[Rec. on:] Pokrovsky N. Gospel in iconographic monuments, mainly Byzantine and Russian

Lovers of Orthodox antiquity and church archaeologists have long and well known the name of the professor of the St. Petersburg Theological Academy N.V. Pokrovsky from the numerous and quite diverse articles and studies that he published from time to time on the pages of Christian Reading and in various archaeological publications. Without listing here all the works of Prof. Pokrovsky, revealing in him diligence, learning and love for church antiquities, I will note only his most recent larger works, namely: “The Last Judgment in the Monuments of Byzantine and Russian Art” (Odessa, 1887), “Miniatures of the Gospel of the Gelati Monastery of the XII century” (St. Petersburg, 1888) and “Wall paintings in ancient churches of Greek and Russians" (Moscow, 1890), in which they are better than others - in our opinion, expressed the tasks pursued by their author and the scientific techniques used by him. Coming from a completely fair idea, justified by facts, that Western scientists, with the scientific means at their disposal, cannot, even if they wanted, satisfactorily examine the ancient monuments of Russian and Byzantine art, Prof. Pokrovsky paid special attention to the latter and chose works of church painting for his special studies. In his three above-mentioned works, he described many monuments of ancient Christian, Byzantine, modern Greek and Russian iconography, published in phototypical photographs the murals of some ancient Russian churches and several miniatures from the Georgian Gospel of Gelati, near Kutaisi, a monastery and, following the example of F. Iv. Buslaev and our other best archaeologists, made a serious attempt to evaluate and explain the monuments of church painting described and partly published by him by comparing them with works of ancient Byzantine-Russian writing. Being in themselves a valuable contribution to our relatively sparse church-archaeological literature, the above-mentioned works of prof. Pokrovsky was essentially a preparatory work, the natural continuation and completion of which is “The Gospel in Iconographic Monuments, Mainly Byzantine and Russian” - an extensive, long-term and thorough work, quite deservedly luxuriously published by the Imperial Moscow Archaeological Society. “The task of this work,” in the words of the author himself, “is to provide an ecclesiastical and archaeological explanation of images related to evangelical history, mainly Byzantine and Russian... Where lies the original grain of evangelical iconography, where, when and under what conditions did it develop, how was this development expressed and to what end did it come?” - these are the questions that the venerable professor promises to address in his research. In other words, N.V. Pokrovsky intends to present a complete history of gospel iconography, through a chronological review of monuments to understand the gradual growth of the latter in different eras and in different artistic centers; he takes upon himself the difficult task of tracing not only the general historical course of Byzantine-Russian gospel iconography, that is, identifying the main stages in the development of the latter, but also expounding and explaining the artistic history of each individual gospel plot. The author’s path to solving this problem lies in a comparative study of monuments of fine art and works of ancient Byzantine-Russian literature. “Informing and necessary criticism of the former,” notes Prof. Pokrovsky, in the introduction to his research, “will show the historical growth of iconographic forms, their modifications at different times, and written monuments will provide an explanation of the internal foundations or motives that caused these changes.” Thus, the author had to deal with two types of data: material and literary; he had to carefully examine both of them and, by comparing them, find out the actual connection between the norms of Byzantine-Russian evangelical iconography and the traditions of ancient writing. To do this, it was necessary to determine and collect in advance the material to be studied. But if the discovery of written monuments, with a few exceptions, already published, did not present a particularly strong difficulty for the author, then the search for works of Christian, especially Orthodox-Eastern iconography was the kind of scientific feat that not everyone could decide to accomplish, but only a person with unusual zeal, ardently devoted to the subject being studied. Wanting to shorten the work ahead, I.V. Pokrovsky began, as usual, by studying previous literature on the issue he had taken up. Having become acquainted with numerous publications and studies of Russian and foreign scientists involved in Western and Eastern church painting, he had to be convinced of the impossibility of arriving at a satisfactory solution to the intended problems with the help of ready-made scientific means. “It turned out that the existing editions of Byzantine and Russian monuments are extremely insufficient and unreliable; many of the most important monuments have not only not been examined, but have not even been published; the choice of monuments for publication is often explained by random and external motives, and not by the requirements of the