Parsuna is an age-old and poorly studied genre of portrait painting

From time immemorial, mankind tried to capture the surrounding world, its thoughts and emotions. It took a long time before the rock paintings were transformed into full-fledged pictures. In the Middle Ages, portrait painting was expressed mainly in the image of the faces of the saints - icon painting. And only from the end of the 16th century artists begin to create portraits of real people: political, social and cultural figures. This kind of art was called "parsuna" (photo works are presented below). This type of portrait painting has become widespread in Russian, Belarusian and Ukrainian culture.

Parsuna - what is it?

Its name was given to this type of painting from the distorted Latin word persona - "personality". That's right at the time called portraits in Europe. Parsuna is a generalized name for the works of Russian, Ukrainian and Belarusian portraiture of the late 16th and 17th centuries, which combines iconography with a more realistic interpretation. This is an early and somewhat primitive portrait genre, common in the Russian kingdom. Parsuna is the original synonym for a more modern concept of "portrait", regardless of technique, style and time of writing.

The emergence of the term

In 1851, the publication of the "Antiquities of the Russian State" was published, containing many illustrations. The fourth section of the book was compiled by IM Snegirev, who first attempted to generalize all existing materials on the history of the Russian portrait. It is believed that it was this author who first mentioned what a parsuna is. However, as a scientific term, this word became widespread only in the second half of the 20th century after the publication of E. Ovchinnikova "Portrait in Russian Art of the XVII Century." She stressed that the parsuna is an early easel portrait painting of the late 16th and 17th centuries.

Characteristic features of the genre

Parsuna emerged in the transitional period of Russian history, when the medieval worldview began to undergo transformation, which led to the emergence of new artistic ideals. It is believed that the works in this artistic direction were created by the Armory Chamber painters - SF Ushakov, G.Odolsky, IA Bezmin, I.Maximov, M.I. Choglokov and others. However, these works of art, as a rule, were not signed by their creators, therefore it is impossible to confirm the authorship of certain works. The date of writing such a portrait was not mentioned anywhere, which makes it difficult to establish a chronological sequence of creation.

Parsuna is a genre of portrait painting that arose under the influence of the West European school. The style and style of the letter are conveyed in bright and quite colorful colors, but still the icon-painting traditions are observed. In general, parsuns are heterogeneous in both material and technological terms, as well as in the stylistic. However, oil paints are increasingly used to create images on canvas. Portrait resemblance is very conditional, often using some attributes or a signature, through which you can determine who exactly is portrayed.

As noted by Lev Lifshits, doctor of art criticism, the authors of the parsun did not try to accurately convey the facial features or the state of mind of the person being portrayed, they sought to observe the clear canons of the stencil presentation of the figure that would correspond to the title or rank of the model - ambassador, voivode, prince, boyar. To better understand what a parsuna is, it is enough to look at the portraits of that time.

Types

To somehow order the specimens of portrait painting of that era, contemporary art critics identified the following categories of parsun, based on personalities and painting techniques:

- tempera on the board, gravestone portraits (Fedor Alekseevich, Fedor Ivanovich, Alexey Mikhailovich);

- Images of high-ranking individuals: princes, nobles, staunts (Lutkin, Repnin's gallery, Naryshkin);

- images of church hierarchs (Joachim, Nikon);

- "parsun" icon.

"Scenic" ("parsun") icon

This type includes images of saints, for which the artist used oil paints (at least in colorful layers). The technique of execution of such icons is as close as possible to the classical European. "Parsunnye" icons refer to the transitional period of painting. There are two main techniques of classical oil painting, used to depict the faces of the saints at that time:

- drawing on canvas using dark ground;

- work on a wooden base with the use of light ground.

It is worth noting that the parsuna is a far from fully studied genre of portrait Russian painting. And the culturologists will have to make many more interesting discoveries in this area.