“Peter I interrogates Tsarevich Alexei Petrovich” in the Tretyakov Gallery. Peter I interrogates Tsarevich Alexei Petrovich in Peterhof Peter I interrogates his son

The failure of recent religious paintings forced Ge to abandon this topic for a while. He again turned to history, this time Russian, dear and close to his soul.
At the First Traveling Exhibition, Ge showed his new work “Peter I Interrogates Tsarevich Alexei Petrovich in Peterhof.” The artist proposed a psychological interpretation of the plot, presenting the painting as a drama of a clash of personalities - adherents of opposing life values.

Tsarevich Alexei was well educated, knew several foreign languages ​​and, in essence, he in no way opposed the reforms, but he was disgusted by the despotic and harsh forts of the reign of Peter I.

It is still not clear whether he actually initiated the preparations for the seizure of power in Russia, or whether he became an involuntary hostage of his entourage, dissatisfied with the policies of the monarch. The prince fled to the West, from where he was returned and tortured to death in the Peter and Paul Fortress with the knowledge and order of his own father.
In a historical painting, the painter conveys the internal state of the characters. The apparent calmness of both, without gestures or external effects, is deceptive. This is a drama of experiences, a drama of mental anguish and difficult choices.
Ge very accurately chose the moment that he reflected in his painting. After studying the documents and a heated argument, Peter is no longer angry, but is bitterly convinced of his son’s betrayal. But before signing the sentence, he peers into Alexei’s face, still not losing hope of seeing repentance in him. The prince lowered his eyes under his father’s gaze, but the silent dialogue continues. The hanging edge of the blood-colored tablecloth is symbolic: it not only separates the characters, but seems to foreshadow the tragic resolution of this conflict.
The European atmosphere of the hall in Monplaisir is alien to the prince, who grew up in towers, and plays against him. But Alexei, confident that the emperor would not dare to stir up society against himself and would not be able to step over his father’s feelings, stubbornly remains silent. He remains Peter's opponent to the end.
The artist wanted, mainly, to convey to the viewer that the death sentence was signed not by the crowned executioner, but by a parent wounded in the heart, who made a decision in the interests of the state.
This picture gives off a chill. Dark walls and the cold mouth of the fireplace, stone floor, pale cold light, barely dispelling the twilight of the large hall. But the main cold is in the relationship between father and son, who have become irreconcilable opponents. The floor, laid out in black and white squares, resembles a chessboard, and the real characters on it are like two opposing pieces in a historical chess game.
In this tragic collision, the most important problem for the artist turned out to be the problem of the moral dignity of the individual. In 1892, he wrote in his “Notes”: “Ten years spent in Italy had an influence on me, and I returned from there a perfect Italian, seeing everything in Russia in a new light. I felt in everything and everywhere the influence and trace of Peter’s reform. This feeling was so strong that I involuntarily became fascinated by Peter... Historical pictures are hard to paint... A lot of research needs to be done, because people in their social struggle are far from ideal. While painting the painting “Peter I and Tsarevich Alexei,” I had sympathy for Peter, but then, after studying many documents, I saw that there could be no sympathy. I inflated my sympathy for Peter, said that his public interests were higher than his father’s feelings, and this justified his cruelty, but killed the ideal...”
The picture was met with great interest. Worldview disputes flared up around her, which to some extent have not subsided to this day. The canvas was immediately acquired by Pavel Mikhailovich Tretyakov, and now it is rightfully considered one of the most famous Russian historical works, mentioned in textbooks and school anthologies.

From the article/file "The Artist. About revelations in icon painting"
Comparative analysis of Repin’s painting “Ivan the Terrible Kills Ivan’s Son” and Ge’s painting “Peter I Interrogates Tsarevich Alexei”

The mother kisses the wounded child and presses him to her heart. The father presses his wounded son to his heart, covering his wound with his hands. A state that expresses love and care. It cannot be said that in Repin’s painting the father kills his son. The viewer needs to come up with this, create his own picture.

It is impossible to imagine Tsarevich Alexei in Ge’s painting “Tsar Peter Interrogates Tsarevich Alexei” in pink clothes. The vertical position of the prince and the concentration of black color give him strength and monumentality. And Peter cannot break through this pillar, he “beats his head against it,” but cannot do anything. Moreover, Peter looks up to his son. There is a certain screw movement in the figure of Peter, although he is sitting, he is almost running from his son. It is from him, and not from “running into” him, that he yields to his son. Here is a clash of statics, Alexey, and dynamics, Peter. Moreover, dynamics are weaker than statics. And if it weren’t for his lowered hands and looking inward, the prince would have been a very formidable force. If Alexey was looking at his father (from top to bottom), they would switch places functionally, he would be the interrogating party. There is a conflict here. And here Peter’s dusty, black boots are justified (foreign to all the surrounding luxury), this is a path, a movement, and these boots will trample everything in their path, including his son. Although in fact Peter, like a propeller, is ready to run away from his son, the movement of the “propeller” is directed from Alexei, and not towards him. Then there would be a greater conflict. Peter gives in to his son, almost runs away from him. The black color of Tsarevich Alexei’s caftan, unbreakable by anything, is “stronger” than the green with red lapels of Peter’s caftan. If the prince had been in pink clothes, this conflict would have disappeared completely. The function of pink in large quantities is joy. And if a person, looking at pink, talks about tragedy, he is deceiving himself. It’s the same as if we said about major music that it is a deep minor.

FILE "ARTIST, ABOUT REVELATIONS IN ICON PRESSURE"
Sergey Fedorov-Mystic
Maria Alexandrovna Almazova and her school.
(Due to the categorical objection of the main character of this essay, the author had to change the names and surnames of the people about whom he writes in this article.)

In 1978, I found myself within the walls of D.K.’s Palitra studio. “Hammer and Sickle”, which was headed by Maria Aleksandrovna Almazova, a fragile woman of short stature, with huge deep eyes looking at the world with admiration, an artist who put her whole soul into painting, and served Art as a Divinity, lived by this service and revealed her spirit, communion with Truth and Beauty. Childhood and admiration for beauty were combined in her with enormous willpower, discipline and an extraordinary mind. She was similar to her aunt, a brilliant pianist, who passed away in the prime of her life and creativity. She was distinguished by unerring taste, a high level of education and a hypnotic ability to see another person and an artist.
Maria Alexandrovna graduated from the Textile Institute, so she taught us to think in such categories as the rhythm of a picture, color, space, contrast, ornamentation. She taught me the concept of a super task and how the elements of painting work towards this super task.
Once, in the halls of the Tretyakov Gallery, while examining Ivanov’s painting “The Appearance of Christ to the People,” I noticed that the figure of Christ in the background is so secondary that the appearance of the Messiah is not here. In the foreground are undressed people (not naked, but undressed, with their backs carefully depicted), who are twice as large as the figure in the background. After all, the artist set a goal to depict the appearance of God, the transformation of the whole world, the change of the world - and here the figure of Christ is overshadowed by its mass and complexity by a large tree that occupies the entire center of the picture. The figure in the background is no different from the other figures. One could call it “The Appearance of Plato to the People” or some other philosopher. And the artist himself realized that the picture did not work out, and therefore did not want to finish it.
(If instead of a human figure there had been a small tree, a cypress, in the background, nothing in the picture would have changed.)

There is a figure in the background, if it is not there, nothing will change. And if you remove the figures of naked people, at least one in the foreground, the picture will collapse. Your eye, whether you like it or not, looks first of all at the bare back, which is more carefully drawn, and on a larger scale, than the figure of a certain person in the background. And this is unacceptable. In the picture, the main character is the bare back. But people are often blinded by the literary plot. If a person had a carpet with a luxurious pattern in front of him, he would never consider a minor detail, somewhere on the periphery, to be the main content of the pattern. This is what the eye sees. And these are the laws of composition.

If you close the small space of water in the picture, it becomes unclear what naked people are doing on the rocky ground, probably sunbathing. That is, there is no baptism by John here. And the clothes of the characters in the foreground are very carefully described, so carefully that these clothes begin to exist on their own, have their own existence, when the character already exists for the clothes, and not the clothes for the character. And the slightly blurred figure in the background cannot compete with the frozen folds and bright colors of the clothes in the foreground. She, the figure, becomes a “poor relative” in relation to the “principals and leaders,” the figures of the foreground. With their monstrous protocol design, the folds crush, the naked bodies crush, the meaning of the picture is lost. There is the appearance of bare backs, but there is no appearance of Christ to the people (including the audience).

