Russia Part 17

These two methods of construction in wood have persisted till the present day, which fact is easily established on examining the rural dwellings of Russia.

The Sclavs, moreover, as well as the Varangians, possessed certain art expressions which denote an Asiatic origin.

Even in Byzantine art, so far as ornamentation is concerned, there were origins that were evidently common to those that are felt in the Sclav arts; and these original elements are again found in Central Asia.

That ornamentation, composed of interlacings and conventional floral motives, dry and metallic, which was adopted at Byzantium, where it very soon destroyed the last vestiges of Roman art, also appears on the most ancient monuments of the Sclavs, and even on objects that in France are attributed to the Merovingians, that is to say, the Franks who came from the sh.o.r.es of the Baltic.

Thus, Russia was to take her arts, as regards ornamentation, from branches that are far apart from one another in time and distance, but which sprang from a common trunk.

About the Tenth Century, the Russian buildings were of wood; all texts agree on this point, and consequently these constructions could have no part in Byzantine architecture, which does not recall even the traditions of carpentry work.

Towards the Eleventh Century, when the Russians began to build religious edifices of masonry, the structure of which, particularly in the vaulting, is inspired by Byzantine art, they adapted to this structure, together with a sensibly modified Byzantine garb, an ornamentation, derived from Asiatic, Sclavic and Turanian elements in variable, that is to say local, proportions.

[Ill.u.s.tration: CHURCH OF THE REDEMER, MOSCOW.]

For at least three centuries, Byzantium was the great school sought by the Latin, Visigothic and Germanic nations of Europe for art teaching, and it was not till the end of the Twelfth Century that the French broke away from these traditions. Their example was followed in Italy, England and Germany more or less successfully.

Russia held aloof from these attempts: she was too closely identified with Byzantine art to try any other course; it may be said that she was the guardian of that art, and was to carry on its traditions by mingling with it elements due to the Asiatic Sclavic genius.

All the dominant elements in Russian art, whether they come from the north or south, belong to Asia. Iranians or Persians, Indians, Turanians, or Mongols have furnished tribute, though in unequal quant.i.ties, to this art.

It may also be said that if Russia has borrowed much from Byzantium, the art elements among her population have not been without influence upon the formation of Byzantine art. We think even that the influence of Byzantine upon Russian art has been greatly exaggerated, and that Persia may have had at least as much effect upon the course of art in Russia.

However, we must except everything pertaining to images. But even here Asiatic influence makes itself felt, not in the form, but in the preservation of the types. The imagery of the Greek school has never gone out of favour in Russia, and it still holds its place there in the representation of holy personages. In this, Russia shows her attachment to tradition, as all the Asiatic races do, and shows how little her intimate sentiments have suffered modification.

The Russians avoided the influence of the Iconoclasts which was felt so violently in the Western Empire in the Eighth Century, and later still in various parts of Western Europe; among the Vaudois and Albigenses in the Twelfth and Thirteenth Century, the Hussites in the Fifteenth, and the Reformers in the Sixteenth.

But if Russian architecture and ornamentation show marked originality, this does not seem to be the case with the representation of holy personages. These remain Byzantine. It was the school of Mount Athos that supplied Russia with the types, as it did to almost all the Greek Christians of the Orient.

In these representations, we have difficulty in finding a tendency towards realism, which, morever, does not appear till quite late, and does not come to full bloom.

In Russian art, it is possible to find a few Scandinavian traces, or, to be more exact, in the arts of Scandinavia we find some elements borrowed from the same sources whence the Russians took theirs.

Russia has been one of the laboratories in which the arts, brought from all parts of Asia, have been united to adopt an intermediate form between the Eastern and the Western world.

Geographically, she was favourably placed to gather together these influences; and, ethnologically, she was entirely prepared to a.s.similate these arts and develop them. If she has stopped short in this work, it was only at a very recent period, and when repudiating her origin and traditions, she tried to become Western, in spite of her own genius.

