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robert o. crummey
the Church and more moderate Old Believers, one of whom, Evfrosin, in 1691
wrote a denunciation of the practice as a violation of the traditional Christian
prohibition of suicide.
36
The second response of the opponents of the reformed Church was less
spectacular but ultimately more successful. Many fled to remote corners of
the realm or beyond the borders of the empire, founded unofficial communi-
ties, and began to adapt Orthodox liturgical observances to their new circum-
stances. Some fugitive groups soon fell victim to governmental persecution;
others, such as the Vyg community, managed to survive and became the prin-
cipal centres of the Old Belief in the first decades of the eighteenth century.
The official Church after 1667
In the last years of the century, Patriarch Ioakim (1674–90) set the agendas
for the official Church. By background a member of the service nobility, he
proved to be a strong-willed leader who, like Nikon, saw the patriarch as the
personification of the Church. At the same time, he understood the necessity
of collaboration with the governments that followed one another in rapid
succession during his tenure and recognised the practical limitations of his
position. For example, when Tsar Fedor insisted on pardoning Nikon, he
acquiesced in spite of grave personal misgivings. In the crises of 1682 and 1689,
he supported the claims of Peter I to the throne.
Within the ecclesiastical administration, he strove for a disciplined, clearly
organised hierarchy free from the routine interference of the state. Following
therecommendationofthecouncilsof1666–7 andthedecisionof alocalcouncil
in 1675, Ioakim abolished the Monastyrskii prikaz in 1677 and replaced it with
a system under which members of the clergy conducted trials of churchmen
and supervised the administration of Church lands. The elaborate plan of Tsar
Fedor’s government to address the enormous size of Russian dioceses achieved
very limited success, however, thanks to the resistance of the episcopate, led by
Ioakim, whofeareda system in whichbishops wouldreport to archbishops and
notdirectlytothe patriarch.Intheend,the Churchcreatedeleven newdioceses
by dividing the territory of existing jurisdictions and, in 1682, succeeded in
filling only four.
36 Robert O. Crummey, The Old Believers & the World of Antichrist. The Vyg Community and
the Russian State, 1 694–1855 (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1970), pp. 39–57;
Georg B. Michels, ‘The Violent Old Belief: An Examination of Religious Dissent on the
Karelian Frontier’, RH 19 (1992): 203–29.
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The Orthodox Church and the schism
Ioakim’s greatest achievement, however, may well be the agreement, con-
cluded with the support of Hetman Samoilovych in 1686, that the new
Metropolitan of Kiev, Gedeon, would recognise the ultimate jurisdiction of
the Patriarch of Moscow, not of Constantinople as previously. Since then, the
fates of the Orthodox Churches in Ukraine and Russia have been inextricably
linked, with profound consequences for both.
37
Ioakim’s understanding of the Church required that the hierarchy, under
the patriarch’s leadership, control devotional life and ecclesiastical culture. In
dealing with popular religion, as part of his crusade against the Old Believers
and other dissidents, Ioakim and his supporters sponsored miracle cults that
gave divine sanction to the three-finger sign of the cross, but suppressed unoffi-
cial and unverifiable saints’ cults, notably the veneration of Anna of Kashin. He
also believed that, since an embattled Church required educated priests, it was
vital to found a theological academy in Moscow. The first two attempts, how-
ever, collapsed because of the theological and political controversies between
the so-called Latinophile and Grecophile parties within the ecclesiastical elite –
both of which, in reality, adapted international Latin scholarship to Orthodox
uses.
