least because he had a
personal connection to Sergei Bulgakov, with whom
he had worked and studied at the Law Faculty in
Moscow University. About eight months after his
Russian trip, Kandinsky wrote to Franz Marc that
the Blaue Reiter Almanac had to include material on
the religious tendencies in Russia: “We will include
some reports on the Russian religious movement in
which all classes participate. For this I have engaged
my former colleague Professor Bulgakov (Moscow
political economist, one of the greatest experts on
religious life).”104 Although the reports were not
published in the final version of the Blaue Reiter
Almanac, it is clear that Kandinsky considered these
new religious and political debates to be an import-
ant marker of the philosophical and cultural climate
of those years, a climate that has yet to be fully
explored by scholars in relation to Kandinsky’s own
art and theories.
One thinker who is rarely discussed in relation
to Kandinsky is Bulgakov’s close friend, colleague,
and fellow theologian Pavel Florensky. Although
Kandinsky never overtly mentioned Florensky in
his writing, the latter’s views on art, spirituality, and
modernity often closely corresponded to Kandin-
sky’s own ideas. In fact, as a philosopher, scientist,
and cultural theorist, Florensky shared many of
Kandinsky’s interests and pursuits. As Nicoletta
Misler observes, their personal libraries contained
many of the same literary, philosophical, and scien-
tific texts, such as Johann Karl Friedrich Zöllner’s
Transcendental Physics and So-​Called Philosophy of
1878, Henri Bergson’s Introduction to Metaphysics of
1903, Rudolph Steiner’s Theosophy: An Introduction
to the Supersensible Knowledge of the World and the
Destination of Man of 1904, as well as writings by the
chemist and spiritualist Alexander Butlerov.105 Much
like Kandinsky, Florensky was also very interested
in the psychophysiological effects of visual repre-
sentation, the synthesis of different art forms, and
the possibility of a transcendental Gesamtkunstwerk,
or total work of art. Moreover, in the early 1910s,
Florensky—akin to Kandinsky—associated with the
younger Russian avant-​garde artists such as Vladimir
Tatlin, Liubov Popova, and Nadezhda Udaltsova
but later opposed what he saw as the lifeless and
mechanical forms of Constructivist and Produc-
tivist art, preferring organic, transcendent, “living”
artworks.106 Above all, in contrast to the younger
generation of avant-​garde artists, both Kandinsky
and Florensky zealously believed in the spiritual,
Kandinsky ’s Subconscious and the Spiritual 171
 prophetic role of artistic representation in addition
to its aesthetic and utilitarian possibilities.
It is highly probable that the two men were
personally acquainted, since they not only moved
in some of the same artistic and social circles but
also were formally affiliated with a number of early
Soviet cultural, educational, and research institu-
tions, such as the RAKhN and the VKhUTEMAS,
where they both taught a number of courses in the
years 1920 to 1924.107 In the summer of 1921 Kandin-
sky established and headed the Psychophysiological
Department at RAKhN, which aimed to research the
psychological and physical effects of aesthetic expe-
rience. Florensky was likewise associated with this
institution for several years from 1921 onward, where
he worked with art historian Alexander Larionov on
compiling the Symbolarium, a theoretical dictionary
of universal symbols.108
However, despite these parallel activities and
shared institutional affiliations, no known docu-
ments record an actual meeting between the two
men. Consequently, their level of interaction and
intellectual exchange remains in the realm of conjec-
ture. Moreover, because from the 1930s onward the
Soviet regime systematically suppressed most theo-
logical, religious, and philosophical texts, much of
the rich discourse that informed Kandinsky’s early
artistic production remains unknown to a broader
international audience. Thus, for example, many
of Florensky’s theories and ideas were only redis-
covered in the 1960s, and the first English-​language
anthology of Florensky’s art-​historical essays was
published in 2002. As a result, Florensky’s uncon-
ventional views on art history and his alternative
formulation of art’s role in modernity have been
almost entirely left out of modernist historiography
and unfortunately still remain largely neglected to
172 The Icon and the Square
this day. In addition, Kandinsky’s emigration from
Soviet Russia at the end of 1921 and the subsequent
Stalinist crackdown on all abstract art ensured that
many of Kandinsky’s pre- and postrevolutionary
activities in Russia were habitually omitted from
the historical record.109 As a result, the theoretical
and aesthetic convergence between Kandinsky
as artist and Florensky as scholar has been largely
unexplored, despite several scholars’ having noted
striking similarities in their artistic philosophies and
broader worldview.110 However, perhaps the most
significant ideological point of contact between
Florensky and Kandinsky is their unapologetically
“medieval,” sacralized conception of art, which radi-
cally departed from the ideas of both the Construc-
tivist and Productivist avant-​garde and the proto–
Socialist Realists.
As demonstrated earlier, Kandinsky often
aligned his own artistic production with that of
medieval Europe and Russia, and Florensky also
identified himself as a “man of the Middle Ages”
who supported a “medieval worldview.”111 In fact,
just as Kandinsky adopted the motif of Saint George
as one of his most prominent iconographic symbols,
Florensky too seemed to associate himself with
the figure of the medieval knight, as evidenced by
two book designs produced for him by his friends
and VKhUTEMAS colleagues Aleksei Sidorov and
Vladimir Favorksy. Both images depict a knight in
medieval armor with an arrow piercing his heart.112
For Florensky, as much as for Kandinsky, the Middle
Ages symbolized a pure, organic, cohesive culture
where aesthetics were structured by a collective reli-
gious impetus and images were expected to reflect
a transcendental and objective truth. Florensky’s
cultural philosophy in particular divided all artistic
production into two antithetical categories, each one
governed by an opposing set of principles: empirical
versus spiritual knowledge, rational versus intuitive
cognition, retinal versus spiritual vision, linear ver-
sus reverse perspective, and realist (in the transcen-
dental sense) versus illusionistic painting. As Doug-
las Greenfield astutely observes in his excellent essay
“Florensky and the Binocular Body,” the theologian
believed that “all cultures alternate between what he
called medieval and Renaissance worldviews.” The
former category included the Homeric Age, Hellenic
culture, and the European Middle Ages, which were
all “characterized by organicity, objectivity, concrete-
ness and cohesion.”113 The latter encompassed the
Minoan Age, the Archaic Age, the European Renais-
sance and Enlightenment, and finally the materialist,
positivist spirit of the nineteenth century, which had
persisted to Florensky’s own day.
In his “Reverse Perspective” essay, Florensky
outlined a materialist, positivist teleology, which,
according to him, had begun with the development
of “scientific” linear perspective by Renaissance art-
ists, whose “bitter Kantian fruits” continued to grow
and flourish in the ensuing centuries, culminating in
the Productivist and Constructivist experiments of
the Soviet avant-​garde.114 In Florensky’s theory, the
single point of view dictated by linear perspective
was predicated on a false, artificial, monocular vision
driven by the rationalist, empiricist desire to control
and structure nature:
The single “point of view” in perspective is an attempt by
the individual consciousness to tear itself away from real-
ity—from the body, from the second eye.115
We see with two eyes, not one, that is, from two points of
view at once, not one as perspective projection requires.
Therefore, the image we form during real sight is not the
one abstractly posited in manuals on perspective but
instead one that necessarily represents the combination of
at least two separate, noncoincident perspectives.116
Accordingly, Florensky argued that all art based on
artificial, man-​made rules was inherently “false” and
therefore could not be categorized as representation.
Such art did not attempt to “represent things but
instead to re-​create them.”117 As such, naturalistic
painters and Suprematists alike were “makers of
machines, not artistic creations,” who sacrificed all
possibility of transcendence to “volume and thing-
ness.”118 Florensky elaborated: “There’s absolutely
no point in enquiring how well or adequately these
machines fulfil their function in reality. Such a test
is no more an exigency than a testing of the techni-
cal quality of mechanical machines invented by an
artist. Good or bad, a machine is always a machine
and not a representation.”119 By contrast, Florensky
believed that medieval images were closer to organic
human vision—which is synthetic in nature—pre-
cisely because they depicted objects from multiple
viewpoints. Although Florensky generally opposed
nonobjective art and frequently criticized avant-​
garde artists, many of his ideas closely paralleled
Kandinsky’s views on art making and the central,
life-​affirming role of the artist. In fact, given that
Kandinsky’s artworks during the early 1910s were
neither illusionistic nor fully abstract and were
frequently structurally based on iconic sources,
they actually formed an apropos visual corollary to
Florensky’s theories on what constituted “true art”
in late modernity. Even in his language, Florensky
recalls Kandinsky’s terminology, particularly with
reference to “vibrations,” which was one of the art-
ist’s key concepts. In “Reverse Perspective” Floren-
sky observes that
Kandinsky ’s Subconscious and the Spiritual 173
 the artist should and can depict his idea of a house, but
he absolutely cannot transfer the house itself to canvas.
He grasps this life of his idea, whether it be a house or a
human face, by taking from the various parts of the idea
the brightest, the most expressive of its elements, and
instead of a momentary psychic fireworks it provides a
motionless mosaic of its single, most expressive moments.
During contemplation of the picture, the viewer’s eye,
passing step by step across these characteristic features,
reproduces in the spirit what is now an image extended
in time and duration of a scintillating, pulsating idea,
but now more intense and more cohesive than an image
deriving from the thing itself, for now the vivid moments
observed at different times are presented in their pure
state, already condensed, and don’t require an expenditure
of psychic effort in smelting the clinkers out of it. As on
the incised cylinder of a phonograph, the sharp point of
the clearest vision slips along the picture’s lines and sur-
faces with their notches, and in each spot arouses in the
viewer corresponding vibrations. And these vibrations
constitute the purpose of the work of art.120
In his “Content and Form” essay Kandinsky writes in
an analogous vein:
The inner element, taken in isolation, is the emotion in
the soul of the artist that causes a corresponding vibration
(in material terms, like the note of one musical instrument
that causes the corresponding note on another instrument
to vibrate in sympathy) in the soul of another person, the
receiver. . . .
In art, form is invariably determined by content.
And only that form is correct which expresses, material-
izes its corresponding content. All other considerations,
in particular, whether the chosen form corresponds to
what is called “nature,” i.e. external nature, are inessential
and damaging, in that they detract from the sole purpose
174 The Icon and the Square
of form—the embodiment of its content. Form is the
material expression of abstract content. Thus, only its
author can fully assess the caliber of a work of art; only he
is capable of seeing whether and to what extent the form
he has devised corresponds to that content which impe-
riously demands embodiment of its content. . . . Thus in
essence, the form of a work of art is determined according
to internal necessity.121
In addition, Kandinsky’s concept of the “hidden
construction” corresponded to Florensky’s under-
standing of the picture plane as a dynamic “field” in
which “the viewer and the viewed interact in recip-
rocal correlation, constituting a dynamic unity.”122
For Florensky the two-​dimensionality of the pic-
torial surface was crucial because it constituted an
autonomous virtual plane that acted as an ideal
“screen” connecting the viewer to a higher reality.
This idea originated with the medieval Russian
iconostasis, which was understood to function as a
porous surface connecting the terrestrial space of
man with the celestial realm of God, Christ, and the
saints. The surface of the image was therefore not a
“static,” motionless entity but rather a dynamic locus
of triangulation between the artist, the viewer, and
a spiritual reality. By rejecting the pictorial surface,
the Constructivists and Productivists had limited
themselves to “the thing as such,” eschewing any
possibility of transcendence and producing works
of “artistic nihilism,” on which “humanity cannot be
sustained for long.”123
According to Florensky, in their positivist,
materialist approach, these artists had reduced art
to simple engineering and as such were continuing
the rationalist project of the Renaissance perspec-
tival artist.124 Adopting the anti-​Western polemics
of the Vekhi authors, Florensky argued that the
analytical-​scientific approach to art making was a
foreign imposition on Russian artistic conscious-
ness that dated back to the times of Peter the Great
and was antithetical to the collective, indigenous
living tradition of icon painting. Douglas Greenfield
persuasively demonstrates how Florensky mapped
this conceptual metaphor of a sterile, rationalist,
perspectival West versus a creative, prolific, antiper-
spectival East onto the cities of St. Petersburg and
Moscow respectively:
The Westernizing Tsar Peter I stands and surveys the
swamp and forest upon which he will lay the geometric
and rectilinear grid of his capital city. . . . Western engi-
neers and architects designed Peter’s city according to the
norms of classical perspective and symmetry.
Indeed, St. Petersburg is a kind of Alberti’s window,
with its strict 2:1 or 4:1 ratios of street width to building
height and its Western façades. It is as if this “tsar and
lawgiver,” as Florensky suggestively calls the artist-​
perspectivist, projected a map on the landscape from his
detached, fixed vantage on the shore.125
By contrast, Florensky viewed Moscow—and espe-
cially the Trinity Lavra of St. Sergius, which was
located just outside of the city—as the historical
birthplace of Russia’s spiritual, intellectual, and artis-
tic culture:
The Lavra is the fulfillment or the manifestation of the
Russian idea. . . . For it is only here, at the noumenal center
of Russia, that you live in the capital of Russian culture. . . .
Russian icon-​painting continues the thread of its
tradition in the icon-​painting school of the Lavra. Russian
architecture over the course of many centuries has made
its best contributions here, in the Lavra, so that the Lavra
is a genuine historical museum of Russian architecture.
Russian book-​making, Russian literature, in general Rus-
sian learning, all received their main nourishment from
the educational activity concentrated in and around the
Lavra.126
While one city represented the deadening, formal-
izing spirit of rationalism, the other held the key to
Russia’s cultural and spiritual regeneration. Green-
field thus astutely concludes that while “Peter, the
perspectivist[,] sees not living reality but a grid. . . .
Florensky’s icon painter, wielding an icon-​ax, breaks
a window back to the Slavic East, to the City of God
seen in Orthodox revelation.”127
It is telling that Kandinsky, just like Florensky,
saw Moscow—rather than St. Petersburg—as his
“spiritual tuning fork.”128 Not only did he paint sev-
eral paintings in homage to the city, such as Lady in
Moscow (1912), Kleine Freuden (1913), and Moscow i
(1916), but he also credited it with some of his most
formative intellectual and aesthetic experiences:129
My mother is a Muscovite by birth, and combines quali-
ties that for me are the embodiment of Moscow: external,
striking, serious, and severe beauty through and through,
well-​bred simplicity, inexhaustible energy, and a unique
accord between [a sense of] tradition and genuine free-
dom of thought, in which pronounced nervousness,
impressive, majestic tranquility, and heroic self-​control
are interwoven. In short: “white-​stone,” “gold-​crowned,”
“Mother Moscow” in human guise. Moscow: the duality,
the complexity, the extreme agitation, the conflict, and
the confusion that mark its external appearance and in
the end constitute a unified, individual countenance; the
same qualities in its inner life, incomprehensible to the
unfamiliar eye (hence the many contradictory opinions
of Moscow held by foreigners); and yet, just as unique
and, in the end, wholly unified—I regard this entire city
Kandinsky ’s Subconscious and the Spiritual 175
 of Moscow, both its internal and external aspect, as the
origin of my artistic ambitions. It is the tuning fork for my
painting. I have a feeling that it was always so. And that in
time thanks to my external, formal progress, I have simply
painted, and am still painting, this same “model” with ever
greater expressiveness, in more perfect form, more in its
essentials.130
More specifically, Kandinsky claimed that it was
“in the Moscow churches and especially in the
Cathedral of the Assumption” that he first experi-
enced the synesthetic possibilities of artistic expres-
sion. According to him, the experience of being
inside a medieval church was equivalent to inhabit-
ing a multisensorial, three-​dimensional artwork, and
he continued to explore the psycho-​physiological
effects of synesthesia on human perception both at
the INKhUK and the RAKhN. In the former, Kan-
dinsky developed and headed the Section of Monu-
mental Art, which investigated the interrelationships
between different art forms, and their simultaneous
impact as a single totalizing aesthetic environment.
Florensky, in his turn, argued that the Orthodox
liturgy created the ultimate synesthetic experience
by combining images, movement, light, sound,
and smell. He believed that the monastery was the
age-​old Gesamtkunstwerk from which contempo-
rary avant-​garde artists could learn. In his essays
“The Trinity–St. Sergius Lavra and Russia” and
“The Church Ritual as a Synthesis of the Arts,” Flo-
rensky envisioned the Trinity Lavra of St. Sergius as
a sacred locus of a renewed medieval culture, a Third
Rome or the promised Jerusalem, just as it had once
been in the medieval period. Here a community of
artists and scholars would come together to oversee
“a truly miraculous and historic attempt to bring into
being that ultimate synthesis of the arts for which . . .
176 The Icon and the Square
modern aestheticians yearn.” This “House of Saint
Sergius,” as Florensky called it, would function
as “a type of experimental center, a laboratory for
the study of fundamental problems in contempo-
rary aesthetics, a kind of modern Athens,” where
theoretical discourse and artistic practice would
be united in order to address some of modernity’s
most pressing philosophical, spiritual, and moral
problems.131 Several years earlier, Kandinsky had
articulated a similar idea, claiming that “the great
epoch of the Spiritual, which is already beginning,
or, in embryonic form, began already yesterday
amidst the apparent victory of materialism, provides
and will provide the soil in which this monumental
work of art [Gesamtkunstwerk] must come to frui-
tion. In every realm of the spirit, values are reviewed
as if in preparation for one of the greatest battles
against materialism. . . . And this is happening also in
one of the greatest realms of the spirit, that of pre-​
eternal and eternal art.”132 In his aspiration for the
Gesamtkunstwerk, and with his redemptive message
and “medieval” vision, Kandinsky would undoubt-
edly have received a warm welcome in Florensky’s
“House of Saint Sergius” had the Soviet Revolution
not taken the course that it did.
Indeed, given his orientation toward spiri-
tuality and transcendentalism, in addition to his
messianic approach to art making, it is not sur-
prising that Kandinsky was quickly rejected by the
younger generation of avant-​garde artists such as
Alexander Rodchenko, El Lissitzky, Vladimir Tat-
lin, Liubov Popova, and Varvara Stepanova, who
considered his “mysticism” and Symbolist leanings
to be out of place at both the INKhUK and the
VKhUTEMAS. The Constructivists and Produc-
tivists advocated a new materialist, rationalist, and
impersonal approach to artistic production and
vehemently opposed any artists or intellectuals who
still upheld prerevolutionary ideals in their theo-
retical and aesthetic programs. In 1920 Rodchenko
famously declared that “art is a branch of mathe-
matics, like all sciences . . . [and] the future will not
construct monasteries for the priests, prophets and
minstrels of art.”133 Rodchenko’s wife, Varvara Ste-
panova, noted in her diary in the same year that she,
together with several of her INKhUK colleagues,
had decided to openly antagonize Kandinsky by
launching “a schism” and “founding a special group
for objective analysis, from which Kandinsky [. . .]
is running away, like the devil from incense.”134
As Nicoletta Misler observes, analogous attacks by
the same group of artists were aimed at the “mystic”
Florensky, who was repeatedly accused of “under-
mining the integrity of VKhUTEMAS and causing
it to ‘collapse.’ ”135 One such example is the 1923 state-
ment published by the Productivists in the journal
Lef, which indirectly criticized Florensky and his
followers for their “mystical Productivism”: “A curi-
ous subgroup of ‘mystical Productivists’ has formed
among the ‘decorative’ painters (Pavlinov, Favorsky
and the priest Florensky). This intimate company
has declared war on all other groups and claims to
be the only authentic group of Productivist art. They
go around the Department of Polygraphy, filling the
heads of students with the following kind of prob-
lem: ‘The spiritual meaning of the images of letters
of the alphabet’ or ‘The struggle of white and black
spaces in graphics.’ ”136 As these polemics clearly
demonstrate, Kandinsky’s and Florensky’s “spiritual”
ethos and aesthetic theories, rather than being
marginal or outdated, must have garnered a large
enough following in the late teens and early twenties
to elicit such virulent attacks from artistic groupings
who considered the popularity of their ideas a threat
to their own endeavors.
Nonetheless, for the most part, modernist his-
toriography has tended to privilege the “vanguard”
radicalism of the Constructivists and Productivists
over these alternative and ostensibly “backward-​
looking” approaches to modern art. The persistence
of Greenbergian formalist methodology well into
the second half of the twentieth century, as well as
the insistent secularism of modernist discourse,
meant that these alternative conceptualizations of
art’s role in modernity were continually margin-
alized for several decades. In the present chapter I
have attempted to complicate this dominant nar-
rative by demonstrating that many of Kandinsky’s
ideas and concepts evolved out of a broader phil-
osophical and religious movement that had swept
through Russia in the first decade of the twentieth
century and continued to persist well into the
1920s. In Kandinsky’s case, as much as in Vrubel’s,
revivalism, experimentation, historicism, and avant-​
gardism were not mutually exclusive categories but
were, on the contrary, mutually generative, challeng-
ing the prevailing assumption that the most signif-
icant modernists were those who most effectively
liberated themselves from the past and its sacred and
spiritual traditions.
Kandinsky ’s Subconscious and the Spiritual 177
5
TOWARD A NEW ICON
Kazimir Malevich, Vladimir Tatlin, and the Cult of Nonobjectivity
On December 19, 1915, the museum-​going public
of St. Petersburg (called Petrograd between 1914
and 1924) was scandalized by the artworks on dis-
play at 0.10: The Last Futurist Exhibition of Painting,
which was held at the private “Art Bureau” of Nade-
zhda Dobychina.1 One commentator wrote that
“to describe these absurdities would be ridiculous.
Suffice it to say that the shamelessness of the exhib-
itors knows no bounds.”2 Another review claimed
that the artists and organizers would undoubtedly
“come to a sticky end. On the walls . . . hang the lim-
its of human morals, for here begin pillage, murder,
banditry, and the road to the penal colony.”3 Such
extreme levels of critical indignation testify to the
unprecedented novelty of the artworks on display
at 0.10. This show would subsequently come to be
regarded as “one of the ten most important exhibi-
tions of the twentieth century.”4 Not only did it alter
the course of modern art in Russia, but it inaugu-
rated an entirely new artistic consciousness—one
that would come to influence several generations of
artists throughout the world.
By the same token, as Vasilii Rakitin has astutely
observed, as much as it heralded a new epoch, 0.10
also marked “the end of an era.”5 Taking place just
two years after the 1913 Exhibition of Ancient Russian
Art, the 0.10 show self-​consciously engaged with
many of the aesthetic and thematic concerns that
had dominated the artistic landscape of prerevo-
lutionary Russia and was therefore appropriately
named the “last” Futurist exhibition.6 If the 1913 exhi-
bition had challenged the public to see Russia’s artis-
tic past in an entirely new light, then 0.10 proposed
a wholly novel set of representational paradigms for
Russia’s artistic future. It is also worth remembering
that less than a kilometer away from Dobychina’s
art gallery, the Russian Museum had in the previous
year opened its newly reinstalled medieval-​art collec-
tion, which was described by various commentators
as a “temple of novel aesthetic revelations for [con-
temporary] artists,” from which they should “draw
inspiration” to “produce new creations.”7
It would appear that a number of the young
artists at 0.10 had heeded such critical calls and
179

Fig. 92  Kazimir Malevich, Black Square, 1915. Oil on canvas,
31 1/4 × 31 1/4 in. (79.5 × 79.5 cm). State Tretyakov Gallery,
Moscow.
consciously adopted a dialogical stance toward
the iconic tradition and the discourse surrounding
it. Embracing the injunctions of theorists such as
Punin and Tarabukin, they used the icon as an onto-
logical and philosophical model for reimagining “the
concept of art” and moving beyond purely “formal
qualities” to reflect the full “depth and breadth of . . .
[a novel] worldview.”8 Thus, for example, Kazimir
Malevich notoriously hung his epoch-​making Black
Square (fig. 92) across the corner of the art gallery,
directly under the ceiling, parodying the sacred
placement of icons in traditional Russian homes
(fig. 93). In his review of the exhibition, Benois
immediately understood Malevich’s “creation” to be
180 The Icon and the Square
“undoubtedly . . . [an] icon.”9 Here the critic implied
a conceptual parallel rather than a formal resem-
blance, since the Black Square had—by analogy—
assumed the icon’s consummate totality as the “zero
of form.” Moreover, Malevich’s subsequent copies
of the Black Square, as well as its virulent reproduc-
tion in miniature on plates, cups, saucers, clothes,
and architectural models, only served to further its
claims to iconicity as a “sacred” prototype.
Ironically, the same notable gesture on the part
of Vladimir Tatlin seemed to be largely overlooked
both by the general public and the critical establish-
ment, with the exception of Punin, a longtime friend
and ardent supporter of the artist. Tatlin’s Corner
Counter-​Reliefs (figs. 94 and 95) were not understood
as “spatial icons,” and only Punin argued that Tatlin’s
paradigmatic shift into three-​dimensionality was
deeply indebted to the iconic tradition, both in its
espousal of material heterogeneity and in its con-
ceptual shift from pictorial to real space.10 Instead of
being aesthetic meditations on or representations of
some perceived reality, Tatlin’s Corner Counter-​Reliefs
remained autonomous and abstract “presentations”
of different materials in the same way that icons were
physical manifestations of a metaphysical reality,
rather than simply symbolic or illusionistic interpre-
tations of that reality.
By contrast, after 1917 a new generation of art-
ists began to move away from such sustained inves-
tigations into the structure, essence, and meaning
of the individual artwork under the conditions of
modernity in favor of more pragmatic, industrial,
and “productivist” concerns, which would ulti-
mately dominate the Soviet art world throughout
the 1920s. Accordingly, this final chapter examines
0.10: The Last Futurist Exhibition of Painting as the
limit case study of the Russo-​Byzantine revival,
where the icon was both literally and figuratively
deployed in the service of a conceptual refiguration
of the modernist idiom. More specifically, it ana-
lyzes how the historical discourse on icons inflected
the production and reception of Vladimir Tatlin’s
Corner Counter-​Reliefs and Kazimir Malevich’s
Black Square, generating a rich plurality of both
intended and unintended meanings. Indeed, theirs
were perhaps the most famous avant-​garde itera-
tions of the icon among a multiplicity of different
responses in an ongoing dialogue that had begun
several decades earlier. What is especially striking
and sets their artworks apart is the way in which
they renegotiated the spiritual and the secular,
the sacred and the profane, and the objective and
subjective. As Bissera Pent­cheva and Aleksei Lidov
have persuasively demonstrated in their recent
publications on Byzantine and medieval Russian
art, icons were not “flat and immobile . . . frozen
images and discrete objects”; they were instead
orchestrators of “shifting phenomenal effects” and
totalizing “visual spectacles” that had the power
Fig. 93  Posledniaia futuristicheskaia vystavka kartin 0,10
(nol'-desiat') (Last Futurist Exhibition of Paintings 0.10 [Zero-​
Ten]), Khudozhestvennoe Buro, Petrograd, December 1915–
January 1916. Photograph by the studio of Karl Bulla. Private
collection.
Fig. 94  Vladimir Tatlin, Corner Counter-​Relief, 1914–15. Iron,
aluminum, and paint, dimensions unknown. Location
unknown. On display at the Posledniaia futuristicheskaia
vystavka kartin 0,10 (nol'-desiat') (Last Futurist Exhibition of
Paintings 0.10 [Zero-​Ten]), Khudozhestvennoe Buro, Petro-
grad, December 1915–Janaury 1916. Photograph by the studio
of Karl Bulla.
to “transform the viewer from observer to partici-
pant, communing with the divine.”11 As such, icons
constituted “image-​paradigms” that “enabled the
structuring of space” and triggered a range of “lit-
erary and symbolic meanings and associations” in
their viewers.12 Pentcheva provocatively concludes
that “Byzantine artistic production rises as a preco-
ciously modern phenomenon . . . [w]here an object
is staged, where the interaction between subject and
object transforms the work into animate presence.”13
Toward a New Icon 181

Fig. 95  Vladimir Tatlin, Corner Counter-​Relief, 1914–15.
Wood, iron, metal cable, etc., dimensions unknown. Loca-
tion unknown. On display at the Posledniaia futuristicheskaia
vystavka kartin 0,10 (nol’- desiat’) (Last Futurist Exhibition of
Paintings 0.10 [Zero-​Ten]), Khudozhestvennoe Buro, Petro-
grad, December 1915–Janaury 1916. Photograph by the studio
of Karl Bulla.
Accordingly, in this final chapter, I argue that it was
precisely the Byzantine phenomenon of “simulated
presence” and “image as performance” that Tatlin
and Malevich harnessed so successfully in their own
“iconic” artworks.14
182 The Icon and the Square
What’s in a Corner?—The Historical
Conflict Between Malevich and Tatlin
As has often been observed, the 0.10 exhibition
marked the emergence of two major artistic move-
ments and modern “isms”: Suprematism and Con-
structivism.15 To a certain degree the exhibition can
even be understood as the personal “battleground”
between Tatlin and Malevich and their competing
concepts of the modern artwork.16 Such ideas were
already clearly articulated by a number of the art-
ists’ contemporaries. The Productivist theoretician
Boris Arvatov contrasted Tatlin’s “materialism” with
Malevich’s “idealism,” while Punin claimed that Tat-
lin and Malevich shared “a particular destiny”: “for
as long as I remember them, they always shared the
world between the two of them: the earth, the sky,
and interplanetary space, everywhere establishing
their sphere of influence. Tatlin usually claimed
the Earth for himself, trying to push Malevich out
into the sky for his objectlessness; Malevich, while
not giving up his claims on the planets, would not
give up the Earth, fairly supposing that it is also a
planet, and therefore can be objectless. . . . It was a
permanent conflict and a perpetual competition.”17
Similarly, Ivan Kliun recalled that Malevich and
Tatlin “were irreconcilable enemies because Tatlin
was also vain [like Malevich] and could not tolerate
being in second place.”18 Although the two artists
had previously exhibited together on several sep-
arate occasions and seemed to have been on com-
paratively collegial terms before the 0.10 exhibition,
their rivalry in the days leading up to and during 0.10
were marked by rising suspicion and animosity.19
Vera Pestel reported that Tatlin kept the blinds in
his studio closed at all times: “[E]ven during the day
[he] doesn’t raise them, because he fears Malevich,
who can cross Griboedov Lane and see [his Corner
Counter-​Reliefs] in the window.”20 According to Tat-
lin’s biographer, Anatolii Strigalev, on one occasion
the artist even went so far as to destroy a number
of his own works to prevent Malevich from seeing
them.21 Malevich, in turn, tried to discredit Tatlin’s
work and to undermine the originality of his Corner
Counter-​Reliefs by claiming that they were entirely
derivative of Cubism:
To distinguish his material selections from Picasso’s selec-
tions, Tatlin called his “contre-​reliefs.” But in this instance,
the name does not alter the matter for us, since it has
produced no real changes in the construction; on the con-
trary, these selections proved to be so close to Picasso’s
work, that not everyone can distinguish between Picas-
so’s work and Tatlin’s. Comparing Picasso’s “relief ” with
Tatlin’s “contre-​reliefs” we see that they have a common
structure, and that likewise the texture and contrasting
comparisons are not vastly different in sharpness. Picasso’s
“relief ” is sharper in its variety of contrasting elements,
and, on the whole, more correct. The “contre-​relief ” of
Tatlin is more plane, although the aim was space and
contrast.22
If we are to accept contemporary accounts, it would
appear that tensions between the two artists came
to such a head right before the opening of 0.10 that
Tatlin resolutely refused to exhibit in the same room
as Malevich and their mutual hostility ultimately
erupted into a legendary fistfight.23 Several scholars
have suggested that this conflict may have been
precipitated by Malevich hanging his Black Square
in the corner, rather than on the walls, of the art
gallery—an installation concept first developed
by Tatlin for his Corner Counter-​Reliefs.24 Indeed,
other than the Black Square, none of Malevich’s
other paintings at 0.10 was presented in this way.
By contrast, the corner hang was integral to Tatlin’s
reliefs and was implicit in their formal structure and
nomenclature.
What was so significant about the corner dis-
play, and why did it trigger such a—literally—vio-
lent confrontation between the two artists? I pro-
pose that at stake was the creation of a new artistic
paradigm, the lionized “avant-​garde icon,” where
the Russo-​Byzantine representational tradition was
deliberately restaged as a uniquely national and,
more importantly, an entirely “original” nonobjec-
tive idiom. I intentionally place the word “original”
in quotation marks, since by 1915 the politics of
originality had reached a fever pitch in the Russian
art world. As Jane Sharp points out, the rapid suc-
cession of “isms” in the preceding years had gen-
erated an intense “anxiety of anticipation” among
Russian artists.25 Above all, the likes of Tatlin and
Malevich wanted to avoid being labeled “derivative”
of their western European counterparts—in other
words, as being merely mechanical imitators of the
French modern masters. Both artists were fully
conversant with the latest Parisian trends and had
experimented with Fauvist and Cubist visual vocab-
ularies in their own respective oeuvres. The icon,
by contrast, furnished them with an “authentic”
starting point, a uniquely “Russian” representational
ancestor, which differentiated Malevich and Tatlin
from Picasso and Matisse.26 As a result, an explicit
connection to and citation of the icon at 0.10 allowed
Malevich and Tatlin to claim an alternative, “indig-
enous” genealogy for themselves and to legitimate
their respective artistic projects as genuinely “new”
and “unprecedented” in an art world “marked by
competition, stylistic eclecticism, and real social and
economic disenfranchisement.”27 That is, the corner
Toward a New Icon 183
 display proved to be a crucial polemical signifier of
both “Russianness” and “originality.”28
In his seminal 1927 publication, The Russian
Icon, Nikodim Kondakov traced the history of the
krasnyi ugol—the “sacred” or “beautiful” corner
where icons were displayed—in domestic interiors
to the sixteenth century:
The multiplication of icons was broadly connected with
the custom of having in every house an oratory, generally
several glazed kiots filled with icons and set in the so-​
called “fair corner” (krasnyi ugol) of a reception or a din-
ing room. Richer people would have a separate room for
the oratory and in it the icons would be arranged in regu-
lar tiers with shelves for lamps to burn before them. . . .
. . . the devotional icon in private hands . . . came to
stand not merely as a symbol or sign, but a kind of house-
hold protector and defender against evil spirits and the
invasion of the Devil . . . against fiery conflagration, the
figure of Elias the Prophet or his Ascent in a Fiery Chariot
or else of Our Lady of the Burning Bush; against murrain
among cattle, the icon of S. Blaise (Vlasi); from sickness,
S. Panteleimon; from sudden death, S. Christopher; there
were also icons to give protection against fever, against
pestilential winds, against catching cold, against poison-
ous snakes, and beasts of prey, and the like.29
Sherwin Simmons proposes a much earlier origin
for this practice than the sixteenth century, dating
it all the way back to the sixth-​century Byzantine
legend of the miraculous healing of King Abgar of
Edessa by the Mandylion, an image of Christ “not
made by human hands” and the archetype for all
iconic representations.30 According to one version
of this story, the king was suffering from leprosy but
was instantly healed upon coming into contact with
a washcloth on which Christ had wiped his face and
184 The Icon and the Square
which had retained an imprint of his divine visage.
As a symbol of his gratitude and newfound Chris-
tian faith, Abgar replaced the ancient pagan idols in
his city with the Mandylion, which was prominently
hung in a corner of the city walls.31 The genesis and
precise genealogy of this centuries-​old custom not-
withstanding, what is important is that to most early
twentieth-​century viewers at 0.10—including Alex-
ander Benois—an artwork prominently displayed
in a corner of a room immediately connoted an icon
or sacred image. Furthermore, in the context of the
ongoing aesthetic debates that had accompanied
the Second All-​Russian Congress of Artists in 1912,
the Exhibition of Ancient Russian Art in 1913, and the
opening of the medieval-​art sections at the Russian
Museum in 1914, Malevich’s and Tatlin’s radical rein-
vention of the icon in 1915 placed them at the van-
guard of the “new artistic consciousness in Russia”
that had been heralded by Sergei Makovsky just two
years earlier.
In fact, both Tatlin and Malevich had expressed
an interest in iconic representation from the begin-
ning of their respective artistic careers.32 A few
surviving drawings made by Malevich’s colleagues
at the Fedor Rerberg Art Institute, such as Nikolai
Goloshchapov’s Caricature of Kazimir Malevich,
a “Rare Bird” (1908–9) and Lef Zak’s Parody of a
Kazimir Malevich Painting (1908–9) (fig. 96), satirize
the artist’s sustained preoccupation with religious
subject matter during his student years in Moscow.33
The first sketch portrays Malevich in profile with a
halo around his head, while the second depicts five
haloed figures seated behind a long table with two
additional winged figures standing on either side in
what is a clear reference to the Last Supper. In addi-
tion, between 1907 and 1908 Malevich executed a
series of fresco designs on a number of religious

themes, such as Triumph of Heaven (1907), Prayer
(1907), Assumption of a Saint (1908), and Entomb-
ment (1908).34 To this day no commissions or proj-
ects have come to light that would have required
Malevich to produce studies for a fresco cycle. Much
like Vrubel’s designs for the Cathedral of St. Vlad-
imir, Malevich’s works appear to have been “pure
creation[s],” inspired by the multiple restoration
and revivalist projects that were taking place around
him in Kiev and its environs during his youth.35 Here
the young Malevich would have seen the recently
restored mosaics and frescoes of the St. Sophia
Cathedral, the St. Cyril Church, and the Monastery
of St. Michael of the Golden Domes, as well as the
newly constructed Cathedral of St. Vladimir. In his
autobiography the artist recalled that he was greatly
attracted to the city’s art and culture and that it had
made a lasting impact on his artistic development.36
He even recounted a childhood episode where
Fig. 96  Lef Zak, Parody of a Kazimir Malevich Painting, 1908–9.
Ink and watercolor on paper, 2 3/4 × 6 1/4 in. (7 × 16 cm).
Album of Fedor Rerberg’s School. Russian State Archive of
Literature and Art, Moscow.
he went to observe “the most famous artists in
St. Petersburg” painting “icons in the cathedral.”37
Typically referred to as The Yellow Series, Male­
vich’s fresco cycle departs significantly from the
stylistic and iconographic canon of traditional
Orthodox representation and ultimately has more in
common with turn-​of-​the-​century Russian Symbol-
ism than with medieval Russo-​Byzantine art. None-
theless, Malevich still incorporated certain iconic
features into his works. For example, he used tem-
pera and gouache instead of oil paint; and in their
predominantly ochre and cinnabar palette, these
paintings recall the gold backgrounds and earthen
tones of mosaics and portable panel icons. Similarly,
in Malevich’s Self-​Portrait (1907) (fig. 97) from the
same series, the artist included a vertical inscription
of his name in red lettering—a clear reference to the
signage on icons. Moreover, as Myroslava Mudrak
points out, on the level of subject matter, this fresco
Toward a New Icon 185

Fig. 97  Kazimir Malevich, Self-​Portrait (Sketch for a Fresco
Painting), 1907. Oil on cardboard, 27 1/4 × 27 1/2 in. (69.3 × 70
cm). State Russian Museum, St. Petersburg.
cycle mainly depicts the supernatural and other-
worldly, forming “a cohesive content addressing the
discrete themes of creation, sacrifice, resurrection,
and redemption.” As such, it emphatically departs
from Malevich’s earlier foray into “Impressionism
and its temporal relation to the natural world,” thus
laying the foundation for his subsequent rejection of
external reality in favor of “timeless” and nonobjec-
tive Suprematism.38
Conversely, Tatlin rarely painted religious
subjects and instead incorporated the formal lan-
guage of icons into his art. Before he enrolled in art
school and embarked on a career as a professional
186 The Icon and the Square
artist, Tatlin first trained as an apprentice in an icon-​
painting workshop.39 However, even before this
formative experience, Tatlin—like Malevich—had
already gained significant exposure to Byzantine
and medieval Russian art as a result of his childhood
proximity to Kiev and his subsequent travels as a
sailor. At age eighteen Tatlin had left his family home
in Kharkov for the port of Odessa, where he enrolled
in the Marine College of Odessa as a cadet sailor.
He then traveled for several months throughout the
eastern and southern Mediterranean on the Grand
Duchess Maria Nikolaevna, visiting Bulgaria, Greece,
Italy, Morocco, Egypt, Syria, and Turkey, where he
would have had the chance to see a large number of
different Byzantine monuments. It is not accidental
that in his autobiography he remarked: “[B]esides
giving me a wage this [trip] was an education for me
as an artist.”40
The pictorial lessons he gleaned from these early
encounters with Byzantine and medieval Russian art
evidently had a significant and lasting impact on his
subsequent artistic production. For example, two
of his best-​known early works from 1911, Fishmonger
and Sailor (fig. 98), draw on iconic imagery in both
their palette and compositional structure. Although
often described as “proto-” or “quasi-​Cubist,”
these works bear a stronger resemblance to Russo-​
Byzantine stylistic conventions than to contempo-
rary Cubism. In fact, Christina Lodder asserts that
“neither of these is a Cubist work. Despite the use
of perspectival distortions and a tendency toward
the analysis of form into facets and planes, these
are curvilinear, as is the treatment of mass. These
qualities, together with the powerful monumentality
of these paintings, point to native sources . . . [and
are] strongly reminiscent of icon-​painting.”41 Indeed,
Tatlin’s distinctive use of highlights in the Sailor
radically departs from the arbitrary distribution of
chiaroscuro effects in contemporary Cubist painting.
Instead of the playful juxtaposition of light and dark
areas, characteristic of Cubist shading, Tatlin indi-
cated light schematically and entirely avoided the
use of cast shadows on the sailor’s face. For example,
on the sailor’s neck, immediately below the chin,
is a prominent triangular white highlight where one
would normally expect to see a shadow.
As already discussed in the third chapter, the
lack of directional lighting was a characteristic fea-
ture of iconic representation.42 With few exceptions,
Byzantine and medieval Russian icons, mosaics, and
frescoes rarely portrayed cast shadows (see figs. 1, 7,
27, 28, 30, 41, 43, 77, and 99). Although Tatlin adopted
this iconic technique, he nonetheless adapted it in
a distinctly modernist way by leaving breaks in the
paint application and allowing the white support
of the canvas to become part of the overall design,
thus reversing the roles of negative and positive Fig. 98  Vladimir Tatlin, Sailor, 1911. Tempera on canvas,
28 1/8 × 28 1/8 in. (71.5 × 71.5 cm). State Russian Museum,
space. Tatlin’s approach recalls Vrubel’s treatment of St. Petersburg.
Mamontov’s dickey in the Portrait of Savva Mamon-
tov (fig. 48) and inverts the pictorial methods of the
Russo-​Byzantine tradition, where the artist built the placed bust of the sailor occupies the entire height
colors up from the darkest ones at the bottom to the and width of the canvas, and together with the two
lightest ones at the top, leaving pure white pigment diminutive figures in the background, it evokes
for the last layer.43 This departure from medieval the formal structure typically found in Byzantine
archetypes is significant because it illustrates that and Russian icons of the Mandylion and bust-​size
Tatlin, much like Vrubel, Kandinsky, and Malevich, depictions of saints and martyrs. In iconic represen-
did not merely replicate iconic stylistic effects but tations, disparities in scale usually signify differences
transformed them in the service of modernist paint- in the spiritual importance of the depicted figures
ing. As Strigalev argues, Tatlin’s stance toward iconic rather than spatial recession. For instance, in the
art was not “passive” or “imitative” but “active and famous twelfth-​century Byzantine icon The Heavenly
regenerative, dialogical and polemical.”44 Ladder of Saint John Climacus (fig. 99), which shows
The Sailor’s square format, saturated colors, and a procession of monks ascending a diagonal ladder
shallow background space likewise point to Tatlin’s into heaven, the more important monks are larger in
familiarity with iconic formal devices. The centrally size than the others, even though they all occupy the

Toward a New Icon 187


Fig. 99  The Heavenly Ladder of Saint John Climacus, twelfth
century. Tempera and gold on wood panel, 16 1/4 × 11 3/4 × 3/4
in. (41.3 × 29.9 × 2.1 cm). Holy Monastery of St. Catherine,
Mount Sinai, Egypt.
same spatial register. Tatlin’s deliberate placement
of the two tiny side figures immediately next to the
dominant head of the sailor seems consciously to
play with these iconic conventions. Moreover, Tat-
lin—much like Malevich in his Yellow Series—used
tempera in this work, which he applied in relatively
188 The Icon and the Square
concentrated and unmodulated patches of color,
particularly on the face and neck of the main figure.
The juxtaposition of the distinct blue of the sailor’s
collar with the rich ochre of the skin recalls the sep-
aration of colors typically practiced by icon painters,
necessitated by the individual preparation of differ-
ent pigments. Lastly, the emphatic arcs in the cor-
ners of the image, which are continued in the curved
bodies of the flanking figures, also create a circular
configuration reminiscent of a halo. Even the writing
on the sailor’s hat playfully invokes the inscriptions
on icons that identify different holy persons.
Tatlin’s two studies of female nudes from 1913
similarly resemble iconic imagery and radically
depart from Picasso’s Analytical Cubist works of 1911
and 1912. Although relatively flattened, Tatlin’s paint-
ings still maintain a clear allusion to a foreground
and background space against which he portrays
easily legible human figures. For example, in Female
Model (Nude 1: Composition Based on a Female Nude)
(1913) (fig. 100), the model sits on top of a red cube-​
shaped support against a deep blue background.
A distinct horizon line separates the horizontal floor
and the vertical wall. Likewise, in Female Model
(Nude 2) (1913), the woman is shown sitting on top
of a rectangular white platform in front of a red back-
ground. By contrast, in Picasso’s Portrait of Daniel-​
Henry Kahnweiler (1910) and Ma Jolie (1911), the
human figures are virtually indistinguishable from
the dynamic, pulsating background forms, which
transform the entire surface of the painting into a
single, continuous grid. Akin to those in the Fish-
monger and Sailor, the human figures in these nude
studies are predominantly composed of elongated
arcs and curvilinear lines instead of the fragmented,
angular, geometric forms in Cubism. Much as in his
1911 works, Tatlin’s use of a deep cinnabar for the
Fig. 100  Vladimir Tatlin, Female Model (Nude 1: Composition
Based on a Female Nude), 1913. Oil on canvas, 56 1/4 × 42 1/2 in.
(143 × 108 cm). State Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow.