So in Polenov’s painting “Christ and the Sinner,” the main thing is the landscape, stone buildings and cypress trees, and the figure of Christ mixes with the crowd and becomes secondary and insignificant, which cannot be the case in meaning.
In another of his paintings, “On the Shore of the Sea of ​​Tiberias,” the huge blue expanses of sky and water absorb the human figure. Its significance disappears. The sun is shining. The sea is calm, there is peace and serenity throughout. It seems that there is nothing to save humanity from. Everything is fine as it is. The artist carefully depicts pebbles on the shore. This is a plein air painting and nothing more. Everything is superficial, and the meaning of the coming of Christ as the Savior of mankind is absolutely not expressed.
Very often people obey the instructions that the title of the picture tells them. And they put on “plot glasses,” as it were. In the picture, one person presses another to his heart, but it turns out that he does not press him, but kills him. The one who hugs is in black, and the one who is hugged is in a pink caftan and green boots. They are reclining on the carpets. The man in the pink caftan has a completely infantile face, the man in black presses his wounded head to himself, kisses it, trying to close the wound with his hands and stop the bleeding. The man in the pink caftan and the infantile face must have been a sick man, apparently weak-minded, who hit his head on the chest, and the one in black, his father, jumped up, overturning the chair, and hugged his beloved son. We see a father distraught with grief. However, for some reason this does not make an impression. Why? If we detach ourselves from the plot and look at the construction of the picture, at the pictorial elements, then we see that the entire center of the picture is occupied by a large pink spot, there is a lot of it, the prince’s caftan, and it is located against the backdrop of warm carpets.
A large mass of pink color on a warm brown background evokes a feeling of comfort, peace, even tenderness. And this is the main color scheme of the whole picture, this is its coloring and it does not correspond to the stated super task. Just think: “How is it that a father kills his son? What a terrible conflict. Tragedy. What contrasts there must be, expressing a state of wild hatred, a clash between two people.” But we have nothing of that here. A person with an infantile face and in a pink outfit cannot be the opposing party.
A father hugs his son, what kind of clash is this? It seems like a tragedy in the face of the father, but along with the face, the artist carefully and lovingly paints the emerald-colored boots in the foreground, gold patterns and carnations, and also carefully depicts the patterns on the carpets, so that the face recedes into the background. And this is unacceptable, because a person’s face and a boot are incommensurable in their importance. This is the talent of the artist, to see that the main thing is in the image, and not in the thoughtless photographic image of matter, as such.
(If Ivan the Terrible had embraced the Shamakhan queen in pink clothes, it would have been a good love picture. The old man, burning with lust, impatiently jumped up from the throne, knocked it over, threw away his staff, and on the Persian carpets pressed the young maiden to his heart. Everything would have worked to the image. He could just as well be hugging the “Girl with Peaches” in a pink blouse. It would be a loving grandfather hugging his granddaughter. If there were sharp shadows, contrasts, different lighting intensities in the prince’s pink clothes. colors, somewhere muted, this would immediately add drama to the image. But there is nothing of this. We look at the meaningless pink spot in the center of the picture, and we do not experience any tragedy that the young man hit the corner of the chest, and the loving one. the father presses his head to his heart. Nobody kills anyone in the picture. You can say that the son, in a fit of epilepsy, broke his head, and the father, distraught with grief, presses him to his chest.)
The vertical walls and tiles are very stable, the stove is very stable, solid and homely, all in a curlicue. Everything stands straight, vertical, nothing collapses, there is no catastrophe. It depends on the artist what angle to give the same stove, what contrasts and lighting to give it, so that a feeling of disaster arises. Repin has a thoughtless statement of fact, “matter as such”
Variation 2) The mother kisses the wounded child and presses him to her heart. The father presses his wounded son to his heart, covering his wound with his hands. A state that expresses love and care. It cannot be said that in this picture the father kills his son. The viewer needs to come up with this, create his own picture.
From Tolstoy’s book “Prince Silver” it turns out that the son of the Terrible Ivan was a rather vile person, and even if historically he really wore a pink caftan, the artist, as a thinker, should not convey the feminine principle to him by dressing him in all pink. Surikov and Vrubel paint women in pink, but this is inappropriate for depicting a vile person. There is too much pink “marshmallow” for the film to have drama, a clash between people leading to murder. Detached, what kind of clash could there be between the black color, the Terrible’s cassock, and the pink color, the prince’s caftan? There can be no conflict, tension, or clash between black and pink. Pink versus black is too infantile and helpless. And we see such infantilism and helplessness in the prince. And we see that the strong personality of Ivan the Terrible hugs and presses the weak, helpless prince, his beloved son. This is how Repin portrayed him. There is no conflict, the painting does not seem to correspond to the title that the artist gave it.

An old man in black hugs a man in pink like a baby. By the way, pink is the color of babies, pink blankets, pink hats. And just about, swaying, he sings a lullaby: “Bayu-bayushki - bayu, don’t lie down on the edge.” A good touch for an auteur film, a scene of madness.

It is impossible to imagine Tsarevich Alexei in Ge’s painting “Tsar Peter Interrogates Tsarevich Alexei” in pink clothes. The vertical position of the prince and the concentration of black color give him strength and monumentality. And Peter cannot break through this pillar, he “beats his head against it,” but cannot do anything. Moreover, Peter looks up to his son. There is a certain screw movement in the figure of Peter, although he is sitting, he is almost running from his son. It is from him, and not from “running into” him, that he yields to his son. Here is a clash of statics, Alexey, and dynamics, Peter. Moreover, dynamics are weaker than statics. And if it weren’t for his lowered hands and looking inward, the prince would have been a very formidable force. If Alexey was looking at his father (from top to bottom), they would switch places functionally, he would be the interrogating party. There is a conflict here. And here Peter’s dusty, black boots are justified (foreign to all the surrounding luxury), this is a path, a movement, and these boots will trample everything in their path, including his son. Although in fact Peter, like a propeller, is ready to run away from his son, the movement of the “propeller” is directed from Alexei, and not towards him. Then there would be a greater conflict. Peter yields to his son, almost runs away from him. The black color of Tsarevich Alexei’s caftan, not broken by anything, is “stronger” than Peter’s green caftan with red lapels. If the prince had been in pink clothes, this conflict would have disappeared completely. The function of pink in large quantities is joy. And if a person, looking at pink, talks about tragedy, he is deceiving himself. It’s the same as if we said about major music that it is a deep minor.