In 1700 when Ioakim’s successor, Adrian, died, Peter I chose to leave the
patriarchal throne vacant, a harbinger of radical changes to come. Looking
back over a century of dramatic events, many of the Church’s fundamental
characteristics had changed little. In spite of attempts to strengthen the office
of patriarch and the role of Church Councils, the tsars’ government repeatedly
took the initiative in establishing ecclesiastical policy and intervened to settle
disputes among the faithful. At their best, the clergy provided the population
withspiritual guidance andsocialandculturalleadership. Yet attemptstocreate
an orderly hierarchical system of administration and to respond to the cultural
changes in other branches of Eastern Orthodoxy had only limited success. As
a wealthy landowner, moreover, the Church attracted popular discontent and
was an inviting target for a cash-starved state. And, most dangerously, the
Russian Orthodox community had fallen into schism. In competition with the
state-supported official Church, the Old Believers had begun to build their own
organisations, select their own cadre of leaders and create their own religious
culture. Thus, for all its apparent strength, the Russian Orthodox Church soon
had to bend before the onslaught of a wilful reforming autocrat.
37 K. V. Kharlampovich, Malorossiiskoe vliianie na velikorusskuiu tserkovnuiu zhizn’, vol. i
(Kazan’: Izdanie knizhnogo magazina M. A. Golubeva, 1914), pp. 214–32.
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lindsey hughes
Culture ‘in transition’
Modern historians have categorised Russia’s seventeenth century as a ‘transi-
tional period’ (perekhodnyi vek), when tradition vied with innovation, indige-
nousculturewith imported trends.Theconceptual framework of binaryoppo-
sitions has proved particularly fruitful.
1
High culture in particular underwent
changes that have been explained with reference to Westernisation, moderni-
sation and secularisation. Some scholars have argued that developments in art,
architecture and literature constituted a Muscovite version of the Baroque,
2
others, adopting Dmitrii Likhachev’s formula, that they represented some-
thing ‘close to the significance of the Renaissance in the cultural history of
Western Europe’.
3
Such phenomena as the illusionistic use of light, shade and
perspective in icons, portrait-painting from life, elements of a modified classi-
cal order system in architecture and new genres and subjects in literature are
treated as curtain-raisers to the eighteenth century, when Russia would begin
to fulfil its destiny by catching up with Western Europe with the assistance of
Peter the Great.
If we accept the view that Russia had to ‘catch up’ with the West, with
preconceptions about what Russia ought to have been, we may well conclude
that, culturally speaking, here was a ‘blank sheet’ waiting to be filled. By the
1 See Iu. M. Lotman and B. A. Uspenskii, ‘Binary Models in the Dynamics of Russian
Culture to the End of the Eighteenth Century’, in A. D. and A. S. Nakhimovsky (eds.),
The Semiotics of Russian Cultural History (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1985),
pp. 30–66.
2 See A. I. Nekrasov (ed.), Barokko v Rossii (Moscow: GAKhN, 1926) and summaries of
debates in James Cracraft, The Petrine Revolution in Russian Architecture (Chicago: Univer-
sity of Chicago Press, 1988) and in his The Petrine Revolution in Russian Imagery (Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 1997). Also Natalia Kostotchkina, ‘The Baroque in 17th-
Century Russian Art: Icon-Painting, Painting, Decorative and Applied Art’, unpublished
M.Phil. thesis, SSEES, University of London, 1994.
3 D. S. Likhachev, ‘Barokko i ego russkii variant XVII veka’, Russkaia literatura, 1969,no.2:
18–45, and his Razvitie russkoi literatury X–XVII vekov (Leningrad: Nauka, 1973), p. 214.
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start of the seventeenth century the Renaissance had made little impact on
Muscovy. In the figurative arts there was no free-standing portraiture, still
life, landscapes or urban scenes, history painting or domestic genre. There
were icons, wood prints and illuminated manuscripts, but no painting in oil on
canvas.Sculpturedeepchiselledinstoneor castinmetal(bell-makingexcepted)
was unknown. Printing (introduced in 1564) was in its infancy. Muscovy had
no theatres or universities. It had produced no poets, dramatists, philosophers,
scholars or even theologians. It lacked both theoretical concepts of ‘the arts’
and political theory. Historians who prioritise written records will search in
vain for a scholarly rationale of autocracy, for example. If we go on to play
the ‘great names’ game, Muscovy will not figure in the world pantheon. The
special emphases and prohibitions of Orthodoxy, a dependent nobility, weak
urbanisation and economic backwardness created a climate that distinguished
Russian elite culture sharply from that of Protestant and Catholic Europe.