189

Fig. 101  Vladimir Tatlin, Seated Figure, 1913. Charcoal on
paper, 17 × 10 1/8 in. (43 × 26 cm). Leaf 95 from Tatlin’s sketch-
book of drawings. Russian State Archive of Literature and
Art, Moscow.
models’ skin, as well as the prominent, expressive
white highlights on their bodies, recalls the pictorial
techniques of medieval frescoes and panel icons,
with which he was evidently intimately familiar.
Here it is important to note that by 1913 Tatlin
would most certainly have been acquainted with
Picasso’s recent works from Sergei Shchukin’s col-
lection and from photographic reproductions in a
number of different art journals, such as Zolotoe runo
and Iskusstvo. In fact, a series of Tatlin’s pencil sketches
from 1913–14 reveal his awareness of and interest in
190 The Icon and the Square
Analytical Cubism. In a study such as Seated Figure
(fig. 101) Tatlin subjected the human body to a grid-​
like geometrization, reminiscent of Cubist pictorial
structure. However, as Magdalena Dabrowski cau-
tions, he does not seem to have fully assimilated
the Cubist system into his own visual vocabulary:
“[W]hile Picasso . . . [emphasizes] the transparency
of the planes composing the figure, Tatlin simply
superimposes a grid over an otherwise realistically
rendered female nude. . . . Even when the geometry of
the figure is reduced to a linear grid, the differences
between Tatlin and Picasso are crucial. In Picasso, the
grid is structural; in Tatlin, only superficial. Tatlin’s
composition remains a geometrized figure with the
linear scaffolding playing an accessorial, not a struc-
tural, role.”45 Furthermore, Tatlin’s explicit explora-
tions of the Cubist idiom seem to have been limited to
his private sketchbooks and were not manifestly inte-
grated into any of his major works from 1911 to 1913.
Indeed, it appears that despite his obvious familiarity
with Cubism, Tatlin preferred to invoke the iconic
tradition in his early paintings in order to avoid the
damning accusations of derivativeness, belatedness,
and mindless foreign importation—a gambit that
clearly bore fruit in the form of Punin’s provocatively
titled 1921 monograph, Tatlin (Against Cubism). Just as
Vrubel’s enthusiasts had argued that the artist’s expe-
riences in the Church of St. Cyril had facilitated his
evolution toward a distinctly modernist style akin to,
but independent of, Paul Cézanne’s, so Tatlin’s advo-
cates would go on to make analogous claims, main-
taining that his engagement with the iconic tradition
had led him to develop a visual vocabulary that con-
verged with but did not duplicate Pablo Picasso’s and
Georges Braque’s Cubist techniques. Although rhe-
torically compelling, such interpretations were them-
selves the products of the Russo-​Byzantine revival
and should therefore not be accepted uncritically.
As discussed in the first two chapters, many period
critics and theorists such as Punin and Tarabukin
were actively involved in the reevaluation of Russo-​
Byzantine art and were deeply invested in relating it
to modernist aesthetics and the historical avant-​garde.
The Russo-​Byzantine revival was thus intimately
linked with the production of national art-​historical
narratives even after the Bolshevik Revolution and
well into the 1920s, testifying to the pervasiveness and
longevity of its discursive reach.
Tatlin Against Cubism
In the years immediately preceding his move into
three-​dimensional construction, Tatlin associated
closely with Mikhail Larionov and Natalia Gon-
charova and exhibited fifty of his works in their
Donkey’s Tail Exhibition, which was held in the Mos-
cow School of Painting, Sculpture, and Architecture
in March of 1912. However, his collaboration with
the Donkey’s Tail group was relatively short-​lived.
As already discussed in the preceding chapter, Lar-
ionov and Goncharova were primarily interested in
the deliberate confrontation of different aesthetic
systems and in the intentional blurring of boundaries
between “high” and “low” art forms, “refined” and
“primitive” subject matter, and ancient and modern
representational traditions. In his booklet Neoprim-
itivism: Its Theory, Its Potential, Its Achievements,
Larionov’s and Goncharova’s friend and fellow artist
Alexander Shevchenko (1883–1948) outlined the
Neoprimitivist philosophy in the following terms:
We are striving to seek new paths for our art, but we do
not reject the old completely, and of its previous forms,
we recognize above all—the primitive, the magic fable of
the old East. . . .
Primitive art forms—icons, lubki, trays, signboards,
fabrics of the East, etc.—these are specimens of genuine
value and painterly beauty. . . .
The word Neoprimitivism on the one hand testifies to
our point of departure, and on the other—with its prefix,
neo—reminds us also of its involvement in the painterly
traditions of our age.46
By contrast, as Dmitrii Sarabianov contends,
“Tatlin in no way regarded Primitivism as his chief
artistic goal” and instead allied himself, “not to the
popular variant of Russian icon painting, as did
Goncharova and Larionov, but to the classical one.”47
A comparison between Tatlin’s Sailor (fig. 98) and
Goncharova’s Savior in Majesty (1917–18) (fig. 102)
makes this difference obvious. Goncharova’s sat-
urated kaleidoscopic painting, with its energetic
brushwork, vibrant colors, and bold patterns, is a
far cry both from the traditional palette of icons and
from Tatlin’s more muted image. Unlike the stratified
spatial structure of the Sailor, with its distinct back-
ground and foreground, Goncharova’s Savior is much
more aggressive in asserting its flatness. Although
Christ’s throne and bent legs suggest some depth, the
stylized floral motifs and white-​on-​blue designs push
the background forward to the surface of the image,
destabilizing the figure-​ground relationship. Gon-
charova’s emphasis on decorative qualities and pro-
nounced patterning is closer to the visual syntax of
Matisse’s paintings like the Red Dining Room (1908),
Still Life with Blue Tablecloth (1909), Spanish Still Life
(1910) (fig. 103), and Seville Still Life (1910–11) than to
medieval icon painting.48 These similarities were dis-
cerned by a number of period commentators in both
Russia and France, often to Goncharova’s detriment,
Toward a New Icon 191

Fig. 102  Natalia Goncharova, The Savior in Majesty, 1917–18.
Gouache on paper, 22 1/5 × 15 1/3 in. (56.5 × 39 cm). State Tre-
tyakov Gallery, Moscow. © ADAGP, Paris, 2017.
who was accused of simply “imitating” the “omelet”
of the “young nihilists” on “the cliffs of Montmar-
tre.”49 In addition, as Sharp writes, “a number of
[Goncharova’s] religious works added a dimension of
192 The Icon and the Square
sacrilege” because “they combined stylistic features
and iconographical elements from the Western tradi-
tion with the Orthodox Russo-​Byzantine” and drew
on a multiplicity of ancient, modernist, and popular
sources to produce subversive hybrids that were “pro-
foundly disruptive” both visually and conceptually.50
Thus, for example, while the pleats of fabric around
the neck of Tatlin’s sailor recall the painterly folds in
medieval representations, the shard-​like highlights
on Christ’s robes in Goncharova’s work evoke the
graphic aesthetic of the lubok, or popular print. Gon-
charova’s self-​conscious stylizations and deforma-
tions have an almost parodic quality. For instance, the
representations of the four apostles, thickly outlined
and swathed in pink cotton clouds, verge on carica-
ture and clearly draw on the “low art” of chromolith-
ographed broadsheets, the krasnushka (or peasant
icon), and urban signboards, rather than on the “high
art” of the “elite” fourteenth-​century Novgorod icons
that were already enshrined at that point in a num-
ber of national museum collections as exemplars of
Russia’s artistic genius—a narrative that Goncharova
evidently aimed to subvert in her own art.
Tatlin’s engagement with the icon was thus
much closer to the iconophile stance of Kandinsky,
although he was less interested in the spiritual or
transcendental nature of iconic representations
and more in their formal structure. This ana-
lytical approach is clearly manifested in Tatlin’s
Composition-​Analysis from 1913 (fig. 104)—a work
that was undoubtedly inspired by the Exhibition of
Ancient Russian Art held in the same year.51 Tatlin was
in Moscow for the duration of the show and would
certainly have had ample opportunity to view it on
more than one occasion. He would have also been
equally aware of the lively discourse it generated in
contemporary art criticism. As its title announces,

Composition-​Analysis was not an independent and
spontaneous composition but rather an intentional
deconstruction of the underlying geometry and
proportions of an unidentified image of the Virgin
and Child. Although there has been considerable
scholarly disagreement about the exact source of
Tatlin’s work, it would seem—given the immediately
recognizable tilt of the Virgin’s head in the center
of the composition, which is typical of the umilenie,
or “tenderness,” iconographic type frequently found
in Byzantine and medieval Russian art—that Tatlin
Fig. 103  Henri Matisse, Spanish Still Life, 1910. Oil on can-
vas, 33 3/4 × 45 3/4 in. (85.9 × 116.3 cm). The State Hermitage
Museum, St. Petersburg. © Succession H. Matisse.
based his image on an icon of the Virgin and Child.52
Larissa Zhadova suggests the late fourteenth-​century
Virgin of the Don, typically attributed to Theophanes
the Greek, as a potential source.53 However, the more
famous twelfth-​century icon of the Virgin of Vlad-
imir or Andrei Rublev’s fifteenth-​century copy of it
(see fig. 28) is another possibility.
In this sketch Tatlin entirely eliminated all illu-
sionistic references and associations, reducing the
image to its most basic geometrical structure. The
Virgin’s body is represented by a large empty triangle,
Toward a New Icon 193

Fig. 104  Vladimir Tatlin, Composition-​Analysis, 1913. Pencil,
gouache, and watercolor on paper, 19 1/4 × 13 in. (49 × 33 cm).
Private collection.
while a black semicircle attached to an ochre semi-​
rectangular shape indicates her head. The Christ
Child is likewise reduced to a series of interrelated
curves and a spherical form, sliced through by a
gray-​and-​blue line, representing the head and eyes
respectively. The bleeding of the watercolor in a
194 The Icon and the Square
loosely circular formation intimates a halo around
the two figures, while the overlaying of different
shapes on top of each other, as well as the different
tonal intensities and partial shading, contributes to
a sense of volume and depth. However, the image
simultaneously asserts its two-​dimensionality with
wide expanses of white paper left unpainted at the
very center of the composition. Despite the reductive
minimalism of Tatlin’s work, the structural coherence
of the original icon remains intact, so that the image
is still identifiable as a representation of a mother
embracing her child. Replacing the expressive, paint-
erly quality of Tatlin’s earlier works, Composition-​
Analysis signals a new analytical and systematic
approach to art making, one that clearly owes a debt
to Analytical Cubism in its deconstructive focus.
Significantly, Tatlin began to work on his first
Painterly Reliefs in 1913 as well. As Charlotte Douglas
and Anatolii Strigalev have convincingly argued,
Tatlin would already have been familiar with some of
Picasso’s three-​dimensional assemblages, such as the
Guitar and Bottle of Bass (1912–13) and Still Life with
Violin (1912–13), even before his fateful visit to Picas-
so’s Parisian studio in 1914; both of these works were
reproduced in the 1913 issue of Les soirées de Paris.54
Cobbled together from cardboard, paper, string,
sheet metal, and wire, these works unquestionably
played an important role in Tatlin’s own move into
real space.55 It is telling that in 1928, as part of an
official government survey, Tatlin listed Picasso as
one of three artists who had exerted the strongest
impact on his own artistic development. The other
two were Mikhail Larionov and Aleksei Afanasiev
(1850–1920) (who will be discussed in more detail
later).56 However, despite this direct attribution of
influence to the Spanish artist, it appears that Tatlin
nevertheless chose to locate the initial gestation
of his “constructive idea” in the Russo-​Byzantine
tradition rather than in Cubist sculpture and assem-
blage—a strategic realignment that allowed him
to assert priority over and independence from the
French modernist canon.57 Thus, according to the
architect Berthold Lubetkin, Tatlin maintained that
“if it wasn’t for the icons, [he] should have remained
preoccupied with water-​drips, sponges, rags and
aquarelles.”58 Consequently, both Tatlin’s contempo-
raries and subsequent scholars have tended to read
in the Painterly Reliefs explicit references to icons.
For example, Lubetkin linked Tatlin’s new creative
direction to the 1913 Exhibition of Ancient Russian
Art, reporting that “inspired by the icons” Tatlin had
“started to drill his boards, mounting on them rings,
screws, bells, marking and screwing the background,
gluing abacus beads, mirrors, tinsels, and arriving
at a shimmering dangling and sonorous composi-
tion.”59 Similarly, Sergei Isakov asserted that “Tatlin’s
reliefs . . . showed him to be an independent, mature
artist and not an imitator of Picasso,” while Vsevolod
Meyerhold contended that it was “the art of the
icon [that] introduced Tatlin to the concept of the Fig. 105  Vladimir Tatlin, Painterly Relief, 1913–14. Wood, oil,
and metal sheet, 24 3/4 × 20 7/8 in. (63 × 53 cm). State Tretya-
culture of materials, to the palpability of materials,
kov Gallery, Moscow.
in the play of their surfaces and volumes.”60
Andrew Spira continues this line of argument
in his Avant-​Garde Icon, writing that Tatlin’s reliefs there was a direct link between the 1913 Exhibition
were “constructed from iconic materials” and were of Ancient Russian Art and the genesis of Tatlin’s
accordingly “strongly evocative” of icons. Describ- theory and practice of “constructiveness.”61 Similarly,
ing Tatlin’s Painterly Relief (1913–14) (fig. 105), Spira in his reading of Tatlin’s Month of May (1916), Spira
notes that one of the encrusted metallic sheets points out that the back of the wooden panel is held
on top of the wooden-​panel support is engraved together by shponki, or wooden beams traditionally
with “undecipherable ornament” reminiscent of attached to the backs of icons to prevent the wooden
text, evoking the Greek and Slavonic lettering on support from cracking and warping and thus stabi-
icons. Spira even goes so far as to read the forms of lize the iconic surface. Noting that it was completely
Composition-​Analysis in the spatial arrangement of unnecessary for Tatlin to use the shponki for rein-
the Painterly Relief’s metallic elements, implying that forcing his Painterly Reliefs, Spira concludes that

Toward a New Icon 195

 “it is highly unlikely that he would have made this
gesture . . . without wanting its iconic resemblance to
be communicated.”62
In her seminal article on faktura, Maria Gough
articulately analyzes the triangulating synergies
between Picasso, Tatlin, and the iconic tradition,
maintaining that Picasso’s 1912 and 1913 sculptures
“had the most profound impact” on Tatlin precisely
because they had powerfully reinforced and even
legitimated Tatlin’s own nascent experimentation
with three-​dimensional assemblage. This closely par-
allels the catalyzing effects that Matisse’s comments
on icons had exerted on Kandinsky’s own exper-
imentation with the Russo-​Byzantine idiom and
throws into relief Aleksei Grishchenko’s prescient
claim that there was a “strange” resonance between
“twentieth-​century Paris . . . [and] medieval Mus-
covy.”63 Gough suggests that, before his trip to Paris,
Tatlin may have read Vladimir Markov’s contem-
poraneously written book-​length study of faktura,
Principles of Creativity in the Plastic Arts, in which he
compared the “authentic” and robust heterogeneity
of the icon’s faktura with the “monotonous” homog-
enization, or “leveling”—both literal and meta-
phoric—produced by the internationalization of
European styles, beginning with neoclassicism and
ending with contemporary artistic movements such
as Cubism and Futurism.64 Gough hypothesizes that
Markov’s argumentation may have encouraged Tat-
lin to situate his own work within a Russo-​Byzantine
genealogy, not least because of the superiority that
Markov attributed to the icon’s polysemic hybridity,
in contrast to Picasso’s ultimate subordination of
“real” materials to a mimetic “pictorial” logic:
[Icons] are decorated with venchik haloes and oplech’ye
neckpieces, basma repoussé metal sheets, and inlays.
196 The Icon and the Square
The painting itself contains gems, metals, etc. So all of this
destroys our modern conception of painting.
. . . With the noise of colour, sound of materials and
collation of faktura we summon people to beauty, religion
and God.
. . . The real world is introduced into [the icon’s]
creative work only through the collation and inlay of real,
effable objects. It is as if there is a struggle between two
worlds here: the inner, non-​real world and our outer, tan-
gible one. These two worlds overlap here. . . .
Picasso . . . [and] several Futurists . . . offer a rather
bold collation of materials. . . . However, in their collation
of such materials these artists are governed only by the
desire to call forth various real associations. They are not
concerned with any plastic concept, and hence it is impos-
sible to compare their collations with those of plastic
quality that we have inherited from the ancients.65
Here Markov emphasizes a crucial difference
between the modern use of material heterogene-
ity and that of the ancient iconic tradition. While
Picasso and the Futurists consciously altered and
transformed the identities of their found objects in
the service of illusory representation, the Russo-​
Byzantine tradition rejected “virtuality” in favor of
simulating divine “presence” through “real” forms in
“real space.”66 Gough thus concludes that “the icon
was an important precedent not only for Tatlin’s
material heterogeneity, but also for his pursuit of
an indexical mode of production.”67 In contrast to
Picasso’s “semiotic” and “metaphorical” approach
to art making, Tatlin adopted a practice of “mate-
rialogical determination.” In other words, Tatlin
only marginally manipulated his materials, trying
to preserve their natural properties as much as pos-
sible and developing a mode of production that was
“indexical”:
As the American philosopher Charles Sanders Peirce
defined it, the “index” is a sign . . . wherein there exists a
“real” or “physical” connection between the sign and its
referent. . . .
Although the icon certainly belongs to another
category of sign within Peirce’s tripartite division (that of
the “icon” wherein the sign resembles its referent, as in,
for example, portraits and onomatopoeias) . . . it never-
theless could be said to share in the indexical modality of
vanguard faktura given the indexical relationship posited
between the icon and its prototype in the theological writ-
ings of the Orthodox Church.68
As already mentioned, one of the most vocal
period advocates of Tatlin’s iconic genealogy
was Nikolai Punin. In his 1921 monograph, Tatlin
(Against Cubism), Punin argued that Tatlin’s artis-
tic innovations were rooted in the ancient iconic
tradition and not in contemporary European art.69
According to Punin, Tatlin’s reliefs, on both theoret-
ical and formal levels, radically departed from the
precedent set by Parisian Cubism and especially by
the works of Picasso. Punin believed that the latter
exemplified the final stage of the western European
tradition of painting, which stressed individualism,
aestheticism, and subjectivity, while Tatlin’s works
replaced these qualities with material, objective,
and “realist” considerations directly inherited from
the Russo-​Byzantine tradition. As discussed in the
first chapter, this interpretation was closely aligned
with the contemporary ideas of Pavel Florensky,
who also emphasized the importance of the icon’s
“real” embodied presence in contrast to the “false”
virtual reality of the two-​dimensional illusionistic
image. According to Florensky, oil painting as a
whole expressed the worldview of the Roman Cath-
olic Renaissance; engraving reflected the ethos of
Protestant rationalism; and icon painting was the
product of Orthodox metaphysics.70 Consequently,
the Painterly Reliefs’ emphasis on their own “object-
hood,” rather than on pictorial representation,
ensured that they were understood by many of Tat-
lin’s contemporaries as secular, modernist reconfigu-
rations of an essentially Orthodox image philosophy.
Accordingly, Punin provocatively concluded
that Picasso’s Cubist works marked the end of an
artistic era that had begun with the Italian Renais-
sance, while Tatlin’s reliefs signaled the dawn of a
new epoch in art:
Picasso cannot be accepted as the dawn of a new era . . .
[he] is on the other side of the divide. . . .
The old school of painting, concluded by Picasso,
accepted form as an element presenting us with color and
space. We postulate the primacy of color (material) and
space (volume), whose interaction produces form. . . .
The French school of painting is dying within its own
tradition. . . .
[The Cubists] confined themselves to the same set of
illusions that limited the Naturalists. The sense of depth in
Picasso’s canvases is by no means less illusory than in the
paintings of a Peredvizhnik. . . .
It became necessary to seek an exit not only from the
canvas but from the whole tradition of European art. This
way out has been found by those artists strong enough to
study dimensions in real spatial relationships. This prin-
ciple underlay Tatlin’s first Counter-​Reliefs. . . .
The world of individuality and imagination remains
there [in France]—here [in Russia] begins a collective
and realist world.71
Punin contended that Tatlin’s “culture of materi-
als” was predicated on the icon painters’ approach
to color and pigment, which was markedly
Toward a New Icon 197
 different from that of European artists. “Pigment for
Cézanne,” wrote Punin, “was no more than color,
which he always controlled through chromatic rela-
tionships.” By contrast, medieval Russian art “had
worked with color as a painting material, as the result
of the dye pigment . . . never was color perceived
by icon painters as the relationships within a chro-
matic scale.”72 Punin argued that Tatlin’s experience
as an icon painter meant that he had understood
color as an attribute of the material, rather than as
an expressive medium to be manipulated at will by
the artist: “For Tatlin, to color meant above all to
study the dyeing pigment; to color in a certain way
meant to work a surface by means of paints. Color is
given objectively, it is a reality and an element; color
relationships are independent of spatial relationships
existing in reality . . . surface, like paint, is a kind of
material: painted, possessing dimensions, volume,
and texture, it can be fluid or hard, brittle or resinous,
elastic, dense and heavy, and like any other material
it searches for its form.” Punin concluded that by
grounding his work in ancient Russian aesthetic tra-
ditions, Tatlin was able to make the “inevitable” con-
ceptual leap from “color understood as material” to
“work on materials in general” and—by extension—
to three-​dimensional construction in real space.73
The Corner-​Counter Reliefs
as “Spatial Icons”
It is important to emphasize that Tatlin was not the
only Russian artist to experiment with volumetric
constructions in the 1910s. At the 0.10 exhibition
several other artists displayed a number of works in
three dimensions, including Ivan Puni’s White Sphere
(1915), Ivan Kliun’s Cubist Woman at Her Dressing
198 The Icon and the Square
Table (1914–15), and Olga Rozanova’s Cyclist (Devil’s
Panel) (1915) and Automobile (1915). However, the
exhibition catalogue listed these works as “Flying
Sculptures,” “Sculptures on a Plane,” and “Sculptural
Paintings.”74 Consequently, Tatlin’s use of the word
“relief ” requires closer examination, especially since
it had specific theological implications in the Ortho-
dox belief system. As is well known, the Orthodox
Church’s prohibition on “corporeality” and “graven
images” precluded any kind of three-​dimensional
sculpture.75 However, a major exception to this
rule were low reliefs, typically made from precious
metals, enamel, ivory, wood, and marble. As such,
in the Orthodox tradition, the “relief ” signified an
acceptable compromise between the flat image and
sculpture in the round. Indeed, as Bissera Pent­
cheva has contended, the “relief icon made of metal
acquired a privileged status in Byzantium after Icon-
oclasm (730–843)”:
This move away from painting and toward relief was sig-
naled in the Iconophile treatises of the early ninth century.
The writings of Theodore Stoudites in particular defined
the icon as an imprint (typos) of likeness (homoiosis)
on a material surface. This mechanical reproduction of an
intaglio secured the correct and inalterable transmission
of homoioma. And since likeness was the true link, binding
icon to prototype, its preservation ensured the legitimacy
of the man-​made image. . . .
. . . Zographia [or lifelikeness in representation] after
Byzantine Iconoclasm changed from “painting from life”
to “material imprint/seal imbued with Spirit”—empsychos
graphe.76
Pentcheva maintains that instead of occupying a
minor and inconsequential place within Byzantine
artistic production, multimedia relief icons actually
constituted a major industry in Constantinople
and emerged as the dominant art form by the ninth
century.77 However, due to the continued premium
placed on the painted image—the product of a
biased, centuries-​old, post-​Renaissance worldview—
this substantial corpus of medieval art has largely
been overlooked, leading to the erroneous conclu-
sion that the painted panel icon predominated over
the bas-​relief in Byzantine and medieval Russian art.
Significantly, Kondakov had already challenged
this widespread assumption in his seminal 1892 pub-
lication on Byzantine enamels, where he observed
that “from the time of Constantine Porphyrogen-
netos (905–959) works in enamel seemed to be very
numerous, as much in the treasury of the Emperor
as in the treasuries of the churches in the capital.”78
In the same publication he also lamented that the
flattening effects of chromolithography reduced “the
sparkling surface . . . the effect of relief . . . and the plas-
tic beauty of the ornament” of the original enamel
icons to a “matte, dead surface,” which gave readers an
inaccurate impression of these objects’ tactile prop-
erties.79 Kondakov dated the proliferation of the relief
icon in Russia to the fourteenth century, when,
under Greek influence, the Russians began to cover even
the figures with plates of silver showing in more or less
relief the outlines and folds of the clothes and vestments. . . .
The golden nimbus of early times from being flat was
given relief as a halo . . . adorned with . . . filigree of twisted
gold wire (skan) sometimes picked out with enamel
(finiff); later the halo took the form of an actual crown. . . .
Naturally even more decoration was applied to the
devotional icon in private hands.80
For Tatlin, the term “relief ” evidently connoted
similar intermedial and antiplanar properties, and
he first began to apply it to his Painterly Reliefs of
1913, signaling his move away from easel painting
and the flat, homogeneous surface of the canvas.
He then adopted the term “counter-​relief ” in 1914 to
indicate an intensification of the work’s expansion
into the surrounding space. Needless to say, a relief
also carries important architectural connotations,
since it is often attached to a support and is therefore
meant to function within a larger spatial register or
built environment. Architecture had been of interest
to Tatlin long before he designed the Monument to
the Third International (1919–20), which is why the
Corner Counter-​Reliefs were devised to function in
an expanded field and to “ ‘wrap’ inert space around
themselves and dominate in it aggressively.”81
That Tatlin intended to enlist the negative space
around his Corner Counter-​Reliefs into the structural
logic of the works themselves becomes clear from
their installation at 0.10. Primarily made from sheets
of iron and aluminum, glass, wood, rope, and gesso,
the reliefs were three-​dimensional structures sus-
pended in midair. Several of them were constructed
along a diagonal axis, which augmented their visual
dynamism and created a sense of levity and move-
ment. As figures 94 and 95 demonstrate, the clusters
of variously sized metal sheets created a series of
rhythmically intersecting planes, which in their
turn produced a complex play of light, shadows,
and reflections. Contemporary accounts, as well as
surviving black-​and-​white photographs, reveal that
Tatlin pasted over the gallery walls with large sheets
of white paper against which the Corner Counter-​
Reliefs were displayed. This maximized the optical
effects of the shadows that were cast on the walls
by the protruding forms of the reliefs, so that the
adjacent walls were activated as additional planes.
Gough points out that the redefinition of empty
Toward a New Icon 199
 space as “a material integer” constituted a key ele-
ment in Tatlin’s shift from Painterly Reliefs to Corner
Counter-​Reliefs.82 Instead of the rectangular frames
and unidirectional picture plane of the former, the
Corner Counter-​Reliefs were multidirectional agglom-
erations of components that collapsed the boundar-
ies between negative and positive space.
Unfortunately, only one out of the three Corner
Counter-​Reliefs that Tatlin displayed at 0.10 has sur-
vived.83 The rest have perished and are only available
to us today as grainy, low-​quality black-​and-​white
photographs, which were first reproduced in a small
brochure that accompanied Tatlin’s section of the 0.10
exhibition. As a result, we are largely left to speculate
about the dimensions, colors, and textures of the
original reliefs, despite recent attempts to reconstruct
them.84 This means that our perception of these com-
plex, volumetric works has been reduced to a single,
static viewpoint in an exclusively visual medium.
Ironically, as evidenced by Kondakov’s critique of
chromolithography, the same “leveling” effect has
also distorted the modern reception of Byzantine
and medieval Russian art. Thus, for example, Rico
Franses asserts that photographs of Byzantine
images with a gold ground—whether mosaics, icons,
or illuminated manuscripts—tend to produce a
fixed and flattening effect, nullifying the gold leaf ’s
“chameleon-​like ability to change appearance.”85 As a
result, both the work’s visual dynamism and its expe-
riential impact on the viewer are entirely suppressed.
Robert Nelson makes a similar observation, contend-
ing that “the Byzantine icon exists in space, in the
physical presence of the religious beholder, no matter
whether that icon was small and portable and held
in the believer’s hands, or a large wall mosaic, visu-
ally beheld and optically grasped from a distance.”86
For instance, in photographic reproductions of the
200 The Icon and the Square
dome mosaic in the twelfth-​century Church of the
Dormition in Daphni, the Christ Pantocrator “appears
flat and two-​dimensional, a poster-​like image pasted
to the gold ceiling of the church.” In reality, however,
the dome curves down toward the viewer, which
gives the impression that Christ is coming “down
from heaven into the actual space and eye of the
beholder.”87 In the Middle Ages discourse on vision
was dominated by the theory of extramission, which
postulated direct physical contact between the sub-
ject and object. According to this theory, the eyes of
the viewer emitted rays of light that traveled to the
thing seen and then back to the perceiver. Nelson
therefore concludes that the Byzantines regarded
vision as “dynamic, thoroughly embodied, and tac-
tile,” presupposing an active viewer.88 This is precisely
the kind of haptic vision that Tatlin aimed to activate
in viewers of his Corner Counter-​Reliefs: “[D]istrust-
ing the eye, we place it under the control of touch.”89
Tatlin’s rejection of vision as primarily optical rather
than embodied went against the mainstream scien-
tific theories of the late nineteenth and early twenti-
eth centuries. Instead, it prefigured the later phenom-
enological philosophy of Maurice Merleau-​Ponty,
where the “gaze caresses the things [it encounters],
it espouses their contours and their reliefs, between it
and them we catch sight of complexity.”90
The idea of the Byzantine image as a “spatial
icon” that functions in real space was first advanced
by Otto Demus in the 1950s. In his seminal study on
Middle Byzantine mosaic decoration, Demus pro-
posed that representations of Christ, the Virgin, dis-
ciples, saints, and other figures interacted with each
other across the “real” space of a Byzantine Church:
To describe these mosaics, encased in cupolas, apsi-
des, squinches, pendentives, vaults and niches, as flat,
or two-​dimensional, would be inappropriate. True, there
is no space behind the “picture-​plane” of these mosaics.
But there is space, the physical space enclosed by the
niche, in front; and this space is included in the picture.
The image is not separated from the beholder by the
“imaginary glass pane” of the picture plane behind which
an illusionistic picture begins: it opens into the real space
in front, where the beholder lives and moves. His space
and the space in which the holy persons exist and act are
identical, just as the icon itself is magically identical with
the holy person or the sacred event. The Byzantine church
itself is the “picture-​space” of the icons . . . [the viewer]
is bodily enclosed in the grand icon of the church. . . .
. . . The icons never cease to be individually framed
spatial units; their connection with one another is estab-
lished not by crowded contiguity on the surface but by an
intricate system of relations in space.91

In the same way that Tatlin had “attributed real spa-

tial relationships to [his] new works of art,” the Byz-
antine monumental image was essentially experien-
tial, and like the Corner Counter-​Reliefs, it functioned
within the “dimensions of lived experience.”92
Formulated nearly four decades after Tatlin’s ini-
tial experimentation with his Corner Counter-​Reliefs,
neither Demus’s nor Merleau-​Ponty’s theories could
have informed the artist’s concept of haptic vision
and his shift into real space. However, during his
student years at the Penza College of Art (1905–10),
Tatlin had closely studied the pictorial techniques of
monumental art, and in his short autobiography he
mentions that “frescoes very much interested [him]
then.”93 He even made copies of ecclesiastical murals
in the churches of Novgorod and several other medi-
eval cities, such as his sketch of the apostle Thomas
(fig. 106) on the cupola of the Church of St. George
in Staraia Ladoga (fig. 107). Although this image is
Fig. 106  Vladimir Tatlin, Study of Apostle Thomas on the Cupola
of the Church of St. George, Staraia Ladoga, 1905–10. Watercolor
and white paint on paper, 9 1/5 × 6 1/8 in. (24 × 15.5 cm). Rus-
sian State Archive of Literature and Art, Moscow.
executed in black and white, it still captures all the
vitality and dynamism of the original fresco. In par-
ticular, Tatlin paid close attention to the expressive
linearity and energetic movement of the medieval
image, which he faithfully reproduced in his own
version. Given Tatlin’s sustained interest in the
semantics of Russo-​Byzantine representations—
as evidenced by his Composition-​Analysis—it is not
implausible to assume that his firsthand experiences

Toward a New Icon 201


Fig. 107  Apostle Thomas, twelfth-​century fresco, Church of
St. George, Staraia Ladoga.
with the complex spatial dynamics of monumental
medieval art would have played a tangible role in
his move into construction and real space. This idea
is reinforced by the relatively large size of the only
surviving Corner Counter-​Relief from the 0.10 exhi-
bition, measuring 71 by 118 centimeters. Its virtually
human scale suggests that Tatlin wanted his viewers
202 The Icon and the Square
to engage with this work in a direct bodily manner
and not only in a detached, retinal way.
However, persisting misconceptions about the
“flatness” and “stasis” of the Russo-​Byzantine image
have led a number of modernist scholars, such as
Zhadova, to conclude that it was only “once he over-
came the two-​dimensional system of expression of
icon painting” that Tatlin “was able to arrive at a real-
ization in space of material constructions built from
complicated geometrical shapes.”94 Accordingly, dis-
cussions of the iconic tradition’s impact on Tatlin’s
oeuvre have tended to be limited to his paintings
and early Painterly Reliefs from the 1910s, and little
has been written about the different ways in which
the dynamic spatiality and experiential modality of
monumental Russo-​Byzantine art might have come
to bear on his later artistic practice, including his
conception of the Monument to the Third Interna-
tional. Indeed, as evidenced by Tatlin’s various state-
ments, the teachings of one of his first art instruc-
tors, Aleksei Afanasiev, continued to shape Tatlin’s
aesthetic views and theories well into his mature
years. As late as 1928 Tatlin continued to name Afa-
nasiev as a major influence on his work, alongside
Larionov and Picasso.95 While Tatlin’s relationships
with the latter two artists have been extensively
examined by a number of scholars, his references
to Afanasiev have gone virtually unnoticed. This
could be because, unlike Picasso and Larionov, Afa-
nasiev is now a nearly forgotten nineteenth-​century
artist, who is mostly known for his realist paintings
of genre scenes and his caricatures for the journals
Shut, Ogonek, and Oskolki. Ironically, one of his
few extant oil paintings depicts an old lady lighting
candles in front of rows of icons in the “holy corner”
of a domestic interior.96
 Like many academically trained artists, Afa-
nasiev was personally involved in several restoration
and revivalist projects in the 1880s and 1890s. For
example, in 1896 he executed four of the façade
mosaics for the Church of the Savior on Spilled
Blood in St. Petersburg: Saint Paul, Saint Luke the
Apostle, Seraphim, and Saints Jacob, Euthymius, and
Eustathius. He likewise created eight mosaic designs
for the interior of the cathedral: Saints Barlaam
of Khutyn and Alexander of Svir, Saints Macarius
of Egypt and Moses the Black, Saints Andronicus of
Pannonia and Apollos, Martyrs Lucian and Agatodor,
Averian and Porphyry, Apostles Nikanor and Phle-
gon of Marathon, Rodion and Urban of Macedonia,
and Saints John the Apostle and James the Great
(fig. 108). As a teacher, Afanasiev encouraged all of
his students to closely study and copy the frescoes
and mosaics of Byzantium, Ravenna, and medie-
val Rus, either from life or based on high-​quality
reproductions. As a result, during his Penza years
Tatlin accumulated a large visual archive of religious
images—both Byzantine and Russian—which he
kept throughout his lifetime.97 Such unexpected
connections between nineteenth-​century revivalism
and twentieth-​century avant-​gardism clearly demon-
strate that the interactions between these ostensibly
distinct and antithetical spheres of artistic activity Fig. 108  Aleksei Afanasiev, Saints John the Apostle and James
were much more fluid and multifaceted than stan- the Great, 1894–97. Mosaic, Church of the Savior on Spilled
Blood, St. Petersburg.
dard modernist narratives would have us believe.
Lastly, as the first chapter of this book con-
tends, theories about medieval visuality and the
complexities of iconic space—which anticipated iconic representations as being turned “inside out.”98
the later studies of scholars such as Demus—were According to him, instead of “absorbing” the viewer
already being actively debated in the mid-1910s by into its pictorial space, the iconic depiction pro-
several of Tatlin’s contemporaries. For instance, jected itself outward from the surface of the image
in his Philosophy of the Icon Tarabukin described and into the space of the viewer:

