1967
English
Art Treasures of Russia
Art Treasures of Russia
ABOUT
Looking over the treasures of Old Russian art collected in this book, the reader will not confine himself to enjoying the beauty of individual works but will naturally ask more general questions. And first of all, is this art merely a local phenomenon, or does it deserve a place in the history of world art? We have not yet sufficiently studied the history of Old Russian art, its masters, and its various schools. Necessarily, our study has tended to make us isolate it from the art of other countries, so that it is hard for us to answer this important question. Even for a provisional answer, we must rise above minute details and concentrate on the finest achievements of Russian art.
There is no doubt that Old Russian art, and above all that of the fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries, when it attained independence and reached its flowering, should take its place in the history of world art. It belongs entirely within the scheme of artistic values created by the nations of Europe toward the close of the Middle Ages and during the Renaissance. At the same time that the Russian people were laying foundations for the national state, Russian artists were attempting to resuscitate those humanistic principles believed inseparable from the legacy of the ancient world. In the West the transition from the Gothic era to the Renaissance was abrupt; in Russia there was no need for so abrupt a change, for art had never broken away from the Byzantine, Greek tradition. In the West the Renaissance was based to a great extent on Roman art; the Russian masters from Rublev on were attracted by the early Hellenic tradition. They knew it mainly through Byzantine paraphrases, yet they correctly discerned its essential features: monumental grandeur, noble purity, clarity of outlines, rhythmic contours, and polychromy. Historical obstacles arose to prevent the development from continuing indefinitely. Russian art never achieved the cultural importance the Italian Renaissance has had for the whole world. The merit of Old Russian art is the extraordinary purity of its style and its character of sublimity. Its achievements cannot be forgotten by mankind. Our century may take pride in having for the first time recognized the true value of this remarkable legacy to world art.
(Description source: page 178)
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