substance of the matter; photographs from monuments sometimes give a wrong idea about the originals, which clearly contradicts the basic principles of Orthodox iconography, and the existing scientific literature concerns only some particular issues of the iconography of the Gospel, leaving a whole mass of them untouched and almost completely ignoring the manifestation of religious ideas in Russian monuments.” In view of such an unsatisfactory state of scientific study of Byzantine-Russian evangelical iconography, the venerable author had to undertake a series of long journeys across Russia, Greece, Turkey and Western Europe in order to familiarize himself with its monuments at their locations. An enterprising and energetic archaeologist visited public and private museums, penetrated into inaccessible libraries and sacristies of monasteries, cathedrals and parish churches, studied works of miniatures, sculpture, mosaics, fresco painting, icon painting, carvings, enamels, sewing and metal production and, of course, extracted from everywhere a whole mass of iconographic material, little known and completely unknown to his predecessors in work. It remained to understand the mass of extracted material: to introduce some monuments into an environment similar to them, already properly assessed in church-archaeological science, to find out the historical significance of others with the help of artistic criticism, by mutual comparison of monuments and dividing them into certain groups. This last work, that is, the classification of monuments based on the similarity of their basic forms, was done by N.V. Pokrovsky, partly in the work itself, partly in an extensive introduction, in which, after indicating the main tasks and method of research of evangelical iconography, the author reviews the Byzantine, Russian and Western sources of the latter and together gives a detailed and complete description of the surviving Greek, Russian, Syrian and Armenian-Georgian facial codes gospels, obverse Russian collections and other important but little-known works of miniature painting. To give the reader a clear idea of ​​the new research by Prof. Pokrovsky and give everyone the opportunity to judge for themselves the content of his work, we will list here only the titles of the sections of the book. According to the chronological order of the Gospel events, the author divides the study into three parts. The first of them, entitled: “Iconography of the Childhood of Jesus Christ,” contains the history of images of the Annunciation of the Most Holy. Theotokos, the visit of righteous Elizabeth, the appearance of an angel to Joseph, the journey of Joseph and Mary to Bethlehem, the birth of Christ, circumcision, the meeting of the Lord, the adoration of the Magi, flight to Egypt, the return of the holy family from Egypt, the beating of the infants of Bethlehem and twelve-year-old Jesus Christ in the temple of Jerusalem; the second part, entitled: “The public ministry of Jesus Christ in iconographic monuments,” embraces the baptism of Jesus Christ, His temptation in the desert, the transfiguration of the Lord, the teaching of Jesus Christ and the miracles of the gospel; the third part, entitled: “The final events of the gospel history in iconographic monuments,” is the most extensive and includes the resurrection of Lazarus, the entry of Jesus Christ into Jerusalem, the expulsion of merchants from the church, the Last Supper, the washing of feet, the prayer of Jesus Christ in the Garden of Gethsemane, the betrayal of Judas, the trial of Jesus Christ, the scourging of Jesus Christ, the denial of the apostle. Peter, the repentance and death of Judas, the crucifixion of Jesus Christ, asking Pilate for the body of Jesus, the removal of the body of I. Christ from the cross and His position in the tomb, the resurrection of Jesus Christ, the appearance of Jesus Christ after the resurrection of St. wives and Mary Magdalene, the assurance of Thomas, the ascension of Jesus Christ into heaven and the descent of St. Spirit on the apostles. From the above list of titles it is easy to see that all the major and even minor events of the gospel history, almost the entire earthly life of the Lord, were studied by N.V. Pokrovsky from iconographic monuments. Not all images related to the gospel are equally carefully and thoroughly examined by him in his work; with great interest and thoroughness, as one would expect, he speaks about images of the most important gospel events, which formed the basis for the holidays of the Orthodox Church and at all times attracted and focused the attention of Byzantine, Russian and Western artists. It can be said without exaggeration that the richer this or that iconographic subject is by the power of religious and artistic thought, the more difficult it is to explain it in church and archaeological terms, the more diligently the author deals with it. The latter’s discussions about the images of the Annunciation, the Nativity and Baptism of Christ, the Last Supper, the Crucifixion and Resurrection of Christ and some other outstanding events of the Gospel form extensive treatises in the work, which cannot be denied either the systematic presentation, much less the abundance of content; they present a truly complete artistic history of these events, in which it is