In the first place, the oldest religious edifices of Russia affect slender forms, in elevation, which distinguishes them from the purely Byzantine buildings.

Evidently, the Russians, from the Twelfth Century on, employed in their religious edifices a geometrical plan that was different from that employed by the Byzantine architects, but one very close to that admitted by the architects of Greece during the early years of the Middle Ages.

In Georgia and Armenia, a number of ancient churches, the majority of which are very small, are also of this character. But, while submitting to these dispositions, as soon as they adopted masonry instead of wood for building, the Russians gave quite individual proportions to their religious edifices.

By the Fifteenth Century, Russia had combined all the various elements by the aid of which a national art should be const.i.tuted. To recapitulate these origins: We find already among the Scythians some elements of art fairly well developed, foreign to Greek art and derived from Oriental tradition. Byzantium, in constant contact with the people of Southern Russia, made its arts felt there; but in the North, some slight Finnish influences and then some Scandinavian ones, make themselves felt. From Persia likewise, Russia received impulses in art, on account of her commercial relations with that country through Georgia and Armenia. In the Thirteenth Century, the Tartar-Mongol domination was imposed upon Russia, employed her artists and craftsmen, and thus placed her in direct contact with that Mediaeval Orient that was so mighty and so brilliant in all its art productions.

At length left to herself, in the Fifteenth Century, Russia const.i.tuted her own art from these various sources. But this variety of sources is more apparent than real. It is enough to examine Scythian ornamentation to recognize that it is of a p.r.o.nounced Indo-Oriental character. Byzantine taste has exerted a preponderating influence upon Russia. But it has been recognized that this Byzantine style is itself composed of very varied elements among which figure most largely the art of Eastern Asia, and that from this Byzantine art Russia likes to appropriate the Asiatic side in particular.

So that we may regard Russian art as composed of elements borrowed from the Orient to the almost complete exclusion of all others.

Moreover, if we follow the streams of art to their sources, we soon come to recognize that the tributaries are not at all numerous.

In the matter of architecture, there are only two principles: structure by wood and concrete structure: grottoes, and construction with clay, and with masonry, which is derived from it. As to construction with cut stones, there results, either from a tradition of building with wood or from concrete construction, grottoes or conglomerate ma.s.ses, sometimes both, as in Egyptian art, for example.

The innumerable races who issued from the East and finally overwhelmed the Roman Empire had preserved from their cradle their own traditions, and continued to keep up communication with their old homes. Better than any other nation, the Russians preserved these traditions, and they were, so to speak, rejuvenated every time a new wave pa.s.sed across their territories; for it was always from the northern or southern Orient, from the Ural or the Taurus, that the invaders came. Whether they presented themselves as enemies or colonists they brought with them something of Asia, the great mother of civilizations.

This Russian art, therefore, was never struck with decadence as was the Byzantine art. It did not live solely upon itself, but profited by all that was brought from the Orient. So, when the Eastern Empire fell during the Fifteenth Century, leaving only a pale trace of the last expressions of its arts, Russia, on the contrary, was raising edifices and fabricating objects of great value from an artistic point of view.

The West had only a small share in these productions, but even this was enough to enable Russian art to be distinguished from the arts of the East by a certain freedom of conception and variety in the execution that rendered it an original product full of promise, the developments of which might have been marvellous if the natural course of events had not been hindered by the pa.s.sion with which high Russian society threw itself on the works of art of Italy, Germany and France.