Toward a New Icon 203

 An icon painter does not think in a Euclidean way.
He rejects linear perspective as a way of articulating
infinite space. The world of icon painting is finite . . .
inverting itself in so called reverse perspective, [iconic
space] terminates somewhere outside the boundaries of
the icon in the eyes of the viewer. . . .
If perspective draws the viewer into its deep
expanses, then iconic space, thanks to “reverse perspec-
tive,” pushes the viewer out. . . . The corporeal world
becomes as if transparent in that it simultaneously turns
out all of its planes. . . . A cathedral is [thus] “turned inside
out.”99
In addition, Tarabukin argued that, out of all the rep-
resentational arts, icon painting was the most “archi-
tectonic” form because of its rejection of illusionism
and imitation in favor of a self-​contained, concrete,
and “constructive” treatment of space.100 As such,
he concluded that in its philosophical essence, icon
painting most closely approached architecture. Like
Demus in his later work, Tarabukin conceived of the
iconic image as being on a continuum with, rather
than as a simulation of, real space. At the time that
Tarabukin was writing Philosophy of the Icon, he had
become acquainted with Punin, who was then
already friends with Tatlin and a regular participant
in the theoretical debates and avant-​garde activities
of Apartment No. 5, alongside Pavel Florensky,
Aleksei Grishchenko, Liubov Popova, Vera Pestel,
Nadezhda Udaltsova, and Alexander Vesnin, among
others.101 Given that at that point Punin was also
working in the Department of Monuments of Rus-
sian Icon Painting and Church Relics in the Russian
Museum and was writing his lengthy study of Andrei
Rublev for Apollon, it is clear that ideas on the spa-
tial dynamics of icon painting and monumental
Russo-​Byzantine art were being actively discussed in
204 The Icon and the Square
Tatlin’s immediate circle of friends and colleagues.
Consequently, Tatlin’s conception of and experimen-
tation with his Corner Counter-​Reliefs would have
unfolded within the context of this rich, multivalent
discourse on the spatial, theoretical, and ontological
complexities of the iconic tradition, undoubtedly
informing his own artistic praxis.
“God Is Not Cast Down”: Toward
a New Theology of Art
With regard to Malevich and his display at 0.10, the
majority of contemporary commentators concluded
that Suprematism had unequivocally triumphed
over “Tatlinism” at the Last Futurist Exhibition of
Painting. For example, Mikhail Matiushin concluded
that Malevich had felt “the idea of paint’s indepen-
dence in painting . . . in a powerful new way,” while
Tatlin’s artworks were “weaker” than the ones he
had exhibited the previous year.102 Three years after
0.10 Punin similarly lamented: “Suprematism is in
full bloom all over Moscow. Street signs, exhibi-
tions, cafés—everything is Suprematism. And this
is extremely telling. One can say with conviction
that the day of Suprematism is at hand. . . . While
Moscow is celebrating the great Suprematist holiday
in this manner, there lives in the quietness, nomi-
nally recognized, but in fact still remaining outside
the sphere of broad influence, another master of
the Moscow art world—Vladimir Tatlin.”103 More
importantly, in contrast to Tatlin’s Corner Counter-​
Reliefs, Malevich’s Black Square was immediately
understood as a new “naked icon.”104 An indignant
Alexander Benois singled it out as an “evil hallu-
cination” and an “affirmation of the cult of futility,
and gloom, and . . . ‘nothingness.’ ”105 As Sharp
perceptively discerns, Benois did not denigrate the
Black Square on aesthetic grounds, but rather on
religious ones. He had shifted his typical “critique
of vanguard art from accusations of epigonism and
eclecticism” to that of “blasphemy.” For Benois, the
Black Square did not “merely constitute an analogue
to the icon and thereby acquire similar authority as
an image; [it] actually replace[d] the icon.” Conse-
quently, the Black Square functioned as an “icon of a
cardinal sin: humankind’s arrogant elevation of the
self (and the machine) above nature and God.”106
Unlike Tatlin, who had spatially transformed the
iconic image into the Corner Counter-​Relief, which
transformation ultimately constituted a structural-​
analytical project, Malevich had restaged the Black
Square as the materialist “zero of form,” presenting
himself as the creator of a “new realism” and—as he
would go on to claim in the 1920s—a “new religion.”
In other words, Malevich deployed a conceptual-​
ontological strategy in the service of the dialectics
of originality. Several years after the 0.10 exhibition
he even retroactively theorized a meaningful con-
nection between the transcendental primacy of the
corner and the geometric dimensions of the cube,
emblematically linking the Black Square to the “holy
corner”:
I see the justification and true significance of the Ortho-
dox corner in which the image stands, the holy image,
as opposed to all other images and representations of
sinners. The holiest occupies the center of the corner, the
less holy occupy the walls on the sides. The corner sym-
bolizes that there is no other path to perfection except for
the path into the corner. This is the final point of move-
ment. All paths, whichever path you were to choose and
tread, if you are going towards perfection, will converge
into the corner; whether you were to walk in the heights
(the ceiling), down below (the floor), on the sides (the
wall), the result of your path will be the cube, as the cubic
is the fullness of your comprehension and is perfection.107
Malevich’s claim to a novel “iconicity” was very
similar to—and in many ways anticipated—Marcel
Duchamp’s “pictorial nominalism,” which radically
extended the philosophical boundaries of art.108 Just
as the Fountain would do in 1917, the Black Square
replaced the question “what is beautiful?,” posed
by Kantian aesthetics, with “what constitutes an
artwork?”109 As a highly perceptive critic, Benois
immediately recognized the threat that Malevich’s
“new icon” posed to the existing realm of aesthetic
experience: it diagramed “the destruction of one
set of values and the installation of a new hierar-
chy—the dominion of forms over nature.” As a
result, Benois tried to discredit the Black Square with
“quasi-​religious, quasi-​social/political rhetoric . . .
his language clearly indicate[d] a refusal to acknowl-
edge the evolution of Malevich’s art; his concern to
expose Malevich’s blasphemous act prevent[ed] him
from taking any notice of Suprematism’s own depen-
dence upon the icon.”110 In fact, by invoking the icon,
Malevich not only created the myth of the Black
Square as the “first” Suprematist painting—rewriting
history in the process—but also affirmed his own
position as the “originator” or “source” of all geo-
metric abstraction. The Black Square thus simultane-
ously symbolized the end of an old representational
tradition and the beginning of a new one.
Malevich’s notorious backdating of the Black
Square to 1913 misled scholars for almost seventy
years.111 This date was not accidental: it realigned the
birth of Suprematism with a number of important
historical events and cultural landmarks, including
the opening of the Exhibition of Ancient Russian Art
Toward a New Icon 205
 and the height of the Russo-​Byzantine revival.112
As Aleksandra Shatskikh notes, it is as though Male-
vich had “a presentiment in predetermining the
significance of 1913, [since he] persisted in dating
his principal work to it.”113 Despite the artist’s dis-
simulation, recent scholarship has decisively dated
the Black Square to June of 1915, demonstrating that
a number of other, polychromatic and multicom-
ponent abstract works preceded it.114 X-​rays of the
Black Square have revealed another Suprematist
composition underneath, composed of a number of
multicolored and diagonally placed elements that
the artist subsequently overpainted. Not only was
the Black Square not the first Suprematist work to
be conceived by Malevich, but it was also not the
first Suprematist work to be shown to the public.
Malevich had exhibited several complex geometric
compositions at the Exhibition of Modern Decora-
tive Art (the first Verbovka exhibition) in Moscow,
which was held from November 6 to December 10,
1915.115 However, unlike these works, the starkness,
reticence, and powerful minimalism of the Black
Square made it a much more momentous modernist
milestone, which in turn necessitated some histori-
cal omissions and resequencing of events on Male­
vich’s part.116 Consequently, playing on the iconic
reference, Malevich positioned the Black Square at
0.10 so as visually to assert its “supremacy” over all
the other paintings (fig. 93). It thus adopted the met-
aphorical function of a “divine prototype,” or “zero
of form,” from which all the other Suprematist works
derived. Furthermore, as Lodder astutely notes, the
irregular placement of the paintings, coupled with
the floor-​to-​ceiling hang, produced a “Suprematist
mural” that “surrounded the viewer, creating a com-
pletely Suprematist space” with the Black Square at
its apex.117 In Orthodox churches the images on the
206 The Icon and the Square
walls and dome are typically arranged according to
a divine hierarchy, with the saints and martyrs at the
lowest level, followed by the narratives of Christ’s
life on earth; the prophets, apostles, and the Virgin
Mary; and finally the archangels and Pantocrator in
the highest registers. Simulating this symbolic spir-
itual order, the Black Square not only assumed the
most elevated and important position in Malevich’s
display, but it also emblematically equated itself with
the image of Christ, simultaneously invoking the
Mandylion legend (a targeted and significant con-
ceptual parallel to which I return later). Building on
his earlier interest in monumental Russo-​Byzantine
art, Malevich, much like Tatlin, was evidently
already thinking in three-​dimensional and architec-
tural terms—an interest that would subsequently
evolve into his arkhitekton and planit designs in
the 1920s. By repeating the 0.10 installation concept
again at the Jack of Diamonds Exhibitions in 1916
and 1917, Malevich not only reasserted his totaliz-
ing Suprematist vision but also reiterated the Black
Square’s “symbolic priority or ‘firstness.’ ”118 Addi-
tionally, in 1920 Malevich published his 34 Drawings,
a book of lithographs that traced the formation and
evolution of Suprematism. In this work he again
reinforced the idea of the Black Square as the origin
of Suprematism by presenting it as the first in a
sequence of different Suprematist images.
Malevich even went so far as to invent a num-
ber of “miraculous” conception stories for the Black
Square in order to amplify the mystification sur-
rounding its creation. For instance, according to Ivan
Kliun, Malevich claimed that “when he was paint-
ing his Black Square, some kind of ‘fiery lightning
flashes’ kept passing over his canvas.”119 Similarly,
when his young followers in Vitebsk and Smo-
lensk asked Malevich to describe how he arrived
at the idea of the Black Square, he told them that it
occurred “spontaneously” while he was looking out
of the window “and was stunned by the contrast
between the freshly fallen, blindingly white snow
and the black knapsack on the back of a boy leaving
the house for school.”120 Lastly, one of his students,
Anna Leporskaia, recalled that “he considered Black
Square an event of such tremendous significance in
his art that he could not eat, drink, or sleep for a full
week.”121 This last account in particular recalls the
religious fasting rituals practiced by icon painters
as part of their sacred production of holy images.
Based on these different descriptions, it appears that
Malevich deliberately drew on the medieval genre
of magical manifestations of icons by presenting
the inception of the Black Square as a miraculous
phenomenon, inspired by divine intervention, again
recalling the Byzantine legend of the Mandylion.
In fact, Malevich—much like Kandinsky—inten-
tionally cultivated the image of a “seer” or “vision-
ary” by deploying prophetic language and biblical
references in many of his writings. He often invoked
the images of a purifying “cosmic flame,” “the desert
of the Word,” “the Three Wise Men,” “the Son of
God,” and “the Last Judgment,” among others.122
He likewise referred to himself as “the beginning
of everything” and attended the Store Exhibition in
the spring of 1916 with “ ‘0.10’ drawn on his forehead
and a piece of paper on his back with the proc-
lamation— . . . ‘I am the apostle.’ ”123 In doing so,
Malevich was most likely following the advice of his
correspondent, friend, and Vekhi author, the phi-
losopher and literary scholar Mikhail Gershenzon
(1869–1925), who maintained that in order to formu-
late a novel system of thought that reflects the spirit
of a new age, “one must find words equal in their
significance to [those of] the Bible.”124
Indeed, many of Malevich’s pronouncements
betray his familiarity with the theological writings
of Vladimir Soloviev, Sergei Bulgakov, and Pavel
Florensky, among others. As Alexei Kurbanovsky
notes, a number of Malevich’s ideas about human
consciousness, the nature of reality, and modern
epistemology closely resemble those of Florensky.125
For instance, in his infamous 1922 essay, “God Is Not
Cast Down: Art, Church, and the Factory,” Malevich
wrote: “Man has defined the existence of things that
were formerly incomprehensible and non-​existent
for him . . . ; if we take any of the things . . . and try to
investigate it, we see that, under pressure from our
tool of investigation, it immediately disintegrates
into a large number of component parts which are
fully independent.”126 Several years earlier, Florensky
had articulated a comparable idea in his Pillar and
Ground of the Truth, writing that “whatever we take,
we inevitably fragment the object we are consider-
ing, split it into incompatible aspects. When we look
at one and the same thing from different points of
view . . . we can arrive at antinomies.”127 Similarly,
Malevich’s notion of mankind’s constant striving
“towards the endless path of the non-​objective” as
a means of reaching “God or perfection . . . as the
absolute end, on which he will act no longer as
a man but as God,” recalls Soloviev’s concept of
Bogochelovechestvo, or Godmanhood, according to
which the dual nature of Christ is also shared by
man, whose ultimate purpose is to achieve theosis,
or union with God.128 In Soloviev’s theology, this
ideal would be attained through the “free unity”
of the three main spheres of human life: “free the-
ocracy,” or “integral society”; “free theosophy,”
or “integral knowledge”; and “free theurgy,” or “inte-
gral creativity.”129 This closely parallels Malevich’s
own formulation: “Man has divided his life into
Toward a New Icon 207
 three paths, the spiritual or religious, the scientific
or factory, and that of art. . . . They signify perfection,
and man moves along them; he moves himself as
a perfected principle towards his final conception,
i.e. towards the absolute; they are the three paths
along which man moves towards God.”130
By the same token, a number of Malevich’s
friends, students, and associates insisted that “he was
not religious” and did not believe in a divine prin-
ciple or “a rational Will that organizes everything,”
subscribing instead to a “cosmic Suprematist feeling
of the universe.”131 Malevich took a keen interest in
theoretical physics and studied astronomy, which
he felt confirmed his ideas about the “being” and
“nonbeing” of creation.132 He maintained that he
was “not much interested in prophecy,” that he
understood “all art as an activity free from all eco-
nomic, practical and religious ideologies,” and that
he ultimately “reject[ed] the soul and intuition as
unnecessary,” welcoming instead “the new world
of things.”133 Moreover, in the years immediately
preceding his move to nonobjectivity, Malevich
produced a number of alogical paintings such as
Cow and Violin (1913) and An Englishman in Moscow
(1914), which were meant to attack rationality and
to celebrate absurdity.134 On February 19, 1914, at a
meeting organized by the Jack of Diamonds group,
he delivered a lecture in which he publicly “rejected
reason.”135 As a result, unlike Kandinsky’s genuine
desire to produce a new transformative spiritual art,
Malevich’s flirtation with iconic representation and
with religious metaphor should be understood as a
calculated avant-​garde gambit, rather than an occult
or mystical endeavor. As Kliun has written:
Malevich’s attitude toward God was also somewhat pecu-
liar and strange: he did not believe in God, but neither
208 The Icon and the Square
was he hostile to Him. His attitude toward God was
expressed in one sketch which I happened to see at his
home; in this sketch, he drew himself standing on some
elevated spot, his arm lifted toward a cloud; he has some
kind of vessel in his hand, either a cup or a shot glass.
Seated on the cloud is God with a radiance, as befits
Him, and he is pouring vodka into Malevich’s glass from
a bottle. In that sketch, I didn’t feel any ridicule, mockery,
or satire; on the contrary, one sensed a friendly, compan-
ionable relationship to God, as if to say—You are a cre-
ator, and I am a creator, both of us are creators.136
Although this sketch has not survived, it is obvious
from Kliun’s description that Malevich’s allegorical
appeal to God as an “equal” or “cocreator” exempli-
fied his own aspiration to be perceived as a visionary
mastermind and modernist colossus—a genius
artist who had single-​handedly “invented” geomet-
ric abstraction in 1913. Instead of simply “imitating”
God’s creation by rendering it as illusionistic, repre-
sentational simulacra, Malevich “implied alignment
with the absolute freedom of God” through the
creation of entirely novel forms that do not exist
in the natural world.137 In a letter to Mikhail Mati-
ushin dated September 24, 1915, Malevich explained
that he wanted to use the name “Suprematism” for
his new movement because “it means supremacy
[gospodstvo]” and because “above all we [Malevich]
acknowledge our ego [to be] supreme.”138 In Russian
the word gospodstvo carries the dual connotation of
domination [gospodstvovat’] on the one hand and
God [gospod’ bog] on the other.
Malevich likewise provocatively asserted that
in “the mysterious face of the Black Square” he saw
“what at one point people saw in the face of God.”139
Had the Bolshevik Revolution not taken the course
that it did, it is tempting to speculate whether
Malevich’s “icons” would eventually have found their
way into actual consecrated ecclesiastical spaces in
the same manner that Mark Rothko’s vast abstract
canvases came to decorate the Rothko Chapel in
Houston, Texas, in the 1970s. Significantly, Shatskikh
notes that “after the Suprematist’s [Malevich’s] rec-
ognition in the Soviet Union in the late twentieth
century at various exhibitions, his gesture at ‘0.10’
was reproduced several times and Black Square was
placed in halls’ ‘icon corners’ . . . in museum dupli-
cations of the original placement a momentous
substitution occurred: ordinary corners became
‘holy’ because an icon was there, Black Square.”140
In other words, by appropriating the sacred position
of the icon, the Black Square was able to sanctify by
analogy the otherwise secular space of the Soviet
and post-​Soviet museum. Malevich had already
experimented with this paradox in the early 1920s.
For instance, at the GINKhUK exhibition of 1926 in
St. Petersburg (called Leningrad between 1924 and
1991), he hung a large cruciform design for an archi-
tectural structure between two pillars and flanked it
on three sides with the Black Square, a Black Cross,
and a Black Circle—Malevich’s Suprematist “Trin-
ity”—which ultimately “resembl[ed] nothing so
much as an altarpiece.”141 Consequently, for a brief
moment in the Soviet period, the Black Square was
ironically able to reverse the sacred-​profane binary
of secular and religious representation, intimating
the transcendental despite its categorical assertion of
nonobjective materialism. In Malevich’s own words,
under the Bolshevik regime “the icon can no longer
be the same meaning, goal and means that it was
formerly: it has already passed on into the museum
where it can be preserved under the new meaning of
art. But as we go deeper into new creative meaning
it loses even that significance and nothing can be
invested in it, for it will be the soulless mannequin of
a past spiritual and utilitarian life.”142 As Fabio Ram-
belli and Eric Reinders have argued in their seminal
essay on iconoclasm, the removal of religious objects
from a sacred gaze and their recontextualization
in museums for the purpose of cultural-​historical
preservation often results in “semioclasm,” or the
destruction of “meanings, the relations between sig-
nifier and signified, and more or less extensive por-
tions of the semiotic system underlying the existence
of the sign-​object.”143 Conversely, the Black Square’s
ostensible “iconoclasm” can be understood as a
tacit acknowledgment of the power of the Russo-​
Byzantine icon, “an affirmation, qua negation.”144 The
Black Square thus functioned “as a new amalgam of
enchantment and disenchantment, the sacred exist-
ing in muted but powerful forms, especially . . . in its
‘negative’ form as desecration.”145 In other words, the
Black Square was able to operate on multiple regis-
ters as both an icon and an anti-​icon, a secular and
a religious object, an act of destruction and simulta-
neous creation. As Briony Fer notes, “Over time the
picture’s iconoclasm has been tempered and trans-
formed; for the picture which served to exemplify
modernism’s break with traditions of representation
quickly became a sacred image itself within a mod-
ernist canon.”146 As a result, the Black Square was
paradoxically iconoclastic and iconophillic at the
same time, perpetually unmaking and remaking the
medieval Russo-​Byzantine icon in its own image.
Malevich would go on to dramatize this seman-
tic duality—rather morbidly—during his own wake
and funeral by replacing the traditional Orthodox
icon with the Black Square (fig. 109). As Kliun writes:
In his will Malevich wrote that the coffin should be of
a cruciform shape and that he should lie in it with arms
Toward a New Icon 209

Fig. 109  Deceased Kazimir Malevich in the funeral hall,
May 17, 1935. State Russian Museum, St. Petersburg.
outstretched to the sides . . . and on the upper white side
of the [coffin] cover we painted a black square at the head,
and a red circle at the feet. . . .
Malevich’s body was laid in the coffin and carried
into the big room, which had been hung with his paintings
in various styles; on the middle wall, in a frame, hung the
large black square, painted on a white ground. The coffin
was placed with its head to the square. . . . The coffin was
placed on a large table, covered with white fabric; on one
side a black square had been drawn on the fabric, on the
other side a red circle. . . . All of this, along with the elegant
dress of the deceased, created a very beautiful, stylish,
colorful, purely Suprematist spectacle.147
As Kliun’s account suggests, through its promi-
nent display at Malevich’s funeral the Black Square
enacted the double role of “a synthesis of painting”
and “a mystical symbol,” leading Sharp to conclude:
“Painting, body, and coffin were drawn together as
210 The Icon and the Square
icon, relic, and reliquary; all appeared as physical
extensions of the artist’s absent presence, guaran-
teeing his creative legacy in the future . . . the funeral
became for later artists the quintessential expression
of modernist subjectivity—the pathos, and hubris,
of which Malevich had been accused in his very first
review by Alexander Benois in 1916.”148 Moreover,
by transforming his funeral into a “Suprematist spec-
tacle” and his own body into an artwork, Malevich
capitalized on the essence of the iconic image as an
extension of the incarnate Christ, cosubstantial with
the reality of the metaphysical realm that it depicted.
In fact, as early as 1915 Malevich had already
explicitly equated himself with his principal artwork,
the Black Square. At the 0.10 exhibition he included
a painting entitled Suprematism: Self-​Portrait in Two
Dimensions (fig. 110), composed of a planar white
background—which Mudrak compares to the gold
ground of an icon—against which Malevich depicted
a number of geometric abstract forms. These
included a blue quadrilateral on top of an angled
black bar in the bottom right corner of the canvas,
a yellow rectangle on top of a small reddish-​brown
square, flanked by a thick ring of the same color
in the left middle ground, and finally a large black
square prominently positioned in the upper register
of the painting, in the place where one would nor-
mally expect to see the face of the sitter.149 To quote
Mudrak: “The essentialized features of the figure,
condensed by Suprematism, offer a kind of pictorial
kenosis—an ‘emptying out’ of the extraneous phys-
ical features and attributes of the sitter to arrive at
the pure essence of his personhood.”150 Read in this
way, the Suprematist Self-​Portrait in Two Dimensions
literalized Malevich’s claim that he had “transformed
[himself] into the zero of form” and had symboli-
cally assumed the position of God by becoming an
“iconic” image; just as the Mandylion was a self-​
portrait of the incarnated Christ, so the Black Square
became a metaphorical incarnation of Malevich.
In other words, just as God had created man in his
own image as the only creature on earth conceived
for its own sake as a testament to God’s eternal good-
ness, so the Black Square functioned as Malevich’s
principle image in a nonobjective universe, created
for its own sake as a signifier of the artist’s unprec-
edented genius. Malevich explicitly articulated this
idea in his 1913 poem “I Am the Beginning”:
I am the beginning of everything, for in my consciousness
worlds are created.
I search for God, I search within myself for myself.
God is all-​seeing, all-​knowing, all-​powerful.
A future perfection of intuition as the ecumenical world
of supra-​reason.
I search for God, I search for my face, I have already drawn
its outline
And I strive to incarnate myself. 151
Taking the date of this poem into account, it
becomes increasingly clear that Malevich insisted
on backdating the Black Square specifically to the
year 1913 so that it would become synonymous with
the person of the artist himself and with the origins
of abstract art. In the ensuing decade his strategy
proved to be successful. The Black Square came to
function both as Malevich’s personal signifier and as
the paradigmatic emblem of Suprematism and van-
guard art in general.
Due to his sophisticated understanding of the
Orthodox image and its historical function, Male-
vich was able to secure a prominent place for the
Black Square within the modernist canon by repro-
ducing it multiple times in different formats. In her
groundbreaking essay “The Originality of the Avant-​
Garde: A Postmodernist Repetition,” Rosalind
Krauss has identified the dual efficacy of locating the
mythos of originality within the “self ” and of sym-
bolically reinforcing it through perpetual repetition:
For originality becomes an organicist metaphor referring
not so much to formal invention as to sources of life.
The self as origin is safe from contamination by tradi-
tion because it possesses a kind of originary naiveté. . . .
Or again, the self as origin has the potential for continual
acts of regeneration, a perpetuation of self-​birth. Hence
Malevich’s pronouncement, “Only he is alive who rejects
his convictions of yesterday.” The self as origin is the way
an absolute distinction can be made between a present
experienced de novo and a tradition-​laden past. The claims
of the avant-​garde are precisely these claims to originality.
Now, if the very notion of the avant-​garde can be
seen as a function of the discourse of originality, the actual
practice of vanguard art tends to reveal that “originality” is
a working assumption that itself emerges from a ground of
repetition and recurrence.152
According to Charles Barber, this was also the logic
of the medieval icon, which likewise drew on the
theological doctrine of incarnation, divine origin, and
artistic repetition: “[F]or a medieval audience . . . [an]
icon could be a copy of a miraculous original and still
claim the same status as the original. . . . Its dual nature
implicates the object in the representation of its proto-
type, so that a viewer must both engage in the ‘surface
of the panel’ and contemplate its prototype.”153 Male-
vich produced at least three known copies of the Black
Square: in 1923, 1929, and 1932. He also reproduced it
in miniature on architectural models and on porcelain
and ceramic tableware. During his time in Vitebsk,
he incorporated the Black Square into designs for
Toward a New Icon 211
 Fig. 110  Kazimir Malevich, Suprematism: Self-​Portrait in Two
Dimensions, 1915. Oil on canvas, 32 3/4 × 25 1/2 in. (83.5 × 65 cm).
Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam.

212
monumental murals, tramway cars, building façades,
and agitational posters, many of which—though
they have not survived—were realized in the 1920s,
as evidenced by a period photograph of the White
Barracks building with prominent black squares on
its façade. Even when Malevich was increasingly
coerced into producing figurative paintings in the late
1920s and early 1930s under mounting political pres-
sure from the Bolshevik regime, he would still sign
these works with a diminutive Black Square, defiantly
demonstrating his enduring allegiance to abstraction
(fig. 111). As Achim Borchardt-​Hume writes, “[I]t is
as if the more the political pressures on avant-​garde
aesthetics grew and the more he ran the risk of his
late work being mistaken for a ‘return to order,’ the
more Malevich wanted to make sure that his name
became inseparable from that icon of Suprematism,
the Black Square.”154 In his unconventional and com-
pelling reading of Malevich’s last self-​portrait, from
1933 (fig. 111), Jean-​Claude Marcadé observes that
the artist’s frontal pose, hieratic monumentality, and
prominent hand gesture all recall the iconography of
the Hodegetria (Greek for “she who shows the way”)
icon of the Mother of God (fig. 112), where the Virgin
is portrayed pointing to the Christ Child as the only
“way” to salvation for all humankind.155 By contrast,
in his Self-​Portrait, Malevich points to nothingness,
or rather, he points to the emphatic absence of his
own “royal infant.” The only trace of the Black Square
is its miniature version in the bottom right corner,
which stands in for Malevich’s signature. Thus, in a
twist of irony, the Black Square becomes palpably
present in this painting through its haunting erasure,
“an affirmation, qua negation,” leading Marcadé to
conclude that Malevich “metonymically appropri-
ated . . . the metaphorical form [of the icon]; . . . the
path to which [he] points is that of the nonobjective
world, which he had developed throughout his
lifetime.”156
Perhaps even more importantly, the Black
Square was adopted by many of Malevich’s students
as an avant-​garde leitmotif, which migrated across
different media throughout the 1920s. For instance,
in 1922 El Lissitzky included the Black Square as
a key protagonist in his children’s picture book,
A Suprematist Tale About Two Squares in Six Con-
structions (Suprematicheskii skaz pro dva kvadrata v
shesti postroikah). He also depicted the Black Square
in the center of his famous 1920 painting Untitled
(Rosa Luxemburg), as well as in a number of his
Proun designs, such as Proun 99 (1920) and Proun 1E
(1919–20). Vera Ermolaeva, Nikolai Suetin, and llia
Chashnik all incorporated the Black Square into their
designs for textiles, arkhitektons, porcelain table-
ware, and agitational propaganda throughout the
1920s (e.g., fig. 113). Needless to say, in the Middle
Ages iconic representations of Christ, the Virgin
Mary, and saints similarly produced a “burden of
quantity” by migrating across different media and
appearing both in monumental and miniature form
on architecture, coins, jewelry, liturgical vestments,
and portable reliquaries. Indeed, as Oleg Tarasov
notes, the Black Square became the “basic ‘icon’ of
UNOVIS,” with members of the organization sewing
little black squares onto their sleeves as an outward
sign of their adherence to the tenets of Suprematism,
leading one contemporary critic to describe them
contemptuously as “freak monks” whose “mon-
astery” ought to be deprived of state funding.157
Through saturation of the visual field, not only
did the Black Square catalyze a new aesthetic con-
sciousness, but it simultaneously augmented its own
power, influence, and recognition with each repro-
duction and—by extension—those of its creator.
Toward a New Icon 213
 Fig. 111  Kazimir Malevich, Self-​Portrait, 1933. Oil on can-
vas, 28 2/3 × 26 in. (73 × 66 cm). State Russian Museum,
St. Petersburg.

214
 For Malevich, dominance in the early Soviet
visual-​arts sphere was just the beginning of a
larger project of mirostroenia, or world construc-
tion, in line with a totalizing Suprematist Weltan­
schauung. During the 1920s Malevich wrote a series
of essays and theoretical treatises in which he
advanced Suprematism as a new, nonobjective world
order—a single, all-​encompassing system of signifi-
cation that would transform lived experience and
human cognition, much as the introduction of Byz-
antine religion and visual culture had done in medie-
val Rus, converting pagan beliefs and traditions into
new modes of Orthodox thought and perception.
However, instead of using art in the service of theol-
ogy, Malevich envisioned using religion in the ser-
vice of aesthetics. In a letter written to Gershenzon
in 1920, he explained:

I no longer view Suprematism as a painter or as a form. . . .

I stand before it like an outsider observing a phenome-
non. For many years I was occupied with my movement in
colors, leaving the religion of spirit aside and twenty-​five
years have passed and now I have come back or entered
into the religious World. . . . I visit churches, look at the
saints and the whole functioning spiritual World and I see
in myself, and maybe in the whole world, that the time
for a change of religions is approaching. I saw that just as Fig. 112  Virgin Hodegetria of Smolensk, ca. 1450. Tempera on
Painting came to its pure form of action, so too the World fabric, gesso, and wood, 54 1/2 × 41 1/4 in. (139 × 105 cm). State
Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow.
of religions is coming to the religion of Pure action.158

In other words, Malevich believed that the time

had come to replace all religions—Christian and
Communist alike—with a new absolute, material-
ist idiom that would remake the world in its own
Suprematist image, the world as nonobjectivity.
Although Malevich had initially believed
that the Soviet state would provide him with the
necessary means and impetus to achieve these lofty
ambitions, he soon became disillusioned with what
he saw as Bolshevism’s reactionary return to a regres-
sive conception of art’s role in society. Following
the death and funeral of Lenin, in 1924, Malevich
observed:

Toward a New Icon 215

 Fig. 113  Nikolai Suetin, Train Car with UNOVIS Symbol en
Route to the Exhibition in Moscow, 1920. Watercolor, India ink,
and gouache on paper, 10 4/5 × 17 1/5 in. (27.5 × 43.8 cm). State
Russian Museum, St. Petersburg. © Nikolaj Mihailovic Sue-
tin / BILD-​KUNST, Bonn–SACK, Seoul, 2017.
Every religion is static. We believe in Lenin, we believe in
his teaching and in nothing else. . . .
But, by virtue of some law, something has happened
that nobody expected: Lenin was metamorphosed like
Christ. . . .
Lenin fought against image, opposed image, i.e. did
not want to reflect images in himself, did not want to be
the mirror of ideas or to be reflected in matter. . . . Lenin
sought the utilitarian object, attempting to direct histori-
cal materialism into the form of Communism to establish
his materialism, but not into idea; he wished to make it
non-​objective.159
216 The Icon and the Square
Lenin’s “disciples,” however, had failed to grasp and
implement his “nonobjective” vision of the world and
had instead resorted to instituting a socialist “theo-
cracy,” leading Malevich to contend that Communism
was fundamentally akin to religion in that both pur-
sued “the same question, the same aim and the same
purpose—to seek God.” To Malevich’s great disap-
pointment, the Soviet state had not evolved entirely
novel ontological and philosophical paradigms but
had simply resurrected the strategies and archetypes
of the past, so that the “Factory” and “Church”
became essentially “the same in both the deep and
the superficial sense: ritual, pious attitude, worship,
faith, hope for the future”: “Just as the church has its
leaders, the discoverers of perfect religious systems,
so also the industrial technical school has its own
which it venerates and honors like the other. Likewise
the walls of both are hung with images and portraits,
martyrs and heroes in order of worth and rank, and
in both cases their names are entered in calendars.”160
Both Marxist materialism and Orthodox theology
had relied on “art to adorn them with a cloak of
beauty,” since they were “not convinced of their own
perfection,” thus betraying their ideological deficien-
cies and essential incompleteness. Modern art, on the
other hand, had become entirely autonomous and
self-​sufficient. Suprematism in particular functioned
as a self-​contained philosophical and “transmeta-
physical” system of thought and visuality that sought
“a new relationship” with both God and nature.
Accordingly, Malevich could be said to have devel-
oped a new “theology of art,” maintaining throughout
his lifetime that only through “the mysterious face of
the Black Square” could humanity hope to attain the
“absolute,” for “in art God is conceived as beauty sim-
ply because in beauty there is God.”161
To sum up, then, both Tatlin and Malevich
were keenly aware of the discourse surrounding
the Russo-​Byzantine revival and had mobilized it
to advance their own artistic goals. Despite their
antithetical approaches to and citations of the medi-
eval icon, they nevertheless shared an interest in its
unique ontological status and deployed it in their
respective formulations of a “new realism” in art.
While Tatlin explored the perceptual complexities
inherent in Russo-​Byzantine representations and
reconstituted them into a new phenomenology
of the modern artwork, Malevich translated their
image philosophy into a novel system of contem-
porary iconicity. Through their corner placement at
0.10: The Last Futurist Exhibition of Painting, both the
Corner Counter-​Reliefs and the Black Square invoked
a specifically Russo-​Byzantine artistic genealogy,
rhetorically breaking with the pictorial traditions
of the western European avant-​gardes. However,
in contrast to the subsequent Productivist platform,
Malevich and Tatlin never fully embraced the call for
the complete dissolution of art in technology. Thus,
Tarabukin claimed in From the Easel to the Machine
that Tatlin remained in essence a “handicraftsman”
who refused to adopt the mechanistic nature of the
later movement, so that “any work created [by him
was] harmoniously worked with his hands and
constitute[d] a unique object.”162 Similarly, Alexan-
der Rodchenko dismissed Malevich’s art as being
excessively theoretical and not materialist enough:
“[W]hat Malevich has is not painting; it is the phi-
losophy of painting.”163 In other words, although
both artists claimed to have moved into completely
unchartered artistic territory, they nonetheless
remained dedicated to the individual artwork and
its transformative possibilities. Just as the icon had
operated for centuries as the locus of spiritual con-
sciousness and theological instruction, so Tatlin’s
and Malevich’s artworks had aspired to reeducate the
populace and to forge a new visual and philosophical
cognition. Accordingly, as much as Tatlin and Male-
vich have been understood to represent the dawn of
a new age of nonobjective art, they simultaneously
marked the culmination and terminus of another
era—one that had begun with the reappraisal of the
Russo-​Byzantine representational tradition in the
mid-​nineteenth century and had dramatically ended
with the onset of the Bolshevik Revolution in 1917.
Toward a New Icon 217
EPILOGUE
On February 21, 2012, five members of the feminist
collective Pussy Riot performed their “Punk Prayer:
Mother of God, Drive Putin Away!” on the sanctu-
ary platform of the revivalist Cathedral of Christ the
Savior in Moscow (fig. 114). The prayer was based on
Sergei Rachmaninoff’s well-​known 1915 hymn to the
Mother of God “Rejoice, O Virgin” from his All-​Night
Vigil (Opus 37) and was interspersed with segments of
punk-​rock music. Members of the collective accom-
panied their performance with a mixture of aggressive
kicking and punching and traditional Orthodox ritual
actions such as prostrations and making signs of the
cross. A video montage of their performance was
subsequently posted online, where it was viewed by
several million people.1 The explosive public response
and controversial arrest and incarceration of the
young women received extensive coverage both in the
Russian and international press, and “Punk Prayer”
has since been enshrined as an enduring piece of
political activism and feminist performance art.2
As discussed in the first chapter, the Cathe-
dral of Christ the Savior (see fig. 17) was originally
designed in a Russo-​Byzantine style in the 1830s by
the revivalist architect Constantine Thon. Its cycle of
frescoes and icons was meant to extol “Holy Russia”
as the descendant and rightful heir of early Christian
Rome and Byzantium with Tsar Nicholas I portrayed
as the guarantor of the Orthodox faith in modernity.
Although it took half a century to build, the cathe-
dral’s life span was short, and in December of 1931 it
was demolished by the Soviet government. After the
fall of the USSR, the cathedral was reconstructed
in the mid-1990s as an exact replica of the original
nineteenth-​century building.3 As such, it was a “dou-
bly” revivalist monument. The chosen venue for
the Pussy Riot performance was therefore not only
a sacred site but also a multivalent dialectical space
charged with various connotations and denotations
that invoked Russia’s complex political, religious, and
artistic past, alongside its troubled and indeterminate
present. Thus, for example, many Orthodox believers
understood Pussy Riot’s performance as a deeply dis-
turbing iconoclastic act that harked back to “the fierce
anti-​religious campaigns of the 1920s–1930s, which
saw the mass destruction of churches and the brutal
massacre of millions of faithful.”4 At the same time,
219
 Fig. 114  Pussy Riot performing “Punk
Prayer: Mother of God, Drive Putin
Away!,” February 21, 2012, Moscow. Photo:
ITAR-TASS.
numerous Pussy Riot supporters argued that “Punk
Prayer” should be understood as genuinely Chris-
tian—a sincere supplication in the face of a repressive
political regime and a “hypocritical . . . commercial
surrogate of Orthodoxy,” whose spiritual leader, the
patriarch of Moscow and all Rus Kirill, notoriously
described Vladimir Putin’s presidency as a “miracle of
God.”5 Still others understood the collective’s action
as primarily operating in the secular realm of political,
artistic, and feminist discourse—a powerful critique
by the progressive, liberal elite of Putin’s increasingly
authoritarian rule and the rise of a corrosive, reaction-
ary Orthodox neo-​religiosity.
220 The Icon and the Square
Just as Malevich’s “evil hallucination” had
blurred the boundaries between the secular sphere
of the museum and the sacrosanct domain of the
church, so Pussy Riot’s intrusion into a revivalist
religious space subversively breached the sacred/
profane binary, eliciting as much public indignation
in the twenty-​first century as the Black Square had
done in the twentieth.6 In fact, it would even be fair
to say that the polemics surrounding questions of
faith, power, national identity, and radical forms of
artistic expression have only intensified in present-​
day Russia. After all, Malevich’s modernist master-
piece did not cost the artist his freedom in 1915 as it
did members of Pussy Riot in 2012. Consequently,
as this book has attempted to show, rather than
a passing trend or an isolated episode in Russia’s
history, the dense and multifaceted intersections
between vanguard art, revivalism, and religious
modalities not only were a crucial marker of Russia’s
modernity but continue to resonate in postmodern
culture and political life in Russia to this day.
Following the reestablishment of Orthodoxy
as the principal religion of the Russian Federation
in the 1990s, a second wave of Russo-​Byzantine
revivalism has swept through the country and its
neighboring regions. Between 1990 and 2015 thou-
sands of new churches and cathedrals were either
restored or built anew.7 According to official statis-
tics, in 1905 there were 48,375 churches in the Rus-
sian Empire.8 Following seventy years of Soviet rule,
that number had fallen to 6,800 by 1986, but by 2006
it had increased almost fourfold to approximately
27,000.9 The Surikov Art Institute in Moscow and
the Ilia Repin Institute for Painting, Sculpture, and
Architecture in St. Petersburg have once again rein-
troduced classes on icon painting and monumental
fresco design in order to train a new generation of
artists in the art of ecclesiastical image making. Aca-
demic publishing in Russia has likewise seen a resur-
gence in monographs, anthologies, and articles on
the subject of religious art and the place of revivalist
architecture in contemporary society.10
As evidenced by Patriarch Kirill’s adulatory
comments on Putin’s leadership, the Orthodox
Church has again formally allied itself with the state
in a shared project of post-​Soviet nation building,
much as it had done in imperial Russia. Indeed,
as a number of contemporary commentators
have observed, many of Vladimir Putin’s policies
seem to hark back to Tsar Nicholas I’s ideology of
“Orthodoxy, Autocracy, and Nationality.”11 Accord-
ingly, through the systematized construction and
reconstruction of cathedrals in the Russo-​Byzantine
style, as well as the active promotion of icon paint-
ing and the deliberate “saturation” of the “public
sphere with Orthodox imagery, symbols, rituals and
discourse,” the ecclesiastical establishment has once
more adopted a prominent role in expanding Rus-
sia’s cultural and political influence in former Soviet
territories under the banner of a shared history,
religion, and aesthetic system.12 Thus, for example,
under the auspices of the Moscow Patriarchate, the
State Tretyakov Gallery organized a major exhibi-
tion of Russo-​Byzantine art in 2008 titled The Ortho-
dox Icon: Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, an ostensibly
apolitical cultural event whose implicit imperialist
subtext now looks increasingly ominous following
the annexation of Crimea.
At the same time that the government and
church have adopted the iconic tradition as a
means of fashioning post-​Soviet consciousness and
religious and social cohesion, a new generation of
vanguard artists has equally embraced it as an inter-
vention strategy and a mode of political protest and
institutional critique. In addition to the Pussy Riot
collective, artists such as Alexander Kosolapov, Igor
Makarevich, Elena Elagina, Avdei Ter-​Oganian,
Dmitrii Gutov, and the Blue Noses have all tested
the boundaries of the public sphere by deploying the
transgressive, revelatory, and critical possibilities of
an Orthodox-​inflected art. For example, Kosolapov’s
infamous Caviar Icon (1996) (fig. 115), which uses
a grainy black surface resembling sturgeon caviar
set within the gilded revetment of an icon to depict
a silhouette of the Virgin Mary holding the Christ
Child, explicitly equates faith with power, luxury,
and conspicuous consumption. Much like “Punk
Epilogue 221