difficult to note significant gaps without prior special acquaintance with the monuments of gospel iconography. The author usually begins the study of each iconographic subject by finding the first experiences of its direct or symbolic representation in works of catacomb painting, in the sculpture of sarcophagi, in the mosaics of ancient Roman and Ravenna churches. Having indicated monuments with ancient images of the subject of interest to him, he describes them, determines from them the typical features of the original composition and then sets off from it, as a starting point, to a review of later works of Christian art, to illustrated codes of the gospels, psalters, words of Gregory the Theologian, menaions, akathists, to Byzantine mosaics, murals of Greek and Russian churches, icons, to the latest Byzantine and Russian sculpture and, finally, to facial and theoretical iconographic originals. Having arranged the named monuments into groups and certainly in chronological order, N.V. Pokrovsky notes in them more characteristic experiences of images that are subject to the study of gospel events, indicates in these images the modification of iconographic forms, and often the particular reasons that caused this or that change in the entire composition. Being present at this painstaking and often lengthy work, reading description after description, with the help of drawings that illustrate the text of the work in many ways, on the one hand, you clearly imagine the gradual artistic growth of each individual iconographic plot, the slow organic development or simply mechanical complication of compositions on the themes of the gospel story; on the other hand, you observe the usual methods of criticism of works of art and see with your own eyes the author’s wide acquaintance with the literature of the subject and with the monuments of Byzantine-Russian iconography. The wealth of new material on the history of the latter makes the work of Prof. Pokrovsky from similar works of Western and Russian scientists and gives him every opportunity to very often supplement and correct both. The first half of the chapters of the book, in which the author presents the material he has collected, will not lose their special meaning for a long time and, in our opinion, constitute the most valuable, but comparatively less interesting part of the work under consideration. Describing the monuments of Byzantine-Russian iconography, N.V. Pokrovsky examined the most ancient images of evangelical events as completely as possible, and from the later ones he chose the most outstanding ones, which, without representing a homogeneous material, would increase the number of original types and compositions. His efforts to eliminate everything superfluous from the book were not accompanied by equal success everywhere; in some, however very few, sections of it there are descriptions of images compiled according to one iconographic template, revealing the poverty of creative thought and giving nothing new for the artistic history of this or that subject. Why shouldn’t the author keep some of this monotonous material to himself, limiting himself to just naming in the text or footnote iconographic data that is not important in establishing general provisions? The scientific conclusion would not have suffered from this, and the venerable professor’s book from beginning to end, in all parts, would have been read with equal attention and interest; now the most interesting parts in it seem to be those places (middle of the chapters) in which I. V. Pokrovsky, after describing dozens of monuments of evangelical iconography, evaluates the latter, makes a general overview and detailed analysis of the main or typical features in the depiction of each evangelical event, determines their origin and significance, and generally explains the details of the symbolism of Byzantine-Russian church painting. The entire task of interpreting iconographic compositions on the themes of gospel history by prof. Pokrovsky reduces it to explaining their internal content, to isolating from one or another image the ideas and concepts contained in it, and recognizes the monuments of ancient writing as the only reliable means for such work. According to this method of interpretation, the firmness of the explanation of certain plots increases as the number of citations in its favor increases and the higher the reliability of the sources cited. N.V. Pokrovsky was well aware of the justice of this idea and steadily followed it in his comments. To determine the internal meaning of the iconographic plot, he first of all turned for clarification to the Holy Scriptures and mainly to the Gospel - the main source of artistic inspiration, in which, according to him, “not only all the main themes of Gospel iconography are given, but also some details of characters, types, settings, history of events that are important in the matter of artistic creativity are indicated.” When the gospel narrative turned out to be insufficient for the scientific explanation of certain artistic forms, or when with its help it was completely impossible to determine the origin and meaning of individual parts in the composition of the whole composition, Prof. Pokrovsky looked for clues to an incomprehensible iconographic phenomenon in sacred tradition, as