From the Eighteenth Century to the 1860s

      In 1843 Briullov and a number of other artists, including Bruni, Markov, Basin, Chebouev and Timofeï were commissioned to decorate the interior of St. Isaac’s Cathedral in Saint Petersburg.

      A Russian artist of French origin (his family had fled France after the revocation of the Edict of Nantes by Louis XIV in 1685) Briullov raised Russian painting to the European level. He introduced Romantic warmth along with inspiration from pompous classicism and reproduced living, spiritual and physical human beauty. From his home in Italy, where he lived until 1853, Briullov painted diverse subjects and explored various genres. Although antique and biblical subjects soon became less important, the largest murals of the St. Isaac Cathedral were entrusted to him: the cupola, the four Evangelists, the twelve Apostles and also the four large compositions from the New Testament. His depiction of the Virgin in Majesty, surrounded by saints and angels, fills the interior of the impressive central dome (a ceiling of over 800 square metres rimmed by gold stucco and white marble). Today, we still have sketches of these compositions as well as preliminary drawings based on models. The paintings of the Evangelists and the Apostles are reminiscent of his Siege of Pskov. The damp, cold and stone dust in the newly built cathedral undermined his health, and in 1847 he was compelled, reluctantly, to abandon the murals, which he had hoped would be the crowning glory of his artistic career.

      Two other painters who produced major historical and religious works were Anton Losenko (1737–73) and Alexander Ivanov, whose father – Andreï Ivanov (see above) – was a professor of historical painting at the Academy. Losenko was born in a small town in the Ukraine and orphaned when young. After a course of singing lessons, he was sent to Saint Petersburg because of his remarkable voice. There, at the age of sixteen, he was entrusted to the care of Argunov (by that time one of the leading portraitists), then studied at the Academy, where he eventually became professor of history painting. Losenko’s artistic education was completed in Paris and Rome, and several of his religious works – such as The Miraculous Catch and Abraham’s Sacrifice – show the influence of Italian Renaissance painting. Curiously, his Cain (1768) and Abel (1769) were intended as exercises in life painting and were only given their Biblical names several decades after his death.

      A contemporary of Briullov, Alexander Ivanov was indisputably the most influential religious painter of his day. After making his mark with pictures such as Apollo, Hyacinth and Zephyr and The Appearance of Christ to Mary Magdalene (1836), he embarked on The Appearance of Christ to the People, a huge canvas that was to occupy much of his energy for the next twenty years, from 1837 to the year before he died. Nevertheless, despite all those years of effort, Ivanov was never happy with the painting and never regarded it as finished. Indeed, it has an undeniably laboured quality, and many of his preparatory studies – landscapes, nature studies, nudes and portraits, including a head of John the Baptist that is masterpiece in its own right – have a vitality that is absent from the painting itself.

      During the last decade of his life Ivanov produced more than 250 Biblical Sketches, many of them remarkable for their limpid colours and spiritual intensity. His great ambition was to convert these watercolour studies into murals for a temple that would encompass every aspect of human spirituality. This project, which drew on mythology, as well as Christian ideas, loomed so large in his imagination that he made endless excuses to avoid working on the interior of St. Isaac’s Cathedral, in order to concentrate on the ideal temple taking shape in his mind.

      11. Nikolaï Gay, Calvary (Unfinished), 1893. Oil on canvas, 22.4 × 191.8 cm, Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow.

      12. Ivan Kramskoï, Christ in the Desert, 1872. Oil on canvas, 180 × 120 cm, Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow.

      From the 1860s to the 1890s

      The religious painting of the Itinerants was marked by an imaginative and psychological intensity that had not been seen since the days of Alexander Ivanov earlier in the nineteenth century.

      During 1863, the year when the fourteen artists rebelled against the conservatism of the Academy, Nikolaï Gay’s powerful painting The Last Supper was exhibited in Saint Petersburg and roused passionate controversy. Dostoyevsky was among those who were disturbed by its realism and theatricality – the ghostly appearance of Judas, the disquieting shadows that fill the painting and, finally, the apprehension of the Apostles watching Judas leave, all contribute to the unusual atmosphere. The stakes were high, as many artists before him, including greats such as Leonardo da Vinci and Tintoretto, had tried their hand at portraying this biblical episode. But in his painting, the feelings of the characters, particularly exacerbated, deeply touched viewers. Gay set aside classical canons and yet achieved such an immense success (Emperor Alexander II himself bought the painting) that the Academy bestowed on him the title of professor. Later, he stated that it was by working on this painting that “he had at last grasped the modern meaning of the Holy Scriptures…” which was not a legend, but a real, living, eternal drama. Gay’s later pictures, which he described as an attempt to create a “Gospel in paint”, were no less shocking. In several of them Christ is shown in a very human state of torment, looking more like a political prisoner than the son of God – a notion so shocking that “Quid est veritas?” (“What is Truth?”) had to be withdrawn when exhibited in 1860 because it was regarded as blasphemous. Nikolaï Gay, contrary to Kramskoï or Polenov, did not intend to idealize the representation of Christ but wanted rather for the viewer to share in his suffering. This is apparent in The Calvary or in The Crucifixion. Christ resuscitated looks very human and he said, regarding this: “I will shake their brains by showing the suffering of Christ. I will force them to suffer without commiserating! After visiting the exposition, they will forget for a long time their small, banal concerns.” Through techniques and pictorial means such as contrast between light and dark, or the quickness of his brushstrokes, Gay managed to provide, with virtuosity expressive works that are very realistic.

      13. Nikolaï Gay, The Last Supper, 1863. Oil on canvas, 283 × 382 cm, Russian Museum, St. Petersburg.

      14. Alexander Ivanov, The Appearance of Christ to the People, 1837–1857. Oil on canvas, 540 × 750 cm, Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow.

      15. Ivan Kramskoï, Laughter (“Hail, the King of the Jews!”), 1877–1882. Oil on canvas, 375 × 501 cm, Russian Museum, St. Petersburg.

      16. Ilya Repin, St. Nicholas of Myra Delivers The Three Innocent Men, 1888. Oil on canvas, 215 × 196 cm, Russian Museum, St. Petersburg.

      Nikolaï Gay was born into a noble family of French origin: his grandfather emigrated from France at the end of the eighteenth century during the French Revolution. The painter’s parents

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