The pink dominant in Paolo Veronese’s painting “The Lamentation of Christ” in the Hermitage is also inappropriate in meaning. A third of the picture is occupied by a young woman with golden curls, with her naked leg pointed forward, dressed in a luxurious pink dress, bewitching us with its folds and tints. This is the main character in the film. The body of Christ, in comparison, appears in the background, almost in shadow, only His illuminated shins come to the fore. It is indecent to come to a funeral in such a dress. The faces of people mourning Christ are very complacent. Tight space. The figures crushed Christ under themselves. And His body blends in color with the color of the fabric and with the earth. There is oppression and grounding. There is no future resurrection of Christ here. This is not an ordinary man, He has risen. But there is nothing like that in the picture, and the main object of the image is the pink dress of a young woman and her naked leg exposed forward. (Probably to the beloved Paolo Veronese.)
In the Rembrandt hall, the paintings “The Return of the Prodigal Son” and “The Prophet Nathan Convicts King David” hung opposite each other. Maria Alexandrovna drew our attention to the different functionality of the color red in different scenes. If in “The Return of the Prodigal Son” red gravitates towards orange, the color is very cozy, warming and this is love itself, then in “the denunciation of King David”, and the prophet denounces him for adultery and murder, in this plot the red color is very hard, aggressive, with deep shadows. I noticed that there are not only different plots, but also different Testaments. The New Testament is a Testament of love, and the Old Testament is harsh.
In the Tretyakov Gallery, examining Rublev’s icon “Archangel Michael,” she thought painfully: “Why a red cloak? Why red?”, and only when they told her that Archangel Michael was the leader of the heavenly army, she breathed a sigh of relief, then everything fell into place.
And with El Greco’s painting “The Apostles Peter and Paul” there was some misunderstanding. Looking at the red, very dramatic, color of the cloak of one of the apostles, Maria Alexandrovna functionally connected it with the story of Peter’s denial, the excitement of feelings and the sorrow of the spirit. The golden-green cloak of another apostle, which evoked a feeling of calm and tranquility, was not at all suitable for expressing this drama. These were the two fundamental color spots of the picture, the main volumes, the main functions. From this she began analyzing the painting. But the symbolism of the hands determined that in the red cloak it is still the Apostle Paul, and not Peter, he is leaning on the book of the law, and Peter is holding the key. Then Maria Alexandrovna stopped analyzing the painting, believing that the peaceful color did not express the gospel story associated with Peter’s denial. The picture is made in a realistic manner. This is not an icon where everything changes, since the spiritual world is expressed. And there Peter is already justified in golden ocher clothes, since there is nothing earthly there anymore.
The pink color of the clothes in Giorgione’s painting “Judith” is functionally justified. Beauty and youth here acquire spiritual and universal significance. The figure of Judith, standing in the foreground at full height, and occupying almost the entire picture, is balanced by the endless space behind it. The universal perspective is both heaven, the spiritual sky, and earth, all humanity. This is why Judith takes on such significance. She hides the sword behind the folds of her clothes, this is not a warlike sword, her graceful leg touches the head of Holofernes, the head is written without any naturalism, it is almost invisible at once. All this says that the feat was accomplished in the name of this beauty. The ovals in the picture create calm and clarity, and only the red folds of Judith’s clothing below speak of the excitement of the blood.
The technique when a powerful figure occupies the foreground of the picture and is balanced by the infinity of space, and thereby acquires universal significance, was quite often used by old masters, including Titian in his painting “Saint Sebastian”. There is terrible drama here, dying beauty. Moreover, the conflict is not given on earth, but by heaven. The brightest place in Sebastian's figure is his heart. (The heart is the throne of God in man). The combination of warm and cold, uneven illumination of the body enhances the drama of what is happening. At the end of his life, Titian no longer painted with brushes, but with his fingers, enhancing the expressiveness and strength of his strokes, imparting texture to the material. It was all the more surprising to see his depiction of Christ the King of the world with a very clearly depicted two-fingered finger. This surprised Maria Alexandrovna at first, but then she decided that double-fingering is a dogmatic image of the two natures of Christ, God and man, and there should be no vagueness in dogmas, everything should be very clear. That’s why the two-fingeredness is so clear.
But in the halls of the Tretyakov Gallery, when we looked at the icon of Dionysius “The Savior is in Power,” she drew our attention to the fact that the hand of the Savior with two fingers was written very warmly and softly. This suggests that the Judgment, the Last Judgment, will be merciful. This was not present in an icon with the same subject by another master.
We were shocked by the “Crucifixion” of Dionysius, the “Flying Savior”, the body of Christ prevails over everyone, and it simply ascends on the cross. The relationship between the cross and the hands of the Savior is very accurately given. The cross here is no longer a blunt weapon of execution, but rather our redemption, why such a major, almost festive scale. Dionysius understands the meaning of what is happening, the significance of the event that has taken place, therefore the hands of the Savior are given in such a way that the crossbars of the cross form wings with the hands. The line of the legs is incredibly beautiful; they are not bent at the knees, but extended diagonally, and this gives a feeling of victory, of voluntary ascent to the cross. If the body of Christ hung on the cross, and his legs were bent at the knees, it would be defeat. In Dionysius this is the ascent and our redemption. And this is not at all how the “Crucifixion” is solved by another icon painter, in the icon hanging in the same room. There the cross prevails over everything. The instrument of execution becomes the main one in the icon. The body of Christ hangs from the cross in his arms, his head is lowered, in contrast to the icon of Dionysius, here his legs are bent at the knees. We see execution and defeat before us. The spiritual meaning of the event, which Dionysius saw, the voluntary ascension of Christ to the cross for the sake of our salvation, disappears. After all, Christ has risen and ascended. This is the main thing, this is a super task. In the icon of Dionysius, suffering and joy are connected with each other, and one does not exist without the other. (This is, by the way, the Christian path)
After analyzing the icons of Andrei Rublev, we started talking about Leonardo da Vinci as a genius of European culture, to which Maria Alexandrovna noted that if Leonardo saw God in man, then Andrei Rublev saw directly God Himself.
This was said in 1978 with a convinced sweatshirt, ten years before the canonization of Andrei Rublev.
Maria Alexandrovna’s classes at the Tretyakov Gallery were attended by her friends, Seventh-day Adventists, who sacredly honor the Sabbath and reject icon veneration. She explained to them why icons are not idols, but are images leading to prototypes. Maria Alexandrovna knew Florensky’s “Iconostasis” well, which was rare for 1978.
In 1978, I converted to Christianity after meeting with Archimandrite Tavrion of Batozsky in the Preobrazhensk Hermitage.
Evgenia Alexandrovna and I often argued about the Church, about Christianity. Admiring ancient Russian church art, she believed that church rituals were invented by people, they were crutches for the sick, and she did not need them at all. She attended church liturgy, and like Lev Nikolaevich Tolstoy, she also believed that these were illusions and self-deception. She shared Tolstoy's point of view on the Gospel, that it is a creation of people and much was invented there.
“I read “What Is My Faith” with glee and completely agree with what it says. Everything that is in the New Testament is already in the Bible, and they are the same. The main thing is love."
“How are they the same?” I answered. “In the Old Testament it is said to stone a woman caught in adultery, but in the New Testament Christ forgives her, even saves her.” (But the Savior really saves her from human malice and jealousy supposedly for God).
During the debate about the Old and New Testaments, I again returned to this episode. Maria Alexandrovna even got angry
-What did you get from this woman?
We argued about baptism. Of course, baptism is not necessary. After all, millions of people are not baptized, so why will they go to hell?
-But Christ was baptized.
-I knew you would ask me this question. Well, He was baptized as a symbol of washing, cleansing, to show people that they must strive for purity of soul.
Maria Alexandrovna believed that she would drag me to her side. I was angry and said about Tolstoy that simplicity is worse than theft, that Tolstoy is a good writer, but a very bad philosopher.
Maria Alexandrovna was horrified by these words,
and started arguing with me even stronger. We almost fought.
Church life seemed to her like some kind of constant self-mortification. But one must rejoice and sing songs to the Creator, and painting is her prayer to God. She is a free and creative person, why should she subordinate her life to another, often very uneducated person? She doesn't need it. And how is it that she will tell a stranger about her sins. Why is this?
True, unlike Lev Nikolaevich, with his theory of non-resistance, she believed that it was always necessary to fight back. Of course, what is written in the Gospel about eternal torment was invented by people, God cannot be like that, and if the suffering and death of innocent children is from God, then this is some kind of fascism. I noticed that eternity is not infinity, and that the center of our life is not here, but eternity. And as Father Vsevolod Shpiller said: “It is not God in eternity, but eternity in God.” It seems that with all her faith in God, Maria Alexandrovna did not particularly believe in the immortality of the soul; sometimes she exclaimed: “Life is so beautiful, why do people die?!” She intensively practiced yoga, studied Eastern cults and fasted. Her credo was HARMONY and her whole life, which became almost ascetic, was devoted to this. I believed that an artist should not discharge his negative emotions and evil perception of the world into the audience. So, with all her Tolstoyan worldview, she reacted sharply negatively to Perov’s painting “Rural Procession of the Cross,” believing that this is a mockery of people, and the technical skill with which this picture was made, when every button is written out, makes this mockery even more sophisticated. Here We admired Nesterov’s “The Hermit,” and his “Appearance to the Youth Bartholomew.” Maria Alexandrovna noticed that Tarkovsky constantly uses this type of face in his films. Kramskoy’s painting “Christ in the Desert” was criticized. And there is a lot of this darkness. In the darkness, a haggard, loose face, emaciated hands, folded in a lock. A bent figure sits with his back to the light, confronting the light. The darkness, coldness and exhaustion evoke a feeling of defeat. This may be a portrait of a philosopher tormented by contradictions. , but not the Mission that brought new life, resurrection and salvation to humanity (Fr. Vsevolod Shpiller once said in a sermon: “Christ came, and humanity understood why it exists”). It rather conveys the state of the artist himself; this is his self-portrait.
Maria Alexandrovna spoke about an experiment she did with self-portraits of famous artists. She took a self-portrait of the master and placed portraits of other artists next to it until she found one that was superior to the first portrait. In the end, only two portraits remained. Then she began to look for a third portrait that would surpass the previous two. After the third, the fourth. And so she built a whole chain of self-portraits of artists. At first it was a self-portrait of Nikonov, but it was surpassed by a self-portrait of Petrov-Vodkin, then there were other masters. The self-portrait of Cezanne lasted the longest; it was a lump that other artists could not surpass, but it was “extinguished” by the self-portrait of Tintoretto. Maria Alexandrovna was even upset for Cezanne. Titian's self-portrait became an unattainable peak. But when Maria Alexandrovna placed a reproduction of Rublev’s “Spas” nearby, everything disappeared.
Maria Alexandrovna:
-After all, “Spas” by Rublev is actually his self-portrait.
I was surprised:
- You know, Orthodoxy says that every person is the image of God, but only it is darkened in us, like an icon under a dark layer of linseed oil. And so the saints reveal this image of God in themselves, and Andrei Rublev was such a saint.
Looking at the sketch for Ge’s painting “The Entry of Christ with His Disciples into the Garden of Gethsemane,” she said: “I want to sing songs.” (But the painting itself in the Hermitage, enlarged four times, was criticized for its bloated forms.) “The Last Supper” received a very restrained assessment, and the painting “What is Truth?” They didn’t pay attention, and it was clear that the main “character” of the picture was Pilate’s white toga, brightly illuminated by the sun. White is the color of purity and holiness. There is a lot of it. The semantic load of the white color does not correspond to the image of Pilate, does not express his role, function, it is not appropriate. An artist is a philosopher, and if he works with color, he must give it a philosophical meaning; he creates an image, a picture, and not an ethnographic reconstruction. And somewhere in the shadows stands a thin, disheveled tramp. If you don’t know the name of the painting, you will never guess that it is Christ. Everything is far-fetched. Maria Alexandrovna said: “We must look at the picture as if we did not know the plot or title at all, and judged the picture only by the elements of the composition. According to their functionality"
(A man is lying on the sofa, against the backdrop of the carpet, enjoying himself, smoking very expensive cigars, so that the smoke rings merge with the patterns of the carpet. There is a white dog at the feet of the sofa. Complete comfort and well-being. Very beautiful and calm coloring. Expensive apartment. If not title, one would think that this is Oblomov of the twentieth century. But it turns out that this is the great director-reformer, the subverter of the past, Meirhold. “The tragic denouement is approaching!” - art critics exclaim. But there is absolutely no tragedy in the picture itself. There is a substitution of what we are. We see in front of us images of our imagination, inspired by literature, the name of the picture. We look at one picture and imagine another.)
About functionality - no matter what culture the image of a triangle belongs to, it will always carry the function of stability and harmony. Before us is a picture - In the desert, a pyramid of white cobblestones, against the backdrop of a bright blue sky, everything is flooded with the rays of the sun. Heat and frozen time. A somewhat Asian contemplation emerges. Not a single human figure. The blue sky, occupying half of the picture, is the piercing, cosmic joy of the universe. A triangular pyramid of white color is stability and harmony, white color is purity, enlightenment. The ocher color of the desert illuminated by the sun is peace and serenity. All elements work towards the apotheosis of existence. Coming closer, we see that the cobblestones with sockets for eyes are skulls. But this doesn’t change anything. “The archaeologists must have gone to lunch.” We read the title: “The Apotheosis of War.” But it doesn't work. No conflict, no contrasts. And if this is translated into Malevich’s Suprematism, it will be a white triangle, against a background of blue and ocher fields. Complete harmony. “The apotheosis of war” can be called “Guernica” by Picasso, although this is already banal. (One of the Tretyakov Gallery guides, while conducting a tour with schoolchildren, stopped in front of the painting and remarked: “The sun is shining, very nice skulls are looking at us.”)
In Pukirev’s film “Unequal Marriage,” if you lift the corners of the bride’s lips in a smile, it will be a completely different literary plot.
"She is shyly down the aisle
Stands with his head bowed,
With fire in downcast eyes,
With a light smile on your lips."

Pushkin "Eugene Onegin"

