PARIS — Politicians who sometimes wonder about the deeper motivations of Russian diplomacy should pay a long visit to the most remarkable show of art from Russia ever staged anywhere.On view at the Louvre, “Holy Russia” offers much more than a fascinating display of works of art from far-flung institutions inside and outside Russia.
The exhibition book, edited by Jannic Durand of the Louvre and Tamara Igumnova of the Moscow Historic State Museum, effectively puts together the material evidence illustrating the conflicting components that went into the making of Russian culture from its inception. The Kingdom of Rus, as it was originally known, came about as a synthesis of human groups and cultural characteristics that seemed as fit to go together as fire and water. It was founded in the ninth century by marauding Scandinavians pouring from present-day Sweden into lands largely populated by Finns mixing with Slavs who were slowly arriving from territories west of present-day Russia.
The earliest surviving Russian chronicle, “An Account of Ancient Times,” tells of the alliance forged by the Slavs and the Finns against the “Variagi,” as Russians call the ancient invaders. Their feats extended as far as France where the “Varègues” or “Varenges” left their name to the town of Varengeville in Normandy — a detail ignored in the exhibition book. A chieftain called Rurik became the ruler of the new kingdom. Thus came into existence the Rurikid dynasty, the first in Russia that owes its name to the land of the Rus, known alike to the Latin chroniclers of medieval Europe and to Iranian geographers using Arabic, the international language of the Muslim East.
How deep the Scandinavian imprint was can be gauged from the weapons and jewels recovered from tombs on territories stretching from the north of modern Russia to the south of present-day Ukraine. The 10th-century fibulae excavated from a funerary chamber in the northern town of Pskov and another discovered in Kiev, now the capital of Ukraine, are no different from costume jewels of this type found in Scandinavia.
The rise of Christianity was the unifying factor that laid the foundation of Russian culture. As early as 959 a Princess Olga sent an embassy to the Germanic emperor Otto requesting the dispatch of a bishop, partly in the hope of raising the status of the kingdom of the Rus. To no avail. It was only in 987 that her grandson Vladimir, keen to obtain the hand of the Byzantine emperor’s sister, Princess Anne, agreed in exchange to adhere to Christianity. Byzantium, shaken by uprisings in its non-Greek possessions, desperately needed to recruit Variagi mercenaries. The deal was concluded. As good as his word, Vladimir ordered in 988 the conversion of the entire population of Kiev, which became the historical birthplace of Russian culture.
Acceptance of the new religion was not immediate. In the struggle for the throne of Kiev that followed Vladimir’s death, his younger sons Boris and Gleb, who had converted to Christianity, were slain by their brother Sviatopolk. Their memory as saintly martyrs was henceforth perpetuated in icons, the Russian word borrowed from Byzantine Greek for holy “images.”
A 14th-century icon from the monastery of Zverin in Novgorod shows the two brothers wearing an attire that reveals a third component in the complex mix of Russian art — the Middle Eastern element. While their swords reproduce the Western model, the pearl-studded leather strips hanging from their belts and their armlets are royal costume fittings worn by the emperors of Sasanian Iran and their early Islamic successors.
The multiple strands, North European, Byzantine and Middle Eastern, kept recurring through much of Russian history, occasionally interweaving in astonishing fashion.
A magnificent limestone capital from the Church of Nativity erected between 1192 and 1196 in the town of Vladimir has the shape of a Romanesque capital, but its formal ornament is carved in a style reminiscent of the repertoire of Islamic Iran with its distant Hellenistic legacy. A pillar from the same church associates five-lobed palmettes common in 10th- and 11th-century Iran with knotted motifs reminiscent of Viking ornament.
The fascination with Northern Europe, more particularly Germanic lands, was lasting. An armilla, or shoulder application, depicting the resurrection of Jesus in champlevé enamels on gilt copper, made in the late 12th century somewhere between the Rhine and the Meuse, was listed in the Cathedral of the Dormition treasury in Vladimir by the 17th century. The head of a man from the town of Old Riazan would not surprise in Romanesque sculpture from Burgundy.
By then a profoundly original figural art was blossoming, most of it known mainly from fragments. The head of a man painted in the late 12th century on the walls of the now vanished first cathedral in Smolensk is remarkable for its expressiveness.
An apex was reached in the first third of the 13th century. The twin influences of Ottonian Germany and Byzantine Greece blend in its ultimate masterpiece, the golden doors of the Cathedral of the Nativity in the town of Suzdal. The scenes painted in gold on the dark metallic ground are Byzantine in inspiration without really resembling Greek medieval art, while the lion masks are based on German prototypes. These too have a distinctive expressiveness.
Somehow, the mid-13th-century Mongol invasion followed by devastation and 200 years of occupation did not stop artistic creation.
Russian manuscript painting, unknown outside its homeland, produced stunning masterpieces. On a vellum leaf from “Simon’s Psalter” illuminated in Novgorod, Jesus stands in a stylized landscape, giving the viewer the searching look of a man intentionally alive.
Drastically opposite trends thrived simultaneously. The icon of Saints George, Climachus and Blaise, painted in Novgorod around the same time, is stylized in a rigid manner based on early Byzantine tradition. The elongated Climachus, about three times the size of George and Blaise, stands against an erstwhile emerald green and intense red ground, revealing a taste for contrasted colors that would be revived in avant-garde painting of the 20th century.
Western influence continued to creep in. Admirable frescoes have been revealed by fragments excavated in Pskov, where the Church of the Nativity and other ecclesiastical constructions demolished by Peter the Great stood until the 18th century. Two female figures in long veils, presumed to be saints, owe as much to awareness of Gothic art from 14th-century Germany in the handling of their smiling faces, as they do to the Byzantine Renaissance for the folds of their drapes.
The attraction to West European art persisted well into the 15th century. The silver-gilt and gilt copper panaghiarion signed in 1435 by Master Ivan Arip offers spectacular evidence of the admiration felt for German goldsmiths. The poly-lobed base and the raised stand with elaborate fleur-de-lis are in the best tradition of flamboyant Gothic monstrances. Curiously, the four lions and the kneeling angels supporting the paten and cover used in the Orthodox ritual send back echoes to much earlier German art.
The multiplicity of strands from East and West never dried up in Russia. When a steel helmet with gold overlay was commissioned for Ivan the Terrible who ruled from 1533 to 1547, the work was entrusted to a Muslim armorer, apparently called in from the lands of the Mongol-Turkic Golden Horde in southern Ukraine, if not from further south. This is shown by the characteristic Turkish shape of the helmet as well as the Iranian-derived arabesques associated with a large border of stylized Arabic script.
To the Russians themselves, the twin attraction to East and West never felt contradictory. Sergei Shchukin, one of the greatest collectors of French Impressionism, also had an outstanding collection of Iranian manuscript painting. In ballet, that supreme Russian achievement in Western-type performing arts, the Eastern touch is evident — as shown by Leon Bakst’s designs.
Nothing has changed. Early art and its ancient roots tell you why.
Holy Russia. The Louvre. Through May 24.
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