By the end of the fourteenth century the Russian icon had reached its full stature and, at the same time, took on such different characteristics that we can distinguish them clearly, guiding ourselves by a certain basis common to the different branches and then marking off the more definite types and establishing their models. The Byzantine drawing had by now fallen to pieces and with its exaggerated refinements it had become unintelligible to the craftsmen and beyond their execution. However, it just happened that the early Greco-Oriental models had simplified the design and worked out a new scheme; how far this was the case we can see by comparing the complicated folds of the Apostles’ clothing, chiton and himation, in Byzantine icons and the same in Russian icons of the fourteenth to sixteenth centuries. A whole series of half-figures of Christ preserves the Byzantine type but has changed the ordinary drawing of the drapery: on Christ’s left shoulder there hangs down in the form of a triangle a corner of the himation thrown under that shoulder when the cloak was draped round the body from behind, whereas that angle should have been covered in its turn by the last end of the cloak thrown round over the shoulder: the natural order has been disregarded for the sake of effect. Further, at the edge of the right arm a saint’s himation makes a tiny segment which ought either to go to the left shoulder or be thrown under the arm and pass across the chest, but it is not clear quite how it falls. We shall see what new and complicated difficulties arose from Byzantine drawing of drapery as remodelled by Rublëv in imitation of the Greek Theophanes. But the drawing of the Nóvgorod icons of the fifteenth century is quite different and comparatively crude: to compare it with the magnificent, if contorted, figures of the wall-paintings is to bring us from an artistic world to one of journeymen.

      Let us take the half-length of S. Thomas which at first sight looks Byzantine in style, so much are the chiton and himation ‘broken up’ by a series of folds, angular, tight and dry, and so much are these folds covered with bright planes and these planes emphasized by highlights of white lead. Further, the hand, painted as in the Greek icons in the act of blessing, the sturdy broad-shouldered body, the youthful head with its sharp oval, and the line round the eyes, everything is Greek. But this is set against what appears to be pupils’ work, the figure has clearly no chest, the drapery is, as it were, hung on the back of a chair or cut out of tin-plates, some of the folds quite unintelligible, and the head is too small for the body.

      What a difference there is in the figure and drapery of the Archangel Gabriel in the State Russian Museum, which, however, belongs to the early fifteenth century and is part of the Deesis tier of the old iconostas in the Súzdal’ Cathedral. The body has delicately sloped shoulders, unlike the ordinary Byzantine type; the face keeps the characteristic Attic oval, but is bent downwards in deep thought. Unlike the Byzantine, the drapery is all soft with wide folds. Clearly we have before us a new style using the forms of the Greek iconography, the style of the Italian trecento; hence the feminine look of the Archangel, with his hair done in thick locks like a woman’s. The technique of the actual painting is quite different, the lighted planes are few and not sharp, fine gradations of half-tones model the folds and the whole manner is already ‘fused’ as it will be in the sixteenth century.

      These are one or two examples of transitional manners of the late fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries: there is no need for the moment to go through the different varieties of Byzantine, Russo-Byzantine, or Greco-Oriental icons, nor yet the local Russian schools of Nóvgorod and Súzdal’, nor to touch on the special points of drawing in the icons of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. When we come to these groups in their historical order their varieties will appear of themselves. Now we only wish to show that in judging of the drawing in icons we must fix our attention not on what it has in common with the Byzantine, but on the historical distinctions and changes.

      Artistic drawing is not only the expression of its epoch and the influences dominant therein, but also of its nation and place. The history of art which puts before us in historical development Italian, French, and German drawing shows us that drawing must be national and likewise individual; it is however significantly more complicated than, say, handwriting, in that we can often do no more than observe the national type in a drawing. When we come to the icon with the knowledge that there is a mechanical copy underlying every considerable drawing, we might expect to have to give up all search for national character, whereas even in the drawing we do perceive national traits and this opens to us a very special side of the craft which brings it into very close connection with a true art.

      The Russian icon-painter set himself the task, before everything else, of precisely imitating his Greek model; giving no play either to his pupil or to himself, he tried to make an exact copy. From the sixteenth century on we hear how the icon-painters sought this model; it made them buy old icons, it forbade any venture to paint even small details in their own fashion instead of the Greek – for instance the contour of the eyes – they were afraid to begin any innovation lest it should be a ground of accusation against them. Yet, all the while, the icon was getting a national tinge, and often it was the head and face which showed it first, next the figure, and only towards the end in a period of decline is there any change in the clothing, the ancient conventional raiment being modified by new influences. The changes of course affect the less prominent details: for instance, while the curly hair of S. George survives as a characteristic point of the saint, the slight wave in that of S. Nicholas may be gradually lost.

      If then we are asked the source and cause of such a change in the characteristic Greek types, we can point, first of all, to the series of miraculous and specially revered icons. You might think that these were the ones which would be most exactly copied, but as a matter of fact it is in these in which we find most frequently and most clearly a change in type. It is evident that, in accordance with a custom which early gained acceptance, patrons were almost always inclined to choose for their own devotion some miraculous icon that they specially revered and knew very well. Such icons would be copied more often than others, and more often than in the case of others would a copy serve as a model for further copying, and, as a result, the process of modification was especially swift. The human hand, as it follows the stencil mechanically traced from the original, tends to modify its lines after its national character and even after a definite manner of icon-painting which suggested to the painter definite features of the iconic type. If we take the type of S. Nicholas Thaumaturgus, whose innumerable Russian icons show evident signs of Greek tradition, this tradition can be exemplified and confirmed by a whole series of early Byzantine pictures in wall mosaic (Daphni, S. Luke in Phocis, S. Sophia at Kiev), and portable mosaic (Stavro-NikitaСкачать книгу