To understand Muscovite high culture (peasant culture and its regional
variations are beyond the scope of our survey) we must initially abandon the
search for the genres, activities and practitioners defined by Western expe-
rience. Political ideology, for example, was expressed first and foremost not
in erudite tracts but in images and rituals. The combined efforts of artists
and craftsmen created and embellished ‘sacred landscapes’ in a complex inter-
action of architecture, iconography, fabrics and vestments, choreography (of
processions), and sacred chant. This culture was conservative, but it was not
impervious to the contemporary events described elsewhere in this volume.
Indeed,inthe seventeenth century ‘a transformationof culturalconsciousness’
was to occur.
4
Culture after the Time of Troubles
Theresolutionofthe TimeofTroubleswas,onthefaceofit,backward-looking.
Official rhetoric emphasised the restoration of God’s favour and of old values
through a universally acclaimed new ruling dynasty with strong links with the
old. The violation of the sacred Kremlin by Poles (bearers of demonic culture)
was interpreted as punishment for sins. The visible evidence of repentance
were rituals that mirrored the harmonious realm with the restored tsar at
its divinely ordered centre, enhanced by new churches, icons and religious
artefacts.
4 Viktor Zhivov, ‘Religious Reform and the Emergence of the Individual in Seventeenth-
Century Russian Literature’, in Samuel H. Baron and Nancy Shields Kollmann (eds.),
Religion and Culture in Early Modern Russia and Ukraine (DeKalb: Northern Illinois Uni-
versity Press, 1997), pp. 184–98.
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Muscovite ceremonial customs were revived, for ritual continuitywas more
necessary than ever as a buttress of royal authority. Michael was crowned in
1613 according to the Byzantine-influenced rite of 1547. Courtly pomp was
particularly impressive during the reign of Tsar Alexis (1645–76). Among the
annual highlights was the Palm Sunday parade to St Basil’s cathedral, when
the tsar on foot and the patriarch seated on a colt enacted the ‘symphony’
of tsardom and priesthood, and the feast of Epiphany on 6 January, when
the patriarch blessed the waters of the Moskva River at a sacred spot desig-
nated ‘the Jordan’.
5
On such occasions the skills of craftsmen were displayed
in all their brilliance in icons, crosses, vessels and vestments, banners, cer-
emonial saddles, harnesses and weapons. Family events were also treated
with great solemnity. For example, the name-days of Alexis’s numerous rel-
atives were celebrated by processions and liturgies for the feasts of patron
saints.
6
The meticulous records of the tsars’ progresses (vykhody) do not dwell on
secular diversions. Since women were excluded from most public occasions,
the masques and balls of Western court life were out of the question.
7
We
should not draw a rigid line between sacred and profane activities, however.
After name-day liturgies special pastries were distributed to courtiers and
churchmen. Weddings and royal births were marked by lavish banquets with
singing and games. Alexis maintained country palaces forsummer recreations,
forexampleatKolomenskoe(seebelow)andIzmailovo,whichboastedgardens
with hothouses and a menagerie. He was particularly devoted to hunting and
devised a ceremonial book of rules for the ‘glorious sport’ of falconry.
8
Michael instituted a programme of building in the historic centre. In the
1630s Russian masters constructed the Kremlin’s Terem palace. Not only its
numerous chapels but also the royal living quarters were decorated with
religious frescos that drew parallels between Moscow’s rulers and their biblical
predecessors. There was no clear boundary between sacred and secular space.
5 See Robert O. Crummey, ‘Court Spectacles in Seventeenth-Century Russia: Illusion and
Reality’, in D. C. Waugh (ed.), Essays in Honor of A. A. Zimin (Columbus, Oh.: Slavica,
1985), pp. 130–46; Paul Bushkovitch, ‘The Epiphany Ceremony of the Russian Court in
the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries’, RR 49 (1990): 1–18.
