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J. D. Bos an essay on visiting the Museum of Russian Icons [ Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | photo gallery] [ continued ]
In glass cases I find collections of crosses, stamps, liturgical artifacts, and the tools and raw materials needed to grind pigment or prepare icons for painting. Many of the icons are bowed away from the wall, as if they'd been painted onto wooden barrel sections. The explanation is a fascinating bit of art history. After the front surface of a hardwood panel to be painted is sanded smooth, the icon-maker coats it with a gesso of marble dust and animal glue made from rabbit skins or isinglass (fish bladders). After the icon is painted and dries, it receives a preserving layer of linseed oil. Since water can only evaporate from the wooden substrate now through the unprotected back of the piece, it curves over time. As I pass from piece to piece, skimming wall plaques and overhearing docents answering questions in whispering voices, scraps of alchemical and technical trivia sublimate onto my awareness: Gold leaf must be applied with great delicacy, the artisan carrying and placing the leaf with the end of a soft paintbrush, then blow gently upon it to smooth it against the surface of the icon. Thus gilt in these paintings is known as "the breath of the monk" . . . Haloes come in varying values of bright goldness; the holier the saint or holy figure, the brighter the gold. In icon versions of the Last Supper, Judas has no halo. He can be recognized as well by the money bag he is invariably holding . . . Icons had a power. If you sewed an icon to the corner of a tablecloth, the tablecloth could be thrown over any rough surface, and by virtue of the holy image it could now be used as an altar . . . The minerals which were crushed to make paint pigment were very expensive and difficult to obtain. For example, lapis lazuli-needed for the blue veil of the Queen of Heaven, Mother of Christ, Mary-had to be imported from the mountains of what is now Afghanistan. (One supposes the high cost of these ingredients explains why the monk artists of the Russian icon tradition became very skilled at painting miniatures: the smaller the picture, the less paint and pigment needed.) I want badly for there to be more and better information about the icons. In the basement-level grouping, a wooden carving is labeled "Saint Nil Stolbenksy" but might be less confusingly written as "Saint Nil of Stolbensky." Or should that be Stolbensk? In any case, Saint Nil is a fascinating figure, with a gaunt long face reminiscent of pre-Rus depictions of the Slavic father-god Perun. I suppose actually that Nil and Perun both resemble the wooden ornaments carved into the shape of the head of Santa Claus that you can buy year-round at the Christmas Tree Shoppe. For that matter, Saint Nicholas is found among the icons as well, though without any of the latter-day trappings of westernized Christmas. His facial type is nonetheless distinctive, in a way the docent euphemizes as "the Nicholas look." Nicholas is not alone in looking a bit bizarre in his stereotyped depiction. There is a traditional motif, the acheiropoieta or "image not made by hands"-a version in paint of the image of Christ's face that appeared on the veil of Veronica. The disembodied head stops at the "wet beard", and has no neck. It floats in space like the head of Medusa on the shield of Perseus. Why are his lips puckered? * * * On another visit, I pause from admiring icons to take a break in the Tea Room itself. I have a cup of Russian tea, called "Anastasia," made by the Kusmi Tea Company (Paris, France). Sitting there, sipping, thinking, I can hear the soft sound of traffic outside, through the basement walls. Strains of Russian choral music drift down the hall, filtering through the open floor plan from the gallery upstairs. There are gaps between louder moments in the song where the music is silent. Its shifting moods reflect the way a museum-goer would experience shifts in thought as they pass from painting to painting, from one evoking reflection to another which evokes emotion. The arrangement and even height of the icons on display around me invite the viewer to stand directly before them, bringing one's face close to the painted face. I've walked through every room, but these are not paintings to walk past, to take in at a glance; the space invites intimate scrutiny. For a relatively small Museum, I don't feel like I've begin to see all there is to see in these works of art and devotion. As I sip my tea I find myself mulling over a metaphor: Just as the frame of an icon represents the material world, and the contents within the frame are the spiritual world, the mundane brick and beams around me contain a wholly different realm. And in the same way an icon might contain symbolic representations, a red horse or a white dove, alluding to larger spaces of theological or Scriptural meaning, a museum contains within its frame any number of symbols signifying at a larger whole. Any museum, then, is a museum of icons, and any icon is a microcosm-worlds within worlds. * * *
Earlier in my visit, the docent had explained that before the October Revolution visitors would have seen icons on the walls of buildings at every street corner in Moscow. Believers would feel compelled to stop and genuflect to show reverence before each and every one. I think I can I appreciate that feeling. THE MUSEUM OF RUSSIAN ICONS at 203 Union Street in Clinton, MA is open to visitors Tuesday-Friday from 11 am to 3 pm, and Saturdays 9 am to 3 pm. Readers may also be interested in:
Jenna Bos studied literature and art history at Boston University. She lives with her husband in Lunenburg, Mass |
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ISSN 2150-6795 |