But only the literary plot will change. The picture will remain the same. A large number of the bride's white wedding dress, the priest's golden vestments, and the groom's exquisite tailcoat and white shirtfront. The bride's face is round and calm, her head is very beautifully decorated. Everything is very elegant, festive and rich. Reliable and good.
It would be possible to remove the wrinkles under the groom’s eyes, then he would be a brave fellow. But this shouldn’t be done, because Maria loved the old man Mazepa. If the content of the picture changes depending on whether the corners of the mouth are raised in joy or lowered in sadness, then the artist has not achieved the goal that he set for himself. Very good, cozy picture. If the bride’s clothing had folds with deep, contrasting shadows, if there were contrasts of warm and cold, then one could talk about a confused state of mind. But everything is peaceful and good. And from afar it is not visible that the groom is old. People get married, a joyful and very deep event in its meaning. But the audience, having read the title, begins to imagine something that is not in the film.
We admired Fedotov's The Widow. A large amount of green space, as it were, absorbs the black color of the dress, preventing the black from putting pressure on us. At the same time, there is no fragmentation in the figure, it is very integral and monumental, it is strength. Chiseled neck, carefully collected golden hair (No dishevelment or disorder), Venus's profile. She stands leaning on the chest of drawers, turning her back to her golden past, the gilded portrait of her husband and the silver icon of the Savior. Leaning his elbow on the chest of drawers, and as if pushing away the past with this elbow. If she were turned to face the portrait of her husband, it would be a prayer, crying and lamentation. Turning away, she thinks about her own things. There is no clutter in the room, no unnecessary objects, only the samovar and candlesticks on the floor speak of some kind of change. In the depths of the green space of the room there is a candle burning, behind the green curtains there is a door. The door is a way out of this situation, a new stage; in the weak light of a candle, it drowns in twilight. What's there? Mystery, unknown, but this will be a new stage. There is no self-closure in the picture. “This widow has a future.” If the color of the room were not green, but blue, pink, yellow, everything would disappear. Green is the color of life, and in combination with black it gives depth and concentration of feelings. Very great power.
In Repin’s painting “They Didn’t Expect” the room is decorated with light wallpaper, all flooded with light. The environment in which people live is bright and joyful, people play music, there are photographs of Raphael’s paintings on the walls. Peace and harmony. And the appearance of some tramp disrupts this harmony. He is a foreign element for this environment.
It's sad to look at the portrait of an alcoholic. The content of his whole life is wine. But from the title we learn that this is a great composer, and we look at the picture with different eyes. Repin does not attach importance to the functionality of the object he depicts. It turns out to be a meaningless statement of fact, “matter as such.” But what is depicted still has its functionality. And a hospital gown too. The function of the hospital gown is to show that the main content of this person's life is being in the hospital, and the function of the red nose is to show the reason for this. There is nothing functional that would speak of music in the picture. This is what distinguishes the paintings of the old masters, everything is functional, there is nothing random, this applies to all elements, color, volume, space. There is no garbage in the paintings, everything works for the ultimate task, for the image. And next to the “portrait of an alcoholic” hangs a wonderful portrait of Strepetova, and absolutely wonderful portraits of generals, sketches for the State Council. Maria Alexandrovna believed that Stasov disfigured Repin when he convinced him that the Spanish artists whom Repin copied were fools when they portrayed courtiers as fools. “I should hit him over the head with his volume of essays!” He disfigured an entire generation of artists."
We admired Savrasov, “The rooks have arrived,” and were indifferent to Shishkin with his bears in the pine forest. “I have an ambivalent attitude towards Shishkin, he is a good master in the technique of depiction, but he is not an artist, but a painter.” There was nothing to see at Vasnetsov’s except for his three princesses, which Maria Alexandrovna pulled out with difficulty, trying to find picturesque merits there. A characteristic touch, speaking about the painting “Ivan Tsarevich on a Gray Wolf,” he noted that the wolf is an exponent of the forest element, a certain mystery and horror, and the fact that this force serves love imparts a special depth and mystery to the fairy tale. And in Vasnetsov’s film it is not a predator of the forest, but a kind dog. And then the meaning is lost. (* If translated into Freud’s system, this can be the dark element of the subconscious in a person, curbed by high feelings - author.)
The vertical format of the painting does not allow the prince and princess to jump anywhere, there is no perspective, they rest against the edge of the canvas. Almost the entire space is occupied by thick gray trunks of oak trees, so that they crushed the loving couple, causing a feeling of dullness and hopelessness of life. In this environment and color, the blue dress of the princess looks completely unnatural, with an infantile face and folded hands, more like a doll. The sweet, ruddy face of the prince in a child's pink hat. The same sweet pink as the marshmallow light of the sunset. All this does not correspond to the Russian fairy tale, which almost always contains very important thoughts and images.
In the Surikov Hall we spent a long time looking at the paintings “The Morning of the Streltsy Execution” and “Boyaryna Morozova”. “Of course Surikov is a giant,” but his elegant paintings don’t bother him.
Being impressed by our trip to Leningrad and visiting the Hermitage, we inevitably compared the paintings of the old masters with the paintings of the Wanderers. If Titian and Rembrandt have compositions of universal significance, then Surikov’s are illustrations of a historical fact. And since all the characters were painted from life, the whole picture turns out to be made up of separate pieces. The result is fragmentation, theatricality, conventionally facial expressions on the characters’ faces, and a mess of colors.
“The Morning of the Streltsy Execution” does not have a clearly defined conflict. The people surrounding Peter are united with those who are being executed and sympathize with them; the soldiers support and console those led to execution. Everyone has empathy and compassion, but at the same time people are executed. It’s as if an unknown force controls people, and they do what they don’t want to do. This absurdity is characteristic of the 20th century, very modern. The left side of the picture is a crowded mass of people, so you have to look at everything in fragments, there is no single coverage. The result is fragmentation and theatricality. We have only sympathy for the people in this crowd. All this happens against the backdrop of a slightly tense, but pleasant morning sky, beautiful domes and walls of the Kremlin imparting a sense of stability and confidence. This does not lead to tragedy; it results in some kind of absurdity.
In the same way, in “Boyaryna Morozova” an unusually beautiful winter landscape is given, but it is intimate, which gives isolation to the action taking place. In front of us is a wall of people, a mess of colors. People's faces are conditionally facial. Until you look at it piece by piece, you will understand who is right and who is wrong. Everyone has their own truth. The white color of the landscape and the snow in the foreground does not express anything; it imparts some meaninglessness to everything that is happening, and the closedness of the space enhances this meaninglessness. Very beautiful outfits.
(Several times I hung a reproduction of this painting on the wall of my room, and each time I had to remove it - it was pressing. And I could not understand why such a good painting did not hang. After analysis, it became clear why this was happening)
But the painting “Menshikov in Berezovka” is a living thing. The whole composition flows towards the window and lamps in the red corner. People have lost everything, but they have very noble faces. The hopeless darkness around the face of Menshikov (by the way, the most unfortunate). The face, hair, and entire figure of the reading girl are rhythmically tied to the window, candlesticks and icons, she is the “savior” of the whole situation, hope for the future, spiritual future, in contrast to her older sister sitting almost on the floor in a black fur coat (also hopeless darkness). The picture has integrity and a state of mind.
Maria Alexandrovna spoke about this technique of artists when the intensity of color increases as its quantity decreases. For example, a large amount of pink turns into a bright red color, but takes up little space. This imparts greater intensity and internal dynamics, intensity and sharpness of the composition. We see this in “Girl with Peaches.” There is a bright red color inside a black bow, a black bow surrounded by a pink shirt, and a pink shirt inside a grey-green surround. It turns out that the “gray ring” turns into a small black one (bow), and the pink mass turns into a red dot inside this bow. Alternating spheres of grey, pink, black and red. It turns out to be a color spring, which is why it seems that the girl is so fidgety.
We made a dizzying rotation in Borisov-Musatov’s “Reservoir”, that’s how the composition was built. She noted how the women's lace dresses were balanced by the very sparse earth color in the foreground, which communicated sophistication and nobility. If the color of the earth were complex in color, then in combination with lace dresses it would be an overload, there would be no conciseness and power of impact. But in general, Maria Alexandrovna perceived Borisov-Musatov’s work as a grave monument.
Her idol was Pavel Kuznetsov. In terms of luminosity of color, he approached Dionysius. When I wanted to define the work of Maria Alexandrovna herself, I said that her painting is Dionysius in impressionism. Maria Alexandrovna agreed with this definition. She believed that every touch of the brush should be conscious and everything should be subordinated to the main thing. The artist himself must determine what is important and what is less important. If he paints a portrait, he must understand that the face, hands, neck, are more important than the clothes (this is how Gioconda is painted, by the way, try to dress her in expensive clothes and everything will be lost), more attention should be paid to them, greater emphasis should be placed. When we write the neck and head, then of course the head is more important than the neck, but in the face itself there are more important and less important details. Once, at an exhibition of Spanish painting in the Pushkin Museum, we spent an hour admiring El Greco’s portrait of a hidalgo with his hand on his chest. Essentially it was a portrait of a hand. But when they came to Velazquez’s portrait of a dwarf sitting on the floor, she noticed that it was impossible to depict both the sole of a boot and a person’s face with the same intensity, they were incommensurable in importance.
Once in the village she wanted to paint an icon of the Don Mother of God. Not knowing the prayer of the first hour, “What shall we call Thee, O blessed one. Heaven, as if thou shone as the sun of righteousness. Paradise, as thou hast vegetated, the color of incorruptibility. Virgin, as thou hast remained incorruptible. Pure Mother, as if you had in Your holy embrace the Son of all God: pray to Him that our souls will be saved,” she embodied this prayer in her icon, saying that in the icon of Theophanes the Greek, the Mother of God is both heaven and earth. The ratio of warm and cold in the face of the Mother of God is very important. Observing the canon, in her icon she somewhat expanded the volume of the Mother of God and enlarged the palm of the hand on which the baby sits, making it like a throne. And she reduced the fingers of the other hand to two fingers, having previously found out that two fingers means two natures in Christ, Divine and human. When I showed the icon to the scientific secretary of the museum, Andrei Rublev, he really liked it. He noted the functionality of all elements. O. Alexander believed that there should be an icon of the twentieth century, and he called mechanical copying of samples made according to a pattern a pious craft. An artist must be a philosopher.
When we looked at “Donskaya” in the Tretyakov Gallery, Maria Alexandrovna noticed that only Theophanes the Greek could make one hand larger than the other, he wanted to and did it. She interpreted the baby’s naked legs as the path ahead of him, the fulfillment of His mission in the world. The hand on which He sits is the throne, but also the direction of the path, the knuckles are written very strictly, almost harshly. The Mother of God’s gaze is not directed at the baby, it is directed inward, She contemplates His path. But the hand on which the Baby’s legs rest, warm, soft, is the love of the Mother of God, something on which He can always lean. Maria Alexandrovna especially paid attention to the protruding thumb on the “throne” hand, this is the direction, the giving of the Child to humanity, the sacrifice. And in the face of the Mother of God there is both sacrifice, She fulfills Her mission, and absolute love for the Son.
For three days while she was working on the icon, she was in rapture of spirit, - “The soul is Christian by nature,” - Tertulian.
“I didn’t invent anything, the iconographic canon has been developed over centuries, brilliantly developed. But within the canon there must be freedom of execution.”
“The most important thing is not written in the notes,” the conservatory professor answered the student when she asked: Why bother looking for solutions when everything is already in the notes?
When I took up icon painting, she gave me advice to make copies from black and white reproductions. Then I can better see the form and color in my work, there will be no forced or feeling of a carefully made fake. Then I can look for color harmony, and the icon will have its own independent life. "A copy is always dead."
Maria Alexandrovna cited as an example a bas-relief from the 3rd or 4th millennium BC located in the Berlin Historical Museum. The bas-relief depicted people in some kind of unearthly joy, people like gods, a feeling of immortality, some kind of electrical force, but at the same time a complete lack of religiosity, worship of God and the absence of human warmth. This image has disappeared from all human civilization. After seeing him, Maria Alexandrovna was sick for a month. In the hall there was a copy of this bas-relief, also from the 3rd millennium, but with all the repetition of forms it did not have this electric power and unearthly joy. The copy is dead.
I began to remember that in the first chapters of the Bible they talk about fallen angels who took the daughters of men as wives, and from these marriages giants were born. And it seems that they possessed some kind of unearthly powers and the global flood was associated with this. But I don’t know what years this applies to. Maria Alexandrovna found this interesting. We also remembered the Atlanteans storming the sky in Greek mythology. But in chapter 6 of the book of Genesis it turned out that it was not the fallen angels, but the sons of God who took the daughters of men as wives, and from these marriages giants were born.
Later, while staying in Optina Hermitage, I attended theological classes. One of the classes was dedicated to the global flood. The monk speaker cited a whole list of holy fathers who interpreted the expression “sons of God” in chapter 6 as “demons, fallen angels.” I was amazed. However, my surprise grew more and more when I heard that thanks to angelic powers and knowledge, the Flood was caused by the penetration of humanity into the foundations of existence. “The windows of heaven were opened” is not a metaphor. And that civilization was far superior to ours in terms of knowledge. -It seemed to me that I was present at a meeting of science fiction writers.- And just as our civilization is now on the verge of a nuclear disaster, thanks to scientific knowledge, so that civilization was destroyed by forbidden, angelic knowledge. It was not because of God’s wrath against humanity that the flood occurred, but because of the corruption of humanity by possessing the powers and capabilities of fallen angels, and by penetrating where it should not penetrate.
After finishing the classes, I asked the monk who spoke: Tell me, when was the Great Flood?
“When was the Great Flood?” the old man asked, “I’ll look now,” and after slobbering on his finger, he began to leaf through the directory. - Here in three thousand three hundred and forty-six (?) BC. (“on Tuesday” – author’s smile.)
I couldn’t help but think that the bas-relief that Maria Alexandrovna saw and from which she fell ill could date back to the time before the Flood, and could reflect the spirit of that civilization.
Once, with the son of Maria Alexandrovna, we had a dispute about whether the abstractions of Kandinsky and his Georgiy could be icons. “Anastasius” defended the idea that any image can be an abstraction, a sign, an icon. I answered that the icon should bear evidence of the divine world, take for example the golden background, evidence of the Divine light. Maria Alexandrovna noted in this regard that when she looks at Kandinsky’s abstractions, she sees our real, earthly world behind them. And an icon is a pure abstraction. Everything is different there.
She almost fainted from the frescoes of Dionysius in the Ferapontov Monastery. She lived in a monastery for a month, making copies. The main technique of Dionysius is flattened clothes, white, with crosses, devoid of color and very voluminous heads. This volume at the top (dandelion) communicates a state of spirituality. If the artist creates volume at the bottom of a character’s figure, this is already groundedness, lack of spirituality. If the volumes are in the middle, it is both spiritual and earthly at the same time. Dionysius was her favorite artist. Everything was measured by Dionysius. She said that the portal fresco of the Nativity is the only one in the entire globe. There is nothing else like it in the world.
Maria Alexandrovna had “X-ray” vision. In the Rublevskaya Trinity, it seemed to her that the caps of hair of the angels were too heavy and somehow stood out from the entire style of the icon. It turned out that the hair caps were actually renewed in the 16th century.
In the icon of Andrei Rublev “Ascension” in the angels standing behind the Mother of God (Angels are the habitat of the Mother of God), Maria Alexandrovna saw the Archangels Michael and Gabriel. The Old Believer Irina, who took icon painting lessons from her, argued that these were simple Angels, as the Evangelist Luke tells us. Maria Alexandrovna answered that she sees the same interaction between the apostles and Archangels Michael and Gabriel in the Iconostasis, where each character occupies its own specific place in terms of its significance. Irina argued that Archangel Gabriel was a messenger from God at the Annunciation, but he does not appear at the Ascension. When we read the Gospel more carefully, it turned out that Apostle Luke calls Archangel Gabriel only an Angel, and nowhere calls him an Archangel. It is Evangelist Luke who writes about the Ascension; it is obvious that also in both the Annunciation and the Ascension he refers to the Archangels as Angels, and Maria Alexandrovna was right in seeing the Archangels Michael and Gabriel in the Angels in the Ascension. The interesting thing is that it was not a church person who saw it. She noted that in the Ascension icon, only the Mother of God has a halo; the disciples do not yet have halos. She stands vertically exactly under Christ Ascending into heaven, as if replacing Him with Herself on earth. She has a leader's gesture, very strong-willed. Her brown clothes, her whole figure is dominant among the apostles, especially since She stands against the background of the white clothes of the two Archangels. Angels are Her habitat.
But the fact that the characters on earth are larger in size than the figure of the ascending Savior and two Angels suggests that the Ascension takes place for the disciples, for those on earth. If the figures of the disciples were smaller, then there would be a separation of Christ from the disciples. This does not happen in Rublev's icon. Christ ascends, but does not leave his disciples. These are the brilliant relationships found by Rublev.
(* Also in the book of Tobit, Archangel Raphael is constantly mentioned only as an Angel)
**) During an excursion for high school students in the halls of the museum named after. Andrei Rublev, the girls, looking at the halos of the saints, asked:
- What is that on their heads?
“These are halos,” answered the guide.
“What did they wear then?” the girls asked.)