6 See Philip Longworth, Alexis Tsar of All the Russias (London: Secker and Warburg, 1984);
Lindsey Hughes, ‘The Petrine Year: Anniversaries and Festivals in the Reign of Peter the
Great (1682–1725)’, in Karin Friedrich (ed.), Festive Culture in Germany and Europe from the
16th to the 20th Century (Lewiston, N.Y.: Mellen Press, 2000), pp. 148–68.
7 See Isolde Thyr
ˆ
et, Between God and Tsar. Religious Symbolism and the Royal Women of
Muscovite Russia (DeKalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 2001).
8 Longworth, Alexis,pp.118–20.
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In the same period the cathedral of the Icon of Our Lady of Kazan’ on Red
Square was built to commemorate the national resistance of 1612.
9
Processions
for the feasts of this and other wonder-working icons were staged several times
a year throughout the century. In 1625 Muscovites celebrated the acquisition of
a fragment of Christ’s garment. The feast of the Deposition of the Robe of Our
Lord (10 July) was one of several added to the liturgical calendar that formed
the basis of cultural life at court.
10
In 1642–3 teams of artists from all over
Russia repainted the murals in the Kremlin Dormition cathedral, following
the outlines of older images. Frescos depicting the princes and tsars of Rus’ in
the Archangel cathedral were similarly renovated, beginning in 1652.
11
But we
have no authentic likeness of Tsar Michael, although there are records of his
image (obraz, suggesting a Byzantine-style effigy) being made in the Kremlin
workshops for presentation abroad.
12
The Romanov succession was backward-looking but it also drove innova-
tion. National recovery and independence required armies, alliances, trade
and foreign expertise. The primary need was for military specialists, but oth-
ers came too. In the 1620s the Scottish engineer Christopher Galloway added
ornate upper portions with Gothic and Renaissance features to the Kremlin’s
Saviour tower and installed a clock. The Swede Johann Kristler designed a
never-completed bridge over the Moskva River.
13
The first Western painter
to arrive, in 1643, was Hans Deters (Deterson) from the Netherlands. Among
the elite a taste grew for foreign ‘novelties’ and cunning technical devices
(khitrosti). At the same time, Patriarch Filaret banned books published in
Lithuania to combat the ‘Latin’ influences that had proliferated during the
Time of Troubles. Tension between opening access to new ideas and protect-
ing Orthodoxy from heresy was a defining characteristic of the seventeenth
century.
9 WilliamC.Brumfield,A History ofRussianArchitecture (Cambridge:CambridgeUniversity
Press, 1993), pp. 141–5.
10 See Hughes, ‘Petrine Year’ and her ‘The Courts of Moscow and St Petersburg. c. 1547–
1725’, in JohnAdamson (ed.), The Princely Courts of Europe 1500–1750(London: Weidenfeld
and Nicolson, 1999), pp. 294–313.
11 I. L. Buseva-Davydova,Khramy Moskovskogo Kremlia: sviatyni i drevnosti (Moscow: Nauka,
1997), pp. 42–3, 103–4.
12 B. N. Floria, ‘Nekotorye dannye o nachale svetskogo portreta v Rossii’, Arkhiv russkoi
istorii 1 (1992): 137–9; Frank K
¨
ampfer, Das russischeHerrscherbildvon den Anf
¨
angenbis zu Peter
dem Grossen. Studien zur Entwicklung politischer Ikonographie im byzantinischen Kulturkreis
(Recklinghausen: A. Bongers, 1978), pp. 211–12.
13 JeremyHoward,The Scottish Kremlin Builder: Christopher Galloway (Edinburgh:Manifesto,
1997); Lindsey Hughes, ‘The West Comes to Russian Architecture’, in Paul Dukes (ed.),
Russia and Europe (London: Collins and Brown, 1991), pp. 24–47.