_SCULPTURE AND PAINTING_

_PHILIPPE BERTHELOT_

Western influence was very strongly felt in sculpture and painting in Russia during the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries. Narrowly confined to the representation of conventional types of saints, these arts did not acquire either personality or expression for two centuries. It was not until the Eighteenth Century that they began to raise statues to the memory of Russia's great men: one of the first monuments was consecrated, as was indeed just, to Peter the Great, Russia's great reformer; in his lifetime, Count Bartolomeo Rastrelli the sculptor, father of the architect, executed a _Peter the Great on Horseback_, which was cast in bronze in 1847; but the successors of Peter the Great did not like this group which they did not consider sufficiently animated and would not allow it to be erected on a public square. Catherine II. had Falconet model a _Peter the Great_ mounted on a fiery horse climbing up a rock; this bronze group is placed in the centre of the Square of Peter the Great on the Neva, at St. Petersburg. Among the most celebrated works of Russian sculpture, we may cite the bronze monument erected to the memory of Prince Poyarski and the butcher Minine on the Red Square, Moscow (by Martoss, rector of the Academy of Fine Arts, St. Petersburg, in 1888); Lomonossov's monument (by Martoss); those of Generals Barclay de Tolly and Koutousov (1818-1836 after the model by B. Orlovski, placed in front of the Cathedral of Kazan, St. Petersburg); the colossal bust of Alexander I. (by Orlovski); the commemorative monument of Alexander I. (1832, by Montferrand), with a statue of the Angel of Peace, by Orlovski; the statue of Krilov, the fabulist, 1855, by Baron Clodt in the Summer Garden, St. Petersburg; an equestrian statue of the emperor Nicholas I. (by Clodt, 1859, on the St. Mary square); the monument of Novgorod, elevated in memory of the millenary of the Russian occupation (1862), in the form of a gigantic bell containing scenes from Russian history, by Mikiechin; the monument to Catherine II.

by Mikiechin, she being represented as surrounded by her generals and statesmen (1874, before the Alexander Theatre); the monument to Pushkin in Moscow (1830, by Objekuchin and Bogomolov); the monument to Bohdan-Chmelnizki, at Kiev (1873, by Mikiechin and other sculptors).

The princ.i.p.al Russian sculptors are Popov, Antokolski (statue of Ivan the Terrible, 1871, in St. Petersburg), Tchichov and E. Lanceray.

They are characterized by a very p.r.o.nounced realism that is common to all.

Russian painting has developed in various directions during the last two centuries under the influence of Western Europe; until the first half of the Nineteenth Century the imitation of Italian painting, the cla.s.sical French school and the execution of strictly academic painting were the three princ.i.p.al paths attempted by the Russian artists. But for half a century, art has found a national expression for itself. At the end of the Eighteenth and beginning of the Nineteenth Century, the princ.i.p.al representatives of religious and historical painting were Losenko (died in 1773), Antropov (died in 1792), Akimov (died in 1814), Ugriumov (died in 1823), Levizki (died in 1822), Ivanov (died in 1823), and Moschov (died in 1839).

The landscape and marine painters of greatest repute are Sim. and Sil. Schtchedrin (the first died in 1804, and the second in 1830), Pritchetnikov (died in 1809), F. Alekseiev (died in 1824). Academic painting was cultivated princ.i.p.ally by Tropinin (died in 1827), Warnek (died in 1843), Lebediev (died in 1837), Worobiev (died in 1855), K. Rabus (died in 1857), Bruni (died in 1875), Markov (died in 1878), A. Beidemann (died in 1869) and Willewalde. The chief painter of the romantic school is K. Brullov, who formed a school and had numerous scholars. Other romantic painters of repute are Bronnikov and various landscape and marine painters such as Aivasovski, Bogolnibov, L. Lagorio and A. Mechtcherski.

Religious and popular painting has A. Ivanov for its representative.

The princ.i.p.al realistic painters in genre and historical painting are Fedotov, Makovski, Perov, Polenor, Vereschagin, etc.

[Ill.u.s.tration: STATUE OF PETER THE GREAT AND THE ADMIRALTY PALACE, ST. PETERSBURG.]

Ornamental sculpture seems to be superior to statuary in Russia: it is abundantly practised in the decoration of churches; the innumerable chapels standing at the street corners in honour of some saint possess icons and lamps of bronze and silver; the iconostases of the cathedrals are extremely rich,--gold, silver-gilt, silver, lapis-lazuli, malachite and enamel-work are lavishly employed there.

