Russian Orthodox Icons and Animal Images Depicted in Them

Russian Orthodox icons are a living and evolving art form. Despite the strictness of the canons, very often, both in the Middle Ages and in our time, icon painters include marvelous details in their works, such as amazing fantasy plants, rocky landscapes, and animal images. It is the latter that we want to discuss today.

Russian Orthodox Icons and Animal Images Depicted in Them

Images of animals—both domestic and wild, or miraculously “domesticated” predators—are found in a number of Christian subjects. For example, not a single scene of the Nativity is complete without the images of an ox and a donkey, warming the newborn Christ with their breath. Often, in such scenes, they are joined by the flocks driven by Christ-worshiping shepherds, the first witnesses of the Nativity. Another such Gospel scene, which invariably includes cattle, is the composition “The Expulsion of the Merchants from the Temple,” and although Russian Orthodox icons did not use this scene very often, it can sometimes be found in some icons with the Lord’s cycle in the border scenes or church paintings.

Nativity of Christ. Russia, 16th century. The State Hermitage Museum.

Quite often, references to friendship with animals, and especially with fearsome predators, can be found in hagiographic literature. Such episodes occurred commonly and became one of the literary tropes in the biographies of monks. The line of development of this trope can be found in the Old Testament, namely in the story of the ascetic exploits of the prophet Elijah who secluded himself in a cave near the river Horeb, and only ravens brought him food (3 Kings 17: 1-6). The popularity of this subject can be evidenced by the oldest surviving Russian hagiographic icon—an image of the prophet Elijah from the village of Vybuty near Pskov of the late 13th century (The Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow).

Elijah the Prophet with His Life and Deesis. Icon from the Church of Elijah the Prophet in the village of Vybuty, near Pskov. The 13th-14th centuries. State Tretyakov Gallery.

However, this monastic communion with beasts was revealed much more vividly in the life of St. Gerasimos of Jordan who befriended a lion, and, in the Russian context, in the life of St. Sergius of Radonezh who fed a wild bear with his humble food.

The imagination of icon painters played out most fully in the scene of St. John the Baptist praying in the desert. In such icons, quite often, the entire lower part of the image is filled with miniature depictions of various animals—deer, hares, lions, horses, and many others quietly exist alongside each other, abandoning their usual behavior. Such images often surprise modern viewers, but there is nothing unusual about them because the word “desert” was interpreted by medieval authors of theological texts not as a space where there was nothing, but as a space free from sins. This interpretation allowed artists to realize all fantasies connected with the ideal world, paradise gardens, and their arrangement.

Thus, even Russian Orthodox icons, with all their strict adherence to the canon, allowed artists to reflect on their relationship with the world of animals.