In the mid-80s, I tried to take up icon painting, especially since I had the blessing of Father John Krestyankin. But I was bored doing this. Follow the sequence of the lines, carefully draw the lines, observing all the thickenings. Looking at my work, Maria Alexandrovna said: “It’s obvious that you are bored.” I complained to Father John that icon painting was not my business. On this occasion, he replied in a letter: “You know, you have listed a lot that you don’t have in you for an icon painter, but I would call it in one word - No humility. There is no childish trust in God. ..."
One day I brought Maria Alexandrovna a carefully made icon of the “Savior Not Made by Hands,” so that I drew the lines under a magnifying glass. Having seen the icon, Maria Alexandrovna said that it had a marketable appearance, it was made to please, and such a marketable attitude towards the icon is a blasphemous attitude. Moreover, all this is technically weak. It was a complete disaster. She explained that in the Middle Ages it was customary to paint icons this way, by applying melts, but it was almost automatic. But the master saw the image in front of him, saw it inside himself and constantly focused on it while working, adding something, subtracting something. The image came out alive. But between him and the image, the copyist has already completed work, and the copyist no longer sees the image itself, and the work turns out to be dead. (As a lawyer, carefully executing the decrees, he does not see the very spirit of the decrees, for the sake of which this is being done.) This does not mean that it is necessary to destroy the canon; it was developed brilliantly, over centuries. But within this canon there must be freedom, an internal vision of the image.
Maria Alexandrovna was very angry that for my work I used old, blackened icon boards, on which nothing could be made out.
“Although there is no image on them, they should be treated with reverence as shrines. They are carriers of the culture of the past.” (Her attitude towards the icon was more reverent than that of the Orthodox.)
I began to remake the icon of the Savior. I wiped everything down and started again. This was already free creativity. As a result of the abrasions, a smoky spot formed on the gesso, in which the eyebrows, nose, and cheekbones appeared very clearly. The whole face appeared. He resembled Rublevsky's Savior. All that remained was to designate the “flying” lines of the eyebrows, eyelashes, mustache and shape the mouth, like that of Rublesky Spas. Having done this, I could not understand whether it was good or bad, but I really liked it. When Maria Alexandrovna saw this icon, she said: “If you don’t write anything else for another twenty years, that will be enough.” The icon was consecrated by the priest in the church where I served as an altar boy. He was a professional artist and greatly revered Vrubel and Korovin. He asked me to donate the icon to the temple, and immediately placed it in the iconostasis, to the great displeasure of the old women, who liked the mother-of-pearl faces against the background of silver foil. The icon separated from me, gained strength and power, somehow incomprehensibly changed, acquiring its own existence, it contained the depth of the spiritual world, and I had nothing to do with this image (I just moved the brush.) (One of the parishioners of the temple was a man , who in the 70s illegally transported ancient icons to England, for which he was persecuted by the KGB with confiscation of property. Looking at the icon, he told me: “I look at it all the time, and it seems to me that it is no different from. old icons.” This assessment of the specialist in the sale of antiquities made a strong impression.)
The rector asked me to paint an icon of John the Theologian. I could not understand why the preaching apostle, the beloved disciple of Christ, sent to preach, the author of the Gospel, covers his mouth with his finger. “Until you understand this, you can’t write,” said Maria Alexandrovna
“This is a mind that is amazed at the mysteries of God,” the scientific secretary, Father Alexander, explained to me. I thought that John the Theologian is not only an evangelist, but also the author of the Apocalypse, which is never read in Orthodox churches during services. It is believed that the Apocalypse will be understandable to people of the last times. The iconography is such that there is an angel on the apostle’s shoulder, dictating revelations into his ear. The apostle covers his lips with his finger, but on his knee he has the open Gospel.
“Enlarge the ear a little, make it more pointed. He listens with this ear,” advised Egenia Alexandrovna.
When I started working on the icon of Our Lady of the Don, she advised me to copy it from a black and white reproduction. “Then you will have a better sense of form and find color relationships in your work. You will be more free to work. And there will be no exhaustion and stiffness.” This advice was very helpful.
Maria Alexandrovna and her husband, the artist “Mikhail Morekhodov,” always spent their summers in a village in the Tver region, beyond Vyshny Volochok. It was a very fruitful time. From year to year one could observe how her paintings, landscapes, and flowers became more and more spiritual. “The flowers in her paintings are more “colored”, more flowers than they are in real life,” the poet Vladimir Gomerstadt once said at Maria Alexandrovna’s personal exhibition on Tverskaya Street in Moscow. It was an image of the flower's soul, the essence, not the surface.
Once Anatoly was painting a portrait of an old woman in the village. The old woman was so flattered that she wanted to thank “Mikhail.” He asked if there was any old icon? And although the entire Tver region was visited by collectors of ancient icons, and there was almost nothing left in the villages, the old woman still brought a large icon of the Tikhvin Mother of God from the attic. The icon was painted in oil at the end of the 1st and early 20th centuries, and was of no value. Perhaps that is why the icon collectors did not take it. However, despite all the roughness of the oil painting, Maria Alexandrovna saw in the Mother of God a very strict and monumental silhouette, characteristic of the 16th century. A neighbor from another village, one of the leaders of the Moscow Union of Artists, when he was asked to take the icon to Moscow by car, also treated it very dismissively. He kept the icon in the bathhouse, where it was badly damaged due to dampness. When the icon was delivered to Moscow, Maria Alexandrovna was horrified by its appearance and was terribly upset. (Another neighbor in the village, a local resident, ground down a large iconostasis icon with a plane, making a door out of it, so that all the painting was completely destroyed.)
We proceeded to the first tests very carefully. When they uncovered a small piece of the background, removing three layers of paint that had darkened with time, they saw a golden sky. Maria Alexandrovna began to invite restorers. But the restorers sought to immediately reveal the face, which Maria Alexandrovna considered unacceptable, and they asked for huge amounts of money. Having carefully studied the restoration, Maria Alexandrovna herself uncovered the entire icon. “Our Lady smiled at me. For several days I opened the icon to the accompaniment of church music, and could not come to my senses.” According to some signs, Maria Alexandrovna identified the icon as 16th century. She was very beautiful, and she was a difficult icon. Powerful currents of grace filled the entire apartment. At that time, I was already working in churches and experienced the disease of getting used to the shrine myself, all the more I was surprised at the luminous power that filled the apartment, it was joy. Grace emanated from the icon and touched the heart. At the first stage of restoration, the scientific secretary of the Rublev Museum, Father Alexander, came to view the icon. The further fate of the icon is a mystery.
Maria Alexandrovna felt very well the angelic presence around her. Once we quarreled so much about Tolstoy that Maria Alexandrovna’s husband rushed to separate us, and the Angelic forces were thrown into confusion. Heated up, I said in my heart: “Your angels were scattered here!”
This instantly cooled the dispute and reconciled us. “That’s it, let’s stop the discussion,” said Maria Alexandrovna, smiling, and understanding very well what was being discussed. Her husband was a saint, but he was not given the opportunity to feel this presence, although he had previously also practiced yoga and went to the astral plane.
She was amazed by the transparent faces of angels and seraphim in Andrei Rublev’s small icon “The Savior is in Power.” Analyzing this icon, she asked the question: “Do we see them?” * (Fr. Vsevolod Shpiller - “Angelic nature, unlike ours, tends to be transparent to God, never to remain in itself, but to abide only in God The church gives them the name “second lights.” This is because their nature is, as it were, “second”, that is, light pouring out from God, and God is love in its perfect transparency for God. reflecting God in their nature, angels in their essence, in their nature, are love. And they gather into their cathedral, forming a kind of spiritual whole.) In this icon they are depicted in a completely different way from the icons of the Annunciation and Ascension. , iconostasis row, where they appear to us, as it were, “in the flesh.” In this icon she saw seven spaces growing into each other, so that each space has its own time, and we contemplate them at the same time. Past present Future. There is rapid movement in the icon, but Christ Himself is outside of time, outside of space and movement, and is addressed to us now. “I thought: Aren’t revelations of the future already taking place, something that should happen, but we see it now outside of time, outside of space? And this icon was given to me so that I could mobilize all my strength to meet this eternity, the future, which is now opening up to me outside of time, outside of space. This icon is a window to eternity"
Rublev's icon repeats the shape of a red square twice. The first with the symbols of the Evangelists in the corners, the second placed on the corner like a rhombus, a red energy field in which Christ is located. The twice repeated shape of the square speaks of the two comings of Christ, which we contemplate at the same time. The evangelists’ symbols of animals and an angel are a connection with the Old Testament revelations (Jeremiah), as well as with everything living that was created by God and nature. And the fact that animals have halos and hold books speaks of the ontological rootedness of everything that exists in the heavens. And we see that at the second coming of Christ, there will not be the destruction of matter, but there will be its transformation. The coloring of the icon is unusually joyful. Gold, red-pink, blue, ocher colors create a festive palette. A meeting with Christ is a holiday for a person.
With all the movement inside the icon, it is very harmonious and balanced. The oval in which Christ is located is eternal harmony, an otherworldly sphere full of angels, so a person will not be lonely there. A graceful red square with elongated ends so that the side of the square forms a "bridge arch", graceful stability. (constructivism). Oval and “arched” square - harmony of infinity. The white pages of an open book, addressed personally to us, resemble a white dove spreading its wings, a symbol of the Holy Spirit. But at the foot of Christ, reminiscent of a closed book, Maria Alexandrovna saw the book of the Old Testament. (The Old Testament has already been fulfilled, and the New Book of the New Testament has been opened to us.) Maria Alexandrovna was especially struck by the throne on which Christ sits. He is as transparent as the Seraphim, and belongs to their world, nature. But at the same time he resides in different spaces, both in the “energy field” of Christ, and in the oval, the cosmic sphere of the Seraphim.
(The angelic triads mention:
Cherubim-Seraphim-Thrones
Beginnings - Dominance - Strength
Authorities-Archangels-Angels
O. Vsevolod Shpiller: “This means that some angels can be closer to one Person of the Holy Trinity, to the hypostasis of God the Father, others to another Person, to the hypostasis of God the Son, and still others to a third, to the hypostasis of God the Holy Spirit.”)
The throne in Rublev’s icon has some kind of its own existence and angelic nature.
Saint Seraphim Zvezdinsky, in his sermon on the Angelic ranks, says that the Thrones are the highest Angelic ranks. The throne on which God sits is not a throne of gold and precious stones, it is the highest Angel.
The figure of Christ is inscribed in the cosmic oval so that He is not removed from us, He is turned towards us, and we stand before Him. If the figure of Christ were a little smaller, the distance between us would be enormous.