it was expressed in monuments of exegetical, historical, homiletical and liturgical literature, as well as in apocryphal and folk tales. However, he used works of renounced writing sparingly, comparing with them monuments of Byzantine-Russian church painting in cases of relatively rare and, so to speak, undoubted, when the borrowing of a well-known iconographic detail from an apocryphal source was obvious. Much more often and more willingly, N.V. Pokrovsky resorted to works of Christian literature to explain iconographic subjects. Explaining the images of outstanding gospel events, he cites, in addition to the gospel, a literally long series of excerpts from writers of the ancient Christian period, holy fathers, liturgical books, church historians, Russian pilgrims and other similar sources. A strict critic, even in this case, will reproach the venerable author for the excess rather than the lack of evidence in defense of this or that position, recognizing it as unnecessary, not achieving the goal of extracting it from all those literary works, the time of writing of which is not precisely indicated by him in the work. There is no need to dwell on the difficulties with which prof. Pokrovsky, when explaining the little-studied monuments of Byzantine-Russian iconography, about the thorough knowledge in the history of Christian art that was required of him when assessing the paintings that he was the first to discover and describe; Let us make two or three remarks about the nature of his comments. As a method of interpreting iconographic monuments, which was followed by prof. Pokrovsky, we would not hesitate to call his explanations themselves ecclesiastical. In his scholarly discussion of artistic compositions on themes of gospel history, he stands firmly on the basis of Holy Scripture and Christian tradition. Out of fear of casting an unfavorable light on the religious character of sacred images, he was reluctant to establish a genetic connection between iconographic forms and apocryphal legends, and even less often allowed himself to compare Christian images with pagan ones from a formal point of view. From the beginning to the end of his work, the venerable author tried to stay within the boundaries of exact facts, and where any iconographic detail did not agree with the historical truth, he, having offered his explanation, directly raised the question and thus provided the reader with clear freedom to accept or not accept his interpretation. Studying the ponderous book of N.V. Pokrovsky, you involuntarily feel that you are dealing with an expert and master in his specialty, who strictly adheres to carefully studied and carefully verified iconographic data, always carefully and with complete seriousness judges them and is completely free from hobbies to extremes, so often observed in amateurs, collectors and connoisseurs of antiquities. Successors of Prof. Pokrovsky’s work may very well not agree with all his explanations, they will note the polysemantic meaning in some interpretations, they will find his conclusions regarding the typical features of this or that iconographic subject not exhaustive of the whole variety of artistic forms, they will want to check, supplement or change them, but they will not dare to blame the venerable author for superficiality, haste and groundlessness. In our opinion, he assessed the monuments of evangelical iconography just as scientifically and skillfully as he carefully collected and conscientiously studied them. At the end of most chapters of N.V. Pokrovsky’s work, in the form of an addition, there is a fairly detailed overview of the most important Western monuments of evangelical iconography. The author introduces them into the circle of his observations as an indirect or secondary source of Byzantine-Russian iconography in order to more fully and clearly present the history of the latter and clearly show the high importance of Byzantium in the medieval art of Western Europe. The important role of the Byzantine world in this regard has long been recognized by the best art historians and has recently attracted more and more attention from scholars, but it has not yet been clarified; The monuments on the basis of which this could be done have not all been described and published; information about them even in Western literature is not complete. Prof. Pokrovsky made his contribution here too. He not only collected Western material for the history of gospel iconography, scattered across various publications and studies, but also described and partly published in his book little-known and completely unknown miniatures of some Western codes of gospels, prayer books and Bibles of the poor. Studying Western images of gospel events, skillfully selected and systematically arranged in N.V. Pokrovsky’s book, you see how close the oldest of them are to Byzantine iconographic models, seeming to be their copies, imitation or minor processing; how eastern icon-painting traditions, completely adopted by Western art at first, were gradually forgotten in it, until, finally, they were completely abandoned and replaced by new beginnings in the era of the revival of Western European art, when artistic realism was finally installed in the place of Byzantine idealism. Thus, in the departments under consideration, the essay of