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Architecture and sculpture
The first masonry churches to be built after the Troubles continued sixteenth-
century trends, displaying tiers of kokoshnik gables beneath the elongated
drums of their cupolas or capped with tent (shater) roofs. (In the 1650s Patri-
arch Nikon banned ‘tent’ churches as uncanonical.) A sort of compendium of
seventeenth-century ecclesiastical architecture is provided by the five-domed
church of the Holy Trinity in Nikitniki (1631–53), built for a wealthy mer-
chant not far from Red Square (see Plate 24).
14
The architect’s imaginative flair
was expended on picturesque annexes (a bell-tower and porch surmounted
by tents) and on the exterior decoration. Kokoshnik gables and ornamental
brickwork jostle with modified elements of the Western-order system, such as
recessed half-columns and classically profiled window surrounds, pediments
and cornices. The interior, constructed without internal piers, was covered
in frescos. Similar churches were built all over Russia in towns, villages and
monasteries, visible evidence of economic recovery. In the commercial city of
Iaroslavl’ on the Volga merchants built dozens of churches, richly decorated
outside with a veritable ‘encrustation’ of carved brickwork and polychrome
ceramics, inside with brilliantly coloured frescos.
15
Impressive architectural
projects were carried out in Rostov Velikii and in the newmonasteries founded
by Patriarch Nikon.
Soviet scholars associated such architecture with ‘secularisation’ (obmir-
shchenie).By reducing domes to mere decorativeappendages, they argued, and
articulating fac¸ades with carved window frames, builders made their churches
look like palaces and hence undermined their sacredness. But clearly neither
builders nor congregations thought in such terms. Their distinctive silhou-
ettes and lavish decorativeness made these churches highly visible landmarks
in praise of God.
Theculmination of the ‘ornamental’ style came with the ‘MoscowBaroque’
(a late nineteenth-century term) that flourished in and around the capital from
the late 1670s and in the provinces into the 1700s.
16
Builders demonstrated a
refined sense of symmetry and regularity in their ordering of both structural
and decorative elements, replacing Russian ornament almost entirely with
motifs derived from the classical orders: half-columns with pediments and
14 Brumfield, History,pp.147–9.
15 Ibid., pp. 158–64.
16 See Cracraft, Architecture,pp.85–109; Lindsey Hughes, ‘Western European Graphic
Material as a Source for Moscow Baroque Architecture’, SEER 55 (1977): 433–43;and
her ‘Moscow Baroque – a Controversial Style’, Transactions of the Association of Russian-
American Scholars in USA 15 (1982): 69–93.
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bases, window surrounds and portals with broken pediments, volutes, fluted
and twisted columns and shell gables. A particularly impressive concentration
of such buildings was commissioned from unknown Russian craftsmen in
the 1680s by Tsarevna Sophia for the Moscow Novodevichii convent. Civic
buildings were constructed on similar principles, for example Prince Vasilii
Golitsyn’s Moscow mansion (1680s) and the Pharmacy on Red Square (1690s).
Structural innovation appeared in the so-called ‘octagon on cube’ churches
in Moscow Baroque style. One of the finest examples, the church of the Inter-
cession at Fili, built in 1690–3 by unknown architects for Peter I’s uncle Lev
Naryshkin, has a tower of receding octagons flanked by four annexes, each
capped with a cupola and decorated with intricately carved limestone details
(see Plate 25). Inside an ornate gilded iconostasis holds round and octagonal,
as well as ‘standard’ rectangular icons, all painted in a distinctly ‘Italianate’
style far removed from traditional Russo-Byzantine painting.
17
This and other
tower churches such as the Trinity at Troitse-Lykovo and the Saviour at Ubory
(by Iakov Bukhvostov, the leading exponent of the style) may owe something
to prototypes in Russian wooden architecture, as well as to ‘Ruthenian’ influ-
ence. Craftsmen from Belorussia and Ukraine introduced Polish Baroque and
Renaissance architectural elements through the medium of wood-carving and
decorative ceramics. The theory of the cultural interaction of the ‘fraternal’
nations fitted comfortably into the Soviet ideological framework, but Russia’s
‘elder brother’ status limited the extent to which such borrowing could be
acknowledged, as did its mainly religious character.
18
The topic requires fuller
investigation.
Western architectural ideas emanated from the Armoury (see below) and
Foreign Office workshops, where craftsmen had access to prints, maps and
illustrated books.
19
Tsar Alexis owned a book of ‘the stone buildings of all
German states’ and works by Vignola, Palladio and other theoreticians of the
Renaissance and Baroque eras. Russian builders (zodchie)
20
were unacquainted
with the theoretical underpinnings of the five orders of architecture and none,
as far as we know, had first-hand experience of Western buildings, although
17 See N. Gordeeva and L. Tarasenko, Tserkov’ Pokrova v Filiakh (Moscow: ‘Izobrazitel’noe
iskusstvo’, 1980); Brumfield, History,pp.184–93.
18 See Lindsey Hughes, ‘Byelorussian Craftsmen in Seventeenth-Century Russia and their
Influence on Muscovite Architecture’, Journal of Byelorussian Studies 3 (1976): 327–41.On
wider issues, Max Okenfuss, The Rise and Fall of Latin Humanism in Early-Modern Russia:
Pagan Authors, Ukrainians, and the Resiliency of Muscovy (Leiden and New York: Brill, 1995),
and editors’ introduction to Baron and Kollmann (eds.), Religion and Culture,pp.3–16.
19 S. P. Luppov, Kniga v Rossii XVII veka (Leningrad: Nauka, 1970); Hughes, ‘Western Euro-
pean Graphic Material’.
20 Theborrowed wordsarkhitektor and arkhitektura first appear in the late 1690s–early 1700s.
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lindsey hughes
some had been to Ukraine. But a few potential patrons picked up ideas abroad,
notleastAlexishimself,whoseencounterswithcity architectureandmagnates’
estates while on military campaigns in Lithuania and the Baltic in the 1650s
inspired him, according to his English doctor Samuel Collins, to remodel his
residences.
21
Some Russians may even have ventured into Moscow’s Foreign
Quarter (nemetskaia sloboda) and gazed at its Protestant churches, shops and
taverns, although restrictions on access limited the Quarter’s impact.
22
The hybrid nature of seventeenth-century Russian architecture is demon-
strated by Tsar Alexis’s wooden palace at Kolomenskoe (1660s–1670s) (see
Plate 26). Simon Petrov, the director of works, was not an architect, but a
master carpenter. He and his men employed traditional timber construction,
but also added broken pediments and twisting columns. Ceilings were painted
with signs of the Zodiac and the Seasons and Ruthenian craftsmen made such
‘curiosities’ as automata in the shape of lions. The tsar’s wooden palace was
an idiosyncratic example of the carpenters’ skills that dominated both urban
and rural landscapes in seventeenth-century Russia. Because so few timber
buildings survive intact from the period and because there were no Russian
Canalettos to record them, we can only reconstruct the urban scene from
stylised images in miniatures and icons and foreigners’ sketches.
23
Woodwork, especially iconostases, survives mostly from interiors. Away
fromMoscowcraftsmenmadenotjustcarvingsbutalso three-dimensionalreli-
gious images, rather like high-relief icons. Popular subjects were St Nicholas
of Mozhaisk and St Paraskeva.
24
The first known examples of free-standing
stone sculpture in Russia are the statues of saints outside the tower church of
the Sign at Dubrovitsy (1690–1704). The church’s design also departed radically
from traditional Orthodoxconventions by dispensing with cupolas in favour of
an open-work crown. Inside there were Latin inscriptions.
25
The Westernised
tastes of its owner, Peter I’s tutor Prince Boris Golitsyn, who knew Latin and
had access to Italian craftsmen, place the church at Dubrovitsy at the very
limits of ‘transitional’ culture. There would be strong resistance to ‘graven
images’ well into the eighteenth century.