Fig. 115  Alexander Kosolapov, Caviar Icon, 1996. Galvanized
copper, silver, wood board, and bits of black glass, 43 1/4 × 34 ×
3 in. (110 × 87 × 8 cm). Private collection, Moscow. © 2017, Alex-
ander Kosolapov / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York.
Prayer,” it implies that the Orthodox Church is dis-
torted by excess, corruption, and hypocrisy. More
specifically, it critiques the ways in which the ecclesi-
astical establishment has strategically profited from
its partnership with the state and has augmented its
influence and material wealth at a time when other
public institutions such as schools and hospitals are
in a state of sharp decline and degradation. The artist
Avdei Ter-​Oganian adopted an even more radical
222 The Icon and the Square
strategy in his 1998 performance piece entitled Young
Atheist, in which he installed cheap, mass-​produced
reproductions of icons in the Manege Art Center
and invited members of the audience to deface them
in exchange for a small fee. The performance culmi-
nated with the artist’s attacking the images with an
axe and encouraging his spectators to follow suit.
Akin to Pussy Riot’s 2012 performance, Koso-
lapov’s and Ter-​Oganian’s works generated wide-
spread offense in clerical circles, leading to formal
charges of “incitement of national and religious
hatred,” hefty fines, and, in the case of the latter, exile
from the Russian Federation. Ironically, the same
federal judge presided both over Ter-​Oganian’s and
Pussy Riot’s cases. Under the banner of “blasphemy,”
“hooliganism,” and “moral outrage,” authorities have
successfully censored, repressed, and ultimately
silenced a number of dissenting and critical voices
in the Russian art world to the general detriment of
civil society and healthy public discourse. Conse-
quently, as these and other examples clearly mani-
fest, from the iconoclastic controversies in medieval
Byzantium to present-​day Russia, the icon continues
to raise thorny issues about the nature of tradition
and innovation, the sacred and the profane, presence
and representation, and—by extension—poses
difficult questions about legitimacy, authenticity,
individual agency, and the dynamics of power.
That said, the scholarly ambitions of this book
extend beyond the charting of a prehistory for
the current debates on the triangulating forces of
contemporary Russian art, politics, and religion.
Rather, The Icon and the Square contends that a rig-
orous reassessment of the conventional modernist
narrative through the lens of historicist revivals and
indigenous reimaginings allows for a much more
nuanced and intricate picture of the multiple artistic
crosscurrents that swept through Europe in the early
twentieth century. More importantly, it illuminates
the extraordinary breadth and variation of modern-
ism itself across different spatio-​temporal contexts.
Instead of plotting a succession of “isms,” The Icon
and the Square highlights the complexity and symbi-
otic nature of the relationship between the last two
decades of the nineteenth century and the first two
of the twentieth, producing a circular rather than a
linear art-​historical narrative. In particular, it draws
attention to Russia’s deliberate and self-​conscious
construction of an entire artistic tradition for itself
in the space of only a few decades, which ultimately
contributed to the trajectory of international mod-
ernism in a number of important and far-​reaching
ways. Instead of being masterminded by a handful
of enlightened visionaries and like-​minded progres-
sives, the foundations of Russian modernism were
laid by a multitude of people from different echelons
of society and with conflicting values and diverging
goals, including the tsar, the church, the scholarly
establishment, official and unofficial artistic insti-
tutions, collectors, critics, and numerous artists of
different stylistic persuasions.
Fueled by nationalism, but also by a strong
desire to participate in pan-​European artistic culture,
artists and critics alike attempted to renegotiate the
different modalities of signification between Russia’s
century-​old native artistic tradition and the most
cutting-​edge modernist experimentation of the
Parisian avant-​garde. The result was a series of highly
innovative, hybrid artworks that synthesized the local
and the global into paradigm-​shifting new modes of
artistic expression. The icon thus functioned as both
a versatile catalyst for formal change and a dynamic
mediator between regional difference and interna-
tional relevance. Vrubel’s unrealized monumental
designs, Kandinsky’s nonobjective paintings, Tatlin’s
three-​dimensional constructions, and Malevich’s
epochal Black Square—all aimed to move beyond the
hermeticism of modernist aesthetics, aspiring instead
to penetrate daily life and to engage questions of
national identity, religious belief, cultural hegemony,
and politics in a sustained violation of modernism’s
central tenet: complete artistic autonomy.
This book therefore proposes that the dom-
inant accounts of the inception and proliferation
of transnational modernism be revised to include
questions of revivalism, religion, regionalism, and
romantic utilitarianism both within and across dif-
ferent national schools. For example, it might prove
instructive to analyze Otto Wagner’s and Maurice
Denis’s revivalist, Neo-​Byzantine designs for the
St. Leopold am Steinhof Church (1905–7) in Vienna
and the St. Esprit Church (1928–35) in Paris along-
side Le Corbusier’s architectural projects, especially
since the latter actively admired the Church of Hagia
Sophia as a paradigm of protomodernist aesthetics,
recalling Roger Fry’s and Alexander Benois’s earlier
definition of modernism as a return to Byzantine
forms.13 As demonstrated by the theoretical writ-
ings of Pavel Florensky, Nikolai Punin, and Nikolai
Tarabukin, appeals to the past need not be consid-
ered reactionary or antithetical to robust formal
innovation and progressive ideals. Instead, they can
serve to enrich and diversify our understanding of
the numerous and variable modes of modernist pro-
duction that transpired in the heart of Paris as much
as on the European periphery. Accordingly, it is the
author’s hope that such a strategic refiguration of
both the mainstream modernist canon and its the-
orization can facilitate the development of a much
more expansive and inclusive model of a genuinely
global history of modern art.
Epilogue 223
Notes
Introduction
1.  Alexander Benois, “Khudozhestvennye pisma—salon i
shkola Baskta,” Rech’, no. 117 (May 1910), repr. in Khudozhest-
vennye pisma, 1908–1917: Gazeta “Rech’,” Peterburg, vol. 1,
1908–1910, ed. Iu. N. Podkopaeva et al. (St. Petersburg: Sad
iskusstv, 2006), 431.
2.  Roger Fry, letter to the Burlington Magazine, March
1908, repr. in A Roger Fry Reader, ed. Christopher Reed (Chi-
cago: University of Chicago Press, 1996), 73.
3.  Clement Greenberg, “Modernist Painting,” Arts Year-
book, 4 (1961): 101–8, repr. in Clement Greenberg: The Col-
lected Essays and Criticism, ed. John O’Brian, vol. 4 (Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 1993), 86.
4.  Nikolai Punin, Tatlin (protiv kubizma) (St. Petersburg:
Gos. izdatel’stvo, 1921), repr. in Tatlin, ed. Larissa Zhadova
(New York: Rizzoli, 1988), 392.
5.  Nikolai Punin, “Puti sovremennogo iskusstva,” Apol-
lon, no. 9 (November 1913): 55–56.
6.  Martha M. F. Kelly, Unorthodox Beauty: Russian
Modernism and Its New Religious Aesthetic (Evanston: North-
western University Press, 2016), 17–20. See also Jefferson
J. A. Gatrall, introduction to Alter Icons: The Russian Icon and
Modernity, ed. Jefferson J. A. Gatrall and Douglas Greenfield
(University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2010),
and Dilip Parameshwar Gaonkar, ed., Alternative Modernities
(Durham: Duke University Press, 2001).
7. Kelly, Unorthodox Beauty, 17–18.
8.  Alison Hilton, “Matisse in Moscow,” Art Journal 29,
no. 2 (Winter 1969–70): 166–73, and Iurii Rusakov, “Matisse
in Russia in the Autumn of 1911,” trans. John E. Bowlt,
Burlington Magazine 117, no. 866, special issue devoted to
twentieth-​century art (May 1975): 284–91.
9.  Nikodim Kondakov, The Russian Icon, trans. Ellis
Minns (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1927), 77.
10.  For a detailed overview of this topic, see Wendy
Salmond and Cynthia Hyla Whittaker, introduction to Visu-
alizing Russia: Fedor Solntsev and Crafting a National Past,
ed. Cynthia Whittaker (Leiden: Brill, 2010), 1–16.
11.  Viktor Lazarev, Drevnerusskie mozaiki i freski xi–xv
vv (Moscow: Iskusstvo, 1973); William Craft Brumfield,
A History of Russian Architecture (Seattle: University of
Washington Press, 2004), 394–99; Anna Kornilova, “Istoki
russko-​vizantiiskogo stilia: Teoreticheskii aspect,” Trudy
Sankt-​Peterburgskogo gosudarstvennogo instituta kulturi, no. 186
(2009): 126–30; Vladimir Lisovskii, “Natsionalnyi stil’” v
arkhitekture rossii (Moscow: Sovpadenie, 2000); Iurii Savel’ev,
“Vizantiiskii stil’” v arkhitekture rossii: Vtoraia polovina xix–
nachalo xx veka (St. Petersburg: Liki rossii, proekt-2003,
2005); Iurii Savel’ev, Iskusstvo istorizma i gosudarstvennyi
zakaz: Vtoroia polovina xix–nachala xx veka (Moscow:
Sovpadenie, 2008).
12.  Camilla Gray, The Russian Experiment in Art, 1863–1922,
ed. Marian Burleigh-​Motley (London: Thames & Hudson,
1986), 100; Jane Ashton Sharp, Russian Modernism Between
East and West: Natal’ia Goncharova and the Moscow Avant-​
Garde (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 187.
13.  For a detailed discussion of this issue, see Olenka
Pevny, “In Solntsev’s Footsteps: Adrian Prakhov and the Rep-
resentation of Kievan Rus,” in Whittaker, Visualizing Russia,
85–108.
14.  Judith E. Kalb, Russia’s Rome: Imperial Visions, Messi-
anic Dreams, 1890–1940 (Madison: University of Wisconsin
Press, 2008); Lada Panova, Russkii Egipet: Aleksandriiskaia
poetika Mikhaila Kuzmina (Moscow: Vodolei Progress-​
Pleiada, 2006); Michael Kunichika, “Our Native Antiquity”:
Archaeology and Aesthetics in the Culture of Russian Modernism
(Boston: Academic Studies Press, 2015); Irina Sevelenko,
“Modernizm kak arkhaizm: Natsionalizm, russkij stil’ i
arkhaiziruiushiaia estetika v russkom modernizme,” Wiener
slawistischer Almanach 56 (2005): 141–83; Nils Ǻke Nilsson,
“Arkhaizm kak modernizm,” in Poeziia zhivopis’: Sbornik
trudov pamiati N. I. Khardzhieva, ed. Dmitrii Sarabianov and
Mikhail Meilakh (Moscow: Iazyki russkoi kul’tury, 2000),
75–82.
15. Panova, Russkii Egipet, 39.
16.  Ibid., 438–50.
17. Kalb, Russia’s Rome, 15–18.
18.  Vera Shevzov, Russian Orthodoxy on the Eve of Revolu-
tion (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), 6.
19.  The same distinction applies in the original Greek
from which the Russian derives. “Iconography” literally
means “icon writing.” For a detailed discussion of this, see
Robin Cormack, Writing in Gold: Byzantine Society and Its
Icons (New York: Oxford University Press, 1985).
225
 20.  David Peters Corbett, The World in Paint: Modern Art
and Visuality in England, 1848–1914 (University Park: Pennsyl-
vania State University Press, 2004), 9–10.
21.  Pavel Florensky, “The Stratification of Aegean
Culture,” in Beyond Vision: Essays on the Perception of Art,
ed. Nicoletta Misler, trans. Wendy Salmond (London: Reak-
tion, 2002), 142–43. This is a translation from Pavel Florensky,
“Naplastovaniia egeiskoi kul’tury,” Bogoslavskii vestnik 11, no. 6
(1913): 33–75.
22.  In their seminal publications, Gray, Bowlt, and Sara-
bianov have challenged the prevailing assumption that the
most significant modernist artists were those who adopted an
exclusively future-​oriented worldview, liberating themselves
from the past and its representational traditions. Instead,
these scholars have persuasively demonstrated that Russia’s
modernist program was deeply indebted to the rich cultural
and intellectual milieu of the so-called Silver Age, the art,
literature, and philosophy of which continued to shape avant-​
garde polemics well into the 1920s. Gray, Russian Experiment
in Art; John E. Bowlt, Moscow and St. Petersburg, 1900–1920:
Art, Life, and Culture of the Russian Silver Age (New York: Ven-
dome Press, 2008); Bowlt, ed., Painting Revolution: Kandinsky,
Malevich, and the Russian Avant-​Garde (Bethesda, Md.: Foun-
dation for International Arts and Education, 2000); Bowlt,
The Silver Age: Russian Art of the Early Twentieth Century
and the “World of Art” Group (Newtonville, Mass.: Oriental
Research Partners, 1979); Bowlt, Russian Art, 1875–1975:
A Collection of Essays (New York: MSS Information, 1976);
Dmitrii Sarabianov, Modern: Istoriia stilia (Moscow: Galart,
2001); Sarabianov, Russian Art: From Neoclassicism to the
Avant-​Garde, 1800–1917; Painting—Sculpture—Architecture
(New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1990); Sarabianov, Russkaia
zhivopis’ kontsa 1900-kh–nachala 1910-kh godov: Ocherki (Mos-
cow: Iskusstvo, 1971); Sarabianov, Russkie zhivopistsy nachala
xx v.: Novye napravleniia (Leningrad: Avrora, 1973).
23. Sharp, Russian Modernism; Sarah Warren, Mikhail
Larionov and the Cultural Politics of Late Imperial Russia (Bur-
lington, Vt.: Ashgate, 2013).
24. Sharp, Russian Modernism, 3.
25.  Sergei Makovsky, “Vystavka drevne-​russkogo
iskusstva,” Apollon, no. 5 (May 1913): 38.
26.  VKhUTEMAS was the Soviet acronym for the
Higher Art and Technical Studios (Vysshie khudozhest-
venno-​tekhnicheskie masterskie) in Moscow, while RAKhN
stood for the Russian Academy of Artistic Sciences (Rossi-
iskaia akademiia khudozhestvennykh nauk), also located in
Moscow.
226 notes to pages 6–21
27.  Nikolai Berdiaev et al., Vekhi: Sbornik statei o russkoi
intelligentsii N. A. Berdiaeva, S. N. Bulgakova, M. O. Gershen­
zona, A. S. Izgoieva, B. A. Kistiakovskogo, P. B. Struve, S. L.
Franka, 2nd ed. (Moscow: Tipo-​lit. T-​va I. N. Kushnerev,
1909).
28.  Briony Fer, “Imagining a Point of Origin: Malevich
and Suprematism,” in Fer, On Abstract Art (New Haven: Yale
University Press, 1997), 7.
Chapter 1
1.  Samuel Hazzard Cross and Olgerd P. Sherbowitz-​
Wetzor, trans. and eds., The Russian Primary Chronicle:
Laurentian Text (Cambridge, Mass.: Mediaeval Academy of
America, 1953), 111.
2.  Avvakum Petrovich (protopope), “Beseda Chetver-
taia: Ob ikonnom pisanii,” in Zhitie protopopa Avvakuma
(Moscow: Eksmo, 2017).
3.  My chief sources here are Pavel Krasnotsvetov,
Kazanskii sobor: Istoricheskii ocherk stroitelstva i tserkovnoi
zhizni (St. Petersburg: Artdeko, 2001); Valerii Turchin, Alek-
sandr I i neoklassitsizm v Rossii: Stil’ imperii ili imperiia kak
stil’ (Moscow: Zhiraf, 2001); Ia. I. Shurygin, Kazanskii sobor
(St. Petersburg: Lenizdat, 1964); Andrei Aplaksin, Kazanskii
sobor: Istoricheskoe issledovanie o sobore i ego opisanie
(St. Petersburg: Izdano na sredstva Kazanskogo sobora, 1911).
4.  Natalia Tolmacheva, “Isaakievskii sobor: Strukturno-​
istoricheskii analiz architekturnogo pamiatnika” (Ph.D. diss.,
Russian Institute of Art History, St. Petersburg, 2004), 85.
5.  Fedor Chizhov, “O ikonopochitanii,” Moskvitianin,
no. 7 (1846): 117–19.
6.  Leonid Ouspensky, Theology of the Icon, trans. Anthony
Gythiel (Crestwood, N.Y.: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press,
1992), 2:362–68.
7.  For a detailed analysis of the multiple internal and
external challenges faced by official Orthodoxy in Rus-
sia during the late imperial period, see Shevzov, Russian
Orthodoxy.
8.  Charles de Secondat Montesquieu, Considérations
sur les causes de la grandeur des Romains et de leur décadence
(Amsterdam: Jacques Desbordes, 1734), 238. Voltaire
[François-​Marie Arouet], Le Pyrrhonisme de l’histoire (Stutt-
gart: L’expédition de l’histoire de notre temps, 1829), 54.
9.  Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, Lectures on the Phi-
losophy of History, trans. J. Sibree (London: G. Bell & Sons,
1900), 353.
10.  As early as 1790 Nikolai Karamzin had already cited
Edward Gibbon as his model for historical writing, and he
based his own twelve-​volume History of the Russian State
from 1816 to 1826 on the former’s History of the Decline and
Fall of the Roman Empire: “It is painful, but in all fairness nec-
essary, to say that at this time we still do not possess a good
Russian History, that is, one written with noble eloquence,
critically, by a philosophical mind. Tacitus, Hume, Robert-
son, Gibbon—they are models!” Nikolai Karamzin, Letters of
a Russian Traveller, 1789–90 (New York: Columbia University
Press, 1957), 252, quoted in Andrew Wachtel, An Obsession
with History: Russian Writers Confront the Past (Stanford:
Stanford University Press, 1994), 46.
Likewise, in 1823 Alexander Pushkin referred to Gibbon’s
work in the eighth chapter of his Eugene Onegin:
Once more he turned to books, unchoosing,
devouring Gibbon and Rousseau,
Manzoni and Chamfort, perusing
Madame de Staël, Bichat, Tissot,
Herder, and even at times a Russian—
nothing was barred beyond discussion—
he read of course the sceptic Bayle
and all the works of Fontanelle—
almanacs, journals of reflection,
where admonitions are pronounced,
where nowadays I’m soundly trounced,
but where such hymns in my direction
were chanted, I remember when—
e sempre bene, gentlemen.
Alexander Pushkin, Eugene Onegin, trans. Charles Johnston
(New York: Viking Press, 1977), chap. 8, stanza 35.
11.  Nikodim Kondakov, Vizantiiskie tserkvi i pamiatniki
Konstantinopolia (Moscow: Indrik, 2006), 26, 30, 70, and
Kondakov, Arkheologicheskoe puteshestvie po Sirii i Palestinie
(St. Petersburg: Izdatel’stvo Imperatorskoi akademii nauk,
1904), 45–46.
12.  Edward Gibbon, History of the Decline and Fall of the
Roman Empire, ed. J. B. Bury, vol. 7 (New York: Fred de Fau,
1907), 53–56.
13.  For more details on the St. Sophia Cathedral, see
Anthony Cutler, “Recovering St. Sophia: Cameron, Cath-
erine II, and the Idea of Constantinople in Late Eighteenth-​
Century Russia,” in An Architectural Progress in the Renaissance
and Baroque: Sojourns In and Out of Italy; Essays in Architectural
History Presented to Hellmut Hager on His Sixty-​Sixth Birthday,
ed. Henry A. Millon and Susan Scott Munshower (University
Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1992), 888–909.
14.  Ibid., 893.
15.  Petr Chaadaev, “Philosophicheskie pisma: Pismo
pervoe,” quoted in A. F. Zamaleev, Rossiia glazami russkogo:
Chaadaev, Leont’ev, Solov’ev (St. Petersburg: Nauka, 1991), 30.
16.  My Past and Thoughts: The Memoirs of Alexander
Herzen, trans. Constance Garnett (New York: Knopf, 1973),
614–15.
17.  Robert S. Nelson, Hagia Sophia, 1850–1950: Holy
Wisdom Modern Monument (Chicago: University of Chicago
Press, 2004), and J. B. Bullen, Byzantium Rediscovered (Lon-
don; New York: Phaidon, 2003).
18. Nelson, Hagia Sophia, 6.
19.  Félix de Verneilh, L’architecture byzantine en France:
Saint-​Front de Périgueux et les églises à coupoles de l’Aquitaine
(Paris: V. Didron, 1851).
20.  For an in-​depth discussion of these views, see Maria
Taroutina, “Second Rome or Seat of Savagery: The Case of
Byzantium in Nineteenth-​Century European Imaginaries,”
in Civilisation and Nineteenth-​Century Art: A European Con-
cept in Global Context, ed. David O’Brien (Manchester: Man-
chester University Press, 2016), 150–77.
21.  John Ruskin, The Stones of Venice, vol. 2 (London:
Smith, Elder, 1853), 92.
22.  Edward Freeman, A History of Architecture (London:
J. Masters, 1849), 164–65.
23.  Ibid., 165–66.
24.  William Edward Hartpole Lecky, History of European
Morals from Augustus to Charlemagne (New York: D. Apple-
ton, 1870), 13–14.
25.  Taroutina, “Second Rome or Seat of Savagery.”
26.  In 1884 Smirnov was selected by the St. Petersburg
Imperial Academy of Arts to travel to Italy as an academic
pensioner, where he lived and studied for three years. See
Ia. V. Bruk and L. I. Iovleva, eds., Gosudarstvennaia Tretia-
kovskaia galereia: Katalog sobraniia, ser. 2, Zhivopis xvii–xx
vekov, vol. 4, bk. 2, Zhivopisi vtoroi polovini xix veka (Moscow:
Krasnaia ploshchad’, 2006), 312–15.
27.  Paul Stephenson argues that it is impossible to under-
stand the Byzantine revival in Europe without examining the
tensions and contradictions inherent in the “Eastern Ques-
tion.” See Paul Stephenson, “Pioneers of Popular Byzantine
History: Freeman, Gregorovius, Schlumberger,” in The Byz-
antine World, ed. Paul Stephenson (New York: Routledge,
2010), 462–80.
28.  See the first two chapters of Andrzej Walicki’s
Slavophile Controversy: History of a Conservative Uto-
pia in Nineteenth-​Century Russian Thought, trans. Hilda
notes to pages 22–31 227
 Andrews-​Rusiecka (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1975), and
Marcus C. Levitt, Early Modern Russian Letters: Texts and
Contexts (Boston: Academic Studies Press, 2009).
29.  Nikolai Karamzin, Karamzin’s Memoir on Ancient and
Modern Russia, trans. and ed. Richard Pipes (New York: Ath-
eneum, 1959), 124.
30. Walicki, Slavophile Controversy, 22.
31.  Timofei Granovskii, Sochineniya, 4th ed. (Moscow,
1900), 378–79.
32.  Aleksei Khomiakov, “Golos greka v zashchitu Vizan-
tii,” in Polnoe sobranie sochinenii Alekseia Stepanovicha Khomia-
kova, vol. 3 (Moscow: Universitetskaia tipografiia, 1900), 366.
33.  For a detailed discussion of this subject, see Richard
Wortman, Scenarios of Power: Myth and Ceremony in Russian
Monarchy from Peter the Great to the Abdication of Nicholas II
(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2006), 120–42.
34.  Svod zakonov rossiiskoi imperii 12 (St. Petersburg,
1857), 49. The provision is article 218 of the Stroitel’nyi ustav,
quoted in Richard Wortman, “The ‘Russian Style’ in Church
Architecture as Imperial Symbol After 1881,” in Architectures
of Russian Identity, 1500 to the Present, ed. James Cracraft and
Daniel Rowland (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2003), 102.
35. Savel’ev, “Vizantiiskii stil’,” 28.
36.  For an in-​depth account of the cathedral’s history and
construction, see Konstantin Akinsha and Grigorii Kozlov,
The Holy Place: Architecture, Ideology, and History in Russia
(New Haven: Yale University Press, 2007).
37.  Since it took more than four decades to complete the
construction and decoration of the cathedral, several import-
ant changes that departed from what Thon and Nicholas I
had initially envisioned were made during Alexander II’s
reign.
38.  After Nicholas I’s death, in 1855, his successor, Alexan-
der II, turned the commission over to a younger generation
of Realist artists known as the Peredvizhniki, who executed
the murals in a more naturalistic European style than Nicho-
las I had originally intended.
39.  As cited in Akinsha and Kozlov, Holy Place, 76.
40.  Nikolai Danilevskii, Rossiia i Evropa, 4th ed.
(St. Petersburg: Izdanie N. Strakhova, 1889), 398–473.
41.  Sergei Zhigarev, Russkaia politika v Vostochnom
voprosie: Ee istoriia v xvi–xix viekakh, kriticheskaia otsenka i
budushchiia zadachi (Moscow: Universitetskaia tipografiia,
1896), 1:49.
42.  Wortman, “ ‘Russian Style,’ ” 103.
43.  “Po voprosu o postroike sobora v g. Revele, Estliand­
skoi gubernii,” Rossiiskii gosudarstvennyi istoricheskii arkhiv,
228 notes to pages 31–39
fol. 797, op. 91, no. 6, quoted in Wortman, “ ‘Russian Style,’ ”
110.
44.  Wortman, “ ‘Russian Style,’ ” 110.
45.  The Nikonian Chronicle, ed. and trans. Serge A. Zen-
kovsky and Betty Jean Zenkovsky, vol. 3, From the Year 1241 to
the Year 1381 (Princeton, N.J.: Kingston Press, 1986), 241–42.
46.  Viktor Lazarev, Moskovskaia shkola ikonopisi (Mos-
cow: Iskusstvo, 1971), 66.
47. Savel’ev, “Vizantiiskii stil’,” 30.
48.  Grigorii Gagarin, Le Caucase pittoresque dessiné
d’après nature (Paris: Imprime par Plon frères, 1847).
49.  Anna Kornilova, Grigorii Gagarin: Tvorcheskii put’
(Moscow: Iskusstvo, 2001), 193.
50.  For a detailed account of Sevastianov’s expeditions
to Mount Athos and his collection of Byzantine art, see Iurii
Piatnitskii, “P. I. Sevastianov i ego sobranie,” in Vizantinove-
denie v Ermitazhe, ed. V. S. Shandrovskaia (Leningrad: Gosu-
darstvennyi Ermitazh, 1991), 14–19.
51.  Izilla Pleshanova and Liudmila Likhacheva,
Drevnerusskoe dekorativno-​prikladnoe iskusstvo v sobranii Gosu-
darstvennogo russkogo muzeia (Leningrad: Iskusstvo, Lenin-
gradskoe otd-​nie, 1985), 200.
52.  Irina Shalina, “Etapy formirovania otdeleniia khris-
tianskih drevnostei Russkogo muzeia Imperatora Aleksan-
dra III,” in Kollektsii i kollekstionery: Sbornik statei po mate-
rialam nauchnoi konferentsii; Russkii muzei Sankt-​Peterburg
2008, ed. Evgenia Petrova (St. Petersburg: Palace Editions,
2009), 10–11.
53.  Khristianskie drevnosti i arkheologiia, Gerold Vzdornov,
Istoriia otkrytiia i izucheniia russkoi srednevekovoi zhivopisi: xix
vek (Moscow: Iskusstvo, 1986), 119.
54. Kornilova, Grigorii Gagarin, 193.
55.  Grigorii Gagarin, Kratkaia khronologicheskaia tablitsa
v posobie istorii vizantiiskogo iskusstva (Tiflis, 1856), iv–v.
56.  Vladimir Stasov, “Vasilii Aleksandrovich Prokhorov,”
Vestnik izyashnikh iskusstv 3, no. 4 (1885): 320–60, repr.
in Stasov, Sobranie sochinenii V. V. Stasova, 1847–1886, vol. 2,
pt. 4 (St. Petersburg: Tipografiia M. M. Stasiulevicha, 1894),
428.
57.  Shalina, “Etapy formirovania,” 12.
58. Vzdornov, Istoriia otkrytiia, 132.
59.  Adrian Prakhov, Otrkrytie fresok Kievo-​Kirillevskoi
tserkvi, xii-ogo veka (St. Petersburg: Tipografiia V. S. Bala-
sheva, 1883), 1.
60.  Ibid., 7.
61.  Ibid., 9.
62. Vzdornov, Istoriia otkrytiia, 134.
 63. Prakhov, Otrkrytie fresok, 5.
64.  Adrian Prakhov, Katalog vystavki kopii s pamiatnikov
iskusstva v Kieve x, xi i xii vekov ispolnennykh A. V. Prakhovym
vtechenii 1880, 1881 i 1882 (St. Petersburg: Tipografiia Impera-
torskoi akademii nauk, 1882).
65.  For information on the decoration of the St. Vladimir
Cathedral, see Viktor Kyrkevych, Volodymyrskyi sobor u Kyievi
(Kiev: Tekhnika, 2004), 26–177.
66.  For more information about the link between revival-
ist architecture, icon painting, and the advent of the stil mod-
ern, see Oleg Tarasov, “The Russian Icon and the Culture of
the Modern: The Renaissance of Popular Icon Painting in the
Reign of Nicholas II,” Experiment 7 (2001): 73–101; Wendy R.
Salmond, introduction to Experiment 7 (2001): xvii–xxi; and
Salmond, “Moscow Modern,” in Art Nouveau, 1890–1914,
ed. Paul Greenhalgh (New York: Harry N. Abrams, 2000),
388–97.
67.  My chief sources here are Nikodim Kondakov,
Vospominaniia i dumy, ed. Irina Leonidovna Kyzlasova
(Moscow: Indrik, 2002); Irina Leonidovna Kyzlasova, ed.,
Mir Kondakova: Publikatsii, stat’i, katalog vystavki (Moscow:
Russkii put’, 2004); Kyzlasova, Istoriia izucheniia vizantiiskogo
i drevnerusskogo iskusstva v Rossii: F. I. Buslaev, N. P. Kondakov;
Metody, idei, teorii (Moscow: Izdatel’stvo Moskovskogo uni-
versiteta, 1985); and Vzdornov, Istoriia otkrytiia.
68.  Nikodim Kondakov, Istoriia vizantiiskogo iskusstva i
ikonografii po miniatiuram grecheskikh rukopisei (Odessa: Tip.
Ul’rikha & Shul’tse, 1876); Kondakov, Histoire de l’art byzan-
tin considéré principalement dans les miniatures, trans. M. Traw-
inski, 2 vols. (Paris: Librairie de l’art, 1886–91).
69.  Nikodim Kondakov, Vizantiiskie tserkvi i pamiatniki
Konstantinopolia (Odessa: Tip. A. Schultz, 1886), 77.
70.  Drevniaia arkhitektura Gruzii (1876), Miniatiury
grecheskoi rukopisi Psaltiri ix vieka (1878), Mozaiki mecheti
Kakhrie-​Dzhamisi: Mone tes Khoras v Konstantinopole (1881),
and Puteshestvie na Sinai v 1881 godu: Iz putevykh vpechatlenii;
Drevnosti Sinaiskogo monastyria (1882).
71.  Nikodim Kondakov, Histoire et monuments des émaux
byzantins (Frankfurt am Mein, 1892); Kondakov, Geschichte
und Denkmäler des byzantinischen Emails (Frankfurt am Main,
1892).
72.  Svetlana Savina, “N. P. Kondakov,” in Shandrovskaia,
Vizantinovedenie v Ermitazhe, 34–38.
73.  Iurii Piatnitskii, “Russkii arkheologicheskii institut v
Konstantinopole (RAIK),” in Shandrovskaia, Vizantinovede-
nie v Ermitazhe, 28.
74.  Ibid., 31.
75.  Fedor Solntsev, Drevnosti rossiiskogo gosudarstva
(Moscow: Tipografiia A. Semena, 1849–53), Ivan Sakharov,
Issledovaniia o russkom ikonopisanii (St. Petersburg: Tipo­
grafiia Iakova Treia, 1849), and Dmitrii Rovinskii, Istoriia
russkikh shkol ikonopisaniia do kontsa xvii veka (Moscow:
Tipografiia vtorogo otdeleniia sobstvennoi E. I. V. kantselia-
rii, 1856).
76.  Nikodim Kondakov, “O freskah lestnitsy Kievo-​
Sofiiskogo sobora,” Zapiski Imperatorskogo russkogo
arkheologicheskogo obshchestva 3, nos. 3–4 (St. Petersburg,
1888): 287–306; Kondakov, “Soobshenie o pamiatnikakh
vizantiiskoi drevnosti v Feodosii i o starinnykh russkikh
obrazakh,” Zapiski Imperatorskogo russkogo arkheologicheskogo
obshchestva 3, nos. 3–4 (St. Petersburg, 1888): 102–3.
77.  Nikodim Kondakov, Russkie klady: Issledovanie drev-
nostei velikokniazheskogo perioda (St. Petersburg: Izdatel’stvo
Imperatorskoi arkheologicheskoi komissii, 1896); Nikodim
Kondakov and Ivan Tolstoy, Russkie drevnosti v pamiatnikakh
iskusstva, 6 vols. (St. Petersburg: A. Benke, 1889–99).
78.  Nikodim Kondakov and Ivan Tolstoy, Antiquités de la
Russie méridionale, trans. Salomon Reinach (Paris: E. Leroux,
1891).
79.  Iurii Savel’ev, “Iskusstvo ‘istorizma’ v systeme gosu-
darstvennogo zakaza vtoroi poloviny xix–nachala xx veka:
Na primere vizantiiskogo i russkogo stilei” (Ph.D. diss.,
St. Petersburg State University, 2006), 36–37.
80.  Dmitrii Ainalov and Egor Redin, Kievsko-​Sofiiskii
sobor: Issledovanie drevnei zhivopisi, mozaik i fresok sobora
(St. Petersburg: Tipografiia Imperatorskoi akademii nauk,
1889); Dmitrii Ainalov, Drevnie pamiatniki iskusstva Kïeva:
Sofiiskii sobor, Zlatoverkho-​Mikhailovskii i Kirillovskii mona-
styri (Kharkov: Tipografiia pechatnoe delo K. N. Gaga-
rina, 1899); Dmitrii Trenev, Ikonostas Smolenskogo sobora
Moskovskogo Novodievich’ego monastyria (Moscow: Izd. pri
Tserkovno-​arkheologicheskogo otd. Obshchestva liubitelei
dukhovnogo prosveshcheniia, 1902); Aleksandr Uspenskii,
Istoriia stenopisi Uspenskogo sobora v Moskve (Moscow:
Tipografiia A. I. Mamontova, 1902).
81.  Savel’ev, “Iskusstvo ‘istorizma,’ ” 146.
82.  Ibid., 147.
83.  For an in-​depth discussion of the formation and
activities of the Committee for the Encouragement of Icon
Painting, see Tarasov, “Russian Icon,” 73–101.
84.  Pavel Muratov, “Otkrytie drevnego russkogo
iskusstva,” in Drevnerusskaia zhivopis’ (Moscow: Airis Press,
2005), 28.
85.  Ibid., 27.
notes to pages 39–45 229
 86.  Pavel Muratov, “Blizhaishye zadachi v dele izucheniia
ikonopisi,” Russkaia ikona, no. 1 (St. Petersburg, 1914): 8.
87.  Punin, “Puti sovremennogo iskusstva,” 55.
88.  Aleksei Grishchenko, O sviaziakh russkoi zhivo-
pisi s Vizantiei i Zapadom xiii–xx vv (Moscow: Izd.
A. Grishchenko, 1913), 69.
89.  Ibid., 7.
90.  Ibid., 89.
91.  Nikolai Tarabukin, Smysl ikony (Moscow: Izd. Pra-
voslavnogo Bratstva Sviatitelia filareta Moskovskogo, 1999),
41. Although the original manuscript was completed in 1916,
it was first published only in 1999.
92.  Punin, “Puti sovremennogo iskusstva i russkaia
ikonopis’,” 50.
93.  Rusakov, “Matisse in Russia,” 286.
94.  Hilton, “Matisse in Moscow,” 166.
95.  Benois, “Khudozhestvennye pisma,” 430–31.
96.  Ya Shik, “U Matissa,” Rannee utro, October 26, 1911,
quoted in Rusakov, “Matisse in Russia,” 287.
97.  “Matiss v Moskve: V Tretyakovskoi galeree,” Utro ros-
sii, October 28, 1911, quoted in Rusakov, “Matisse in Russia,”
289.
98.  Ibid., 288–89.
99.  For a discussion of Matisse’s interest in Byzantine art,
see Mark Antliff, “The Rhythms of Duration: Bergson and
the Art of Matisse,” in The New Bergson, ed. John Mullarkey
(Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1999), 184–208,
and Robert S. Nelson, “Modernism’s Byzantium Byzantium’s
Modernism,” in Betancourt and Taroutina, Byzantium/Mod-
ernism, 24–27.
100.  Aleksei Grishchenko, Russkaia ikona kak iskusstvo
zhivopisi (Moscow: Izdanie Avtora, 1917), 242.
101.  Pavel Muratov, “Vystavka drevnerusskogo iskusstva v
Moskve,” Starye gody, April 1913, 32.
102.  For a discussion of this publication, see Florensky,
Beyond Vision, 58–62.
103.  Nikoai Berdiaev, “Picasso,” Sofia, no. 3 (March 1914):
60.
104.  Pavel Florensky, Smysl idealizma (Sergiev Posad:
Tipografiia Sviato-​Troitskoi Sergievoi Lavry, 1914), 45, quoted
in Florensky, Beyond Vision, 59.
105.  Sergei Bulgakov, “Trup krasoty,” Russkaia mysl’, no. 8
(1915): 91–106.
106. Grishchenko, O sviaziakh russkoi zhivopisi, 17, 26.
107.  Alexander Benois, “Khudozhestvennye pisma: Ikony
i novoe iskusstvo,” Rech’, no. 93 (1913): 2, as translated by
Andrew Spira in Avant-​Garde Icon: Russian Avant-​Garde Art
230 notes to pages 46–51
and the Icon Painting Tradition (Aldershot, Hampshire; Burl-
ington, Vt.: Humphries, 2008), 120–23.
108.  This phrase was originally coined by Nicolas Zernov,
who explored the phenomenon in his seminal book The Rus-
sian Religious Renaissance of the Twentieth Century (London:
Darton, Longman & Todd, 1963). In this study Zernov
traced a widespread rebirth of interest in Christian Orthodox
thought and philosophy among the Russian intelligentsia in
the first decade of the twentieth century.
109.  For more information on Soloviev’s beliefs, see Oli-
ver Smith, Vladimir Soloviev and the Spiritualization of Matter
(Boston: Academic Studies Press, 2011).
110.  Vladimir Soloviev, Sobranie sochinenii V. S. Solov’eva,
12 vols. (Brussels: Foyer oriental chretien, 1966).
111.  Vladimir Soloviev, The Crisis of Western Philosophy:
Against the Positivists, trans. and ed. Boris Jakim (Hudson,
N.Y.: Lindisfarne Press, 1996), 93–94; Soloviev, The Philosoph-
ical Principles of Integral Knowledge, trans. Valeria Z. Nollan
(Grand Rapids, Mich.: Wm. B. Eerdmans, 2008), 52.
112. Soloviev, Philosophical Principles, 69.
113.  Andrzej Walicki, A History of Russian Thought: From
the Enlightenment to Marxism (Stanford: Stanford University
Press, 1979), 392.
114.  Viacheslav Ivanov quotes Soloviev’s “Three Speeches
in Memory of Dostoyevsky” in “Dve stikhii v sovremennom
simbolizme,” in Rodnoe i vselenskoe (Moscow: Izdatel’stvo
“Respublika,” 1994), 160, trans. in Kelly, Unorthodox Beauty, 14.
115. Walicki, History of Russian Thought, 392.
116.  Judith Deutsch Kornblatt, Divine Sophia: The Wis-
dom Writings of Vladimir Solovyov (Ithaca: Cornell University
Press, 2009), 104.
117. Walicki, Slavophile Controversy, 578.
118.  Nikolai Berdiaev, The Russian Idea (New York:
Macmillan, 1948), 177.
119.  Maria Gough, “Faktura: The Making of the Russian
Avant-​Garde,” Res: Journal of Anthropology and Aesthetics 36
(Autumn 1999): 38.
120.  Nicoletta Misler, “Pavel Florensky as Art Historian,”
in Florensky, Beyond Vision, 31.
121.  Ibid., 23–24.
122.  Ibid., 72.
123.  Pavel Florensky, “Reverse Perspective” (1920),
in Florensky, Beyond Vision, 218.
124.  Ibid., 217.
125.  Pavel Florensky, Iconostasis, trans. Donald Sheehan
and Olga Andrejev (Crestwood, N.Y.: St. Vladimir’s Semi-
nary Press, 1996), 88.
 126.  Pavel Florensky, “On Realism” (1923), in Florensky,
Beyond Vision, 180–82.
127.  Although “Iconostasis” was completed over the
summer of 1922, it was first published posthumously, many
years after Florensky’s death. The first incomplete publica-
tion appeared in the theological journal Bogoslovskie trudy 17
(Moscow, 1977). The first full English translation, by Donald
Sheehan and Olga Andrejev, was published by St. Vladimir’s
Seminary Press in 1996.
128. Florensky, Iconostasis, 67.
129.  Florensky, “Reverse Perspective,” 253–54.
130.  Erwin Panofsky, “Die Perspektive als ‘sym-
bolische Form,’ ” in Vorträge der Bibliothek Warburg 1924/25
(Leipzig: Teubner, 1927), 258–330.
131.  Florensky, “Reverse Perspective,” 202.
132.  Ibid., 204.
133. Florensky, Iconostasis, 69.
134.  Saint John of Damascus, Three Treatises on the Divine
Images, trans. Andrew Louth (Crestwood, N.Y.: St. Vladimir’s
Seminary Press, 2003), 22, 43, 108.
135.  Florensky, “Reverse Perspective,” 258.
136. Tarabukin, Smysl ikony, 125–37.
137.  Nikolai Punin, “K probleme vizantiiskogo iskusstva,”
Apollon, no. 3 (March 1913): 17–25; Punin, “Puti sovremen-
nogo iskusstva”; Punin, “Puti sovremennogo iskusstva i russ-
kaia ikonopis’’.”
138.  Punin, “K probleme vizantiiskogo iskusstva,” 25;
Punin, “Puti sovremennogo iskusstva,” 56; Punin, “Puti
sovremennogo iskusstva i russkaia ikonopis’,” 50.
139.  Punin, “K probleme vizantiiskogo iskusstva,” 17;
Punin, “Puti sovremennogo iskusstva i russkaia ikonopis’,” 46.
140.  Punin, “K probleme vizantiiskogo iskusstva,” 23.
141.  Punin, “Puti sovremennogo iskusstva i russkaia
ikonopis’,” 47.
142. Ibid.
143.  Gerold Vzdornov and Aleksei Dunaev, “Nikolai
Mikhailovich Tarabukin i ego kniga Philosofia ikony,” in Tara-
bukin, Smysl ikony, 9.
144. Tarabukin, Smysl ikony, 43, 49.
145.  Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, Aesthetics: Lectures
on Fine Art, trans. T. M. Knox, vol. 1 (Oxford: Oxford Univer-
sity Press, 1998), 83.
146. Tarabukin, Smysl ikony, 44–45.
147.  Ibid., 44.
148.  Ibid., 131.
149.  Ibid., 136.
150.  Ibid., 131–32.
151. Tarabukin, Proiskhozhdenie i razvitie ikonostasa
(1918). Tarabukin, “O sovremennoi zhivopisi: Iazyk form,”
Ponedel’nik, no. 16 ( June 1918): 3; Nikolai Tarabukin, Opyt
teorii zhivopisi (Moscow: Vserossiiskii proletkul’t, 1923);
Tarabukin, Ot mol’berta k mashine (Moscow: Izdatel’stvo
“Rabotnik prosveshcheniia,” 1923); Tarabukin, Iskusstvo dnia
(Moscow: Vserossiiskii proletkul’t, 1925).
152.  For a discussion of the various ways in which the
Bolsheviks drew on iconic images and ecclesiastical archi-
tecture as models for Communist political propaganda, see
Andrew Spira, “Icons and Propaganda,” in Avant-​Garde Icon,
168–208; Katerina Clark, “Socialist Realism and the Sacraliz-
ing of Space,” in The Landscape of Stalinism: The Art and Ide-
ology of Soviet Space, ed. Evgeny Dobrenko and Eric Naiman
(Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2003), 3–18; and
Victoria E. Bonnell, Iconography of Power: Soviet Political Post-
ers Under Lenin and Stalin (Berkeley: University of California
Press, 1999), 1–19, 20–35. For a broader discussion of the
sacralization of politics in Soviet Russia, see A. James Gregor,
“Leninism: Revolution as Religion,” in Totalitarianism and
Political Religion: An Intellectual History (Stanford: Stanford
University Press, 2012), 87–114, and Emilio Gentile, Politics as
Religion, trans. George Staunton (Princeton: Princeton Uni-
versity Press, 2006), 45–68.
Chapter 2
1. The Exhibition of Ancient Russian Art was organized in
February of 1913 by the Imperial Archaeological Institute in
Moscow in celebration of the three-hundredth anniversary of
the Romanov dynasty.
2. Vzdornov, Istoriia otkrytiia, 204–5.
3.  Nikolai Sychev, Drevlekhranilishche pamiatnikov russkoi
ikonopisi i tserkovnoi stariny imeni Imperatora Nikolaia II pri
Russkom muzee Imperatora Aleksandra III (St. Petersburg:
Izd. zhurnala Starye gody, 1916), 4.
4.  Iakov Tugenkhold, “Vystavka drevnei ikonopisi v
Moskve,” Severnye zapiski, nos. 5–6 (May–June 1913): 217–18;
Muratov, “Vystavka drevnerusskogo iskusstva,” 34–35;
Alexander Benois, “Russkie ikony i Zapad,” Rech’, no. 97
(April 1913): 2; Nikolai Punin, “Vystavka drevne-​russkogo
iskusstva,” Apollon, no. 5 (May 1913): 40.
5.  For an analysis of the “Third Rome” doctrine, see Nina
Sinitsyna, Tretii Rim: Istoki i evoliutsiia russkoi srednevekovoi
kontseptsii, xv–xvii vv (Moscow: Izd-​vo Indrik, 1998).
6.  Cited in Robert Lee Wolf, “The Three Romes:
The Migration of an Ideology and the Making of an Auto-
crat,” Daedalus 88, no. 2 (1959): 291.
notes to pages 51–60 231
 7.  For a good summary of the ties that bound Byzantium
and medieval Russia, see Olga Popova, “Medieval Russian
Painting and Byzantium,” in Gates of Mystery: The Art of Holy
Russia, ed. Roderick Grieson (Cambridge: Lutterworth
Press, 1992), 45–59.
8.  Robin Cormack, Byzantine Art (Oxford: Oxford Uni-
versity Press, 2000), 181.
9.  Popova, “Medieval Russian Painting,” 45.
10. Cormack, Byzantine Art, 181, and John Lowden, Early
Christian and Byzantine Art (London: Phaidon, 1997), 418.
11. Lowden, Early Christian and Byzantine Art, 420.
12.  Gatrall, introduction to Alter Icons, 4.
13. Sychev, Drevlekhranilishche pamiatnikov, 4.
14.  Nikolai Punin worked in the Department of Mon-
uments of Russian Icon Painting and Church Relics at the
Russian Museum of His Imperial Majesty Alexander III in
St. Petersburg from 1913 to 1916; Pavel Muratov worked as a
curatorial assistant to Nikolai Romanov in the Moscow Pub-
lic and Rumiantsev Museum from 1910 to 1913.
15. Sychev, Drevlekhranilishche pamiatnikov, 7.
16.  For information on the cameo collection at the Her-
mitage, see A. V. Bank, “Neskol’ko vizantiiskikh kamei iz
sobraniia Ermitazha,” Vizantiiskii vremennik 16, no. 41 (1959):
206–15; N. A. Zakharova, “Nachalo sozdaniia vizantiiskoi
kollektsii Ermitazha,” in Shandrovskaia, Vizantinovedenie v
Ermitazhe, 5–7.
17.  Catherine II to Friedrich Melchior Grimm, 1795,
in Sbornik Imperatorskogo russkogo istoricheskogo obshchestva,
vol. 23, Pis’ma Imperatritsi Ekaterini II k Grimmu (1774–1796)
(St. Petersburg: Tipografiia Imperatorksoi akademii nauk,
1878), 637.
18.  Zakharova, “Nachalo sozdaniia,” 6; Iurii Piatnitskii
et al., eds., Sinai, Byzantium, Russia: Orthodox Art from the
Sixth to the Twentieth Century (London: Saint Catherine
Foundation, 2000), cat. no. B12, p. 54; cat. nos. B55, B56, p. 81.
19.  Zakharova, “Nachalo sozdaniia,” 5.
20.  V. N. Zalesskaia, “Russkoe arkheologicheskoe
obshchestvo, pravoslavnoe palestinskoe obshchestvo, arkheo-
logicheskaia komissiia,” in Shandrovskaia, Vizantinovedenie v
Ermitazhe, 25.
21.  Alfred Darcel and Alexander Basilewsky, Collection
Basilewsky: Catalogue raisonné (Paris: Vve A. Morel, 1874).
22.  Piatnitskii et al., Sinai, Byzantium, Russia, cat. no. B64,
p. 89; cat. no. B123, p. 145.
23.  V. N. Zalesskaia, “Vizantiiskie pamiatniki v kollektsii
A. P. Bazilevskogo,” in Shandrovskaia, Vizantinovedenie v
Ermitazhe, 12.
232 notes to pages 60–71
24.  Nikodim Kondakov to Count Sergei Trubetskoi,
quoted by Svetlana Savina in “N. P. Kondakov,” in Shan-
drovskaia, Vizantinovedenie v Ermitazhe, 35–36.
25.  Ibid., 36.
26. Kondakov, Vizantiiskie tserkvi (2006), 16.
27.  Nikodim Kondakov, Imperatorskii Ermitazh:
Ukazatel’ otdeleniia srednikh vekhov i epohi vozrozhdeniia
(St. Petersburg: Tipografiia Ministerstva putei Soobshcheniia
[A. Benke], 1891), 19.
28.  Ibid., 5.
29.  Piatnitskii et al., Sinai, Byzantium, Russia, cat. no. B6,
p. 51; cat. no. B13, pp. 55–56; cat. no. B32, p. 67; cat. no. B63,
p. 88; cat. no. B67, p. 91; cat. no. B82, p. 100.
30.  Decree no. 11532, April 13, 1895, in Polnoe sobranie
zakonov Rossiiskoi imperii, sobranie tretie, vol. 15 (St. Peters-
burg: Gosudarstvennaia tipografiia, 1899), 189.
31.  V. A. Gusev, introduction to Iz istorii muzeia:
Sbornik statei i publikatsii, ed. I. N. Karasik and E. N. Petrova
(St. Petersburg: Gos. Russkii muzei, 1995), 8.
32.  E. V. Basner, “Nachalo,” in Karasik and Petrova,
Iz istorii muzeia, 32.
33.  Anatolii Polovtsov, Progulka po Russkomu muzeiu
Imperatora Aleksandra III v Sankt Peterburge (Moscow:
Tipografiia I. N. Kushnerev, 1900), 26.
34.  Birzhevye vedomosti, no. 66 (March 1898), quoted in
Basner, “Nachalo,” 33.
35.  Konstantin Voenskii, Russkii muzei Imperatora Alek-
sandra III (St. Petersburg: Tipografiia Ministerstva vnutren-
nikh del, 1898), 19.
36.  Gusev, introduction to Karasik and Petrova, Iz istorii
muzeia, 8; Iu. A. Aseev, “Russkii muzei, 1908–1922,” in ibid., 38.
37.  Nikodim Kondakov, “Report of the Russian Museum
of His Imperial Majesty Alexander III for the Year 1913,” 16,
Vedomstvennyi arkhiv gosudarstvennogo russkogo muzeia,
op. 1, d. 310, p. 100, cited by Shalina in “Etapy formirovania,”
in Petrova, Kollektsii i kollekstionery, 17.
38.  Piatnitskii et al., Sinai, Byzantium, Russia, cat. no. B85,
p. 101; cat. no. B87, pp. 104–5; cat. no. B89, pp. 108–9; cat. no.
B113, p. 137; cat. no. B117, pp. 140–41; cat. no. B125, pp. 148–49.
39.  E. Petrova and J. Kiblitskii, eds., “Prechistomu obrazu
tvoemu pokloniaemsia—”: Obraz Bogomateri v proizvedeniiakh
iz sobraniia Russkogo muzeia (St. Petersburg: Palace Editions,
1995), cat. no. 85, pp. 152–53; cat. no. 239, p. 348; Petrova,
Kollektsii i kollekstionery, fig. 1, p. 57; fig. 4, p. 59; fig. 9, p. 12;
Pleshanova and Likhacheva, Drevnerusskoe dekorativno-​
prikladnoe iskusstvo, cat. no. 36, pp. 196–97; D. Solovieva and
V. A. Bulkin, eds., Sviatoi Nikolai Mirlikiiskii v proizvedeniiakh
xii–xix stoletii iz sobraniia Russkogo muzeia (St. Petersburg:
Palace Editions, 2006), cat. no. 40, pp. 118–19; cat. no. 71,
p. 180; cat. no. 76, pp. 190–91.
40.  Shalina, “Etapy formirovania,” 17.
41.  Viktor Lazarev, Russkaia ikonopis’, ot istokov do
nachala xvi veka (Moscow: Iskusstvo, 2000), cat. no. 84,
pp. 82–83; cat. no. 74, p. 77; A. O. Bolshakov and L. G. Kli-
manov, eds., Iz kollektsii akademika N. P. Likhacheva: Katalog
vystavki (St. Petersburg: Izd-​vo Seda-​S, 1993), cat. no. 339,
pp. 134–35; Piatnitskii et al., Sinai, Byzantium, Russia, cat. no.
B91, pp. 112–13; cat. no. B92, pp. 113–14; cat. no. B132, pp. 158–
59; cat. no. B142, pp. 168–69; cat. no. B147, pp. 173–74; cat. no.
B164, pp. 184–85; cat. no. B168, p. 188.
42.  Aseev, “Russkii muzei, 1908–1922,” 34.
43. Sychev, Drevlekhranilishche pamiatnikov, 7.
44.  Ibid., 11.
45.  Gerold Vzdornov, Restavratsiia i nauka: Ocherki po
istorii otkrytiia i izucheniia drevnerusskoi zhivopisi (Moscow:
Indrik, 2006), 299.
46.  Aseev, “Russkii muzei, 1908–1922,” 35–36.
47.  Ibid., 40–41.
48.  Ibid., 39.
49.  Shalina, “Etapy formirovania,” 18.
50.  My principle sources here are Karl Kestner, Sbornik
materialov dlia istorii Rumiantsevskogo muzeia (Moscow:
Tipografiia E. Lissner & Iu. Roman, 1882); Piatidesiateletie
Rumiantsevskogo muzeia v Moskve 1862–1912: Istoricheskii
ocherk (Moscow: Skoropech. A. A. Levenson, 1913); Otchety
Moskovskogo publichnogo i Rumiantsevskogo muzeev (Mos-
cow: Tipografiia Rogal’skogo, 1864–1917); and Elena Ivanova,
“Moskovskii publichnyi i Rumiantsevskii muzei,” in Era
Rumiantsevskogo muzeia: Iz istorii formirovaniia sobraniia
GMII im A. S. Pushkina, vol. 1, Kartinnaia galereia, ed. Ksenia
Bogemskaia and Gerold Vzdornov (Moscow: Izd. Krasnaia
ploshchad’, 2010), 11–80.
51.  Piatidesiateletie Rumiantsevskogo muzeia, 45; Gerold
Vzdornov, Iskusstvo knigi v drevnei Rusi: Rukopisnaia kniga
severo-​vostochnoi Rusi xii–nachala xv vekov (Moscow:
Iskusstvo, 1980), cat. no. 50, p. 328.
52.  Piatidesiateletie Rumiantsevskogo muzeia, 184–85;
Ivanova, “Moskovskii publichnyi i Rumiantsevskii muzei,”
22–23.
53.  Ivanova, “Moskovskii publichnyi i Rumiantsevskii
muzei,” 17.
54.  Piatidesiateletie Rumiantsevskogo muzeia, 11.
55.  Ivanova, “Moskovskii publichnyi i Rumiantsevskii
muzei,” 28.
56.  Piatidesiateletie Rumiantsevskogo muzeia, 12–13.
57.  Ibid., 12–17.
58.  Alexander Shkurko, E. M. Yukhimenko, and
Vadim Egorov, eds. The State Historical Museum, trans.
P. A. Aleinikov, V. N. Eiler, S. A. Khomutov, E. V. Kurdyukova,
and A. A. Timofeyev (Moscow: Interbook Business Publish-
ers, 2006), pp. 133, 136; cat. no. 3, p. 140; cat. no. 26, p. 157.
59.  Materialy dlia proekta novogo ustava i shtata Moskov­
skogo publichnogo i Rumiantsevskogo muzeia (Moscow, 1872),
15.
60.  M. A. Vazhskaia, “P. I. Sevastianov,” in Bogemskaia
and Vzdornov, Era rumiantsevskogo muzeia, 421.
61.  Otchet Moskovskogo publichnogo i Rumiantsevskogo
muzeev za 1873–1875 god (1877), 99.
62.  Otchet Moskovskogo publichnogo i Rumiantsevskogo
muzeev za 1864 god (1865), 174.
63.  Irina Leonidovna Kyzlasova, Russkaia ikona xiv–xvi
vekov (Leningrad: Izdatel’stvo Avrora, 1988), cat. no. 94,
p. 164; cat. no. 95, p. 165; cat. no. 96, p. 166; Bogemskaia and
Vzdornov, Era Rumiantsevskogo muzeia, vol. 1, inv. 2857,
p. 422; inv. 2700, p. 423; inv. 2852 and inv. 2861, p. 424.
64.  Piatidesiateletie Rumiantsevskogo muzeia, 20.
65.  Ibid., 21.
66.  Aleksei Viktorov, Katalog slaviano-russkikh rukopisei,
priobretennykh Moskovskim publichnym i Rumiantsevskim
muzeiami, v 1868 g, posle D. V. Piskareva (Moscow: Tipografiia
V. Gotie, 1871); Sobranie rukopisei V. I. Grigorovicha (Moscow:
Tipografiia M. N. Lavrova, 1879); Sobranie rukopisei P. I. Sev-
astianova (Moscow: Tipografiia E. Lissner & Iu. Roman,
1881); Sobranie rukopisei I. D. Beliaeva (Moscow: Tipografiia
E. Lissner & Iu. Roman, 1881); Vukol Undolskii, Slaviano-​
russkie rukopisi V. M. Undolskogo opisannye samim sostavitelem
i byvshim vladel’tsem sobraniia (Moscow: Izd. Moskovskogo
publichnogo i Rumiantsevskogo muzeev, 1870).
67.  Piatidesiateletie Rumiantsevskogo muzeia, 21, xxxv–xlii.
68.  Ibid., 193.
69.  Ustav Obshchestva drevnerusskogo iskusstva pri
Moskovskom publichnom muzeume, vysochaishe utverzhdennom
v 22-oi den’ maia, 1864 goda (Moscow, 1864).
70.  Georgii Filimonov, Simon Ushakov i sovremennaia
emu epokha russkoi ikonopisi (Moscow: Universitetskaia
tipografiia, izdannyi Obshchestvom drevnerusskogo
iskusstva pri Moskovskom publichnom muzee, 1873).
71.  Ksenia Muratova and Gerold Vzdornov, eds. Voz-
vrashchenie Muratova: Ot “Obrazov Italii” do “Istorii kavkaz­
skikh voin”; Po materialam vystavki “Pavel Muratov—chelovek
Serebrianogo veka” v Gosudarstvennom muzee izobrazitelnykh
notes to pages 71–77 233
 iskusstv imeni A. S. Pushkina, 3 marta–20 aprelia 2008 goda
(Moscow: Indrik, 2008), 19.
72.  Igor Grabar, Istoriia russkogo iskusstva, 6 vols. (Mos-
cow: Izd. I. Knebel’, 1909–14). Muratov’s volume 6 is entitled
Istoriia zhivopisi: Dopetrovskaia epokha.
73.  See, by Pavel Muratov, “Pismo iz Londona:
khudozhestvennye vystavki,” Vesy, no. 7 (1906): 47–51;
“Parizh­skie vesennie vystavki,” Zori, nos. 9–14 (1906);
“O nashei khudozhestvennoi kulture,” Moskovskii
ezhenedel’nik, no. 38 (1906): 32–36; “Vystavki ‘Soiuza’ i
‘Peredvizhanaia’ v Moskve,” Vesy, no. 2 (1907): 109–11;
“Vystavki Moskovskogo tovarishestva i nezavisimykh,”
Vesy, no. 6 (1907): 99–100; “Staroe i molodoe na poslednikh
vystavkakh,” Zolotoe runo, no. 1 (1908): 87–90; “Vystavka kar-
tin ‘Stefanos,’ ” Russkoe slovo, no. 3 (1908): 4; “Vystavka kartin
‘Salon Zolotogo Runa,’ ” Russkoe slovo, no. 81 (1908): 5.
74.  Piatidesiateletie Rumiantsevskogo muzeia, 18.
75.  “Pismo iz Moskvi,” Russkii invalid, no. 112 (St. Peters-
burg, 1862): 378.
76.  Otchet Moskovskogo publichnogo i Rumiantsevskogo
muzeev za 1911 god (1912), 11; Piatidesiateletie Rumiantsevskogo
muzeia, 19.
77.  Otchet Moskovskogo publichnogo i Rumiantsevskogo
muzeev za 1903 god (1904), 20–22.
78.  Ivanova, “Moskovskii publichnyi i Rumiantsevskii
muzei,” 35.
79.  Otchet Moskovskogo publichnogo i Rumiantsevskogo
muzeev za 1901 god (1902), 65.
80.  Ibid., 69.
81.  Otchet Moskovskogo publichnogo i Rumiantsevskogo
muzeev za 1879–1882g (1884), 23.
82.  Aleksei Uvarov, “Ustav muzeia imeni ego impera-
torskogo vysochestva gosudaria naslednika tsesarevicha,”
in Otchet Imperatorskogo rossiiskogo istoricheskogo muzeia
imeni Imperatora Aleksandra III v Moskve za xxv let (1883–
1908) (Moscow: Sinodal’naia tipografiia, 1916), 187–88.
83.  For a detailed account of the construction, layout,
and interior decoration of the museum, see Natalia Datieva,
“O stroitel’stve zdania istoricheskogo muzeia,” in Istoriches-
komu muzeiu—125 let: Materialy iubileinoi nauchnoi konfer-
entsii, ed. Vadim Egorov and Alexander Shkurko (Moscow:
Gosudarstvennyi istoricheskii muzei, 1998), 323–43.
84.  Vadim Egorov and Elena Yukhimenko, “The State
Historical Museum: Treasures of History and Culture,”
in Shkurko, Yukhimenko, and Egorov, State Historical
Museum, 11.
85.  Ibid., 16, 27.
234 notes to pages 78–87
86.  Datieva, “O stroitel’stve zdania,” 338.
87.  Ibid., 339.
88. Nelson, Hagia Sophia, 30–33.
89.  Vladimir Sizov, “Istoricheskii muzei v Moskve,”
Iskusstvo i khudozhestvennaia promyshlennost’, no. 8 (May
1899): 625–27.
90.  Although originally created in the thirteenth century,
the Radzivill Chronicle survives only as a later fifteenth-​
century copy, which is held by the Library of the Russian
Academy of Sciences in St. Petersburg. Written in Old Sla-
vonic, it documents the history of the formation and ascen-
dance of Kievan Rus and its relationship with its neighbors.
91.  Sizov, “Istoricheskii muzei,” 628.
92.  Datieva, “O stroitel’stve zdania,” 342.
93.  Sizov, “Istoricheskii muzei,” 629.
94.  Ibid., 630–31.
95.  F. I. Schmidt to A. V. Prakhov, June 25, 1900, cited in
Vzdornov, Istoriia otkrytiia, 171.
96.  Egorov and Yukhimenko, “State Historical Museum,”
38.
97. Vzdornov, Istoriia otkrytiia, 159.
98.  Egorov and Yukhimenko, “State Historical Museum,”
34.
99.  Shkurko, Yukhimenko, and Egorov, State Historical
Museum, 168.
100.  Helen C. Evans and William D. Wixom, eds.,
The Glory of Byzantium: Art and Culture of the Middle Byz-
antine Era, a.d. 843–1261 (New York: Metropolitan Museum
of Art, 1997), cat. no. 140, pp. 203–4; Bruk and Iovleva,
Gosudarstvennaia Tretiakovskaia galereia, ser. 1, Drevnerusskoe
iskusstvo x–xvii vekov: Ikonopis xviii–xx vekov (Moscow:
Krasnaia ploshchad’, 1995), cat. no. 23, pp. 83–84; cat. no. 24,
pp. 84–85; Shkurko, Yukhimenko, and Egorov, State Histori-
cal Museum, cat. no. 6, pp. 178–79; cat. no. 7, pp. 180–81; cat.
no. 20, p. 191.
101.  Shkurko, Yukhimenko, and Egorov, State Historical
Museum, cat. no. 1, pp. 138–39; cat. no. 4, p. 141; cat. no. 6,
p. 142.
102.  Evans and Wixom, Glory of Byzantium, cat. no. 122,
pp. 171–72; Shkurko, Yukhimenko, and Egorov, State Histori-
cal Museum, cat. no. 2, pp. 390–91.
103.  Datieva, “O stroitel’stve zdania,” 341.
104.  Egorov and Yukhimenko, “State Historical
Museum,” 40.
105.  Ibid., 41.
106.  Dmitrii Postnikov had a large collection of icons,
enamels, and applied-​art objects dating from the fifteenth
to the nineteenth centuries. Natalia Shabelskaia’s collection
contained more than four thousand pieces of folk and applied
art, which included articles of clothing, embroidery, lace, and
carved objects made of ivory, metal, and wood.
107.  Egorov and Yukhimenko, “State Historical Museum,”
42.
108.  Andrei Nakov, Malevich: Painting the Absolute (Farn-
ham, Surrey: Lund Humphries, 2010), 4:283.
109.  Egorov and Yukhimenko, “State Historical
Museum,” 43.
110.  Fedor Petrov and N. B. Strizhova, “U istokov sozda­
niia istoricheskogo muzeia: N. I. Chepelevskii,” in Istoricheskii
muzei—entsiklopediia otechestvennoi istorii i kultury (Moscow:
Gosudarstvennyi istoricheskii muzei, 2003), 6.
111.  For a detailed discussion of Russian provincial muse-
ums in the context of the Russo-​Byzantine revival, see Vzdor-
nov, Istoriia otkrytiia, 172–94.
112.  V. I. Antonova amd N. E. Mneva, eds., Katalog drev­
nerusskoi zhivopisi xi–nachala xviii v.v. (Moscow: Iskusstvo,
1963), vol. 1, cat. no. 180, pp. 221–22; Ivan Bogo­slovskii, Opi­
sanie ikon khraniashikhsia v Rostovskom muzee tserkovnykh
drevnostei (Rostov-​Iaroslavskii: Tipografiia S. P. Sorokina,
1909), cat. no. 204, p. 83; cat. no. 224, p. 91.
113. Vzdornov, Istoriia otkrytiia, 140.
114.  Alexander Anisimov, ed., Katalog vystavki xv Vse-
rossiiskogo arkheologicheskogo s’ezda v Novgorode: Otdel 2
(tserkovnyi) (Novgorod: Tipografiia M. O. Selivanova, 1911);
Anisimov, ed., Dopolnenie k katalogu vystavki xv Vserossiiskogo
arkheologicheskogo s’ezda v Novgorode: Otdel 2 (tserkovnyi)
(Novgorod: Tipografiia M. O. Selivanova, 1911).
115. Anisimov, Katalog vystavki, cat. no. 1, p. 1; Anisimov,
Dopolnenie k katalogu vystavki, cat. no. 251, p. 23; cat. no. 377,
p. 28; cat. no. 428, p. 36; cat. no. 430, p. 36; Lazarev, Russkaia
ikonopis’, cat. no. 51, p. 65; Olga Vasilieva, Ikony Pskova (Mos-
cow: Severnyi palomnik, 2006), cat. no. 122, pp. 388–95.
116.  “K predstoiashchei arkheologicheskoi vystavke,”
Novgorodskaia zhizn, no. 259 ( July 17, 1911), 16.
117.  Katalog vystavki xi-go arkheologicheskogo s’ezda v
Kieve (Kiev: Tipografiia I. N. Kushnerev, 1899); N. Belia-
shevskii, “Arkheologicheskii s’ezd v Kieve,” Kievskaia starina,
no. 10 (1899): 116–20.
118.  N. Beliashevskii, “Arkheologicheskii s’ezd v Khar­
kove,” Kievskaia starina, no. 11 (1902): 330–31.
119.  Katalog vystavki xii arkheologicheskogo s’ezda v Khar-
kove (Kharkov: Tipografiia gubernskogo pravleniia, 1902).
120.  Beliashevskii, “Arkheologicheskii s’ezd v Kharkove,”
334.
121.  Katalog vystavki viii arkheologicheskogo s’ezda v
Moskve (Moscow: Tipografiia L. & A. Snegirevykh, 1890).
122.  Ibid., cat. no. 8, p. 15; cat. no. 137, p. 20; cat. no. 2,
pp. 45–46; cat. nos. 695–98, 701, 800, 821, 871–73, 3120, p. 33;
cat. nos. 3121, 3122, p. 34; cat. nos. 1, 2, p. 71; O. E. Etingof,
Vizantiiskie ikony vi–pervoi poloviny xiii veka v Rossii (Mos-
cow: Indrik, 2005), cat. no. 4, p. 553; cat. no. 29, pp. 650–53;
Shkurko, Yukhimenko, and Egorov, State Historical Museum,
cat. no. 4, p. 392; Antonova and Mneva, Katalog drevnerusskoi
zhivopisi, vol. 2, cat. no. 909, pp. 408–9; Vzdornov, Istoriia
otkrytiia, 207.
123.  For a detailed review of this exhibition, see A. Malm­
gren, “Vystavka Arkheologicheskogo instituta v St. Peter-
burge,”Arkheologicheskie izvestiia i zametki 7, nos. 1–2 (1899):
21–26, and Malmgren, “Vystavka tserkovnykh drevnostei v
Arkheologicheskom institute,” Arkheologicheskie izvestiia i
zametki 6, nos. 11–12 (1898): 389–90.
124.  Malmgren, “Vystavka Arkheologicheskogo insti-
tuta,” 21.
125.  Perechen’ predmetov drevnosti na vystavke v Arkheo-
logicheskom institute (St. Petersburg: Tipografiia Lopukhina,
1898), 3.
126.  Malmgren, “Vystavka Arkheologicheskogo insti-
tuta,” 24–25.
127. Vzdornov, Istoriia otkrytiia, 209.
128.  Katalog vystavki tipov Khrista (Moscow: Tipografiia
A. I. Mamontova, 1896); S. S., “Moskovskaia vystavka izo-
brazhenii Khrista,” Arkheologicheskie izvestiia i zametki 4, nos.
7–8 (1896): 213.
129.  Ibid., 214–15.
130. Vzdornov, Istoriia otkrytiia, 209.
131.  Tugenkhold, “Vystavka drevnei ikonopisi,” 217;
Makovsky, “Vystavka drevne-​russkogo iskusstva,” 38.
132.  For a detailed overview of these collections, see
Vzdornov, Restavratsiia i nauka, 217–36; E. V. Stepanova,
“Kollektsia N. P. Likhacheva,” in Shandrovskaia, Vizantino-
vedenie v Ermitazhe, 54–62; Pavel Muratov, Drevnerusskaia
ikonopis’ v sobranii I. S. Ostroukhova (Moscow: Izdatel’stvo
K. F. Nekrasova, 1914); Nikolai Punin, “Zametki ob ikonakh
iz sobraniia N. P. Likhacheva,” Russkaia ikona, no. 1 (St. Peters-
burg, 1914): 21–47; Punin, “Elinizm i Vostok v ikonopisi
(po povodu sobraniia ikon I. S. Ostroukhova i S. P. Riabush-
inskogo),” Russkaia ikona, no. 3 (St. Petersburg, 1914): 181–97.
133.  Vystavka drevnerusskogo iskusstva ustroennaia v 1913
godu v oznamenovanie chestvovaniia 300-letiia tsarstvovaniia
doma Romanovykh (Moscow: Imperatorskii Moskovskii
arkheologicheskii institut imeni Imperatora Nikolaia II, 1913),
notes to pages 87–92 235
 cat. no. 4, p. 6; cat. no. 14, p. 9; cat. no. 17, p. 10; cat. nos. 20,
21, 22, p. 11; cat. no. 43, p. 15; cat. no. 45, p. 16; cat. no. 50, p. 17;
cat. no. 109, p. 33; Lazarev, Russkaia ikonopis’, cat. no. 49, p. 61;
cat. no. 135, p. 129; cat. no. 142, p. 130; Antonova and Mneva,
Katalog drevnerusskoi zhivopisi, vol. 1, cat. no. 76, pp. 132–33;
cat. no. 43, pp. 106–7; cat. no. 45, pp. 108–9; cat. no. 199,
pp. 233–35; cat. no. 126, p. 172; cat. no. 67, pp. 125–27.
134.  Pavel Muratov, introduction to Vystavka drevnerussk-
ogo iskusstva ustroennaia v 1913, 3.
135.  The exhibition contained more than one hundred
icons and five hundred photographs, revetments, embroi-
deries, wooden carvings, and other liturgical items and was
accompanied by a short overview and catalogue written by
Vasilii Georgievskii. See Vasilii Georgievskii, “Obzor vystavki
drenerusskoi ikonipisi i khudozhestvennoi stariny” and
“Katalog vystavki drenerusskoi ikonipisi i khudozhestvennoi
stariny,” in Trudy Vserossiiskogo s’ezda khudozhnikov v Petro-
grade, dekabr 1911–ianvar 1912, vol. 3 (St. Petersburg: T-​vo
R. Golike & A. Vilborg, 1914), 163–68, 169–75.
136.  For more information on the congress, see Trudy
Vserossiiskogo s’ezda khudozhnikov v Petrograde, dekabr 1911–
ianvar 1912, 3 vols. (St. Petersburg: T-​vo R. Golike & A. Vil-
borg, 1914–15), and John E. Bowlt, “Vasilii Kandinsky: The
Russian Connection,” in The Life of Vasilii Kandinsky in Rus-
sian Art: A Study of “On the Spiritual in Art,” ed. John E. Bowlt
and Rose-​Carol Washton Long, trans. John E. Bowlt (New-
tonville, Mass.: Oriental Research Partners, 1980), 22–25.
137.  Dmitrii Ainalov, “O znachenii i zadache nas-
toiashchego s’ezda,” in Trudy Vserossiiskogo s’ezda khudozh-
nikov, 1:xvi.
138.  Dmitrii Ainalov, “O nekotorykh sovremennykh
techeniiakh v russkoi zhivopisi,” in Trudy Vserossiiskogo s’ezda
khudozhnikov, 1:6.
139.  Georgievskii, “Obzor vystavki,” 163.
140.  Georgievskii, “Katalog vystavki,” cat. nos. 11, 14,
21, 22, p. 169; cat. no. 72, p. 170; Antonova and Mneva, Kat-
alog drevnerusskoi zhivopisi, vol. 1, cat. no. 47, pp. 109–10;
cat. no. 101, p. 151; Lazarev, Russkaia ikonopis’, cat. no. 105,
p. 111; Bolshakov and Klimanov, Iz kollektsii akademika
N. P. Likhacheva, cat. no. 3049, p. 275.
141.  Georgievskii, “Obzor vystavki,” 166.
142.  Makovsky, “Vystavka drevne-​russkogo iskusstva,” 38.
143.  The Act of Toleration was passed by Tsar Nicholas II
on April 30, 1905, and granted legal status to religions other
than the official Russian Orthodox Church, religions that
included schismatics and sectarians such as the Old Believ-
ers, among others.
236 notes to pages 92–103
144.  Tugenkhold, “Vystavka drevnei ikonopisi,” 215–16.
145.  Makovsky, “Vystavka drevne-​russkogo iskusstva,” 39.
146.  Punin, “Vystavka drevne-​russkogo iskusstva,” 40.
147. Kondakov, Russian Icon, 10.
148.  Pavel Muratov, Drevnerusskaia zhivopis’, 61, 64.
Chapter 3
1.  Stepan Iaremich, Mikhail Aleksandrovich Vrubel’: Zhizn
i tvorchestvo (Moscow: Knebel’, 1911), 55.
2.  Nikolai Punin, “K risunkam M. A. Vrubelia,” Apollon,
no. 5 (May 1913): 7.
3.  Some notable exceptions include Aline Isdebsky-​
Pritchard, The Art of Mikhail Vrubel (1856–1910) (Ann Arbor:
UMI Research Press, 1982), 67–90; Nina Dmitrieva, Mikhail
Aleksandrovich Vrubel’ (Leningrad: Khudozhnik RSFSR,
1984), 32–56; Mikhail Alpatov and Grigorii Anisimov, Zhivo-
pisnoe masterstvo Vrubelia (Moscow: Lira, 2000), 87–112; and
Viktoriia Gusakova, Viktor Vasnetsov i religiozno-​natsional’noe
napravlenie v russkoi zhivopisi kontsa xix–nachala xx veka
(St. Petersburg: Avrora, 2008), 121–49.
4.  For example, see Dmitrieva’s discussion of Vrubel’s
late religious works in Mikhail Aleksandrovich Vrubel’, 82–84.
5.  See Kelly, Unorthodox Beauty, and Bowlt, Moscow and
St. Petersburg, 67–99.
6.  Anna Vrubel, “Vospominaniia o khudozhnike,”
in Vrubel’: Perepiska, vospominaniia o khudozhnike,
ed. E. P. Gomberg-​Verzhbinskaia, Iu. N. Podkopaeva, and
Iu. N. Novikov, 2nd ed. (Leningrad: Iskusstvo, 1976), 154.
7. Iaremich, Vrubel’, 22.
8.  Anna Kornilova, “Iz istorii ikonopisnogo klassa Aka-
demii khudozhestv,” Problemy razvitia zarubezhnogo i russk-
ogo iskusstva: Sbornik nauchnykh trudov, ed. Vera Razdolskaia
(St. Petersburg: Institut imeni I. E. Repina, 1995), 76.
9.  For a recent edition in English, see Paul Hether-
ington, ed., The “Painter’s Manual” of Dionysius of Fourna:
An English Translation [from the Greek] with Commentary of
Cod. Gr. 708 in the Saltykov-​Shchedrin State Public Library,
Leningrad (London: Sagittarius Press, 1974).
10.  In 1881 Nikodim Kondakov published a photographic
album containing one hundred images of mosaics and minia-
tures from the illuminated manuscripts in the collections of
the St. Catherine Monastery on Mount Sinai: Vues et antiq-
uités du Sinai par M. le professeur Kandakoff et photographe
J. Raoult (Odessa, 1883). However, it remains unclear whether
Vrubel would have had access to it and whether he might oth-
erwise have been able to see these reproductions.
11. Gusakova, Viktor Vasnetsov, 123.
 12.  There is some disagreement over the original source
for these angels. Iaremich claims that Vrubel based the com-
position on photographs of the Torcello mosaics in Adrian
Prakhov’s collection. However, Nikolai Prakhov recounts that
Vrubel produced the design after he had returned from his
trip to Italy, where he had seen the Torcello mosaics in per-
son. See Iaremich, Vrubel’, 54, and Nikolai Prakhov, Stranitsy
proshlogo: Ocherki-​vospominaniia o khudozhnikakh (Kiev:
Obrazotvorchogo-​mistetstva i muzichnoi literaturi U.S.S.R.,
1958), 284.
13.  Mikhail Vrubel to Adrian Prakhov, summer 1884,
repr. in Gomberg-​Verzhbinskaia, Podkopaeva, and Novikov,
Vrubel’: Perepiska, 71.
14.  Nelson, “Modernism’s Byzantium,” 34–36.
15.  In 1899 a court inquiry was launched against Savva
Mamontov for having allegedly misappropriated the stock
shares of the Moscow-​Iaroslavl-​Arkhangelsk Railroad.
Mamontov’s property was sealed; he was imprisoned for five
months and subsequently declared bankrupt.
16.  Alpatov and Anisimov, Zhivopisnoe masterstvo
Vrubelia, 113.
17.  Naum Gabo, Of Divers Arts (New York: Pantheon
Books, 1962), 156.
18.  Ibid., 156, 168–69.
19. Iaremich, Vrubel’, 52.
20.  Pavel Muratov, “Vrubel’,” Moskovskii ezhenedel’nik,
no. 15 (April 10, 1910): 45–50.
21.  Ibid., 48.
22. Ibid.
23.  Isdebsky-​Pritchard, Art of Mikhail Vrubel, 86.
24.  Ibid., 257n51. For Russian collections of modern
French art, see Beverly Whitney Kean, All the Empty Palaces:
The Great Merchant Patrons of Modern Art in Pre-​Revolutionary
Russia (New York: Universe Books, 1983); Albert Kostene­
vich, Hidden Treasures Revealed: Impressionist Masterpieces
and Other Important French Paintings Preserved by the State
Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg, trans. Elena Kolesnikova,
Catherine A. Fitzpatrick, and Stas Rabinovich (Moscow:
Ministry of Culture of the Russian Federation; St. Peters-
burg: State Hermitage Museum; New York: Harry N.
Abrams, 1995); Morozov, Shchukin: The Collectors; Monet to
Picasso; 120 Masterpieces from the Hermitage, St. Petersburg,
and the Pushkin Museum, Moscow (Bonn: Bild-​Kunst, 1993).
25. Dmitrieva, Mikhail Aleksandrovich Vrubel’, 34.
26.  For a detailed discussion of the cultural role and con-
ceptual evolution of the picture frame and its ever-​changing
functions in Russian art, see Oleg Tarasov, Framing Russian
Art: From Early Icons to Malevich, trans. Robin Milner-​
Gulland and Antony Wood (London: Reaktion, 2011).
27. Florensky, Iconostasis, 79–82.
28.  For a detailed discussion of this subject, see Sharp,
Russian Modernism, 238–53.
29.  For a good overview of this topic, see Jefferson
J. A. Gatrall, “Pictorial Blasphemy,” in The Real and the Sacred:
Picturing Jesus In Nineteenth-​Century Fiction (Ann Arbor:
University of Michigan Press, 2014), 62–89.
30.  Viktor Vasnetsov to Adrian Prakhov, spring 1885,
repr. in Viktor Vasnetsov: Pis’ma, novye materialy, ed. Liudmila
Korotkina (St. Petersburg: Izdatel’stvo “ARS,” 2004), 58.
31.  V. Svechnikov, “Tvorchestvo V. M. Vasnetsova i
ego znachenie dlia russkoi religioznoi zhivopisi,” Svetil’nik:
Religioznoe iskusstvo v proshlom i nastoiashchem 67 (Moscow
1913): 5.
32. Sharp, Russian Modernism, 239.
33.  Rosa Newmarch, The Russian Arts (New York:
E. P. Dutton, 1916), 224.
34.  Artist, no. 16 (1891): 133, quoted in Sergei Durylin,
“Vrubel’ i Lermontov,” Literaturnoye nasledstvo 45–46 (1948):
580.
35.  Vladimir Stasov, Sobranie sochinenii V. V. Stasova, vol.
4 (St. Petersburg: Tipografiia M. M. Stasiulevicha, 1906), 181.
36.  Vladimir Stasov, “Vystavki,” Novosti i birzhe-
vaia gazeta, no. 27 (1898), quoted in Durylin, “Vrubel’ i
Lermontov,” 584.
37.  Nikolai Tarabukin, Mikhail Aleksandrovich Vrubel’
(Moscow: Iskusstvo, 1974), 16–17.
38.  Adrian Prakhov, Kievskii Vladimirskii sobor: K istorii
ego postroiki (Kiev, 1896), 2–3.
39.  Adrian Prakhov quoted in Nikolai Prakhov, “Mikhail
Aleksandrovich Vrubel’,” repr. in Gomberg-​Verzhbinskaia,
Podkopaeva, and Novikov, Vrubel’: Perepiska, 187.
40.  This particular version of the Lamentation was
designed as a triptych with Christ and the Virgin occupying
the central panel. The left panel depicts John the Apostle and
Joseph of Arimathea, while the right one shows Mary Magda-
lene and Mary of Clopas.
41.  For an in-​depth study of Vrubel’s sustained interest
in Nietzsche, see Aline Isdebsky-Pritchard, “Art for Phi-
losophy’s Sake: Vrubel Against ‘the Herd,’ ” in Nietzsche in
Russia, ed. Bernice Glatzer Rosenthal (Princeton: Princeton
University Press, 1986), 219–48. For an illuminating analysis
of the multiple and fascinating affinities between Nietzsche’s
ideas and Russian Orthodoxy, see Bernice Glatzer Rosen-
thal, “A New Spirituality: The Confluence of Nietzsche and
notes to pages 103–116 237
 Orthodoxy in Russian Religious Thought,” in Sacred Stories:
Religion and Spirituality in Modern Russia, ed. Mark D. Stein-
berg and Heather J. Coleman (Bloomington: Indiana Univer-
sity Press, 2007), 330–57.
42.  Alexander Benois, Moi vospominaniia, vols. 4 and 5
(in one vol.) (Moscow: Nauka, 1980), 275.
43.  Ibid., 276–77.
44.  Alexander Benois, “Vrubel’,” Mir iskusstva, nos. 10–11
(1903): 179.
45.  Vsevolod Dmitriev, “Zavety Vrubelia,” Apollon, no. 5
(May 1913): 18.
46.  Ibid., 15.
47. Tarabukin, Mikhail Aleksandrovich Vrubel’, 135.
48. Sharp, Russian Modernism, 240.
49.  Alexander Vrubel to Anna Vrubel, September 11, 1886,
repr. in Gomberg-​Verzhbinskaia, Podkopaeva, and Novikov,
Vrubel’: Perepiska, 118.
50. Tarabukin, Mikhail Aleksandrovich Vrubel’, 21.
51. Iaremich, Vrubel’, 54.
52.  Nina Dmitrieva dates the work to 1887 and calls it
Head of an Angel. Dmitrieva, Mikhail Aleksandrovich Vrubel’,
52. Petr Suzdalev also identifies this work as Head of an
Angel but dates it to 1889. P. K. Suzdalev, Vrubel’ (Moscow:
Sovetskii khudozhnik, 1991), 158. Meanwhile, Irina Shu-
manova and Evgeniia Iliukhina identify the same drawing
as Head of the Demon and date it to 1890. Shumanova and
Iliukhina, “ ‘Prorok i mechtatel’: M. A. Vrubel’ i V. E. Borisov-​
Musatov,” Nashe nasledie 77 (2006): 140–57.
53.  The drawing was titled The Demon in the journal Apol-
lon, no. 5 (May 1913), pages not numbered. However, the same
work was also labeled The Seraph in the 1957 State Tretyakov
Gallery Vrubel exhibition catalogue, Mikhail Aleksandrovich
Vrubel’: Vystavka proizvedennii, ed. O. A. Zhivova (Moscow:
Iskusstvo, 1957), 160, and in the 1976 exhibition catalogue Le
symbolisme en Europe: Rotterdam, Museum Boymans-​van Beun-
ingen (Paris: Éditions des musées nationaux), 240. The State
Russian Museum, where the work is currently kept, captions
it “The Standing Demon (also known as Seraph).”
54.  Janet Kennedy, “Lermontov’s Legacy: Mikhail
Vrubel’s Seated Demon and Demon Downcast,” Transactions
of the Association of Russian-​American Scholars in the U.S.A. 15
(1982): 176.
55.  Konstantin Bogaevskii to Sergei Durylin, January 12,
1941, quoted in Durylin, “Vrubel’ i Lermontov,” 594.
56.  Isdebsky-​Pritchard, Art of Mikhail Vrubel, 100;
Mikhail Allenov, Mikhail Vrubel’ (Moscow: Slovo, 1996), 87.
57.  Isdebsky-​Pritchard, Art of Mikhail Vrubel, 97.
238 notes to pages 117–133
58.  Ibid., 77.
59.  Alexander Blok, “Pamiati Vrubelia,” Iskusstvo i pechat-
noe delo, nos. 8–9 (1910): 307–9; Blok, “O sovremennom
sostoianii russkogo simvolizma,” Apollon, no. 8 (1910): 21–30;
Pavel Muratov, “O vysokom khudozhestve,” Zolotoe runo,
no. 12 (1901): 75–84.
60.  Alexander Benois, “Vrubel’,” Rech’, no. 91 (April,
1910), repr. in Khudozhestvennye pisma, 1908–1917: Gazeta
“Rech’,” Peterburg, vol. 1, 1908–1910, ed. Iu. N. Podkopaeva
et al. (St. Petersburg: Sad iskusstv, 2006), 411.
61.  Isdebsky-​Pritchard, Art of Mikhail Vrubel, 88.
62.  Dmitriev, “Zavety Vrubelia,” 15.
63. Tarabukin, Mikhail Aleksandrovich Vrubel’, 31.
64.  Ibid., 106.
65.  Nikolai Kulbin, “Kubizm,” Strelets 1 (1915): 204.
66.  Sergei Sudeikin, “Dve vstrechi s Vrubelem: Vospo­
minaniia o khudozhnike,” Novosel’e, no. 19 (1945): 29–38,
repr. in Gomberg-​Verzhbinskaia, Podkopaeva, and Novikov,
Vrubel’: Perepiska, 295.
67.  Alpatov and Anisimov, Zhivopisnoe masterstvo
Vrubelia, 196.
68.  Dmitrii Sarabianov and Natalia Adaskina, Popova,
trans. Marian Schwartz (New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1990),
14.
69.  German Karginov, Rodchenko (London: Thames &
Hudson, 1979), 10; Liubov Rudneva, “Vladimir Tatlin—
tritsatye gody,” in Vladimir Tatlin: Leben, Werk, Wirkung;
Ein internationales Symposium, ed. Jürgen Harten (Cologne:
DuMont, 1993), 462.
70. Gabo, Of Divers Arts, 155–56.
71.  John E. Bowlt, “Rodchenko and Chaikov,” Art and
Artists 11 (October 1976): 28.
72. Tarabukin, Mikhail Aleksandrovich Vrubel’, 40–41.
73.  For further discussion of this subject, see Andrei
Kovalev, “Samosoznanie kritiki: Iz istorii sovetskogo iskusst-
voznaniia 1920-kh godov,” Sovetskoe iskusstvoznanie, no. 26
(1990): 344–80.
74. Tarabukin, Smysl ikony, 14.
75.  Nikolai Punin to Anna Arens, July 24, 1914, repr.
in Mir svetel liuboviu: Dnevniki, pisma, ed. L. A. Zykov (Mos-
cow: Artist, 2000), 63.
76.  Nikolai Punin, “V zashchitu zhivopisi,” Apollon, no. 1
( January 1917): 60–63.
77.  The Diaries of Nikolay Punin, 1904–1953, ed. Sidney
Monas and Jennifer Greene Krupala, trans. Jennifer Greene
Krupala (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1999), 29–30.
78. Punin, Mir svetel liuboviu, 16.
 79. Tarabukin, Mikhail Aleksandrovich Vrubel’, 31.
80.  Ibid., 32.
81.  Ibid., 37.
82.  Ibid., 131.
83.  Diaries of Nikolay Punin, 207.
Chapter 4
1.  Viktor Ufimtsev, Govoria o sebe (Moscow: Sovetskii
khudozhnik, 1973), 40, quoted in Kazimir Malevich: Letters,
Documents, Memoirs, Criticism, ed. Irina Vakar, Tatiana Mikh-
ienko, and Charlotte Douglas (London: Tate Publishing,
2015), 2:211.
2.  Nina Kandinsky, Kandinsky und ich (Munich: Kindler,
1976), 87, quoted in Bowlt, “Vasilii Kandinsky: The Russian
Connection,” 33.
3.  Vasily Kandinsky, Rückblicke (Berlin: Der Sturm, 1913),
trans. as Reminiscences in Kandinsky: Complete Writings on
Art, ed. Kenneth C. Lindsay and Peter Vergo (New York:
Da Capo Press, 1994), 355–88.
4.  Vasily Kandinsky, Über das Geistige in der Kunst
(Munich: R. Piper, 1912), trans. as On the Spiritual in Art in
Kandinsky: Complete Writings, 177.
5.  Nikolai Punin, “Mera iskusstva,” Iskusstvo kommuny,
no. 9 (February 2, 1919): 2.
6.  Punin, “V zashchitu zhivopisi,” 62.
7.  Punin, “Puti sovremennogo iskusstva i russkaia ikono-
pis’,” 47.
8.  Nina Kandinsky quoted in Kandinsky in Paris, 1934–
1944 (New York: Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, 1985),
24.
9. Kandinsky, Reminiscences, 369.
10.  Vasily Kandinsky quoted in Dmitrii Sarabianov, “Kan-
dinskii i russkaia ikona,” in Mnogogrannyi mir Kandinskogo,
ed. Dmitrii Sarabianov, Natalia Avtonomova, and Valerii
Turchin (Moscow: Nauka, 1998), 42.
11.  Vasily Kandinsky, “Interview with Karl Nierendorf ”
(1937), in Kandinsky: Complete Writings, 806.
12. Grishchenko, O sviaziakh russkoi zhivopisi, 26; Benois,
“Khudozhestvennye pisma,” 2.
13. Kandinsky, On the Spiritual in Art, 151.
14.  Ya Shik, “U Matissa,” Rannee utro, October 26, 1911,
quoted in Rusakov, “Matisse in Russia, 287.
15.  Vasily Kandinsky, “Content and Form” (“Soderzhanie
i forma,” 1910), in Kandinsky: Complete Writings, 87–90;
“Whither the ‘New’ Art?” (“Kuda idet ‘novoe’ iskusstvo,”
1911), in ibid., 98–104; and On the Spiritual in Art, in ibid.,
119–219.
16. Kandinsky, Reminiscences, 377.
17.  Reinhold Heller, “Kandinsky and Traditions Apoca-
lyptic,” Art Journal 43, no. 1 (Spring 1983): 20–21.
18.  Ibid., 19.
19.  Klaus Lankheit, “A History of the Almanac,”
in The Blaue Reiter Almanac, ed. Vasily Kandinsky and Franz
Marc, trans. H. Falkenstein (New York: Viking Press, 1974), 32.
20.  Kandinsky’s paper was read by Nikolai Kulbin in the
first section, on the “problems of aesthetics and art history,”
of the Second All-​Russian Congress of Artists, since Kan-
dinsky had to be back in Munich for the opening of the first
Blaue Reiter exhibition and therefore was unable to attend the
congress himself. Kandinsky’s presentation was generally well
received and was especially commended by Dmitrii Ainalov.
21.  Other papers presented in the same section include
A. P. Eissner’s “Ancient Monuments of the Southwest Cau-
cuses,” A. S. Slavtsev’s “Restoration of the ancient Georgian
Monastery in Zarzma,” and L. A. Matsulevich’s “Frescoes in
the Church of Zarzma.”
22.  Bowlt, “Vasilii Kandinsky: The Russian Connection,”
1–5.
23.  Johan Tikkanen, Die Genesismosaiken von S. Marco
in Venedig und ihr Verhältniss zu den Miniaturen der Cotton-
bibel, nebst einer Untersuchung über den Ursprung der mittel-
alterlichen Genesisdarstellung besonders in der byzantinischen
und italienischen Kunst (Helsinki: Druckerei der finnischen
Litteratur-​gesellschaft, 1891); Robert Forrer, Die Zeugdrucke
der byzantinischen, romanischen, gothischen und späteren Kunst-
epochen (Strassburg, 1894); Oskar Wulff, Die Koimesiskirche
in Nicäa und ihre Mosaiken nebst den verwandten kirchlichen
Baudenkmälern: Eine Untersuchung zur Geschichte der byzanti-
nischen Kunst im i. Jahrtausend (Strassburg: Heitz & Mündel,
1903); Friedrich Wilhelm Unger, Quellen der byzantinischen
Kunstgeschichte (Vienna: W. Braumüller, 1878).
24.  In his discussion of color, Kandinsky observes that
blue is reserved for the holiest figures in icon painting and is
therefore the most spiritual color, citing Kondakov’s Histoire
de l’art byzantin, 2:38: “les nimbes . . . sont dorés pour l’em-
pereur et les prophètes (i.e., for human beings) et bleu de
ciel pour les personnages symboliques (i.e., for those beings
which have only spiritual existence).” Kandinsky, On the Spir-
itual in Art, 182.
25. Kondakov, Histoire de l’art byzantin, 2:37.
26.  Vasily Kandinsky quoted in Lankheit, “History of the
Almanac,” 30.
27.  Julius Meier-​Graefe, Entwicklungsgeschichte der moder-
nen Kunst: Vergleichende Betrachtung der bildenden Künste, als
notes to pages 133–142 239
 Beitrag zu einer neuen Aesthetik, 3 vols. (Stuttgart: Verlag Julius
Hoffmann, 1904).
28.  Wilhelm Worringer, Abstraktion und Einfühlung:
Ein Beitrag zur Stilpyschologie (Munich: R. Piper, 1908),
93–95, trans. Michael Bullock, Abstraction and Empathy:
A Contribution to the Psychology of Style (Chicago: Ivan R.
Dee, 1997), 97–99.
29.  Susanna Partsch, Franz Marc, 1880–1916, trans. Karen
Williams (Cologne: Taschen, 2001), 94.
30.  Lankheit, “History of the Almanac,” 30.
31.  Peg Weiss, Kandinsky in Munich: The Formative
Jugendstil Years (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1979),
262.
32.  The kokoshnik was a variety of traditional Russian
headdress worn by women and girls in the northern regions
of Russia during the twelfth to seventeenth centuries.
33.  Johannes Eichner, Kandinsky und Gabriele Münter:
Von Ursprüngen moderner Kunst (Munich: Bruckmann, 1957),
118.
34.  Will Grohmann, Wassily Kandinsky: Life and Work
(New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1958), 50.
35. Eichner, Kandinsky und Gabriele Münter, 83–84.
36. Kandinsky, On the Spiritual in Art, 125.
37.  Jonathan David Fineberg, Kandinsky in Paris, 1906–
1907 (Ann Arbor: UMI Research Press, 1984).
38.  Sjeng Scheijen, Diaghilev: A Life, trans. Jane
Hedley-Próle and S. J. Leinbach (London: Profile, 2009).
39.  Ibid., 151.
40. Fineberg, Kandinsky in Paris, 53.
41.  For more information on Tenisheva’s activities in
Paris, see Wendy R. Salmond, Arts and Crafts in Late Imperial
Russia: Reviving the Kustar Art Industries, 1870–1917 (New
York: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 140.
42. Kandinsky, On the Spiritual in Art, 128.
43.  Ibid., 194.
44.  Ibid., 151.
45. Spira, Avant-​Garde Icon, 129. For an in-​depth study of
Kandinsky’s interest in shamanism, folk culture, and ethnog-
raphy, see Peg Weiss, Kandinsky and Old Russia: The Artist
as Ethnographer and Shaman (New Haven: Yale University
Press, 1995).
46.  Kandinsky, “Content and Form,” 87.
47.  Much of the scholarship that has addressed Kandin-
sky’s interest in medieval and religious art has tended to fall
into one of two categories. The first relies on a Theosophical
explanation first theorized by Sixten Ringbom in his seminal
publication The Sounding Cosmos: A Study in The Spiritualism
240 notes to pages 142–147
of Kandinsky and the Genesis of Abstract Painting (Åbo: Åbo
Akademi, 1970). This theory attributes a pivotal role to Kan-
dinsky’s interest in mysticism and the occult, and especially
to Theosophy and the writings of Rudolf Steiner and Helena
Blavatsky. However, Kandinsky himself was never a member
of the Theosophical Society, and it seems that he had largely
lost interest in the movement by 1910—the exact moment
when he began to incorporate religious motifs into his paint-
ings. Although Kandinsky wrote in a letter to Franz Marc that
Theosophy should be mentioned “briefly” in the Blaue Reiter
Almanac, any references to Theosophy were entirely omitted
from the final version of the publication. Likewise, the Rus-
sian edition of On the Spiritual in Art, published in 1914, has
no references to Blavatsky, Steiner, or Theosophy. Moreover,
as Kenneth Lindsay and Peter Vergo convincingly demon-
strate, even the part of the German version of On the Spiritual
in Art in which Kandinsky cites Blavatsky’s Key to Theosophy
“is nothing other than an extended review of contemporary
intellectual and artistic trends, in the course of which the
author refers to figures as diverse as Boecklin and Skriabin,
Karl Marx and Edgar Allan Poe.” See Kandinsky: Complete
Writings, 117. Apart from this one exception, none of Kandin-
sky’s other publications makes any reference to Theosophy.
In fact, Kandinsky himself, in a 1926 letter to his friend Galka
Scheyer, who had inquired about his connection with the
movement, vehemently denounced attempts to associate him
with Theosophy: “All this absolutely does not imply that I
am a Theosophist! Nor have I ever been one. . . . After many,
really many years of these misunderstandings and miscon-
ceptions I sometimes begin to get a little angry about it all!”
Quoted by Peg Weiss in her review of Kandinsky: The Devel-
opment of an Abstract Style, by Rose-​Carol Washton Long, Art
Journal 44, no. 1 (Spring 1984): 93. Scholarship in the second
category has largely focused on Kandinsky’s connections
with Russian fin de siècle literary culture and its preoccupa-
tion with apocalyptic and eschatological themes, which were
prevalent in Russian Symbolist thought at this time. Both
John E. Bowlt and Rose-​Carol Washton Long have presented
convincing accounts of Kandinsky’s ongoing intellectual
exchanges with turn-​of-​the-​century Russian intellectuals; see
Bowlt and Washton Long, Life of Vasilii Kandinsky in Russian
Art, and Washton Long, Kandinsky: The Development of an
Abstract Style (Oxford: Clarendon Press; New York: Oxford
University Press, 1980). Although certainly persuasive, these
studies tend to limit their analyses to Kandinsky’s interest in
religious imagery and themes more broadly, instead of focus-
ing specifically on Russo-​Byzantine art. The few accounts
that have considered Kandinsky’s engagement with iconic
representations, such as Dimitrii Sarabianov’s essay “Kandin-
sky and the Russian Icon” (Kandinskii i russkaia ikona), have
tended to discuss it in purely formal and iconographic terms
and have neglected to consider how icons might have influ-
enced the artist conceptually. For the most part, however, any
references to icons in scholarship on Kandinsky have inclined
toward generalizations and oversimplification, limiting his
interest in iconic forms to the Neoprimitivist impulse typi-
cally attributed to the Russian avant-​garde more broadly.
48.  Vasily Kandinsky, On the Spiritual in Art, in Bowlt and
Washton Long, Life of Vasilii Kandinsky in Russian Art, 64.
49. Kandinsky, On the Spiritual in Art, in Kandinsky:
Complete Writings, 131.
50.  John E. Bowlt, “A Brazen Can-​Can in the Temple
of Art: The Russian Avant-​Garde and Popular Culture,”
in Modern Art and Popular Culture: Readings in High and Low,
ed. Kirk Varnedoe and Adam Gopnik (New York: Museum
of Modern Art; Harry N. Abrams, 1990), 143; John Malm­
stad, “The Sacred Profaned: Image and Word in the Paintings
of Mikhail Larionov,” in Laboratory of Dreams: The Russian
Avant-​Garde and Cultural Experiment, ed. John E. Bowlt and
Olga Matich (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1996), 157.
51.  Malmstad, “Sacred Profaned,” 169.
52.  Mikhail Larionov, foreword to Pervaia vystavka lub-
kov, organizovannaia D. N. Vinogradovym 19–24 fevralia (Mos-
cow: Pechatnoe delo, 1913), in Sharp, Russian Modernism, 274.
53. Sharp, Russian Modernism, 242.
54.  Goncharova was repeatedly fined on the charges of
obscenity and blasphemy, and several of her paintings treat-
ing religious themes were confiscated and removed from the
opening of the Donkey’s Tail Exhibition in 1912 and then again
from her retrospective exhibition in St. Petersburg in 1914.
For a full discussion of this topic, see Sharp, Russian Modern-
ism, 238–53.
55.  David Burliuk et al., Poshchechina obshchestvennomu
vkusu (Moscow: G. L. Kuz’min, 1912). This infamous mani-
festo was first published in the Futurist collection of the same
name and has been translated and republished numerous
times. See Vladimir Markov, Russian Futurism: A History
(Berkeley: University of California Press, 1968), 45–46, and
Carl Proffer et al., eds., Russian Literature of the Twenties:
An Anthology (Ann Arbor: Ardis, 1987), 542.
56.  Iakov Tugenkhold, “Sovremennoe iskusstvo i narod­
nost’,” Severnye zapiski, no. 11 (November 1913): 157; Alex-
ander Benois, “Povorot k Lubku,” Rech’, no. 75 (March 18,
1909): 2.
57. Kandinsky, On the Spiritual in Art, in Bowlt and Wash-
ton Long, Life of Vasilii Kandinsky in Russian Art, 64.
58.  Vasily Kandinsky, “Franz Marc,” Cahiers d’art 11
(1936), trans. in Kandinsky: Complete Writings, 796.
59.  Muratov, “Vystavka drevnerusskogo iskusstva,” 36.
60. Kandinsky, On the Spiritual in Art, in Kandinsky:
Complete Writings, 131.
61.  Ibid., 213.
62.  B. Kozlov, “Khudozhestvennyi sezon v Ekaterino-
slave,” Apollon, no. 11 (1910): 39.
63.  Vasily Kandinsky, letter to the editor, Russkoe slovo,
no. 102 (May 4, 1913), quoted in Bowlt and Washton Long,
Life of Vasilii Kandinsky in Russian Art, 21.
64.  Kandinsky, “Franz Marc,” 796.
65.  Viktor Bychkov, The Aesthetic Face of Being: Art in the
Theology of Pavel Florensky, trans. Richard Pevear and Larissa
Volokhonsky (Crestwood, N.Y.: St. Vladimir’s Seminary
Press, 1993).
66.  Caryl Emerson, “Russian Orthodoxy and the Early
Bakhtin,” in “Religious Thought and Contemporary Critical
Theory,” special issue, Religion and Literature 22, nos. 2–3
(Summer–Autumn 1990): 115.
67.  Anthony Ugolnik, The Illuminating Icon (Grand Rap-
ids, Mich.: Wm. B. Eerdmans, 1989), 49, 50, and 52.
68. Bychkov, Aesthetic Face, 29–30.
69.  Eckart von Sydow, Die deutsche expressionistische Kul-
tur und Malerei (Berlin: Furche-​Verlag, 1920), 143.
70. Kandinsky, On the Spiritual in Art, in Kandinsky:
Complete Writings, 166.
71.  Washton Long, Kandinsky, 66.
72.  For more information on Kandinsky’s activities at
the RAKhN, see Nicoletta Misler, “Vasilii Kandinsky and the
Russian Academy of Artistic Sciences,” Experiment 8, no. 1
(2002): 173–85.
73.  Clemena Antonova, Space, Time, and Presence in the
Icon: Seeing the World with the Eyes of God (Burlington, Vt.:
Ashgate, 2010), 18.
74.  Collected Works of C. G. Jung, vol. 8, The Structure
and Dynamics of the Psyche, ed. Michael Fordham, trans.
R. F. C. Hull, 2nd ed. (Princeton: Princeton University Press,
1970), 325–42.
75. Kandinsky, On the Spiritual in Art, in Kandinsky: Com-
plete Writings, 209.
76.  Vasily Kandinsky to Will Grohmann, November 21,
1925, cited in Weiss, Kandinsky and Old Russia, xv; Vasily Kan-
dinsky, “Abstract and Concrete Art,” London Bulletin (1939),
in Kandinsky: Complete Writings, 841.
notes to pages 147–154 241
 77. Kandinsky, On the Spiritual in Art, in Kandinsky: Com-
plete Writings, 197.
78. Bychkov, Aesthetic Face, 71.
79.  For an in-​depth analysis of the different Russo-​
Byzantine iconographic types that Kandinsky employed
during these years, see Sarabianov, “Kandinskii i russkaia
ikona,” in Sarabianov, Avtonomova, and Turchin, Mnogogran-
nyi mir Kandinskogo, 42–49.
80. Weiss, Kandinsky and Old Russia, 148–50.
81.  Washton Long cites the extremely long lance as the
identifying feature of Saint George, pointing out that it is the
single most dominant characteristic of Kandinsky’s three oil
paintings and three glass paintings (all from 1911) that were
specifically titled Saint George. See Washton Long, “Vasilii
Kandinsky, 1909–1913: Painting and Theory,” in Bowlt and
Washton Long, Life of Vasilii Kandinsky In Russian Art, 217–20.
82.  Washton Long provides an exhaustive analysis of
Kandinsky’s pre–World War I paintings on the subjects of
All Saints Day (1911), the Sound of Trumpets, and the Deluge
(1913) in Kandinsky: The Development of an Abstract Style.
Washton Long argues that Kandinsky’s interest in these
motifs derived primarily from Theosophy and were especially
stimulated by Rudolf Steiner’s exegesis of the Revelation of
Saint John. Attributing what she considers to be Kandinsky’s
eschatological tendencies toward fin de siècle apocalypticism,
Washton Long almost exclusively relies on iconographic
analysis to support her argument. Similarly, in his essay
“Kandinskii i russkaia ikona,” Sarabianov offers an in-​depth
overview of all the possible Russo-​Byzantine sources that
may have influenced Kandinsky’s work in the years 1909–13.
My own analyses are largely informed by his findings.
83.  Vasily Kandinsky, “Komposition 6,” in Kandinsky,
1901–1913 (Berlin: Verlag Der Sturm, 1913), xxxv–xxxviii, trans.
in Kandinsky: Complete Writings, 385.
84.  Ibid., 389.
85.  Clement Greenberg, “Obituary and Review of an
Exhibition of Kandinsky,” The Nation, January 13, 1945, repr.
in Clement Greenberg: The Collected Essays and Criticism,
ed. John O’Brian, vol. 2 (Chicago: University of Chicago
Press, 1986), 3–4.
86.  Ibid., 5.
87. Kandinsky, On the Spiritual in Art, in Kandinsky: Com-
plete Writings, 194–95.
88.  Ibid., 195.
89. Tarabukin, Smysl ikony, 131.
90. Antonova, Space, Time, and Presence in the Icon, 141.
91.  Ibid., 107.
242 notes to pages 154–172
92. Bychkov, Aesthetic Face, 61.
93.  For more information on medieval theories of vision,
see Robert S. Nelson, ed., Visuality Before and Beyond the
Renaissance: Seeing as Others Saw (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 2000).
94. Antonova, Space, Time, and Presence in the Icon, 2.
95.  Cornelia Tsakiridou, Icons in Time, Persons in Eternity:
Orthodox Theology and the Aesthetics of the Christian Image
(Farnham, Surrey: Ashgate, 2013), 255–58.
96.  A. Vasiliev, “Andrei Rublev i Gregorii Palama,” Zhur-
nal Moskovskoi patriarkhii, no. 10 (1960): 33–44; Popova,
“Medieval Russian Painting,” 54–58.
97.  Florensky, “Reverse Perspevtive” (1920), in Beyond
Vision, 201–72.
98.  See Zernov, Russian Religious Renaissance.
99.  Berdiaev et al., Vekhi.
100.  For an in-​depth discussion of the Vekhi group, see
Leonard Schapiro, “The Vekhi Group and the Mystique of
Revolution,” Slavonic and East European Review 34, no. 82
(1955): 56–76.
101.  Semen Frank, Biografiia P. B. Struve (New York: Izd-​
vo im. Chekhova, 1956), 81.
102.  Schapiro, “Vekhi Group,” 78.
103.  Nikolai Berdiaev, Freedom and the Spirit (New York:
C. Scribner’s Sons, 1935).
104.  Vasily Kandinsky to Franz Marc, September 1, 1911,
cited in Lankheit, “History of the Almanac,” 17.
105.  Johann Karl Friedrich Zöllner, Die transcenden-
tale Physik und die sogenannte Philosophie; Henri Bergson,
Introduction à la métaphysique; Rudolph Steiner, Theosophie:
Einführung in übersinnliche Welterkenntnis und Menschenbe-
stimmung. Misler, “Pavel Florensky as Art Historian,” 61.
106.  The philosopher Pavel Popov, brother of the avant-​
garde painter Liubov Popova, hosted weekly gatherings in
their Moscow home from 1912 to 1914. Among the regular
attendants were artists Aleksei Grishchenko, Vera Pestel,
Vladimir Tatlin, Nadezhda Udaltsova, Alexander Vesnin, and
critics and philosophers Fedor Stepun, Boris Ternovets, Alex-
ander Toporkov, Boris Vipper, and Pavel Florensky.
107.  Kandinsky taught at the VKhUTEMAS from 1920
through the end of 1921, and Florensky taught there from 1921
through 1924.
108.  Misler, “Pavel Florensky as Art Historian,” 24.
109.  It was only in the early 2000s that scholars finally
began to examine Kandinsky’s activities in early and post-
revolutionary Russia. For example, see Experiment 8, no. 1
(2002), and Experiment 9, no. 1 (2003).
 110.  See Bychkov, Aesthetic Face, 43, and Nicoletta Mis-
ler, “Toward an Exact Aesthetics: Pavel Florensky and the
Russian Academy of Artistic Sciences,” in Bowlt and Matich,
Laboratory of Dreams, 118–34.
111.  Lev Zhegin, “Vospominaniia o P. A. Florenskom,”
in Makovets, 1922–1926: Sbornik materialov po istorii ob’edi-
neniia, ed. Mira Nemirovskaia and Evgen’ia Iliukhina (Mos-
cow: Gos. Tret’iakovskaia galereia, 1994), 99, quoted in Mis-
ler, “Pavel Florensky as Art Historian,” 75.
112.  Misler, “Pavel Florensky as Art Historian,” 73–75.
113.  Douglas Greenfield, “Florensky and the Binocular
Body,” in Gatrall and Greenfield, Alter Icons, 198.
114.  Florensky, “Reverse Perspective,” 216.
115.  Pavel Florensky, Sochineniia, ed. Igumen Andronik
(A. S. Trubachev), P. V. Florensky, and M. S. Trubacheva,
vol. 3 [1] (Moscow: Mysl’, 1999), 365, quoted in Greenfield,
“Florensky and the Binocular Body,” 195.
116.  Pavel Florensky, Stat’i i isledovaia po istorii i
filosofii iskusstva i arkheologii, ed. Igumen Andronik
(A. S. Trubachev) (Moscow: Mysl’, 2000), 252, quoted in
Greenfield, “Florensky and the Binocular Body,” 195.
117.  Greenfield, “Florensky and the Binocular Body,” 199.
118.  Florensky, “Reverse Perspective,” 258.
119.  Pavel Florensky, Analiz prostranstvennosti i vremeni v
khudozhestvenno-​izobrazitel’nykh proizvedeniiakh, ed. Oleg Geni-
saretskii and M. S. Trubacheva (Moscow: Izdatel’skaia gruppa
“Progress,” 1993), 127–28, cited in Florensky, Beyond Vision, 62.
120.  Florensky, “Reverse Perspective,” 271.
121.  Kandinsky, “Content and Form,” 87.
122.  Misler, “Pavel Florensky as Art Historian,” 82.
123. Florensky, Analiz prostranstvennosti, 126.
124.  Ibid., 126–28.
125.  Greenfield, “Florensky and the Binocular Body,”
197–98.
126.  Pavel Florensky, The Trinity–St. Sergius Lavra and
Russia, trans. Robert Bird (New Haven: Variable Press,
1995), 7, 29 (orginally published as “Troitse-​Sergieva Lavra i
Rossiia,” in Troitse-​Sergieva Lavra, ed. Pavel Florensky, Pavel
Kapterev, and Yurii Olsuf ’ev [Sergiev Posad: Tipografiia I.
Ivanov, 1919], 3–29).
127.  Greenfield, “Florensky and the Binocular Body,” 198.
128. Kandinsky, Reminiscences, 382.
129.  See Marit Werenskiold, “Kandinsky’s Moscow,” Art
in America 77 (March 1989): 96–111.
130. Kandinsky, Reminiscences, 382.
131.  Florensky, “The Church Ritual as a Synthesis of the
Arts,” in Beyond Vision, 101.
132.  Kandinsky, “Content and Form,” 88.
133.  Alexander Rodchenko, “Slogans” (December 12,
1920), in Art in Theory, 1900–2000: An Anthology of Changing
Ideas, ed. Charles Harrison and Paul Wood (Malden, Mass.:
Blackwell, 2003), 340.
134.  Varvara Stepanova, Diary (1920), quoted in Maria
Gough, The Artist as Producer: Russian Constructivism in Revo-
lution (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2005), 31–32.
135.  Misler, “Pavel Florensky as Art Historian,” 79.
136. “VKhUTEMAS,” Lef 2 (April–May 1923): 174,
quoted in Misler, “Pavel Florensky as Art Historian,” 78.
Chapter 5
1.  0.10: The Last Futurist Exhibition of Painting was opened
on December 19, 1915, and ran until January 19, 1916. It was
held in the private art gallery of Nadezhda Dobychina, which
was located in the nineteenth-​century Adamini House on the
Field of Mars in St. Petersburg. The exhibition showcased 155
works by Kazimir Malevich, Vladimir Tatlin, Liubov Popova,
Olga Rozanova, Nadezhda Udalstova, Ksenia Boguslavskaia,
Ivan Puni, Ivan Kliun, Vasilii Kamenskii, Nathan Altman,
Vera Pestel, Mikhail Menkov, Maria Vasilieva, and Anna
Kirillova. For a detailed analysis of the 0.10 exhibition, see
Linda S. Boersma, 0.10: The Last Futurist Exhibition of Painting
(Rotterdam: 010 Publishers, 1994); Anatolii Strigalev, “O Pos-
lednei futuristicheskoi vystavke kartin ‘0,10 (Nol’-Desiat’),’ ”
Nauchno-​analiticheskii informatsionnyi biulleten’ Fonda
K. S. Malevicha (2001): 12–38; Aleksandra Shatskikh, “0.10:
The Last Futurist Exhibition,” in Black Square: Malevich and
the Origin of Suprematism, trans. Marian Schwartz (New
Haven: Yale University Press, 2012), 101–23; and Matthew
Drutt, ed., In Search of 0,10: The Last Futurist Exhibition of
Painting (Riehen, Basel: Fondation Beyeler, 2015).
2.  Vecher Petrograda, January 20, 1916, quoted in Boersma,
0.10, 46.
3.  Golos Rossii, January 21, 1916, quoted in Boersma, 0.10, 65.
4. Shatskikh, Black Square, 101.
5.  Vasilii Rakitin, “The Artisan and the Prophet: Marginal
Notes on Two Artistic Careers,” in The Great Utopia: The Rus-
sian and Soviet Avant-​Garde, 1915–1932 (New York: Guggen-
heim Museum, 1992), 32.
6.  In most English-​language scholarship Posledniaia
futuristicheskaia vystavka kartin has been translated as The
Last Futurist Exhibition of Painting. However, it is important
to note that the Russian word “poslednii” can be translated
on the one hand as the “last,” or “final,” or on the other as the
“latest,” or “most recent.”
notes to pages 172–179 243
 7. Sychev, Drevlekhranilishche pamiatnikov, 7; Birzhevye
vedomosti, quoted in Basner, “Nachalo,” 33.
8.  Punin, “Puti sovremennogo iskusstva i russkaia ikono-
pis’,” 46; Tarabukin, Smysl ikony, 43.
9.  Alexander Benois, “Posledniaia futuristskaia vystavka,”
Rech’, no. 8 ( January 9, 1916), quoted in Kazimir Malevich:
Letters, Documents, Memoirs, Criticism, 2:517.
10.  Nikolai Punin, Tatlin (protiv kubizma) (St. Petersburg:
Gos. izdatel’stvo, 1921). For a recent edition, see Punin, O Tat-
line, ed. Irina Punina and Vasilii Rakitin (Moscow: Literaturno-​
khudozhestvennoe agenstvo “RA,” 1994), 27–42. For an
abridged version in English, see Zhadova, Tatlin, 347–93.
11.  Aleksei Lidov, Spatial Icons: Performativity in Byzan-
tium and Medieval Russia (Moscow: Indrik, 2011), 19; Bissera
Pentcheva, The Sensual Icon: Space, Ritual, and the Senses in
Byzantium (University Park: Pennsylvania State University
Press, 2010), 2–3.
12. Lidov, Spatial Icons, 42; Pentcheva, Sensual Icon, 8.
13. Pentcheva, Sensual Icon, 210.
14.  Ibid., 205, 210.
15.  Strigalev, “O Poslednei futuristicheskoi vystavke,”
12; Boersma, 0.10, 74; Masha Chlenova, “0.10,” in Inventing
Abstraction, 1910–1925: How a Radical Idea Changed Modern
Art, ed. Leah Dickerman (New York: Museum of Modern
Art, 2012), 206–8. Shatskikh observes that Tatlin had already
exhibited his “painterly reliefs” a year and a half earlier at
the Tramway V Exhibition and that the artist’s volumetric
constructions did not create “a separate and integral ‘counter-​
relief ’ trend . . . in the Russian avant-​garde.” However, she also
concedes that Tatlin’s reliefs “served as a point of departure
for the movement toward Constructivism.” Shatskikh, Black
Square, 104. Indeed, Tatlin himself subsequently claimed that
he was “the founder of Constructivism,” and while there are
certainly marked differences between his artistic project and
that of the Obmokhu artists such as Alexander Rodchenko,
Karl Ioganson, and Georgii and Vladimir Stenberg, Tatlin’s
move into three-​dimensional construction and his use of
industrial materials nonetheless made a considerable impact
on the later Constructivists.
16.  See Strigalev, “O Poslednei futuristicheskoi
vystavke,”12–24; Aleksandra Shatskikh, Kazimir Malevich i
obshchestvo Supremus (Moscow: Tri kvadrata, 2009), 103–20;
and Boersma, 0.10, 38, 50–51. Charlotte Douglas, “Tatlin i
Malevich: Istoriia i teoriia, 1914–15,” in Harten, Vladimir Tat-
lin, 428–37.
17.  Boris Arvatov, “Dve gruppirovki,” Zrelishcha 8 (1922):
9; Nikolai Punin, “Pervye futuristicheskie boi: Glava iz
244 notes to pages 179–183
memuarov Iskusstvo i revolutsiia (1930–1932),” ed. Leonid
Zykov, Russkaia mysl’, nos. 4268–70 (May 6–12, 1999), trans-
lated as “The First Futurist Battles: Chapter from the Memoir
Art and Revolution (1930–1932),” in Kazimir Malevich: Letters,
Documents, Memoirs, Criticism, 2:145.
18.  Ivan Kliun, Moi put’ v iskusstve: Vospominaniia, stat’i,
dnevniki (Moscow: Russkii avangard, 1999), 139.
19.  Tatlin and Malevich had exhibited their works
together at the following exhibitions: Exhibition of Paintings
of the Union of Youth Society of Artists in St. Petersburg, 1911;
Exhibition of Paintings of the Union of Youth Society of Artists
in St. Petersburg, 1912; Exhibition of Paintings of the Donkey’s
Tail Group of Artists in Moscow, 1912; Contemporary-​Painting
Exhibition of Paintings in Moscow, 1912–13; Exhibition of Paint-
ings of the Union of Youth Society of Artists in St. Petersburg,
1913–14; Second Free-​Painting Exhibition of Paintings in Mos-
cow, 1913–14; Exhibition of Paintings by Artists for Comrade
Warriors in Moscow, 1914–15; Paintings of the Moscow Society
of Women Artists for the Casualties of War in Moscow, 1914–15;
Exhibition Works of Russian Theater from the Collection of
Levkii Zheverzheev in Petrograd, 1915. In addition, a pho-
tograph from 1914 shows the two artists sitting together in
Malevich’s country house, or dacha, in Nemchinovka.
20.  Vera Pestel, “Fragmenty dnevnika: Vospominaniia;
‘O khudozhestvennom proizvedenii,’ ” in Amazonki avan-
garda, ed. G. F. Kovalenko (Moscow: Nauka, 2001), 246.
21.  Anatolii Strigalev, “From Painting to the Construction
of Matter,” in Zhadova, Tatlin, 42n105.
22.  Kazimir Malevich, “The Constructive Painting
of Russian Artists and Constructivism,” in Essays on Art,
1915–1933, ed. Troels Andersen, trans. Xenia Glowacki-​Prus
and Arnold McMillin (London: Rapp & Whiting; Chester
Springs, Pa.: Dufour Editions, 1969), 2:75.
23.  For a contemporary account of the tensions sur-
rounding the 0.10 exhibition, see Varvara Stepanova, “Diary:
1919–1921,” in Kazimir Malevich: Letters, Documents, Memoirs,
Criticism, 2:172–74. For additional accounts, see Vladimir
Vejdle, “Art Under Soviet Power,” in Kazimir Malevich:
Letters, Documents, Memoirs, Criticism, 2:155, and Charlotte
Douglas, “Malevich and Western European Art Theory,”
in Malevich: Artist and Theoretician, ed. Charlotte Douglas
and Evgeniia Petrova (Paris: Flammarion, 1991), 56.
24.  Strigalev, Boersma, and Alan C. Birnholz all sug-
gest that this shared preoccupation with the corner both
provoked and exacerbated the latent rivalry between the
two artists. See Boersma, 0.10, 67–69; Anatolii Strigalev and
Jürgen Harten, eds., Vladimir Tatlin: Retrospektive (Cologne:
Dumont, 1993), 250n352; and Alan C. Birnholz, “Forms,
Angles, and Corners: On Meaning in Russian Avant-​Garde
Art,” Arts Magazine 51 (February 1977): 105. By contrast,
Shatskikh challenges this hypothesis, arguing that Tatlin
only installed his Corner Counter-​Reliefs a few hours before
the exhibition opened to the public, by which point all of
Malevich’s works, including the Black Square, were already on
display; see Shatskikh, Black Square, 108–9.
25.  Jane Ashton Sharp, “The Critical Reception of the
0.10 Exhibition: Malevich and Benua,” in Great Utopia, 49.
26.  Ironically, under the influence of Matthew Stewart
Prichard, in the early 1910s Matisse became increasingly inter-
ested in Byzantine art as a precursor to modernist aesthetics.
See Nelson, “Modernism’s Byzantium,” 24–28, and Antliff,
“Rhythms of Duration.”
27.  Sharp, “Critical Reception of 0.10,” 49.
28.  For further discussion of the various meanings of
the corner installation, see Birnholz, “Forms, Angles, and
Corners.”
29. Kondakov, Russian Icon, 26–30.
30.  Because the Mandylion was an acheiropoieton, or an
image “not made by human hands,” it was not only viewed as
a direct embodiment of the Incarnation, which provided an
archetypal representation of Christ, but was also understood
as granting divine sanction to the practice of icon painting
in general. See Sherwin Simmons, “Kasimir Malevich’s
‘Black Square’: The Transformed Self, Part Three; The Icon
Unmasked,” Arts Magazine 53 (December 1978): 129.
31.  For more recent discussions of the Edessa legend and
the origins of the Mandylion in Eastern Orthodoxy, see Averil
Cameron, “The History of the Image of Edessa: The Tell-
ing of a Story,” Harvard Ukrainian Studies 7 (1983): 80–94;
Aleksei Lidov, “Sviatoi Mandilion: Istoriia relikvii,” in Spas
Nerukotvornyi v russkoi ikone, ed. L. M. Evseeva, A. M. Lidov,
and N. N. Chugreeva (Moscow: Moskovskie uchebniki i kar-
tolitografiia, 2005), 12–39; Lidov, “Holy Face—Holy Script—
Holy Gate: An Image-​Paradigm of the ‘Blessed City’ in Chris-
tian Hierotopy,” in Hierotopy: Comparative Studies of Sacred
Spaces, ed. Aleksei Lidov (Moscow: Indrik, 2009), 110–43.
32.  For a discussion of Malevich’s persistent use of Chris-
tian iconography, see Jean-​Claude Marcadé, “Malevich i pra-
voslavnaia ikonografiia,” in Poeziia i zhivopis’: Sbornik trudov
pamiati N. I. Khardzhieva, ed. Dmitrii Sarabianov and Mikhail
Meilakh (Moscow: Iazyki russkoi kul’tury, 2000), 167–73. For
Tatlin’s interest in Russo-​Byzantine art, see Anatolii Strigalev,
“Znachenie traditsii drevenerusskogo i narodnogo iskusstva v
tvorchestve Tatlina,” in Harten, Vladimir Tatlin, 368–72.
33.  For a discussion of Malevich’s activities at Fedor
Rerberg’s Art Institute, see John E. Bowlt, “Kazimir Malevich
and Fedor Rerberg,” in Rethinking Malevich: Proceedings of a
Conference in Celebration of the 125th Anniversary of Kazimir
Malevich’s Birth, ed. Charlotte Douglas and Christina Lodder
(London: Pindar Press, 2007), 1–26.
34.  For a detailed analysis of these works, see Myroslava
M. Mudrak, “Kazimir Malevich and the Liturgical Tradition
of Eastern Christianity,” in Betancourt and Taroutina, Byzan-
tium/Modernism, 37–72.
35.  Mikhail Vrubel to Anna Vrubel, June 7, 1887,
in Gomberg-​Verzhbinskaia, Podkopaeva, and Novikov,
Vrubel’: Perepiska, 49.
36.  Kazimir Malevich, “Chapters from an Artist’s Auto-
biography,” in Kazimir Malevich: Letters, Documents, Memoirs,
Criticism, 1:20.
37.  Ibid., 21.
38.  Mudrak, “Malevich and the Liturgical Tradition,” 69, 70.
39.  Larissa Zhadova writes that from 1895 to 1902 Tatlin
worked in an icon-​painting studio with two young artists,
Levenets and Kharchenko, whom he considered his first two
teachers of art. See Zhadova, Tatlin, 445.
40.  Vladimir Tatlin, “Brief Survey” (1952–53), in Zha-
dova, Tatlin, 322.
41.  Christina Lodder, Russian Constructivism (New
Haven: Yale University Press, 1983), 11.
42.  For further discussion of liturgical lighting and depic-
tions of light in Byzantium, see Robert S. Nelson, “Where
God Walked and Monks Pray,” in Holy Image, Hallowed
Ground: Icons from Sinai, ed. Robert S. Nelson and Kristen M.
Collins (Los Angeles: J. Paul Getty Museum, 2006), 1–38.
43.  For a detailed analysis of Byzantine painting tech-
niques, see David C. Winfield, “Middle and Later Byzantine
Wall Painting Methods: A Comparative Study,” Dumbarton
Oaks Papers 22 (1968): 61–139.
44.  Strigalev, “Znachenie traditsii,” 370.
45.  Magdalena Dabrowski, “Tatlin and Cubism,” Notes in
the History of Art 11, nos. 3–4 (Spring–Summer 1992): 40.
46.  Alexander Shevchenko, Neoprimitivizm: Ego teoriia,
ego vozmozhnosti, ego dostizheniia (Moscow: Tipografiia 1-i
Moskovskoi trudovoi arteli, 1913), quoted in translation in
John E. Bowlt, ed., Russian Art of the Avant-​Garde: Theory and
Criticism, 1902–1934 (New York: Viking Press, 1976), 45, 47.
47.  Dmitrii Sarabianov, “Tatlin’s Painting,” in Zhadova,
Tatlin, 49, 53.
48.  All four of these works were acquired by Sergei
Shchukin for his collection shortly after they were painted,
notes to pages 183–191 245
 and would have been directly available to Goncharova in the
early 1910s.
49.  Eugène-​Melchior de Vogüé, “Peintres russes,” Figaro,
no. 308 (November 4, 1906): 1; C. de Danilowicz, “L’exposition
russe,” L’art et les artistes 4 (October 1906–March 1907): 320.
50. Sharp, Russian Modernism, 186–87.
51.  Strigalev and Harten catalogue this as a work on paper
(cat. 237, plate 64) and also mention an oil painting with the
same name and possibly the same design, shown by Tatlin in
the Union of Youth Exhibition in Petersburg at the end of 1913,
together with three ink drawings (cat. 235). See Strigalev and
Harten, Vladimir Tatlin: Retrospektive, 228–29.
52.  Based on some of Tatlin’s statements, Zhadova
proposes several versions of Lucas Cranach the Elder’s
Madonna and Child as possible sources. She also suggests
that Composition-​Analysis might have been a synthesis of
both Russian iconic and Renaissance sources. See Zhadova,
“Composition-​Analysis, or a New Synthesis?,” in Tatlin,
63–66, and plates 99–102. By contrast, Sarabianov argues for
an anonymous Italian Madonna dating from the end of the
sixteenth to the beginning of the seventeenth centuries. See
Sarabianov, “Tatlin’s Painting,” 56. Finally, Strigalev dismisses
both attributions, simply proposing an “Old Master” source.
See Anatolii Strigalev, “Tatlin i Pikasso,” in Pikasso i okrest-
nosti: Sbornik statei, ed. M. A. Busev (Moscow: Progress-​
Traditsiia, 2006), 128n59, 141.
53.  Zhadova, “Composition-​Analysis,” 66.
54.  Copies of this and other European journals were kept
in the personal collection of Vladimir Lebedev, a close friend
and associate of Tatlin. See Strigalev, “Tatlin i Pikasso,”138n21,
and Douglas, “Tatlin i Malevich,” 433.
55.  For a long time it was believed that Tatlin’s now-leg-
endary visit to Picasso’s studio at 242 Boulevard de Raspail in
Paris took place in the early summer of 1913. Margit Rowell,
John Milner, and Christina Lodder all list this date. See Margit
Rowell, “Vladimir Tatlin: Form/Faktura,” in “Soviet Revolu-
tionary Culture,” special issue, October 7 (Winter 1978): 88n9;
John Milner, Vladimir Tatlin and the Russian Avant-​Garde
(New Haven: Yale University Press, 1984), 70; and Lodder,
Russian Constructivism, 9. However, Strigalev has challenged
this dating by demonstrating that Tatlin’s trip to the West took
place in the spring of 1914. Tatlin was in Berlin for the opening
of the Russian Folk Art Exhibition on February 14, 1914. This
exhibition closed on March 19, and on April 7 or 8 Tatlin was
in Paris, only returning to Russia around April 14. See Anatolii
Strigalev, “O poezdke Tatlina v Berlin i Parizh,” Iskusstvo, nos.
2 and 3 (1989): 39–44 and 26–31. There are also conflicting
246 notes to pages 192–198
accounts about the nature of the visit. Some imply repeated
visits, while others describe only one. See Milner, Vladimir
Tatlin, 70, and Nobert Lynton, Tatlin’s Tower: Monument to
Revolution (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2009), 33.
56.  Questionnaire, TsGALI, fond 1938, inventory 1, unit
59, p. 1, in Zhadova, Tatlin, 262.
57.  Anatolii Strigalev, “Universitety khudozhnika Tatlina,”
Voprosy iskusstvoznaniia 9, pt. 2 (1996): 429.
58.  B. Lubetkin, “The Origins of Constructivism” (lec-
ture given to Cambridge University School of Architecture,
May 1, 1969), tape recording, cited in Lodder, Russian Con-
structivism, 12.
59. Ibid.
60.  S. K. Isakov, “K ‘kontrreliefam’ Tatlina,” Novyi zhur-
nal dlia vseh (Petrograd), no. 12 (1915): 46–50, quoted in
Zhadova, Tatlin, 334; V. E. Meierkhol’d and V. M. Bebutov,
“K postanovke Zor” (1920), quoted in D. I. Zolotnitskii, Zori
teatral’nogo Oktiabria (Leningrad: Iskusstvo, 1976), 103.
61. Spira, Avant-​Garde Icon, 110.
62.  Ibid., 111.
63.  Gough, “Faktura,” 44–45; Grishchenko, O sviaziakh
russkoi zhivopisi, 26.
64.  Gough, “Faktura,” 40.
65.  Vladimir Markov, Printsipy tvorchestva v plasticheskikh
iskusstvakh: Faktura (St. Petersburg: Soiuz molodezhi, 1914),
as translated in Vladimir Markov and Russian Primitivism:
A Charter for the Avant-​Garde, ed. Jeremy Howard, Irena
Bužinska, and Z. S. Strother (Burlington, Vt.: Ashgate, 2015),
207–11.
66.  For a rigorous theoretical discussion of the construc-
tion of virtual spaces versus real spaces in the history of art,
see David Summers, Real Spaces: World Art History and the
Rise of Western Modernism (New York: Phaidon Press, 2003).
67.  Gough, “Faktura,” 52.
68.  Ibid., 49–52.
69. Punin, Tatlin (protiv kubizma), as edited in O Tatline,
27–42. The majority of the English translations are my own,
although in some passages I have relied on Eugenia Lock-
wood’s translations in Zhadova’s Tatlin.
70. Florensky, Iconostasis, cited in Bychkov, Aesthetic Face,
53.
71. Punin, O Tatline, 28, 32–34, 41.
72.  Ibid., 31.
73.  Ibid., 32.
74.  Strigalev, “O Poslednei futuristicheskoi vystavke,” 24.
75.  As discussed in the first chapter, some of these eccle-
siastical prohibitions were overruled during the reigns of
 Catherine II and Alexander I in order to accommodate the
royal preference for Baroque and neoclassical aesthetics.
76. Pentcheva, Sensual Icon, 11, 14.
77.  Ibid., 11–12.
78. Kondakov, Histoire et monuments des émaux byzantins,
84.
79.  Ibid., 302.
80. Kondakov, Russian Icon, 28–30.
81. Shatskikh, Black Square, 108.
82.  Gough, “Faktura,” 45.
83.  This work is a 1925 reconstruction by Tatlin of the
original 1915 Corner Counter-​Relief and incorporates some of
the original materials. It is now housed at the State Russian
Museum in St. Petersburg.
84.  A number of Tatlin’s reliefs were reconstructed in
1993–96 by Dmitrii Dimakov, Elena Lapshina, and Igor
Fedotov under the direction of Anatolii Strigalev. They are
currently housed in the State Tretyakov Gallery in Moscow.
85.  Rico Franses, “Lacan and Byzantine Art: In the
Beginning Was the Image,” in Betancourt and Taroutina,
Byzantium/Modernism, 312.
86.  Robert S. Nelson, “To Say and to See: Ekphrasis and
Vision in Byzantium,” in Nelson, Visuality Before and Beyond
the Renaissance, 158. See also Lidov, Spatial Icons, 5–51; Pent­
cheva, Sensual Icon, 5–9; and Liz James, “Sense and Sensibility
in Byzantium,” Art History 27, no. 4 (2004): 523–37.
87.  Nelson, “To Say and to See,” 156.
88.  Ibid., 155.
89.  Vladimir Tatlin et al., “Nasha predstoiashchaia rab-
ota,” VIII s’ezd sovetov: Ezhednevnyi biulleten’ s’ezda, no. 13
( January 1921): 11, trans. as “The Work Ahead of Us,” in Zha-
dova, Tatlin, 239.
90.  Maurice Merleau-​Ponty, The Visible and the Invisible,
ed. Claude Lefort (Evanston: Northwestern University Press,
1968), 76.
91.  Otto Demus, Byzantine Mosaic Decoration: Aspects of
Monumental Art in Byzantium (Boston: Boston Book & Art
Shop, 1955), 13–14.
92. Punin, O Tatline, 33.
93.  Tatlin, “Brief Survey,” 322.
94.  Zhadova, “Composition-​Analysis,” 66.
95.  Questionnaire, TsGALI, fond 1938, inventory 1, unit
59, p. 1, in Zhadova, Tatlin, 262.
96.  For more information on Aleksei Afanasiev, see Gosu-
darstvennaia Tretiakovskaia galereia, ser. 2, vol. 4, bk. 1, 52.
97.  Strigalev, “Znachenie traditsii,” 369.
98. Tarabukin, Smysl ikony, 125.
99.  Ibid., 124–25.
100.  Ibid., 48.
101.  Vzdornov and Dunaev, “Nikolai Mikhailovich Tara-
bukin i ego kniga Philosofia ikony,” in Tarabukin, Smysl ikony,
9; Strigalev, “Universitety khudozhnika Tatlina,” 428.
102.  Mikhail Matiushin, “O vystavke ‘Poslednikh futuris-
tov,’ ” Ocharovannyi strannik (Petrograd), Spring 1916, 17–18.
103.  Nikolai Punin, “V Moskve: O novykh khudozhest-
vennykh gruppirovkakh,” Iskusstvo kommuny, no. 10 (Febru-
ary 9, 1919), quoted in Kazimir Malevich: Letters, Documents,
Memoirs, Criticism, 2:150.
104.  Kazimir Malevich to Alexander Benois, May 1916,
in Kazimir Malevich: Letters, Documents, Memoirs, Criticism,
1:82–86.
105.  Benois, “Last Futurist Exhibition,” 514–17.
106.  Sharp, “Critical Reception of 0.10,” 42.
107.  Kazimir Malevich, The World as Non-​Objectivity:
Unpublished Writings 1922–25, vol. 3 of Essays on Art, ed. Troels
Andersen, trans. Xenia Glowacki-​Prus and Edmund T. Litte
(Copenhagen: Borgen, 1976), 354. Malevich’s Mir kak bez-
predmetnost’ was written between 1924 and 1925 but was first
published in 1927 under the German title Die gegenstandslose
Welt as the eleventh book in the Bauhaus Book series under
the editorship of Walter Gropius and Laszlo Moholy-​Nagy.
108.  See Thierry de Duve, Pictorial Nominalism: On Mar-
cel Duchamp’s Passage from Painting to the Readymade (Min-
neapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1991).
109.  Ibid., xx–xxii.
110.  Sharp, “Critical Reception of 0.10,” 42.
111.  The dating of the Black Square to 1913 persisted well
into the 1980s.
112.  The year 1913 witnessed a number of important his-
torical and cultural milestones, including the tercentenary of
the Romanov dynasty, the successful resolution of the Balkan
Wars, and the premieres of Diaghilev’s Rite of Spring and the
Futurist opera Victory over the Sun in Paris and St. Petersburg
respectively. See John E. Bowlt, “The Year 1913: Crossroads of
Past and Future,” in Moscow and St. Petersburg, 319–46.
113. Shatskikh, Black Square, 2.
114.  Ibid., 37–53.
115.  See ibid., 85–98, and Charlotte Douglas, “The Art of
Pure Design: The Move to Abstraction in Russian and English
Art and Textiles; A Meditation,” in Russian Art and the
West: A Century of Dialogue in Painting, Architecture, and the
Decorative Arts, ed. Rosalind P. Blakesley and Susan E. Reid
(DeKalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 2007), 99–101.
116. Shatskikh, Black Square, 47.
notes to pages 198–206 247
 117.  Christina Lodder, “Malevich as Exhibition Maker,”
in Malevich, ed. Achim Borchardt-​Hume (London: Tate Pub-
lishing, 2015), 94.
118.  Fer, “Imagining a Point of Origin,” 7.
119.  Ivan Kliun, “Kazimir Malevich: Memoirs,” in Kazimir
Malevich: Letters, Documents, Memoirs, Criticism, 2:79.
120.  Rakitin, “Artisan and the Prophet,” 30.
121. Shatskikh, Black Square, 45.
122.  For example, see Kazimir Malevich, “I Am the
Beginning” in The Artist, Infinity, Suprematism: Unpublished
Writings, 1913–1933, vol. 4 of Essays on Art, ed. Troels Ander-
sen, trans. Xenia Hoffmann (Copenhagen: Borgen Verlag,
1978), 12–26; and the following letters: Kazimir Malevich to
Mikhail Matiushin, April 12, 1916; to Pavel Ettinger, April 3,
1920; to Mikhail Gershenzon, December 21, 1919, and April 11,
1920, all in Kazimir Malevich: Letters, Documents, Memoirs,
Criticism, 1:80–81, 127–28, 116–20, 128–30.
123.  Varvara Stepanova, Chelovek ne mozhet zhit’ bez
chuda: Pisma, poeticheskie opyty, zapiski khudozhnitsy,
ed. A. N. Lavrentiev and V. A. Rodchenko (Moscow: Sfera,
1994), 61, cited in Shatskikh, Black Square, 127.
124.  N. M. Gershenzon-​Chegodaeva, Pervye shagi
zhiznennogo puti: Vospominaniia docheri Mikhaila Gershen-
zona (Moscow: Zakharov, 2000), 127, cited in Kazimir Male­
vich: Letters, Documents, Memoirs, Criticism, 1:109.
125.  Alexei Kurbanovsky, “Malevich’s Mystic Signs: From
Iconoclasm to New Theology,” in Steinberg and Coleman,
Sacred Stories, 363–64.
126.  Kazimir Malevich, “God Is Not Cast Down: Art,
Church, and the Factory” (1920–22), in Essays on Art, 1:188–223.
127.  Pavel Florensky, Stolp i utverzhdenie istiny (Moscow:
Put’, 1914), trans. Boris Jakim, The Pillar and Ground of the
Truth (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1997), 118.
128.  Malevich, “God Is Not Cast Down,” 196–97; Vladi-
mir Soloviev, Lectures on Godmanhood, trans. Peter Zouboff
(London: Dennis Dobson, 1948).
129. Soloviev, Philosophical Principles, 53–54. For a good
overview of these concepts, see Randall A. Poole, “Vlad-
imir Solov’ev’s Philosophical Anthropology: Autonomy,
Dignity, Perfectibility,” in A History of Russian Philosophy,
1830–1930: Faith, Reason, and the Defense of Human Dignity,
ed. G. M. Hamburg and Randall A. Poole (Cambridge: Cam-
bridge University Press, 2010), 131–49.
130.  Malevich, “God Is Not Cast Down,” 216.
131.  Konstantin Rozhdestvensky, “Malevich Is an Inex-
haustible Topic,” in Kazimir Malevich: Letters, Documents,
Memoirs, Criticism, 2:292, 300.
248 notes to pages 206–210
132.  Kazimir Malevich to Mikhail Gershenzon, January 1,
1921, in Kazimir Malevich: Letters, Documents, Memoirs, Criti-
cism, 1:135.
133.  Kazimir Malevich to El Lissitzky, September 6, 1924,
in Kazimir Malevich: Letters, Documents, Memoirs, Criticism,
1:171; Malevich, “From ‘Secret Vices of the Academicians’ ”
and “The Question of Imitative Art,” in Essays on Art, 1:17
and 182; Malevich, “Notes on Architecture,” in Artist, Infinity,
Suprematism, 102.
134.  See John E. Bowlt, “The Cow and the Violin:
Toward a History of Russian Dada,” in The Eastern Dada
Orbit: Russia, Georgia, Ukraine, Central Europe, and Japan,
ed. Stephen C. Foster (New York: Hall, 1998), 137–63, and
Shatskikh, Black Square, 1–33.
135.  Malevich’s speech was printed in the newspaper
Rech’, no. 32 (February 20, 1914): 5.
136.  Kliun, “Kazimir Malevich: Memoirs,” 66.
137. Summers, Real Spaces, 640.
138.  Kazimir Malevich to Mikhail Matiushin, Septem-
ber 24, 1915, in Kazimir Malevich: Letters, Documents, Memoirs,
Criticism, 1:68; Malevich, “Reply,” in Essays on Art, 1:54.
139.  Kazimir Malevich to Pavel Ettinger, April 3, 1920,
in Kazimir Malevich: Letters, Documents, Memoirs, Criticism,
1:127.
140. Shatskikh, Black Square, 109.
141.  Maria Gough, “Architecture as Such,” in Borchardt-​
Hume, Malevich, 62.
142.  Malevich, “Question of Imitative Art,” 170.
143.  Fabio Rambelli and Eric Reinders, “What Does
Iconoclasm Create? What Does Preservation Destroy?
Reflections on Iconoclasm in East Asia,” in Iconoclasm: Con-
tested Objects, Contested Terms, ed. Stacy Boldrick and Rich-
ard Clay (Aldershot, Hampshire: Ashgate, 2007), 31.
144.  Bernard Faure, “The Buddhist Icon and the Modern
Gaze,” Critical lnquiry 24, no. 3 (Spring 1998): 785.
145.  Michael Taussig, Defacement: Public Secrecy and the
Labor of the Negative (Stanford: Stanford University Press,
1999), 13.
146.  Fer, “Imagining a Point of Origin,” 7.
147.  Ivan Kliun, “The Funeral of Kazimir Malevich,”
in Kazimir Malevich: Letters, Documents, Memoirs, Criticism,
2:89–91.
148.  Jane Ashton Sharp, “ ‘Action-​Paradise’ and ‘Ready-
made Reliquaries’: Eccentric Histories in/of Recent Russian
Art,” in Betancourt and Taroutina, Byzantium/Modernism, 283.
149.  Mudrak, “Malevich and the Liturgical Tradition,”
54–55.
 150.  Ibid., 55.
151.  Malevich, “I Am the Beginning,” 12.
152.  Rosalind Krauss, “The Originality of the Avant-​
Garde: A Postmodernist Repetition,” October 18 (Autumn
1981): 53–54.
153.  Charles Barber, Contesting the Logic of Painting: Art
and Understanding in Eleventh-​Century Byzantium (Leiden:
Brill, 2007), 29.
154.  Achim Borchardt-​Hume, “An Icon for a Modern
Age,” in Borchardt-​Hume, Malevich, 29.
155.  Marcadé, “Malevich i pravoslavnaia ikonografiia,” 171.
156.  Ibid., 171–72.
157.  Oleg Tarasov, Icon and Devotion: Sacred Spaces in
Imperial Russia, trans. and ed. Robin Milner-​Gulland (Lon-
don: Reaktion, 2002), 378; G. Seryi, “A Monastery on State
Support” (Leningradskaia pravda, June 10, 1926), in Kazimir
Malevich: Letters, Documents, Memoirs, Criticism, 2:529.
158.  Kazimir Malevich to Mikhail Gershenzon, April 11,
1920, in Kazimir Malevich: Letters, Documents, Memoirs, Criti-
cism, 1:129.
159. Malevich, World as Non-​Objectivity, 352–54.
160.  Malevich, “God Is Not Cast Down,” 203.
161.  Ibid., 216.
162. Tarabukin, Ot mol’berta k mashine, cited in Gough,
Artist as Producer, 145–46.
163. Stepanova, Chelovek ne mozhet zhit’ bez chuda, 181.
Epilogue
1.  For thoughtful and detailed analyses of Punk Prayer,
see Vera Shevzov, “Women on the Fault Lines of Faith: Pussy
Riot and the Insider/Outsider Challenge to Post-​Soviet
Orthodoxy,” Religion and Gender 4, no. 2 (2014): 121–44;
Anya Bernstein, “An Inadvertent Sacrifice: Body Politics and
Sovereign Power in the Pussy Riot Affair,” Critical Inquiry 40,
no. 1 (2013): 220–41; Dmitry Uzlaner, “The Pussy Riot Case
and the Peculiarities of Russian Post-​Secularism,” State, Reli-
gion, and Church 1, no. 1 (2014): 23–58.
2.  Nadieszda Kizenko, “Feminized Patriarchy? Ortho-
doxy and Gender in Post-​Soviet Russia,” Signs 38, no. 3
(2013): 595–621; Elena Gapova, “Delo Pussy Riot: Femi-
nistskii protest v kontekste klassovoi bor’by,” Neprikosnoven-
nyi zapas 5, no. 85, http://​magazines​.russ​.ru​/nz​/2012​/5​/g2​
.html, accessed on May 25, 2017.
3.  Liubov Shirshova, “Sovremennaia monumental’naia
zhivopis’ Russkoi Pravoslavnoi Tserkvi: po materialam
vossozdania Kafedral’nogo sobornogo Khrama Khrista Spa-
sitelia v Moskve” (Ph.D. diss., St. Petersburg State Art and
Industry Academy, St. Petersburg, 2012).
4.  Shevzov, “Women on the Fault Lines,” 133.
5.  Sestra Olga, “Patriarkh Kirill protiv molitvy v
khrame?,” Arsen’evskie vesti 13 (March 28, 2012): 3; “Steno-
gramma vstrechi predsedatelia Pravitel’stva RF V. V. Putina so
Sviateishim Patriarkhom Kirillom i liderami tradiotsionnykh
religioznykh obshchin Rossii,” Patriarchia.ru, February 8,
2012, http://​www​.patriarchia​.ru​/db​/text​/2005767​.html,
accessed on June 2, 2017.
6.  Benois, “Posledniaia futuristskaia vystavka,” 517.
7.  For a detailed analysis of ecclesiastical architecture in
post-​Soviet Russia, see Anna Ryndina, ed., Russkoe tserkovnoe
iskusstvo novogo vremeni (Moscow: Indrik, 2004); Natalia
Laitar’, “Sovremennaia pravoslavnaia tserkovnaia arkhitektura
Rossii: Tendentsii stilevogo razvitia i tipologia khramov”
(Ph.D. diss., Herzen State Pedagogical University of Russia,
St. Petersburg, 2012).
8. A. I. Klibanov, ed., Russkoe pravoslavie: Vekhi istorii
(Moscow: Politizdat, 1989), 380.
9.  Patriarch Alexei II quoted by Interfax Religion on
November 10, 2006: http://​www​.interfax​-religion​.ru​
/orthodoxy​/​?act​=​news​&​div​=​15024, accessed on Novem-
ber 23, 2015.
10.  For example, see Nina Kuteinikova, Sovremennaia
pravoslavnaia ikona (St. Petersburg: Znaki, 2007), and Irina
Buseva-​Davydova, “Sovremennye Khramovye Rospisi:
Programma, traditsiia, stil’,” in Iskusstvo v sovremennom mire,
ed. O. B. Dubova, M. A. Busev, and M. P. Lazarev (Moscow:
Pamiatniki istoricheskoi mysli, 2004), 258–78.
11.  Robert Service, “Putin’s Czarist Folly,” New York
Times, April 6, 2014; Anders Aslund, “Unmasking President
Putin’s Grandiose Myth,” Moscow Times, November 28, 2007;
Jérôme Gautheret, “Poutine, dans l’ombre de l’impitoyable
Tsar Nicolas Ier,” Le Monde, May 12, 2014; Orlando Figes,
“Geopolitik wie im zaristischen Russland,” Kölner Stadt-​
Anzeiger, January 1, 2016.
12.  Shevzov, “Women on the Fault Lines,”136.
13.  For a discussion of Le Corbusier’s ongoing fascination
with the Church of Hagia Sophia, see Tulay Atak, “Abstrac-
tion’s Economy: Hagia Sophia in the Imaginary of Modern
Architecture,” in Betancourt and Taroutina, Byzantium/Mod-
ernism, 135–62.
notes to pages 210–223 249
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Index