Perhaps in no other icon is Christ as close to us as in this “Savior in Power.” If you look at the holidays “Transfiguration”, “Ascension”, all this is at a very great distance from us. In the icon “The Savior is in Power,” Christ is addressed personally to us, although he is outside of time, outside of space. It is addressed to me personally. Here is royal grandeur and absolute Love. Greatness - powerful volumes in the knees, on one of which the open book rests. The book is open for us, we read it. Golden clothes. Powerful, voluminous regal head. But both the hand and the face are written very softly. The hand with two fingers is plump, almost like a woman’s. And the result will be royal, divine greatness and gentleness, meekness, love, which makes Christ unusually close to us.
“If in the icon of Rublev’s “Savior” endless love is poured out on me, I see how much I am loved. Then in the icon “Savior is in Power” this love is united with Divine greatness. He is God, the Creator of the entire universe created by this love, and His love is addressed to me personally.
As an artist, I see that this could only be written from living experience. Nothing convinces me of authenticity like Rublev’s icon. Sometimes you read the texts of the Gospel and think: “How is it possible, a real living person and suddenly this is God?” Sometimes doubts arise. And when I look at Rublev’s icon, all doubts disappear, I see absolute, living reality.
After all, the tragedy of the Jewish people is that they need to feel everything with their hands. They are terrible orthodox, they observe everything. This is some kind of horror.
And they are believers, very believers. But they did not accept Christ.
People doubted, students doubted. He didn’t know how to convince them. And for two thousand years now, this disbelief has been genetically transmitted. This is the tragedy of the Jewish people. For me personally, Rublev’s icons turned out to be a “touch with my hands”. I have been a believer for a long time. And I came to this without shock, I was led by forces that have a colossal relationship with me, they led me in a clear, understandable way. And although I was raised in an atheistic family, in the seventies I came to a clear understanding of the existence of God.
But it was a feeling of a common God. After all, it is very difficult to realize that a real person is His Son. After all, you can say “Yes, yes, I believe,” but in addition to speculative reasoning, there must be depth inside. How Thomas the unbeliever must have felt.
(After all, Thomas’s “unbelief” came from a reluctance to become gullible.)
And “Trinity” by Rublev, “Spas”, when I began to engage in serious analysis, it absolutely revealed to me the reality of what was depicted. And after that I began to perceive the universe differently. It was given to me to see through the icon. Just as I came to know God through Dionysius, through his fresco. With me, it was a shock when I saw her.”
When Maria Alexandrovna began to copy Rublev’s “Trinity,” she saw in it actively expressed elements of cubism, abstractionism, and partly Suprematism. She was shocked when, while working on the face of God the Father, she discovered that the face of God the Father and Picasso’s “Portrait of Vollard” had the same solution. The pink robes of God the Father are an endless crystalline form, at the same time the light flashes (Father of Lights), the hooks are Kandinsky's abstract art. But while with other icon painters this may be accidental, with Rublev it is clearly and consciously expressed. All this prompted her to think: “Isn’t Rublev’s “Trinity” a synthesis, an absolute of all directions in art that were, are and will yet be discovered in art. The sum of everything that exists, of all means of expression?
Back in the early eighties, analyzing the pictorial language of the icon, she noticed that there could be no contrast in God, this was excluded. I asked: “And in the Rublev Trinity, in the clothes of the central Angel, red and blue, is there any contrast there?”
Maria Alexandrovna replied: “There is no contrast in God, but Rublev’s central Angel is God the Son, this is Christ, and the mission that He faces is contrasting.”
Unfortunately, I do not have materials from Maria Alexandrovna’s analysis of “The Trinity”. While studying with her student, an Old Believer, Maria Alexandrovna still forbade recording herself on a tape recorder, so I can only cite a few grains of memories of the Old Believer herself. So, when Irina made the Angel’s heel rounded in her copy, Maria Alexandrovna noticed to her that a rounded heel is characteristic of a hard-working, grounded, peasant foot. The Angel has a sharp heel that represents aristocracy and sophistication and soaring above the ground. The very touch of the Angels' feet to the footstools is the point of contact of our world, our earth.
And she associated the pink clothes of the Angel of God the Father with the beginning of the universe, drawing an analogy with the pink clothes of a baby.
(Fr. Vsevolod defined the first person of the Holy Trinity, God the Father, as “The silent primordial basis of beginningless existence, giving birth to the Hypostasis.”)
If in the analysis of icons Maria Alexandrova never turned to texts that revealed the meaning of the phenomenon depicted in the icon, and read this “text” in the icon itself, then when analyzing the “Trinity” she nevertheless asked Irina the Old Believer to bring the “Creed”, since it was about about dogmatic doctrine, which she did not fully know, and checked her vision of the icon in accordance with the “symbol”.
Thus, in the fresco of Theophanes the Greek “Christ Pantakrator”, she was surprised that the blessing hand of the Savior was weakened compared to the hand holding the Gospel. Both powerful, heavy hands of the Creator, the blessing hand is heavier and more energetic, but the gesture is weakened, as if in a state of creative reverie. We are in the temple, “in the Gospel,” and if the blessing hand were more accentuated, then the Gospel, the Word, would fade into the background, but then this dominant blessing would be more characteristic of God the Father, as in Rublev’s “Trinity,” and the mission Christ was the Gospel, which is why it is so emphasized by Theophanes the Greek. “In general, this is not just a blessing, it must also be earned.” Despite the difference in hands, the Savior’s eyes are symmetrical; they are convex, directed outward and inward. And this symmetry forms a cross. The pupils of the eyes are not dark, but light, and this is a reverse perspective. The Savior himself against the backdrop of infinite space is the infinity of the universe, the Creator of which he is. In the fresco, Adam's hands are open to God, they perceive the power of God and reflect it, the gaze is directed to heaven, but the ear is very active, like other prophets. They look inward and outward, but they hear God more. But Seth’s hands no longer have creative power, there is obedience in them, another will passes through them. The large head and small hand are a symbolic image of monastics. Noah also has a very voluminous head (Cezanne later made such voluminous heads), but if Seth has the hands of a peasant, then Noah has the hands of a priest. Maria Alexandrovna saw Noah as a certain intellectual of his time, like Sakharov. Abel is especially striking. Outwardly, he is very similar to the central Angel in the Trinity, the fresco of Theophanes the Greek. Abel is a prototype of Christ. A type of His death. In contrast to the central Angel, Abel has a very tragic look; he has a lot of volume tension in the upper part of his head, eyebrows, and forehead. Senile eyelids. And at the same time, a short nose, like a baby’s, means a short life. In Abel there is the tragedy of death not overcome. In comparison with him, the Apostle Paul was “born” in God, moved into another phase of life in communion with God, and therefore death for the Apostle Paul was overcome and is no longer death. This does not happen with Abel. This is the first death in all of humanity and he remains in it. Since Abel is a prototype of Christ, His death, then according to the law of “worldwide analogies” (derived by Evgenia Alexandrovna herself), he must somehow be present at the Annunciation. It could be a gesture or some other detail, but Abel’s presence there is necessary, something must remind of him. Comparing the image of Adam and Abel, Maria Alexandrovna noted that they were the same in size. But Adam is surrounded by a huge space, which immediately makes him more significant, he is all in God and is distant from us, Abel does not have such space, he is close to us. There are different internal states here.
“Unlike an icon, a fresco has neither an end nor a beginning; it is the infinity of the world order. When I look at the icon, everything around me ceases to exist, this is a complete passage there. When I look at a fresco, it’s a universe. This is also present in the iconostasis. The fresco reveals everything to me. I read the Bible, but I don’t really understand it. I look at Feofan’s fresco and understand everything. The Jews did not accept Christ, they believed that it was a fake, and they were waiting for something. And if you looked at the fresco, you could understand how it would be. The mission of Christ, it was in Him that everything was fulfilled.” Jewish blood flowed in Maria Alexandrovna’s veins.
“A person trusts his physiology. Until he touches it, he won’t believe it. Everyone is built this way, and I am built this way. No matter how Christ showed miracles, no matter how much he spoke to his disciples, something was still missing. Both music and nature testify, but still it’s not enough. Personally, I have unconditional faith when I don’t need any evidence - this is a fresco and icons. Everything falls into place, and what people don’t understand, I can see everything here.”
In Melchizedek, Theophanes the Greek, Maria Alexandrovna saw the high priest of Christ, the Old Believers singing daily at church services argued that this could not be, there was a priesthood of Levites who made sacrifices, and only with the coming of Christ were bloody sacrifices abolished, since He sacrificed Himself.
“I don’t know, I see in Melchizedek’s gesture that this is Christ. “This is not a person at all,” answered Maria Alexandrovna. “He will not die.” In one of the church calendars, on the page dedicated to Melchizedek, it was said that the Church assimilates the immortality of Christ to Melchizedek. A person outside the Church saw in the church fresco what the zealous churchwoman did not see. Not knowing the message of the Apostle Paul to the Jews, she saw its embodiment in a fresco. “Melchizedek, king of Salem, priest of the Most High God...
first, by the sign of the name, the king of righteousness, and then the king of Salem, that is, the king of peace,
without father, without mother, having neither the beginning of days nor the end of life, being like the Son of God, he remains a priest forever.
...about Him (about Christ) it is said: “The Lord has sworn and will not repent: You are a priest forever according to the order of Mchizedek.”
Analyzing the work of Andrei Rublev, Maria Alexandrovna began to think that this was not a person, but an Angel sent from God. In some way she correlated him with Giotto, mentioning that in the drawing depicting Andrei Rublev painting a temple, he is depicted as bald and with one arm shorter than the other, like Giotto. Some fragments of the Gospel about John the Baptist, who came in the spirit of Elijah, or the question of the Apostles about the man born blind, implying the possibility of a person sinning before his birth into this world, could evoke the idea of ​​reincarnation. In the eighties, the book of the Czech neurosurgeon Stanislav Grof, who, using a certain method, revived people’s memories, to the point that they recalled their infancy and stay in the womb, was very popular. The soul remained united with God, in the harmony of the spiritual cosmos, contemplated the surrounding world in God, and its birth and arrival in the earthly world was perceived as a catastrophe.
One day, the author of these lines, for some unknown reason, began to read the thoughts of a child in the womb. The child saw his brother and sister playing on the green grass. And he knew perfectly well that these were his brother and sister. A week later he was born, becoming a senseless baby, sometimes frightening us with his intelligent gaze, behind which there was the sky. They named him Daniel in honor of the prophet Daniel. His birth was preceded by forty akathists to the Iveron Mother of God, we read them while we were digging a well, and constant communion of the Holy Mysteries. Grof wrote that the soul is aware of itself up to six months and understands everything, and at six months it passes a barrier that cuts off its memory, and then it is already a senseless baby, at the very beginning of its development. Maria Alexandrovna herself also came into confusion and amazement at the intelligent gaze of her baby; the baby saw right through her and it was a look from the sky that was within him. But then the sky closed, and they were just the button eyes of a two-month-old baby. Involuntarily I remembered the meeting of Mary and Elizabeth: “... and the child in my womb rejoiced.”

