Russian Icons with Hagiographies of the 17th-19th Centuries

Initially, Russian icons with hagiographies were created for temple spaces only. The fact is that the depiction of a large, easily recognizable image of the saint and compositions from their life, which also had to be easily recognizable from a distance, required a significant size of the board. However, starting from the last third of the 16th century, very small hagiographic icons began to appear for domestic prayer and meditative prayerful gazing. Especially often, such icons were painted by Stroganov masters, i.e., artists who worked on the orders of the prominent Stroganovs. Most “Stroganov icons” were almost square in format, and the saint in the median was usually depicted in a three-quarter turn in prayer to Christ or the Mother of God.

John the Baptist—the Angel of the Desert. 1620s. Prokopiy Chirin (Stroganov School of icon painting). Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow

Russian Icons with Hagiographies of the 17th-19th Centuries

Icon painting of the first half of the 17th century is largely associated with the finest skillful masterpieces of the Stroganov masters. However, the principal compositional transformations of the hagiographic iconography occurred later, in the second half of the 17th century, especially in the painting of the artists of the Armory (the Tsar’s workshops were part of it in the time of Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich Romanov). In many of these icons, scenes from the lives of the saints were not located in a kind of a “frame” in the margins but were incorporated into the landscape and architecture of the centerpiece, where the monumental figure of the saint was painted. Moreover, quite often, scenes arranged in this way were losing their strict chronological sequence. Thus, on the one hand, the painting became more inventive and refined as if inviting the praying person to look into those miraculous or tragic events that befell the saint, but on the other hand, such frills made it difficult to “read” the plot. Perhaps, this is one of the reasons why Russian icons of the Modern era would often combine two established compositional principles: the placement of the key scenes (e.g., particularly significant miracles, burial, martyrdom, etc.) at the feet of the saint, and the placement of the traditional hagiographic cycle resembling a frame in the margins.

Icon of the Holy Trinity. 1697. Armoury Chamber master Kirill Ulanov. Moscow

An important innovation for iconographers of the time of transition from the medieval tradition to the Modern era was the appearance of a new large-scale corpus of the lives of the saints. This colossal work was done by St. Demetrius of Rostov (1651-1709). Relying on old sources, including Metropolitan Macarius’ Great Chetnyi Minei, he set out difficult multi-temporal hagiographic texts in a simple and understandable, reader-friendly language. Icon painters who created Russian icons willingly used this source.

St. Sergius of Radonezh with His Life. Yaroslavl. Middle of the 17th century. Yaroslavl Historical-Architectural and Art Museum-Reserve

Undoubtedly, the aesthetics of the Modern era only contributed to such artistic endeavors. However, a particularly significant innovation in the iconography of the Synodal period (the Holy Synod, as the institution governing the church, replaced the Patriarch by order of emperor Peter the Great in 1721) was the influence of the new secular styles, Baroque and Classicism, and such, Russian icons were often painted in oil colors. A new formal solution for hagiographic icons of the time was the placement of separate scenes inside the luxurious lavish gold cartouches (frames). This approach could sometimes be found in the paintings by artists of the Moscow Armory of the 17th century, but the “pictorial” principle, which came from European art and secular painting, manifested itself only in the capital’s iconography of the 18th century and then spread to other regions where Russian icons traditionally echoed the St. Petersburg fashion.

Feodorovskaya Icon of the Mother of God, with the Legend of the Icon. The middle of the 19th century. Kostroma

In the Modern era, the hagiographic icon finally enters the everyday life of people of different social classes. Small icons with a reduced, very concise hagiographic cycle were especially popular. Many people tended to have such icons with images of patronal saints of all family members, and therefore, especially in the 19th century, the repertoire of saints represented in such “mass” icons expanded quite dramatically.

Thus, Russian icons with hagiographies of saints have come a long way. Born in Byzantium, they adapted to the realities of Russian history and culture and retained their vivid features in the most diverse historical epochs.