Page numbers in italics refer to images. Soviet, 7, 11, 57, 131–32, 135, 138, 173
theory and aesthetics, 45–57, 128–35, 148–51, 170–77, 191–
Abgar of Edessa, 184 98, 204–17
Abramtsevo, xiii Avvakum Petrovich, 16
abstract, 153–54, 161–62, 167 Azrael (Vrubel), 123–25
academic art, 15, 17–21, 33–36, 40, 110–12
Act of Toleration (1905), 93–94, 236 n. 143 Bagration, Petr, 88
Adamovich, Vladimir, 86–87 Bakhtin, Mikhail, 152
Afanasiev, Aleksei, 194, 202–3 Barber, Charles, 211
Ainalov, Dmitrii, 3, 43, 91, 92–93 Barr, Alfred, 138
Aksakov, Konstantin, 31 Basilewsky, Alexander, 43, 64–67
Alexander II, 228 nn. 37,38 Basin, Petr, 33
Alexander III, 67, 114. See also Russian Museum of His Impe- Battle of Novgorod with Suzdal, The, 82–83
rial Majesty Alexander III “beautiful” corner, 184, 205
Alexander Nevsky Cathedral, 34 beauty, 50, 55
All-​Russian Archaeological Conventions, 87, 88–90 Benjamin-​Constant, Jean-​Joseph, 24, 25–26
All Saints (Kandinsky), 140 Benois, Alexander
All Saints I (Kandinsky), 158, 163, 165 on Byzantinism, 1–2
All Saints II (Kandinsky), 158–61, 163 on icons, 140
Alpatov, Mikhail, 107 on Malevich’s Black Square, 180, 204–5
ancient civilizations, Russian enthusiasm for, 4–5 on Matisse, 47
Angel of Death (Vrubel), 123–25 on Religious Composition: Virgin (with Ornament), 149
Angels’ Lamentation (Vrubel), 97, 98 on Vrubel, 122
Anisimov, Alexander, 48 on Western artists, 48–49
Annunciation (Vrubel), 99, 100, 101 on works in St. Vladimir Cathedral, 116–17
Annunciation icon, 101 Berdiaev, Nikolai, 48, 50, 171
Antonova, Clemena, 168–69 Black Accompaniment (Kandinsky), 155–56
Apollon (journal), 54, 62, 72, 77, 132, 141, 204 Black Square (Malevich), 180, 181, 183, 204–7, 209–13, 217
Apostle Thomas, 201, 202 Blaue Reiter Almanac, 142, 144, 171, 240 n. 47
archaeological conventions, 87, 88–90 Blessing of the Bread, The (Kandinsky), 141
archetype, 153–54 Blok, Alexander, 122
architecture, ecclesiastical, 16–17 blue, 239 n. 24
Art Nouveau, 40, 128, 134–35. See also stil modern Blue Rayonism (Portrait of a Fool) (Larionov), 127
Arvatov, Boris, 182 Blue Rose, 55
Assumption, depictions of, 18–20 Bogaevskii, Konstantin, 120–21
Assumption Cathedral, 83–84 Bogochelovechestvo, 207
Assumption of the Virgin (Briullov), 18–19, 20 Bolin, Edward, 87
Autumn (Larionov), 149 Bolin, Gustaf, 87
Avant-​garde Bolshevik regime, 209, 213, 231 n. 152
French, 46, 168 Bolshevik Revolution, 5, 56, 72, 191, 208, 217
pre-​revolutionary, 92–95, 130–31, 148–51, 179–82, 191–92, Borchardt-​Hume, Achim, 213
198 Borovikovsky, Vladimir
Russian, 3, 53, 59, 127, 130, 148, 151, 168, 170, 171, 241 n. 7, 244 Royal Doors with Christ, the Virgin, the Archangel Gabriel
n. 15 and the Four Evangelists, 20, 21