File "The artist. about revelations in icon painting."

Thoughts on abstract art
Sergey Fedorov-Mystic

As it seems to the author, Abstractionism is a spiritual, super-real phenomenon, and belongs to the category of supersensible perception. And therefore it goes beyond the perception of a “normal” person, just as the possibilities and experience of a psychic go beyond the limits of a normal person. When a certain eidetic, that is, a person who never forgets anything, was asked to remember an insignificant conversation that took place ten years earlier, the eidetic began to remember that the conversation took place at a green fence, salty in color. A “carnal” person is not given to feel this way, but a psychic understands this. It is natural for the fingers not to feel taste, just as it is natural for the tongue to distinguish the variety of tastes. A true abstract artist, by virtue of his natural gift, sees the soul of objects, and conveys not the surface of the object, but the emotional experience of the “soul” of the object. Imagine that in front of you are two equally white cups filled with white crystals. Mr. Repin, whose credo is “Matter as such,” is true to his credo, would very competently depict two identical cups with white crystals, but would not convey the fact that there is salt in one cup and sugar in the other. An abstract artist would convey the “soul” of salt and sugar in a certain color field; in one case it could be olive, in another pinkish. And it is unlikely that pink would express the color of bitter salt. Each object, thing has its own power, image, ontological image, not accessible to “normal vision”. When a psychic “sees” the thoughts of another person, he sees them, thoughts, not with the vision with which they see the skin of the face, eyes, hair, but with another spiritual one, and one spiritual vision is complemented by simply physical vision, together the completeness of the image is created. Completeness also arises in the contemplation of the image, the soul of the object itself; the object has its own life, its own existence, accessible to contemplation through the combination of spiritual and simply physical vision. “Like is known by like” The saints add that the contemplation of such prototypes is inexpressible, and only by some kind of similarity, a symbol, can it be expressed and designated through visual means. Naturally, it all depends on which side the observer is on. The man closed his eyes and plunged into the blackness of the cosmos of his “I”, this is smart darkness, a powerful awareness of his “I” - one black square. And the “square” of the night sky, where there is no “my self,” where there is only the reality of the physical sky, where there is no mental darkness. And it can be assumed that Malevich’s Square expresses the presence of “smart darkness”, and not just the absence of light. Just as outwardly two wires may not differ from each other, but electricity flows through one, capable of killing a person or giving light, this wire is a carrier of powerful energy, and in the other wire there is emptiness, zero. And an abstract artist can express the fullness of one wire with electricity, but a realist artist cannot, true to realism, he will depict two identical wires, and will not convey the essence of the phenomenon, will not convey the most important thing, since the system of realism itself in essence cannot convey this. In the same way, a saint who has united with God is like a wire that has become a carrier of electricity, so a person outside of God is like a wire in which there is no electric field, no strength. Although outwardly they will be the same two people.

