The Image of a Saint through the Prism of Earthly Living: On the Compositional Role of a Saint in Icons with Vita Scenes in ‘Srednik’ in the Second Half of the 17th Century

Abstract

In this article we take up a problem concerning the compositional and semantic role of the saint’s image in the new vita (living) icons type, appeared in the 17th century in Old Rus’ (for example, vita icon of the Saint John the Forerunner taking place in the iconostasis of the church of Elijah the Prophet in Yaroslavl, beginning of the 1660s). Such an approach is unique except for Preobrazhenskii’s article. This article is interdisciplinary in nature dealing with a problem of narration inherent to the Christian art, of the relationship between icons and sociocultural tendencies in the transitional period of the Late Middle Ages in Russia. This study allows to consider icons not only in the context of Old Rus’ painting, but also like an expression of the universal functioning, compositional structure and rhetoric of the image. Attention to the saint’s image, represented as a “portrait”, is explained by the fact that the narrative cycle is placed in the saint’s zone. In the traditional vita (living) icon a saint is placed in the central zone (“srednik”) being semantically the same as the saint in the new type. The narrative cycle is placed on the border. Thus the saint in the new icons’ type is regarded from the perspective of the earthly living. Through the Christian history of image a saint’s “portrait” is often presented in some implicit narration even if there’s no plot. In our article this effect is more intensified because of the focus on the earthly world occupying almost all the composition. The painting technique called “life-likeness” (“zhivopodobie”) also contribute to this effect. Moreover, we think that the saint’s image in these icons follows the Stroganov school icons in the context of the transformations of the self-consciousness in the 17th century.