261
 Borovikovsky, Vladimir (cont’d) Caricature of Kazimir Malevich, a “Rare Bird” (Golosh-
Saint Catherine, 18 chapov), 184
Bowlt, John, 131, 141, 226 n. 22, 240 n. 47 Cathedral of Christ the Savior, 32–33, 36, 219–20, 228 nn. 37,38
Braque, Georges, 145, 190 Catherine the Great, 63–64
Briullov, Karl, 18–19, 20 Le Caucase pittoresque (Gagarin), 36, 37
broadsheet (lubok), 9, 149, 192 Caviar Icon (Kosolapov), 221–22
Bruni, Fedor, 33 Cézanne, Paul
Bulgakov, Mikhail, 99 as founder of Cubism, 130
Bulgakov, Sergei, 48, 170, 171, 207 Mont Sainte-​Victoire, 107, 108, 109
Bullen, J. B., 23 Punin on, 198
Burliuk, David, 131 as savior of European art, 46
Burne-​Jones, Edward, 148 Vrubel compared to, 107–10, 129
Buslaev, Fedor, 40, 77 Chaadaev, Petr, 22
Bychkov, Viktor, 152, 169 Chagall, Marc, 72
“Byzantine,” 3–4, 43 Chistiakov, Pavel, 99
Byzantine art. See also Russo-​Byzantine revival Chizhov, Fedor, 20
and change in contemporary art world, 45–47 Christ in the Wilderness (Kramskoi), 121
criticism of, 20–24 Christ Pantocrator, 200
Florensky, Punin, and Tarabukin on, 49–57 Christ Pantocrator icon, 69, 70
Florensky on perspective in, 52 Christ Pantocrator with Archangels, 104, 105
in Hermitage Museum, 63–67 Christ’s Entry into Jerusalem, 161, 162
ideological and cultural reevaluation of, 31–38 Church of San Vitale, 26, 30
in Imperial Russian Historical Museum, 79–87 Church of the Dormition, 200
Kandinsky’s exposure to, 141–44 cleaning and restoration, 7, 39, 44, 61–62, 94
Kondakov on, 45 color
Matisse’s interest in, 245 n. 26 Kandinsky on, 239 n. 24
in Moscow Public and Rumiantsev Museum, 73–79 Punin on Tatlin’s use of, 197–98
relationship between Russian icon painting and, 59–61 Colorful Life (Motley Life) (Kandinsky), 86, 144, 145
rising interest in, 23–31 Committee for the Encouragement of Icon Painting, 44
in Russian Museum of His Imperial Majesty Alexander III, Composition-​Analysis (Tatlin), 192–94, 246 n. 52
67–73 Composition V (Kandinsky), 163, 164
as underappreciated, 45 Composition VI (Kandinsky), 161–62
Western influence on, 13–20 Composition VII (Kandinsky), 165, 167
Byzantine Empire Concentric Circles (Kandinsky), 165, 168
changing Russian attitudes towards, 31–38 conservation, 7, 39, 44, 61–62, 94
denigration of, 20–26 Constantine I (emperor), 25
Byzantine revival, 23–31, 227 n. 27. See also Russo-​Byzantine Constantine VII (emperor), 86
revival Constantinople (Istanbul), 13, 22, 23, 31–32, 33, 36, 60–61, 198–99
Byzantinism, 1–2, 152–53 Constructivism, 130, 131, 176–77, 182, 244 n. 15
Byzantium copying of artworks, 79
criticism of, 20–24 Corbett, David Peters, 6
evolution of Russia’s relationship with, 13 Cormack, Robin, 60
ideological and cultural reevaluation of, 31–38 Corner Counter-​Reliefs (Tatlin), 180, 181, 182, 183, 198–204, 217
Kondakov on, 45 corner display, 183–84, 205
rising interest in, 23–31 Couchaud, André, 23
Russian engagement with, 5 Crimean War (1853–56), 31
“Byzanto-​Russian,” 43 Crusades, 41
Cubism, 54, 130, 183, 186–87, 190, 191–98
Caillebotte, Gustave, 128, 129 Cubo-​Futurism, 130, 138
cameos, 63–64 Cutler, Anthony, 22