Prof. Pokrovsky presents a lot of instructive information not only for the Russian, but also for the foreign church archaeologist. Until now, there have been no special and comprehensive studies devoted to gospel iconography based on Byzantine and Russian monuments. N.V. Pokrovsky set himself the happy idea of ​​filling this noticeable gap in church-archaeological literature and carried it out in practice with honor. But his composition can have not only scientific and historical, but also ecclesiastical and practical significance. Those fighting the Old Believers will find in the book of Prof. Pokrovsky provides indisputable iconographic data for a definite solution to controversial issues about the symbolic images of the evangelists Mark and John, about the composition of the cross and in general the appearance of the cross of Christ on the most ancient monuments. Those who argue with Catholics on the issue of liturgical forms of baptism through immersion and pouring will find here a lot of material and literary evidence in favor of the preferable antiquity of the Orthodox practice over the Latin one. But the greatest practical benefit from the work under consideration can be obtained by those who for the first time have to deal with ancient monuments of iconography, as well as by those in whose hands the iconography is in our hands. Although prof. Pokrovsky in the introduction to his work says that he pursued historical and archaeological goals and left aside the tasks of the practical application of archaeological knowledge, “as a subject of special ecclesiastical practical knowledge in conjunction with artistic technique,” nevertheless, his completely scientific classification of iconographic forms and their distribution by era, indicating the features characteristic of one or another era, can serve as a reliable criterion for novice archaeologists in the matter of recognition and chronological determination ancient monuments. The book that interests us can introduce icon painters and artists both to the details and meaning of Byzantine-Russian symbolism, which is not always clear to them, and to the oldest and best experiences in depicting gospel events. Our modern icon painting, being at the complete disposal of people, with a few exceptions, little knowledgeable or not brought up at all in those principles that should determine the activity of an icon painter, is increasingly moving away from its Byzantine models, slavishly follows Western iconographic forms and thus gradually loses its definite hieratic character, and turns into secular painting. Well-meaning people who value Orthodox churchliness are aware of evil and quite rightly see salvation from it in a return to antiquity, to ancient icon-painting traditions. But how to take advantage of the artistic experience of the past centuries? Encourage icon painters to strictly follow icon painting originals in their work? But the originals themselves, as can be clearly seen from the last work of Prof. Pokrovsky, in many ways deviated not only from the examples of ancient Christian painting in catacombs and mosaics, but even differ significantly from Byzantine murals and miniatures, and represent Greek painting in the period of its decline. Force icon painters to stick to the best images of their distant predecessors in the craft? But who will authorize them the dignity of these, let’s say, long-known iconographic samples? What will a modern Orthodox painter be guided by, even if he wanted to be faithful to the true iconographic type and did not trust the scope of his brush? In this regard, complete collections of accurate photographs from exemplary surviving ancient Christian, Byzantine and Old Russian paintings, systematically compiled and recognized by church authorities, would be extremely useful. But while such church-approved guidelines have not been offered to our icon painters-artists, they can only turn for information and instructions to the publications and writings of Russian church archaeologists, among which one of the first places should be taken by “The Gospel in Iconographic Monuments, Mainly Byzantine and Russian” by N.V. Pokrovsky. It is therefore impossible not to wish now that this work may be widely disseminated among Russian icon painters and, in general, all those educated people who are interested in the successes of our theological science. It is sincerely unfortunate that the venerable author, intending his book primarily for specialists, often used without explanation foreign words and special terms that are not understandable to everyone (for example: modernization, satellites, kathisma, vegetative, mandorla, sharaknots, pyxida, antipendium, etc.), and also sometimes stopped very little at describing his drawings. Some of the latter are not explained or even numbered in the text. On the merits of the illustrations it should be noted that they are executed gracefully; Below in terms of clarity and clarity of the drawing are those that appear for the first time in the book of Prof. Pokrovsky, but this depended not on the author, but on the quality of the originals themselves. At the end of the essay there is a detailed table of contents, a list of figures and a subject index, which is of great convenience for using the extensive essay. You might be interested in: