Blackwell Reference Online

Extract

Translated by Abbott GleasonThe history of art in Russia may be said with confidence to have begun with the introduction of Christianity to Rus′ in 988. The new era brought religious liturgy with it, which meant architecture, painting, music, and the culture of the book – in the form of illuminated manuscripts. The acceptance of Christianity from Byzantium was occasioned by pragmatic considerations. But the chronicle legend about how Prince Vladimir chose between diverse faiths is nevertheless significant, pointing as it does to the “aesthetic” motive in the decision of Vladimir's messengers. Finding themselves in an Orthodox Church, they allegedly “knew not whether [they] were in heaven or on earth.” It was not, evidently, merely a matter of the barbarian simple-heartedness of the Kievans, overcome by the magnificence of Hagia Sophia. The story suggests a particular role for art: the image of beauty that attests the fundamental benevolence of God's world. With only slight exaggeration one might say that art in Russia has preserved this role ever since, even with the loss of religious viewpoint in the eighteenth century. It has continued to be the measure, the standard, rendering powerful judgments on life. The icon was the divine model, the form of a better world. In modern times, art undertook to provide utopias, such as the “New Rome,” in Bazhenov's abortive Kremlin Palace; or ... log in or subscribe to read full text