262 Index
Dabrowski, Magdalena, 190 Female Model (Nude 1: Composition Based on a Female Nude)
Danilevskii, Nikolai, 33 (Tatlin), 188–90
“decadent,” 98–99, 113 Female Model (Nude 2) (Tatlin), 188–90
defamiliarization, 131 Fer, Briony, 209
Demoiselles d’Avignon (Picasso), 130 Fiery Ascension of the Prophet Elijah, The, 156, 157
Demon: An Eastern Tale, The (Lermontov), 112–13 Fifteenth All-​Russian Archaeological Convention, 88–89
Demon Cast Down (Vrubel), 120–21, 122, 123, 125, 130 Filimonov, Giorgii, 79
Demon Looking at a Dale (Vrubel), 109 Filonov, Pavel, 97
Demon series (Vrubel), 118–27 Fineberg, Jonathan David, 146
Demus, Otto, 200–201 Finlay, George, 23
Denis, Maurice, 223 First Abstract Watercolor (Kandinsky), 153
Descent of the Holy Ghost (Vrubel), 103 Fishmonger (Tatlin), 186
Diaghilev, Sergei, 113, 146 Florensky, Pavel
Didron, Adolphe, 23, 101 on iconic visuality, 110
Dionysius, 23, 34, 55, 60, 101 “Iconostasis,” 51–52, 231 n. 127
directional lighting, 101, 187 on icon’s embodied presence, 197
Dmitriev, Vsevolod, 117, 127 The Meaning of Idealism, 48
Dmitrieva, Nina, 110 on medieval conception of universe, 6
Dobychina, Nadezhda, 179 and philosophy of icon, 49, 50–53, 57
Donkey’s Tail Exhibition, 191 on Picasso, 48
Dostoyevsky, Fyodor, 55 “Reverse Perspective,” 51–52, 173–74
Douglas, Charlotte, 194 similarities between Malevich and, 207–8
dualism in iconic representations, 148, 150 teaches at VKhUTEMAS, 242 n. 107
Durand, Paul, 23, 101 theoretical and aesthetic convergence between Kandinsky
dynamic field, picture plane as, 174 and, 171–77
Formalism, 51, 54, 55, 95, 131, 138, 139, 177
Eastern Tale (Vrubel), 131, 134 Fossati, Gaspare and Giuseppe, 23, 81
Egypt, Russian engagement with, 5 France
Eichner, Johannes, 145, 146 critical reception of Russian art, 130, 191–92
Eighth All-​Russian Archaeological Convention, 87, 89–90 exhibitions of Russian art in, 130, 146–47
Ekimov, Vasilii, 17 French art in Russian collections, 45–46, 48, 109, 237 n. 24
Ekster, Alexandra, 131 French artists in Russia, 46–47
Eleventh All-​Russian Archaeological Convention, 89 French modernism and its reception in Russia, 1–2, 45–49,
Elijah, 156–61 78, 107–10, 130–31, 194, 197–98
Elisha, 156 Russian artists in, 109, 130, 144–48, 194–96
Emerson, Caryl, 152 Frank, Semen, 170
Emperor Leo VI Prostrated Before Christ Pantocrator, 81 Franses, Rico, 200
Empress Theodora at the Coliseum, The (Benjamin-​Constant), Freeman, Edward, 23–25
24, 25–26 Freud, Sigmund, 153
Exhibition of Ancient Russian Art (1913), 47–48, 59, 91–95, 151, Fry, Roger, 1–2
179, 192–93, 195 Funeral, The (Kandinsky), 144–46
Exhibition of Icon Painting and Artistic Antiquities, 92–93, 236 Futurism, 196
n. 135
Exhibition of Russian and Finnish Artists, 113 Gabo, Naum, 107–8, 131, 132
extramission, theory of, 200 Gagarin, Grigorii, 36, 37–38
Galla Placidia Mausoleum, 26, 28, 29
Fabergé, Karl, 87 Gatrall, Jefferson, 8
“false” Realism, 51 Gauguin, Paul, 1, 94
Fauvism, 145, 183 Ge, Nikolai, 111, 121
Fedor Rerberg Art Institute, 184 Genuine Icon Painting and Lubki exhibition, 149

Index 263
 Georgievskii, Vasilii, 93 during fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, 15
Gershenzon, Mikhail, 207 secularization of, 20
Gesamtkunstwerk, 176 as serious subject of study, 35–38
Gibbon, Edward, 21–22, 226–27 n. 10 Tarabukin on, 204
Godmanhood, 207 ikonopis, 6
Goloshchapov, Nikolai, 184 Imperial Academy of Arts, 99–101, 111, 112
Goncharova, Natalia, 86, 148, 149–50, 191–92, 241 n. 54 Imperial Academy of Sciences, 42
gospodstvo, 208 Imperial Archaeological Institute, 90
Gothic art and architecture, 23, 64, 76, 91 Imperial Moscow Archaeological Society, 44
Gothic Revival, 4 Imperial Russian Archaeological Society, 44
Gough, Maria, 50, 196–97, 199–200 Imperial Russian Historical Museum (State Historical
Grabar, Igor, 78 Museum), 79–87, 89–90
Granovskii, Timofei, 31–32 Impressionism, 1–2, 54
Gray, Camilla, 226 n. 22 Impression IV (Gendarme) (Kandinsky), 161, 168
Greenberg, Clement, 2, 138, 165–67 INKhUK, 57, 176, 177
Greenfield, Douglas, 8, 173, 175 intermedial and intermediality, 199
Gregory Palamas, Saint, 169 In the Black Square (Kandinsky), 154–55, 156
Grishchenko, Aleksei, 46, 47, 48, 140, 196 Isaiah’s Prayer with Dawn, 143
Grohmann, Will, 145 Isakov, Sergei, 195
Isdebsky-​Pritchard, Aline, 109
Hagia Sophia, 22, 23, 81
Head No. 2 (Gabo), 131, 132 Jack of Diamonds, 151, 206, 208
Head of a Lion (Vrubel), 131, 133 John of Damascus, Saint, 53
Head of an Angel (Vrubel), 120 Jugendstil, 140, 146
Head of Demon (Vrubel), 118, 119 Justinian (emperor), 25
Head of John the Baptist (Vrubel), 123
Head of the Demon (Vrubel), 120 Kalb, Judith, 5
Heavenly Ladder of Saint John Climacus, The, 187–88 Kandinsky, Nina, 139
Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich, 21, 55 Kandinsky, Vasily, 138–39, 140
Heller, Reinhold, 140 All Saints, 140
Hermitage Museum, 63–67 All Saints I, 158, 163, 165
Herzen, Alexander, 22–23 All Saints II, 158–61, 163
hidden construction, 153–54, 174 artistic process of, 161–62
History of Byzantine Art and Iconography Traced in the Minia- on artist’s role in society, 137
tures of Greek Manuscripts, The (Kondakov), 40–41 Black Accompaniment, 155–56
History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (Gibbon), In the Black Square, 154–55, 156
21–22, 227 n. 10 The Blessing of the Bread, 141
“holy” corner, 184, 205 on blue in icon painting, 239 n. 24
Holy Synod, 13–14, 76, 111 Colorful Life (Motley Life), 86, 144, 145
Holy Trinity (Vasnetsov), 110, 111 Composition V, 163, 164
Composition VI, 161–62
“I Am the Beginning” (Malevich), 211 Composition VII, 165, 167
Iaremich, Stepan, 97, 237 n. 12 Concentric Circles, 165, 168
iconic space, 56, 203–4. See also spatial icons within context of Russian Religious Renaissance, 170–77
iconoclasm, 198, 209 engagement of, with iconic representation, 148–65
“Iconostasis” (Florensky), 51–52, 231 n. 127 First Abstract Watercolor, 153
icon painting. See also Russian icon painting The Funeral, 144–46
blue in, 239 n. 24 and Imperial Russian Historical Museum, 86
contemporary practices in, 44–45 Impression IV (Gendarme), 161, 168

264 Index
 influence of, 7 on relief icon, 199
interest in and exposure of, to iconic tradition, 139–48 Russian Antiquities in Monuments of Art, 42–43
Last Judgment, 140, 162, 163, 163 on Russian Museum of His Imperial Majesty Alexan-
Last Supper, 140 der III, 69
Matisse’s influence on, 196 and study of medieval Russian art, 42–43
The Morning Hour, 144–46 and term “Russo-​Byzantine,” 3
perception of, in modernist historiography, 137–38 Korovin, Sergei, 87
Picture with the White Edge, 162 Koshelev, Alexander, 74
Red Spot II, 158, 160, 161 Kosolapov, Alexander, 221–22
Reminiscences, 139 Kramskoi, Ivan, 121
Riding Couple, 144–46 krasnyi ugol, 184, 205
Saint George cycles, 140 Krauss, Rosalind, 211
scholarship on interest of, in medieval and religious art, Krumbacher, Karl, 142
240–41 n. 47 Kulbin, Nikolai, 130, 141
Sound of Trumpets, 140 Kurbanovsky, Alexei, 207
On the Spiritual in Art, 141, 142, 146, 147–48, 151, 239 n. 20 Kuzmin, Mikhail, 2, 99
spiritual versus empiricist vision of, 165–70 Kuznetsov, Pavel, 95
teaches at VKhUTEMAS, 242 n. 107
Untitled, 142 Lamentation I (Vrubel), 114, 115
Volga Song, 144–46 Lamentation II (Vrubel), 114–16, 237 n. 40
Yellow-​Red-​Blue, 154, 156, 163–65 Larionov, Alexander, 172
Kapkov, Iakov, 34–35, 36 Larionov, Mikhail, 127, 148–49, 150, 191, 194
Karamzin, Nikolai, 31, 226–27 n. 10 Last Judgment (Kandinsky), 140, 162, 163, 163
Kazan Cathedral, 16–19, 20–21, 33 Last Judgment (St. Sophia Cathedral), 162, 164
Kelly, Martha M. F., 2–3 Last Judgment, Novgorod icon, 166
Kharichkov, N. N., 74 Last Judgment mosaic (Cathedral of Santa Maria Assunta),
Khlebnikov, Velimir, 132 103
Khomiakov, Aleksei, 31, 32 Last Supper (Kandinsky), 140
Kiev Lecky, William Edward Hartpole, 25
Eleventh All-​Russian Archaeological Convention, 89 Le Corbusier, 223
and Malevich, 185 Lef, 177
and Tatlin, 186 Le Fauconnier, Henri, 48–49, 140
and Vrubel, 97, 99–104, 110, 113, 117–18, 130–31 Lenin, Vladimir, 215–16
Kievan Rus, 13, 33, 34, 71, 82, 234 n. 90 Leporskaia, Anna, 207
Kiev Museum of Antiques and Art, 88 Lermontov, Mikhail, 112–13
Kiev Theological Academy, 89–90 Lidov, Aleksei, 181
Kireevskii, Ivan, 31 lighting, directional, 101, 187
Kirpichnikov, Alexander, 91 Likhachev, Nikolai, 43, 71–72
Kliun, Ivan, 182, 206, 208, 209–10 linear perspective, 52, 147–48, 173, 204
Koimesis, 19–20 Lissitzky, El, 213
Kondakov, Nikodim liturgy, 13, 176
and Basilewsky collection at Hermitage Museum, 65–67 Lodder, Christina, 186, 206
and contemporary artistic movements, 44–45 Lorrain, Claude, 16
on Gibbon’s attacks on Byzantium, 21–22 Lowden, John, 61
The History of Byzantine Art and Iconography Traced in the Lubetkin, Berthold, 195
Miniatures of Greek Manuscripts, 40–41 lubok (broadsheet), 9, 149, 192
as key figure in Russo-​Byzantine revival, 40–42
on krasnyi ugol, 184 Maiat, Vladimir, 86–87
photographic album published by, 236 n. 10 Makovksy, Sergei, 94, 184

Index 265
 Malevich, Kazimir Meyerhold, Vsevolod, 195
Black Square, 180, 181, 183, 204–7, 209–13, 217 Mir iskusstva (journal), 141
historical conflict between Tatlin and, 182–91, 244–45 n. 24 Mir Iskusstva (World of Art) (movement), 46, 55
“I Am the Beginning,” 211 Misler, Nicoletta, 51, 171, 177
influence of, 7 modernist painting and artists, 1–3, 40, 46–49, 226 n. 22
Moscow debut of, 87 modernity
and new theology of art, 204–17 Florensky and, 171–77
Self-​Portrait, 185, 213, 214 iconic tradition aligned with, 94–95
Suprematism: Self-​Portrait in Two Dimensions, 210–11, 212 icon’s function in theorization of, 6
34 Drawings, 206 Kandinsky and, 138–39, 148, 151
The Yellow Series, 184–86 markers of, 221
Malmstad, John, 149 move away from, 180
Mamontov, Savva, 237 n. 15 Orthodox faith in, 219
Mandelstam, Osip, 99 and philosophy of icon, 49–56
Mandylion, 71, 86, 184, 187, 206, 207, 211, 245 n. 30 and reception of contemporary art, 48–49
Manet, Edouard, 2 and rise of international modernism, 128
Man in a Russian Old-​Style Costume, A (Vrubel), 103–4 in Russia and Europe, 9
Manuel d’iconographie chrétienne et latine; traduit du manuscrit Russian engagement with, 2–3, 40
byzantin “Le guide de la peinture” (Didron and Durand), modernization, 7, 20, 150
101 Monastery of St. Michael of the Golden Domes, 39, 43, 82
Marc, Franz, 144 Montesquieu, 21, 25
Marcadé, Jean-​Claude, 213 Month of May (Tatlin), 195
Markov, Aleksei, 33, 196 Mont Sainte-​Victoire (Cézanne), 107, 108, 109
Markov, Vladimir, 196 Morning—Decorative Panel (Vrubel), 113
Martos, Ivan, 17 Morning Hour, The (Kandinsky), 144–46
Matisse, Henri, 1, 3, 46–47, 140, 191, 193, 196, 245 n. 26 Morning Visit of a Byzantine Empress to the Graves of Her
Matiushin, Mikhail, 204 Ancestors (Smirnov), 26–31
Mausoleum of Galla Placidia, 26, 28, 29 Morozov, Ivan, 45
Meaning of Idealism, The (Florensky), 48 mosaics
medieval Russian art in Cathedral of Santa Maria Assunta, Torcello, 103
and artistic revival, 44–45 in Church of San Vitale, Ravenna, 26, 30, 55
and change in contemporary art world, 45–47 in Church of the Dormition in Daphni, 200
collection, institutionalization, and exhibition of, 59, 60, 61 in Church of the Savior on Spilled Blood, St. Petersburg, 203
color and pigment in, 197–98 as discussed by Julius Meier-​Graefe, 142–44
conservation of, 43–44 as discussed by Otto Demus, 200–201
discovery of, 44 as discussed by Roger Fry, 1–2
featured in art journals, 62–63 in Galla Placidia Mausoleum, Ravenna, 26, 28–29, 81
in Imperial Russian Historical Museum, 79–87 in Hagia Sophia, Istanbul, 23, 55, 81, 99
Kondakov on, 45 in the Monastery of St. Michael of the Golden Domes, 39,
Matisse on, 46–47 42–43, 82, 102, 185
in Moscow Public and Rumiantsev Museum, 73–79 as a source of inspiration in Kandinsky’s art, 144–45
reconceptualization of, 92–95 as a source of inspiration in Vrubel’s art, 104–6, 123–25
as serious subject of study, 42–43 in State Historical Museum, 81–82
underestimation of, 45 in St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome, 76
Meier-​Graefe, Julius, 142 in St. Sophia Cathedral, Kiev, 39, 42–43, 55, 82, 99–100,
Merleau-​Ponty, Maurice, 200 102–5, 185
Metropolitan Alexis Healing the Tatar Queen Taidula of Blind- Moscow Archaeological Society, 85
ness While Dzhanibeg Looks On (Kapkov), 34–35, 36 Moscow Courtyard (Polenov), 128, 129
Metzinger, Jean, 145 Moscow Public and Rumiantsev Museum, 73–79

266 Index
Moscow Society of Art Lovers, 90–91 restoration of, 61–62
Moses (Vrubel), 118–20 Old Testament Trinity (Ushakov), 15–16
Mount Athos, 37, 41, 70–71, 76, 85, 99, 101, 144 On the Spiritual in Art (Kandinsky), 141, 142, 146, 147–48, 151,
Mount Sinai, 5, 90, 101 239 n. 20
Mudrak, Myroslava, 185–86, 210 Orientalism, 5, 23, 25–26, 33, 34
Murashko School of Drawing, 39, 102 Orthodox Church and Orthodoxy, 17, 111–12, 152, 198, 221–22
Muratov, Pavel ostranenie, 131
on art research and theory, 46 Ostroukhov, Ilia, 62, 72, 78, 91
employment of, 232 n. 14 Ouspensky, Leonid, 20
and Exhibition of Ancient Russian Art, 92 Ovchinnikov, Mikhail, 87
on interest in icon, 95
on medieval Novgorod icons, 151 Painterly Reliefs (Tatlin), 194–96, 199
and Moscow Public and Rumiantsev Museum, 77–78 Painter’s Manual (Dionysius of Fourna), 23
Sofia, 48 Panofsky, Erwin, 52
on underestimation of medieval Russian art, 45 Panova, Lada, 5
on Vrubel and Cézanne, 109 Paris: A Rainy Day (Caillebotte), 128, 129
on Vrubel as avant-​garde martyr, 122 Parody of a Kazimir Malevich Painting (Zak), 184, 185
Museum of Christian Antiquities, 36–37, 38, 99 Pashkov House, 74, 75
museums and private collections. See also temporary Peirce, Charles Sanders, 197
exhibitions Pentcheva, Bissera, 181, 198–99
Hermitage Museum, 63–67 Peredvizhniki (Itinerants or Wanderers), 46, 73, 98–99, 111,
Imperial Russian Historical Museum, 79–87, 89–90 128, 129, 149, 228 n. 38
Moscow Public and Rumiantsev Museum, 73–79 Pestel, Vera, 182–83
Museum of Christian Antiquities, 36–37, 38, 99 Peter the Great, 13–15, 31, 175
and reconceptualization of medieval art, 59, 60, 61, 63 Petrov-​Vodkin, Kuzma, 95
Russian Museum of His Imperial Majesty Alexander III, Picasso, Pablo, 48, 130, 190, 194, 196, 197, 246 n. 55
62, 67–73, 179 Picture with the White Edge (Kandinsky), 162
pigment, Punin on Tatlin’s use of, 197–98
Napoleonic Wars, 3 Pillar and Ground of the Truth (Florensky), 207
nationalism, 4, 7, 31, 40, 49, 223 Polenov, Vasilii, 128, 129
naturalism, 20, 44, 46, 51, 53–54, 129, 144, 169 political reforms, 93–94
Nazarenes, 148 Popov, Pavel, 242 n. 106
Nelidov, Alexander, 41 Popova, Liubov, 130–31
Nelson, Robert S., 23, 105, 200 Popova, Olga, 60
“Neo-​Byzantine,” 3–4 Portrait of Savva Mamontov (Vrubel), 106–7, 108, 187
neoclassicism, 4, 17, 196 Portrait of Savva Mamontov (Zorn), 107
Neoprimitivism, 191 positivism, 7
“Neo-​Russian,” 3–4 Postimpressionism, 1, 128
Neradovskii, Petr, 71–72 Postnikov, Dmitrii, 87, 234–35 n. 106
Nesterov, Mikhail, 87, 110, 116–17 Poussin, Nicolas, 16
Newmarch, Rosa, 112 Prakhov, Adrian, 38–40, 42, 99, 102–3, 104, 114, 237 n. 12
Nicholas I, 32, 33, 113 Prakhov, Nikolai, 127
Nicholas II, 67–68, 236 n. 143 “pre-​Petrine,” 43
Nietzsche, Friedrich, 116 Pre-​R aphaelites, 148
Nikon, Patriarch, 94 “primitive,” 147–48
nimbus / nimbi, in Kandinsky works, 165 Primitivism, 191
Principles of Creativity in the Plastic Arts (Markov), 196
Old Believers, 94, 236 n. 143 Productivists and Productivist art, 57, 176–77
Old Testament Trinity (Rublev), 14, 15–16, 64, 169 Prokhorov, Vasilii, 37, 38

Index 267
 psychology, Kandinsky’s interest in, 153 revivalism, 3–4, 8, 9, 47, 177, 203, 221, 223
Puni, Ivan, 198, 243 n. 1 Revolution (Bolshevik), 5, 56, 72, 191, 208, 217
Punin, Nikolai Riabushinsky, Stepan, 62, 72, 78, 91, 92, 93
and avant-​garde, 128 Rider, The (Vrubel), 130
on decline of Russian art, 46 Riding Couple (Kandinsky), 144–46
employment of, 232 n. 14 Ringbom, Sixten, 240 n. 47
on Exhibition of Ancient Russian Art, 94–95 Robert and the Nuns (Vrubel), 130
on Kandinsky, 138 Rodchenko, Alexander, 131, 177, 217
on Manet and Impressionists, 2 Roerich, Nikolai, 95, 146
and philosophy of icon, 49, 50, 53–55, 57 Romanesque art and architecture, 43, 64, 76
and Russian Museum, 72–73 Romantic movement, 23
on Suprematism, 204 Rome, Russian engagement with, 5. See also “Third Rome”
Tarabukin and, 204 ideology
on Tatlin, 197–98 Rossetti, Dante Gabriel, 148
Tatlin (Against Cubism) , 133, 197 Royal Doors with Christ, the Virgin, the Archangel Gabriel and
on Tatlin and Malevich, 182 the Four Evangelists (Borovikovsky), 20, 21
on Vrubel, 97, 131–33 Rozanova, Olga, 137, 198, 243 n. 1
“Punk Prayer: Mother of God, Drive Putin Away!” (Pussy Rublev, Andrei
Riot), 219–21 Old Testament Trinity, 14, 15–16, 61–62, 63, 169
Pushkin, Alexander, 227 n. 10 Virgin of Vladimir, 70, 71
Pussy Riot, 219–21 Rumiantsev, Nikolai, 74
Putin, Vladimir, 221 Rumiantsev Museum, 73–74. See also Moscow Public and
Rumiantsev Museum
Rachmaninoff, Sergei, 219 Ruskin, John, 23
Radzivill Chronicle, 234 n. 90 Russian Antiquities in Monuments of Art (Kondakov and
RAKhN, 153, 172, 176, 226 n. 26 Tolstoy), 42–43
Rakitin, Vasilii, 179 Russian Archaeological Institute in Constantinople (Istan-
Rambelli, Fabio, 209 bul), 41–42
rationalism, 31, 50, 94, 137, 175, 197 Russian icon painting
Ravenna cleaning and restoration of, 61–62
Church of San Michele, 64 featured in art journals, 62–63
Church of San Vitale, 26 reconceptualization of, 92–95
Mausoleum of Galla Placidia/nl, 26, 81 relationship between Byzantine icon painting and, 59–61
Rayonism, 127, 130 temporary exhibitions featuring, 90, 91–95
Realism, “true” and “false,” 51 Russian Museum of His Imperial Majesty Alexander III, 62,
realists. See Peredvizhniki (Itinerants or Wanderers) 67–73, 179
real space, 11, 19, 180, 194, 196, 198, 200–202, 204 Russian Religious Renaissance, 49, 170–77
Redin, Egor, 43 Russian Style (Russkii stil), 79
Red Spot II (Kandinsky), 158, 160, 161 Russkaia ikona, 72
Reinders, Eric, 209 “Russo-​Byzantine,” 3–4, 43
relief icons, 198–99 Russo-​Byzantine revival, 4–5. See also Byzantine art; Byzan-
religious art, versus sacred art, 53 tine revival
Religious Composition: Virgin (with Ornament) (Goncharova), Benois on, 49
149–50 key figures in, 38–42
Reminiscences (Kandinsky), 139 linked with modern artistic expression, 1–2, 40, 46–49
Renaissance, 2, 16, 22, 41, 45, 47, 49, 53, 55, 56 linked with production of national art-​historical narratives,
Resurrection (Vrubel), 116 191
“Reverse Perspective” (Florensky), 51–52, 173–74 and nineteenth-​century positivism, 7
“revival,” 4–5 polemics fueling, 33–34

268 Index
 second wave of, 221 Six-​Winged Seraph (Vrubel), 120, 123–25
Tatlin and Malevich and discourse surrounding, 217 Slap in the Face of Public Taste, A, 151
Russo–Turkish War (1768–1774), 22 Slavophiles / Slavophilism, 20, 31, 33, 45, 49, 50, 67
Russo–Turkish War (1877–1878), 33, 60 Smirnov, Vasilii, 26–31, 227 n. 26
Socialist Realism, 50
sacred art, versus religious art, 53 Society of Ancient Russian Art, 77
“sacred” corner, 184, 205 Sofia, 48, 78
Safonov, Nikolai, 83–84 Soldatenkov, Kozma, 74
Sailor (Tatlin), 186–88, 191–92 Solntsev, Fedor, 3, 13, 42
Saint Catherine (Borovikovsky), 18 Soloviev, Vladimir, 32, 49–50, 55, 207
Saint George, 82 Sound of Trumpets (Kandinsky), 140
Saint George and the Dragon, 154, 155 Spanish Still Life (Matisse), 191, 193
Saint George cycles (Kandinsky), 140 spatial icons, 180, 198–204. See also iconic space
Saint George motif, 154–56, 242 n. 81 Spira, Andrew, 8, 148, 195–96
Saint John the Baptist (Martos), 17 Standing Demon, The (Vrubel), 120, 121, 238 n. 53
Saint John the Evangelist and Prochorus, 74 Stasov, Vladimir, 38, 44, 113, 128
Saints Boris and Gleb, 71, 73, 91, 93 St. Catherine Monastery on Mount Sinai, 5, 90, 101
Saints John the Apostle and James the Great (Afanasiev), 203 St. Cyril Church, 39, 97, 99, 102–3, 112, 117, 118
Saint Theodore the Dragon Slayer, 64, 66 St. Dimitrii Cathedral, 84
Salon d’automne (1906), 146 Stepanova, Varvara, 177
Salon des indépendants, 78 Stephenson, Paul, 227 n. 27
salon painting, 3, 54 St. Esprit Church (Paris), 223
Salzenberg, Wilhelm, 23, 81 stil modern, 40, 229 n. 66. See also Art Nouveau
Santa Maria Cathedral, 103 St. Isaac Cathedral, 36
Sarabianov, Dmitrii, 191, 226 n. 22, 246 n. 52 St. Leopold am Steinhof Church (Vienna), 223
Savel’ev, Iurii, 9, 43 Stones of Venice (Ruskin), 23
Savior in Majesty (Goncharova), 191–92 St. Petersburg Imperial Academy of Arts, 35–38
Schmidt, Fedor, 85 Strigalev, Anatolii, 183, 187, 194
Seated Demon (Vrubel), 104–5, 106, 107–8, 121, 123 stripping, 153
Seated Figure (Tatlin), 190 Stroganov School, 71, 79, 90, 92
Second All-​Russian Congress of Artists, 92, 93, 184, 239n20 Strom, Ivan, 32
secularization, 10, 20 Struve, Petr, 170
Self-​Portrait (Malevich), 185, 213, 214 St. Sophia Cathedral (Kiev), 43, 82, 99, 100, 104, 105
semiotics, 196, 209 St. Sophia Cathedral (Novgorod), 82, 83
Seraph (Vrubel), 120, 121, 238 n. 53 St. Sophia Cathedral (Tsarskoe Selo), 22, 39
Serov, Valentin, 87 St. Sophia Cathedral (Vologda), 162, 164
serpent, in Kandinsky works, 162–63 Study for the Virgin (Vrubel), 118, 119
Sevastianov, Petr, 36–37, 76 Study of a Head (Vrubel), 120
Shabelskaia, Natalia, 87, 235 n. 106 Study of Apostle Thomas on the Cupola of the Church of
Sharp, Jane, 4, 9, 118, 183, 192, 210 St. George, Staraia Ladoga (Tatlin), 201
Shatskikh, Aleksandra, 206, 209, 244 n. 15 St. Vladimir Cathedral, 39–40, 110, 112, 113–18
Shcherbatov, Prince Mikhail, 31 Sudeikin, Sergei, 130
Shchukin, Petr, 85 Suetin, Nikolai, 213, 216
Shchukin, Sergei, 46, 48 Suprematism, 182, 204, 205–6, 208, 211, 215, 216
Shchusev, Aleksei, 86–87 Suprematism: Self-​Portrait in Two Dimensions (Malevich),
Shevchenko, Alexander, 191 210–11, 212
Shevzov, Vera, 5 Surikov, Vasilii, 86, 87
Shklovsky, Viktor, 131 Surrealism, 130
Simmons, Sherwin, 184 Sychev, Nikolai, 59, 62, 71, 72

Index 269
 Symbolist movement, 4 34 Drawings (Malevich), 206
Symeon the New Theologian, Saint, 169 Thon, Constantine, 33. See also Cathedral of Christ the Savior
Tolstoy, Leo, 42–43, 128
Tarabukin, Nikolai Train Car with UNOVIS Symbol en Route to the Exhibition in
and avant-​garde, 128 Moscow (Suetin), 216
on decline of Russian art, 46 Trenev, Dmitrii, 43
on Eastern Tale, 131 Tretyakov Gallery, 47, 60, 73, 79, 221
on iconic space, 56, 168, 203–4 Trinity Lavra of St. Sergius, 175, 176
on icon painting, 204 Tsakiridou, Cornelia, 169
on Manet and Impressionists, 2 Tuchkov, Pavel, 74
on medieval conception of universe, 6 Tugenkhold, Iakov, 48, 94, 149
and philosophy of icon, 49, 50, 53, 55–57 Tver, 88
and study of Vrubel’s art, 132 Twelfth All- Russian Archaeological Convention, 89
on Tatlin, 217 Two Angels with Labara (Vrubel), 102, 103
on Vrubel, 113, 117–18, 129, 133–35 two-​dimensionality of pictorial surface, 174
Tarasov, Oleg, 213
Tatlin (Against Cubism) (Punin), 133, 197 Ufimtsev, Viktor, 137
Tatlin, Vladimir Ugolnik, Anthony, 152
Composition-​Analysis, 192–94, 246 n. 52 UNOVIS, 213
Constructivism and reliefs of, 244 n. 15 Untitled (Kandinsky), 142
Corner Counter-​Reliefs, 180, 181, 182, 183, 198–204, 217 Ushakov, Simon, 15–16
and Cubism, 191–98 Uspenskii, Alexander, 43
Female Model (Nude 1: Composition Based on a Female Uspenskii, Fedor, 41
Nude), 188–90 Uvarov, Aleksei, 64, 79, 80, 85
Female Model (Nude 2), 188–90
Fishmonger, 186 Vasnetsov, Viktor, 81, 86, 110, 111–12, 116–17
historical conflict between Malevich and, 182–91, 244–45 veiling, 153, 154
n. 24 Vekhi (Landmarks), 170–71
influence of, 7 Vereshchagin, Vasilii, 64, 65, 87
on Levenets and Kharchenko, 245 n. 39 Verneilh, Félix de, 23
Month of May, 195 Vesnin, Alexander, 204, 242 n. 106
Painterly Reliefs, 194–96, 199 Viktorov, Aleksei, 77
Punin on, 133 Virgin Hodegetria of Smolensk, 215
Sailor, 186–88, 191–92 Virgin Mary mosaic, The, 99, 100
Seated Figure, 190 Virgin of the Don, 193
Study of Apostle Thomas on the Cupola of the Church of Virgin of Vladimir (Rublev), 70, 71
St. George, Staraia Ladoga, 201 vision, 165–70, 200
visit of, to Picasso’s studio, 246 n. 55 Vision of the Prophet Ezekiel, The (Vrubel), 125–27
Vrubel and, 131 VKhUTEMAS, 51, 57, 172, 176, 177, 226 n. 26, 242 n. 107
temporary exhibitions, 76, 87–95 Vladimir of Kiev (prince), 13
Tenisheva, Maria, 146–47 Volga Song (Kandinsky), 144–46
Ter-​Oganian, Avdei, 222 Voltaire, 21, 25
Theodora (empress), 25, 26 von Sydow, Eckart, 152–53
Theodore the Studite, Saint, 53 Voronikhin, Andrei, 17. See also Kazan Cathedral
theology of the icon, 51–53, 168–70 Vrubel, Mikhail
Theophanes the Greek, 60–61 Angel of Death, 123–25
theophany, 50, 169 Angels’ Lamentation, 97, 98
Theosophy, 137, 141, 240 n. 47 Annunciation, 99, 100, 101
“Third Rome” ideology, 5, 60, 80 and avant-​garde, 128–35

270 Index
 Azrael, 123–25
changed iconography of, 118–27
compared to Cézanne, 107–10
critical misunderstanding and rejection of, 112–18
Demon Cast Down, 120–21, 122, 123, 125, 130
Demon Looking at a Dale, 109
Demon series, 118–27
Descent of the Holy Ghost, 103
Eastern Tale, 131, 134
Head of a Lion, 131, 133
Head of an Angel, 120
Head of Demon, 118, 119
Head of John the Baptist, 123
Head of the Demon, 120
influence of, 7
Lamentation I, 114, 115
Lamentation II, 114–16, 237 n. 40
Last Judgment mosaic, 237 n. 12
A Man in a Russian Old-​Style Costume, 103–4
Morning—Decorative Panel, 113
Moses, 118–20
Portrait of Savva Mamontov, 106–7, 108, 187
Resurrection, 116
The Rider, 130
Robert and the Nuns, 130
Seated Demon, 104–5, 106, 107–8, 121, 123
Six-​Winged Seraph, 120, 123–25
The Standing Demon, 120, 121, 238 n. 53
and St. Cyril Church frescoes, 39
Study for the Virgin, 118, 119
Study of a Head, 120
trajectory of, toward modernist style, 97–110
Two Angels with Labara, 102, 103
The Vision of the Prophet Ezekiel, 125–27
Vzdornov, Gerold, 9, 59
Walicki, Andrzej, 31, 50
Wanderers (Itinerants). See Peredvizhniki (Itinerants or
Wanderers)
Warren, Sarah, 9
Washton Long, Rose-​Carol, 153, 240 n. 47, 242 nn. 81,82
Weiss, Peg, 154
Westernization, 13–14, 16, 43–44, 175
Westernizers. See Slavophiles / Slavophilism
World of Art (Mir Iskusstva), 141
Worringer, Wilhelm, 142–44
Wortman, Richard, 34
Yellow-​Red-​Blue (Kandinsky), 154, 156, 163–65
Yellow Series, The (Malevich), 184–86
Young Atheist (Ter-​Oganian), 222
Zabelin, Ivan, 80, 85
Zak, Lef, 184, 185
Zaraisk Gospel, 74
Zernov, Nicolas, 230 n. 108
0.10: The Last Futurist Exhibition of Painting, 179–84, 198,
199–200, 204, 206, 217, 243 nn. 1,6, 244–45 n. 24
Zhadova, Larissa, 193, 202, 245 n. 39, 246 n. 52
Zhigarev, Sergei, 33
zhivopis, 6
Zorn, Anders, 107

Index 271