Portrait in the art of Russia. Portrait in the fine arts

In this article we will look at a portrait in the art of Russia. The value of this genre is that the artist tries to convey with the help of materials the image of a real person. That is, with due skill, we can get acquainted through a picture with a certain era.

In addition, painters try not only to depict external attributes, but also to convey the inner state of the person who poses.

Read on, and you will learn the milestones of the development of the Russian portrait from the Middle Ages to the present day.

Portrait genre in art

The portrait in the fine arts as we understand it today, has emerged relatively recently. Only in the middle of the seventeenth century a historian at the court of the French King Louis XIV, Andre Felibien, proposed to call this word only images of people.

Until this time, this term meant all images, whether it be an animal, plant or mineral. In the Middle Ages, the beasts had a slightly different attitude than now. They could be summoned to court, tortured and tried, according to legal norms.

Following Felibenom Arthur Schopenhauer expressed the idea that animals are inherent only generic signs, they do not have a human personality. Also today icons are not considered portraits, because they are not written from the original.

Thus, a portrait in art and literature appeared long ago, but in ancient times it was understood by any "fine work".

The development of this genre is due to two things - the improvement of writing techniques (composition, anatomy, etc.), as well as changing the perception of a person's place in the world. The greatest flourishing of portraits occurs in the eighteenth century, when ideas of individuality and the realization of the ideal in personal life prevailed in Western Europe.

Early period

Actually, the portrait in the art of Russia was born only on the border of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Before that, there were images in the medieval style, when the individuality receded into the background.

The basis of the early period of Russian painting is made up of icons. It was such works that existed until the seventeenth century.

But the changes began in the late period of Kievan Rus. Up to now, similarities have come to the group portraits of the family of Svyatoslav, the daughters of Yaroslav the Wise. There are also several examples of drawings with some personality, for example, Yaroslav Vsevolodovich with a temple in his hand. So he was rewarded for donating to construction work.

The first attempts to depart from the canonical and ecclesiastical letters in the direction of secular painting occurred during the reign of Ivan the Terrible. We see his images in some books. This step was made solely thanks to Stoglav Cathedral, which decided and legalized the reflection of kings, princes and people on icons.

Parsuna

In the seventeenth century, painting continued to improve. We see that the portrait in the art of Russia acquires more and more individual features. There is such a genre as "parsuna". This is a distorted word "person".

Similar works were still created on the plates of tempera, that is, in the style of the icon painters, but depicted lifetime images of people. The most ancient such picture was the parsun of Mikhail Vasilievich Skopin-Shuisky.

True, it was created as a gravestone portrait of a "Mantle." But the prince depicted on it was written "resurrected", revived in a better world, therefore its features are different from the canonical faces on the icons.

Gradually there is a departure from the church dogma, technology from Europe is borrowed. So, from the territory of the Commonwealth comes the "Sarmatian portrait", a genre of images of gentry.

In addition, painters from Western Europe come to the kingdom of Moscow to teach local artists. There are "titulars" (special books depicting exemplary portraits of European rulers).

The Petrine era

Actually, the "portrait" in the art of Russia appears only during the reign of Peter the Great. It was this period that became a turning point in the life of the country. Art reflected the trend of new trends.

The portraits appear voluminous and deep, artists master the perspective. An understanding of the play of light and shadow is born, experiments with flowers on the canvas begin. There is also a final separation of church and secular art.

Now the painting is divided into three currents - Archaizing, Rossica and the national school.

The first is the transition from "parsuna" to easel painting. The second is represented by the works of foreign masters in Russia. Domestic school was expressed in the works of Nikitin, Antropov, Vishnyakov, Matveyev and Argunov.

It is noteworthy that the Russian artists of this period first mastered, so to speak, "catch up", Europeans. But in a few years already works appear completely independent, with their own vision. That is, the development of local centers of world-class painting begins.

Late 18th century

Gradually, a portrait in Russian art becomes the property of the middle strata of society. If before the middle of the eighteenth century only noble persons were portrayed, close to the royal family, now there are portraits of not only the nobility and landowners, but even several peasants. The latter, in particular, took place solely through educational ideas in society.

In the fifties and sixties of the eighteenth century portraits of Empress Elizabeth Petrovna set a special tone. Many noble families ordered themselves paintings, similar to this pattern.

Also important researchers see the independent way of domestic masters. They expressed their vision in colors and attributes more inherent in the Baroque, compared to European artists who worked in the Rococo style.

The works of Russian painters are simply filled with colorful images, faces filled with life, ruddy and rosy-cheeked ladies.

Classicism and the Silver Age

Gradually there is a retreat in the direction of chamber. At the end of the eighteenth century, it is already difficult to discern the West European and Russian portrait. Genre in the visual arts enters the world stage. Only now there are no bright and magnificent baroque forms.

There is a transition through rococo to neoclassicism and pre-romance. Sentimental and light notes appear. The main feature of this period was historicism. That is, the tone was set by the ceremonial portraits of the imperial family.

This era is reflected in the works of Shchukin, Rokotov, Borovikovsky and Levitsky.

Then comes the period of romanticism. Here the most famous artists are Bryullov, Varnek, Tropinin and Kiprensky.

Later comes realism, which is inherent in the paintings of Repin, Surikov and Serov.

The silver age of Russian painting presented the world with such masters as Malevich, Vrubel, Malyutin, Somov, Konchalovsky and others.

Soviet portrait

The portrait in contemporary art is determined not by ideology, as it was in Soviet times, but by the financial side of the issue.

But between the paintings of Malevich and our time there is a whole era of the Soviet Union.

Here the ideas of the first wave of avant-gardism develop, the Moscow and Leningrad schools, the "Builders of Bratsk". The fundamental feature was socialist realism.

Thus, today we have become acquainted with the history of the portrait in Russian art.