RUSSIAN ICON IN EUROPEAN MUSEUM COLLECTIONS

Tamara Yu. Yureneva

Tamara Yu. Yureneva — DSc in History, Leading Research Fellow, Russian Institute of Cultural and Natural Heritage by named D. S. Likhachev, Bersenevskaya nab., 20, 119072 Moscow, Russia. E-mail: iureneva@mail.ru

History of Arts

2017

Vol. 45

Pp. 176-189

May 11, 2017

September 15, 2017

75.046+351.852.1

85.146.56(2)+85.101(4)

The author considers collections of Russian icons in European museums, analyses historical and socio-cultural factors that have conditioned their formation and composition. During the XIX century, the Russian icon interested collectors mainly as a rarity or an object of church use. Artistic re-evaluation of the icon, which took place at the beginning of the 20^th century, resulted in rapid growth of icon collections in Russia. However, this “discovery” of the Russian icon as a phenomenon of art did not take place in Europe to the full: the First World War and then revolutionary upheavals in Russia intervened. In the first half of the 20^th century, European museums, with the exception of the Swedish National Museum, did not have representative collections of the Russian icon. By the second half of the century, when foreign museums began to show special interest in Russian icons, for the most part masterpieces of Old Russian painting had already been in Russian museums. That is why in European countries there are no collections of equal worth to collections in Moscow and St. Petersburg. At the same time, some European museums have formed very interesting and representative collections of Russian icons, of great artistic, cognitive and educational value.

Russian icon, Russian medieval painting, icon collecting, collections of Russian icons in foreign museums, Russian art in foreign museums, Russian cultural heritage abroad.

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