Russia
Moscow
55.7415° N · 37.6208° E
What is there today
The Tretyakov gallery holds the largest collection of Russian icons in existence, with a room of its own for Andrei Rublev, and in the Kremlin cathedrals the Moscow school is seen in the very place it was painted for. The church of Saint Nicholas in Tolmachi, inside the gallery itself, is still a working church: there are works venerated and visited at the same time.
Why this image comes from here
When Constantinople falls in 1453, the craft of the icon does not go out: it moves north and speaks Russian for four centuries. The Russian school lengthens the figures, darkens the ground and writes in Church Slavonic. The pieces in this catalogue that carry Cyrillic letters repeat models of that school, not of the Greek one.
Pieces from this place
Moscow
The Resurrection
Ref. AS025016 – AS025030 – AS025042
Not available
Moscow
Crucifixion of the Russian school
Ref. AS026016 – AS026030 – AS026042
Not available
Moscow
Archangel Raphael
Ref. AS028016 – AS028030 – AS028042
Not available
Moscow
Saint Tatiana the Martyr
Ref. AS036016 – AS036030 – AS036042
Not available
Moscow
Virgin of the Seven Sorrows
Ref. AS046016 – AS046030 – AS046042
Not available
Moscow
Virgin of Silence
Ref. AS057016 – AS057030 – AS057042
Not available
- The Resurrection
- The panel repeats the late Russian model of the Resurrection over the tomb, spread by the Moscow school from the seventeenth century onwards, blending the Greek icon with Western engraving. It is the Easter image presiding over Russian iconostases of that period.
- Crucifixion of the Russian school
- The model comes from eighteenth century Russian iconography, when the northern workshops also worked the Crucifixion in relief, with aged gold and the elongated figures of their school. This panel keeps that character of an old object, with wear as part of the image.
- Archangel Raphael
- The Slavonic letters say where the model comes from: the Russian school, which gave each archangel a fixed attribute. Raphael received the vessel of medicines, after the book of Tobit, where he heals a father s blindness and guides a son s journey.
- Saint Tatiana the Martyr
- A Roman deaconess martyred around the year 226, her cult passed to Russia and stayed there. In 1755 the empress Elizabeth signed the founding of Moscow University on Saint Tatiana s day, and since then she is the patroness of Russian students: the twenty fifth of January is her feast and the end of the winter exams.
- Virgin of the Seven Sorrows
- In the West this devotion is called Mater Dolorosa and the seven swords are the seven sorrows. The model copied here is the Russian one, called Softener of Evil Hearts, and the arrows do not come from a list of sorrows but from the prophecy of Simeon: a sword shall pierce your own soul.
- Virgin of Silence
- It is an uncommon and fairly late Russian type. It tells no gospel scene: it is a gesture and nothing more, and that is why it works as well in a chapel as in a house where nobody prays.