Liberal Arts and Sciences

"The Russian Gérôme" – thus was Vereshchagin dubbed by English critics in 1872 and the comparison was repeatedly to be made by contemporaries. This article looks at where the two artists really do reveal similarities and at the deep-rooted differences in their presentation of the Orient, with an emphasis on Vereshchagin’s first large work, his Turkestan series. Although Vereshchagin also took up Oriental subjects later in his career, in this author’s opinion the Turkestan series represents the most fruitful attempt to master the French model of Orientalising painting, above all that of Gérôme, not only in his own oeuvre but in Russian nineteenth-century art as a whole. As such, it provides us with ideal material to assess the individual and national features of Vereshchagin’s Orientalism.

Antoine Chrysostome Quatremère de Quincy was one of the most active and influential figures of French
culture who participated in shaping the artistic policy in France for many years. This aspect of his work is the most explored
one. Quatremère’s treatises are considered primarily in the cultural context of his time, which was determined by
the confrontation between Neoclassicism and Romanticism. The place of Quatremère’s views in the history of European
aesthetic thought is so far less studied. It is from this perspective that we focus on the analysis of Quatremère’s treatise
“Essay on the Nature, the End and the Means of Imitation in the Fine Arts” (1823). Particular attention is paid to the points
of its intersection and divergence with the conceptions of mimesis, which had been formed in Plato’s and Aristotle’s philosophy.
We also point out the symptoms of the nineteenth-century devaluation of the notion of mimesis in Quatremère’s
treatise.

В 1830-е гг. в творчестве Поля Делароша складывается историческая картина нового типа. Для понимания специфики этой картины ключевой является категория нарратива. В статье на избранных примерах обозначена модель повествования в классической исторической живописи и предложен анализ нарративной структуры картины Делароша «Кромвель у гроба Карла I». К анализу привлечен контекст картины — ее рецепция современниками, ее сюжетные источники в исторических трудах Шатобриана и Гизо, мысли Гизо о приемах повествования в литературе и историографии, суждения современников об особенностях исторического нарратива самого Гизо. В статье показано, что в «Кромвеле» Делароша повествование одновременно и претерпевает принципиальные изменения относительно классической своей модели, и получает импульс к исчезновению. В этом произведении доля описания, обеспечивающего зримую экспозицию сцены, вытесняет долю собственно рассказа, приводящего сцену в действие, которого здесь очень мало, а то, что есть, незначительно и не вполне понятно. Это действие ускользает от идентификации с той или иной «функцией», т. е. типом действия в его значении для фабулы. Поэтому оно сохраняет смысловую неопределенность и противоречивость. Вместе с этим и отчасти благодаря этому усиливается сходство исторической репрезентации с реальностью.

In 1834, Anatoly Demidov gave Karl Brullov’s The Last Day of Pompeii to Nicholas I as a gift. The article interprets this incident in the context of Demidov’s complex relationship with the emperor, understood as an implicit polemic dialogue about the symbolic values. By shedding light on circumstances that have not been taken into account by either prior historians of the Demidov family or specialists in Brullov’s work, the dual meaning of Demidov’s gesture of a gift is revealed. Among other things, attention is given to the intention of Demidov’s little-studied “Letters on Russia.” His activities as an art patron and as the largest collector of contemporary French painting are examined from a new point of view.

The article offers a new look at Vyacheslav Schwarz's painting “The tsar's procession on the pilgrimage” (1868) as well as at the historical thought in Russian art of the 19th century. Some of the visual, historiographical, and literary sources of the painting have not been previously identified, and are revealed in this article for the first time. “The tsar's procession” is considered in the national and international cultural contexts. The article explains the view on history in general and on Russian history in particular that is promoted by this work of Schwarz. Among others, the following questions are answered: Why is this picture sometimes called “The queen's procession”? Whose is the sleigh featured in the scene? What is the meaning of the wooden architecture here? What are the artistic and literary reminiscences of the depicted melted snow? The key concept the article introduces and interprets is the notion of “lyrical historicism”.

... The Preslav Text Type has more extant witnesses than the Old one. 3. At the beginning of the XIII century St. Sawa of Serbia introduced the Typ-icon of Jerusalem in the Serbian ChilanderMonastery on Mount Athos. It was meant to serve as the basis for monastery needs. ...