21 Samuel Collins, The Present State of Russia (London, 1671), pp. 64–5.
22 See Lindsey Hughes, ‘Attitudes towards Foreigners in Early Modern Russia’, in Cathryn
Brennan and Murray Frame (eds.), Russia and the Wider World in Historical Perspective:
Essays for Paul Dukes (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 2000), pp. 1–23.
23 Cracraft, Architecture,pp.40–2.
24 See T. M. Kol’tsova (ed.), Reznye ikonostasy i dereviannaia skul’ptura Russkogo Severa.
Katalog vystavki (Archangel and Moscow: MKRF, 1995).
25 Brumfield, History,pp.189–90; T. A. Gatova, ‘Iz istorii dekorativnoi skul’ptury Moskvy
nachalaXVIII v.’, inT.V. Alekseeva (ed.),RusskoeiskusstvoXVIIIveka (Moscow:‘Iskusstvo’,
1968), pp. 40–1.
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The Armoury: icons, portraits, applied art
The Kremlin Armoury Chamber (Oruzheinaia palata), established at the begin-
ning of the sixteenth century, comprised a complex of studios making, storing
and repairing high-quality items for the tsars’ ceremonial and everyday use.
Under the directorship of the boyar Bogdan Khitrovo from 1654 to 1680 it
emerged as a virtual ‘academy of arts’.
26
The royal churches and residences swallowed up icons by the dozen and
the Armoury’s studios employed some of the best icon painters (ikonopistsy)
inthe land. The most famous was Simon Ushakov(1629–86), whoisregardedas
the very embodiment of ‘transition’, a pioneer of new effects in icon-painting,
but never a fully-fledged easel painter.
27
In particular, he was known for his
ability to apply chiaroscuro effects, especially to faces in such traditional com-
positions as Christ Not Made by Hands. Ushakov was acquainted with Western
art. The classical arch in the background of his icon The Old Testament Trinity
(1671), for example, was copied from a print of a painting by the Italian Paolo
Veronese. In his epistle to Ushakov, written some time between 1656 and 1666,
fellow icon painter Iosif Vladimirov asked: ‘How can people possiblyclaim that
only Russians are allowed to paint icons and only Russian icon-painting may
be revered, while that of other lands should neither be kept nor honoured?’
In the reply attributed to him, Ushakov wrote of the usefulness of image-
making for commemorating the past and recording the present, comparing
the painter’s skill with the properties of a mirror.
28
But he remained firmly
within an Orthodox context.
His icon The Planting of the Tree of the Muscovite Realm (1668) demonstrates
several aspects of his art. It includes images of Tsar Alexis, his first wife Mariia
and two of their sons, the only surviving ‘portrait’ of the tsar known for
sure to have been produced during his lifetime and signed by the artist. (The
signing of icons, hitherto anonymous,is itself evidenceof the growth of artistic
autonomy.) The icon also contains accurate representations of the walls of the
Kremlin and the Spasskii (Saviour) tower. But far from being a vehicle for
26 SeeLindseyHughes, ‘The MoscowArmouryandInnovations in 17th-Century Muscovite
Art’, CASS 13 (1979): 204–23; Cracraft, Imagery,pp.107–15.
27 For a popular Soviet view, see N. G. Bekeneva, Simon Ushakov 1626–1686 (Leningrad:
Khudozhnik RSFSR, 1984). Also V. G. Briusova, Russkaia zhivopis’ XVII veka (Moscow:
Iskusstvo, 1984); Lindsey Hughes, ‘The Age of Transition: Seventeenth-Century Russian
Icon-Painting’, in Sarah Smyth and Stanford Kingston (eds.), Icons 88 (Dublin: Veritas
Publications, 1988), pp. 63–74.
28 ‘Poslanie nekoego izografa Iosifa k tsareva izografu i mudreishemu zhivopistsu Simonu
Ushakovu’ and ‘Slovo k liuboshchatel’nomu ikonnogo pisaniia’ (c.1667), as cited in
Cracraft, Imagery,pp.82–8.
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