In the churches of Saint Isaac and the Saviour there are many admirable and veritable _chefs d'?uvre_ of originality and brilliancy to be found. The industry of bronze and goldsmith's work in religious objects is very flouris.h.i.+ng and gives occupation to numerous workmen and artists in Moscow and St. Petersburg. An imperial manufactory produces the mosaics which occupy such a great place in the decoration of the churches.

Industrial arts are very prosperous in Russia and have made great progress during the last century: silken goods are no longer imported from Lyons; and the Russian cabinet-makers produce beautiful furniture, not only in their national style, but in the purest forms of French art of the Louis XV. and Louis XVI. styles. Civil goldsmith's work and jewellery have also been benefited by the national Renaissance: the Emperor Alexander III. restored to honour the national feminine costume for official b.a.l.l.s, and ordered works of art to be made after the models of the Muscovite style, and indeed even after the marvels found in the excavations of the Cimmerian Bosphorus.

The religious images, particularly those made in Moscow and Kazan, come very near being works of art. Numerous manufactories produce icons painted on wood or copper, ornamented with reliefs of copper, _crysocale_, silver, silver-gilt and gold. The workmen are monks and peasants: each part of the icon--eyes, nose, mouth, hands and feet--is executed by a specialist who always makes the same thing, after the immutable types that the Muscovite convents received from Mount Athos.

_RUSSIAN MUSIC_

_A. E. KEETON_

Russian music is the strangest paradox--it owes more to the music of other countries than any other school, yet no music is more thoroughly individual and unmistakable. It clothes itself after the form and fas.h.i.+on of its neighbours, but beneath its garb peeps out a physiognomy indubitably Sclavonic. Its utterances impress us as the most modern--yet the student who would correctly a.n.a.lyze many of its unique characteristics of harmony and modulation is often obliged to take a flying leap backwards over a s.p.a.ce of centuries in order to investigate old Church modes, or Persian and Arabian scale systems, both so ancient as to be well-nigh forgotten in Western Europe.

Sixty years ago, there was no Russian school of music, properly speaking; then suddenly it sprang into being. The wonderful rapidity of its growth almost confuses one. Its exponents at once displayed the astonis.h.i.+ng receptiveness common to their race. _D'un trait_, as the French would say, they appropriated the knowledge and experience which the Italian and German schools had been slowly ama.s.sing for centuries. Technique, form, counterpoint--all these they found ready made to their hand, and borrowed them unstintingly. Had they done this and no more, the onlooker might have dismissed them as clever plagairists, and probably no one would have paid them any further attention. But they had other means at their disposal. Their country contained a treasure-house of native melody and rhythm; a region albeit which few Russians had hitherto thought it worth their while to explore. It is true that, since the middle of the Seventeenth Century, tentative excursions had been made in this direction from time to time, chiefly, though, by outsiders settled in Russia, nor had any of their efforts led to very appreciable results. The man who first turned with serious intent to the pent-up musical resources of his own country was Michael Ivanovitch Glinka.

He had sufficient strength of purpose to carry out his designs--he became the founder of the modern Russian school of music and the father of Russian opera.

Glinka belonged to a good if not very wealthy family, who lived upon their estate in the government of Smolensk, where he was born in 1804.

From babyhood upwards he delighted his friends and relations by his apt.i.tude not for music alone, but also for languages, literature, zoology, botany--in fact, for each and every intellectual pursuit which came in his way. The brilliance of his college course in St.

Petersburg was noteworthy. He quitted it to occupy a civil post under Government, a position, however, which he soon abandoned, in order to devote himself solely to music. Like so many other men of genius, he married a woman quite incapable of comprehending his artistic aims and ambitions; to quote the words of a Russian writer, Madame Glinka, _nee_ Maria Petrovna, "was only a pretty doll, who loved society and fine clothes, and had no sympathy whatever with her husband's romantic, poetic side." One is glad to state that Glinka never had to struggle with poverty. He died at Berlin in 1857.