© Copyright: Sergey Fedorov-Mystic, 2011
Certificate of publication No. 21106301478

THREE BANDITS by Ilya Glazunov
Criticism of the painting "Kulikovo Field"

The first thing that strikes you is the cut off top of the main character’s head. He was moved so close to the viewer that he blocked any view. Essentially we run up against the dark clothes of the three characters like a wall. Dark faces, dark clothes, dark night. The viewer met three bandits blocking his way in the night, burning steppe. The left character wears a red cloak, which merges with the red color of the fire in the steppe, and the central character has the same red sleeves. It is clear that the fires are their doing. The left character is clutching a broadsword, the murder weapon. Now he will end the viewer, who has nowhere to run. They blocked his path, approaching him closely. And again, complete illiteracy - hands are cut off. This is basic lack of professionalism. In the right corner of the picture there is some kind of terrible black muzzle with reflections of fire on the cheekbones, dressed in a monastic doll. This is obviously a bandit who killed the monk and put on his doll. And again the head is cut off by the edge of the picture. Everyone has lifeless eyes, like those of the dead. These characters evoke nothing but horror. And to say that this is a contemplator of the Divine Light, a contemplator of the Most Holy Trinity, Sergius of Radonezh and the blessed Prince Dmitry Donskoy is a mockery.

Glazunov wants to combine the eyes of the icon with his semi-surrogate realism, and the result is a fuzzy eclecticism. Petrov-Vodkin managed to create a synthesis of iconographic and realistic styles. But there is a high understanding of art. Glazunov's paintings become simply bad posters.

O. Ioann Krestyankin about the apparitions of Vsevolod Shpiller
Sergey Fedorov-Mystic
Conversation by Archimandrite John Krestyankin
about posthumous phenomena
Archpriest Vsevolod Shpiller.
Pskov-Pechersky Monastery May 21, 1988

May 20, 1988 I gave Father Ioann Krestyankin a letter describing some of the posthumous phenomena of Father Vsevolod Shpiller.
After the death of Father Vsevolod Shpiller on January 8, 1984, many people, mostly spiritual children, saw his apparitions. Over the past four years since the death of Fr. Vsevolod, I also witnessed some of his phenomena.
One of the first - at the liturgy on January 14, 1984. on the day of the circumcision of the Lord and the memory of St. Basil the Great. This was a week after the death of Fr. Vsevolod. He died on the second day of the Nativity of Christ, in the Cathedral of the Most Holy Theotokos. Father Vsevolod deeply revered Basil the Great all his life, wore a cross with a particle of his relics (and was buried with this cross?). Like Basil the Great, he created an entire school of theology from among his students.
After the liturgy, which was performed by Father Vladimir Vorobyov in the Church of St. Nicholas at the Preobrazhenskoe cemetery, while kissing the cross, I asked Father Vladimir: “Could Father Vsevolod be at the liturgy today?” O. Vladimir looked at me intently and answered: “I could.” - and he hopes that Father Vsevolod was at the liturgy, and that during the night prayers he himself very much asked Father Vsevolod to come. I replied that during the invocation of the Holy Spirit for the Gifts, I saw O. Vsevolod together with Basil the Great. All this is sightless.*
A month after the death of Father Vsevolod, on February 7, 1984, Patriarch Pimen served at the feast of the miraculous icon of the Mother of God “Quench My Sorrows” in the Nikolo-Kuznetsk Church. At the very end of the liturgy, when the priesthood went to the middle of the church, the subdeacons took their place and the Patriarch was left alone in the altar, Father Vsevolod appeared to him. And the Patriarch with the contrite _________________________________________________________
* Perhaps the second saint was not Basil the Great, but Father Paul of the Trinity, confessor of Fr. Vsevolod, a recluse whose existence I knew nothing about at the time. In terms of his power, he was greater than Father Vsevolod. All this is not of our scale and not of our measurements.

As a note: Shortly before Father Vsevolod’s death, I asked him: “Father, don’t leave us.” To which Father Vsevolod answered after a pause: “Everything is God’s will.” On December 19, 1983, on the day of remembrance of St. Nicholas, Father Vsevolod served his last liturgy in the Nikolo-Kuznetsky Church. He served in this temple continuously for more than 30 years. When I I approached Father Vsevolod’s blessing, not knowing that this was his last blessing to me, I clearly felt how it was as if he had been wounded in the heart and he thought about me with a groan: “I didn’t get it!” A month and a half later, Father Vsevolod died. After the death of Father Vsevolod, there was a spiritual breakthrough into eternity. Despite all the longing for Father Vsevolod, it was felt that he did not leave us.

While the evening funeral service of Demetrius Parent Saturday began in the church, Father John Krestyankin in the reception room of the fraternal building answered questions from the people around him, talking with everyone together and with each individual. Having answered my questions, he himself asked the question: “Did you write to me?” I replied that back in May I wrote about Father Vsevolod Shpiller. Father John immediately remembered everything and said: “I knew Father Vsevolod well, I sat at the same table with him.” As last time, Father John spoke in detail about the relationship between the Triumphant Church and the earthly Church. But this time, Father John stubbornly warned against delusion: “Fr. Vsevolod sees your every move, every step of your life... The desire to see Father Vsevolod, visions - all this can greatly slow down your spiritual movement...
Visions can interfere with your communication with Father Vsevolod himself... Father Vsevolod sees everything that happens in your life, and there this desire for visions can upset him." Father John said that there are two cases when one cannot accept visions: First: during prayer in front of the icon of the Savior, when it may seem that the Savior is coming out of the icon. Second case: ...At this moment, a monk from the monastery brethren addressed Co. John with urgent questions. Having released him, Father John said to everyone: “Now hurry up, otherwise the dead are already waiting for me.” “You will come to me tomorrow, and I will give you the “ABC of Prayer,” where everything is explained in detail.” Father John pressed me close to him and told me how one old woman prayed very much that it would be revealed to her, as it was there in the next world. Metropolitan Nikolai. And then one day, during prayer, she sees the clouds parting, and the head of Metropolitan Nicholas appears in this space. And this old woman was very inquisitive, and she boldly asked him: “Father Nikolai, what are you doing there? “I pray,” answered Metropolitan Nicholas, and the clouds moved.” Father John kissed me tenderly. I was going to talk with other people. “Father, come to the grave of Father Vsevolod, there is simply a fountain of grace. Bow for me when you are at the grave of Father Vsevolod.” And you yourself come. I would love to, but who will let me out of the monastery gates? Soon Father John was already at the funeral service in St. Michael’s Church. And that evening and the next day in the Church they prayed for the repose of the departed and sang “Rest with the Saints...”.

Sergey Fedorov 1988. The second edition of “Conversations of Father John Krestyankin...” was made in November 2000.

To the artist
My dear!
God's blessing to read you the life of St. Seraphim of Sarov written by Metropolitan Veniamin Fedchenkov.
Read carefully, and each time before reading, ask the Comforter Spirit to help in reading and understanding what you read. Find the place in his life where your spiritual person is currently located. And from this moment, at least partially engage in spiritual activity similar to what will open before your mind and gaze.
And with such a superficial approach in assessing events and life, which we have, and with our way of life, and with our spiritual structure, you in advance doom your search for the Holy Spirit to fruitlessness. Reading the Holy Fathers is necessary, but believe me, we need it in order to see ourselves and the jungle into which we have gone, moving away from God in search of the fullness of our own “I.”
It is more difficult to return, getting out of the gullies, but you must return if you want to know the Holy Spirit experientially.
Where to start, how to continue and how to end?
Start with a humble invocation of God's help. Continue to be humble with the awareness of your complete failure and terrible sinfulness. And end with a humble surrender of all of yourself to the will of God. Start small. Try to overcome yourself in something small, and you will see how much work is needed for this, and how success is impossible without God’s help.
2. About questioning. [The question was: How to make a decision and make a choice if there is no way to ask your spiritual father? ]
1- Always, in all cases, look for justification for your actions in Holy Scripture - the Gospel.
2-Ascend your mind to God: “Through the prayers of my spiritual father, Lord, help me, give me understanding.”
Do you know, you have listed a lot of things that you don’t have for an icon painter. And I would call it all in one word: “There is no humility. There is no childish trust in God"
But the special phenomena that happen to you are known to your confessor, and I will not touch on them.
God's blessing to you.
All our misfortunes, even from Adam, came from unwillingness to obey. For us, if we want to return to God, we need to obey the words of the Lord that are spoken to us in the New Testament. Obedience to the will of God is the treatment that can return us to health and life.

10 –6--1987.
Pskov-Pechersky Monastery. Archm. John Krestyankin.

Archm. John the Peasant Pskov-Pechersky Monastery
10–11–1991 (2nd letter)

Dear Sergius in the Lord!
God's blessing for you not to change anything external in your life until 1993 - stay with your mother, take guidance from Father Vladimir and not write any memories or memories.
Both you and Father Vsevolod only need prayer, and your spiritual experience is given only to you, and if you find yourself unable to keep the secret, then what is given will be taken away from you.
There will still be one small amendment and addition to your lifestyle and spiritual aspirations.
During this period of time, you absolutely need to get acquainted with the monastic structure of life and get in touch theoretically and practically. But as?
Periodically live for some time as a pilgrim-novice in several monasteries. This can be done both on your vacation and on those free days that you have when there is no service in the temple.
Live both in Optina and in the St. John the Theologian Monastery near Ryazan. And one must live not in the privileged position of an icon painter, but in the position of a worker.
And then you will understand something, and you will make a more definite choice for yourself, based not on the soaring of the spirit and soaring in the clouds, but on the real basis of monastic works. After all, it is possible that when you come to the monastery, you will be assigned to such obedience that will have nothing to do with your aspirations. Read the life of John of Damascus.

So Seryozha, this is your order.
The fact is, my dear, that fittings cannot be done either in the case of marriage or in the case of joining a monastery, and one must come to God with the determination to be faithful to the end.
God's blessing to you.
Archm. John

Christmas 1996.

Dear Sergius in the Lord!
I am fulfilling the request for prayer for your mother. I also remember Tatyana Dmitrievna. Tatyana Dmitrievna has a confessor, Father Vladimir, who will guide her on the right path and help her in everything. And it is my duty to pray for her, for her health and for the monk Nikita. All the best to you.

(According to Tatiana’s cell attendant, Fr. John responded orally to my letter without reading it. The envelope remained unopened on the bedside table. Tatiana gave me a comprehensive answer from Fr. John. Quite unexpectedly for myself, a month later I received from Fr. John's greetings for Christmas 1996. He briefly repeated his answer, and my farewell phrase to him: “All the best to you”)

Father Pavel Troitsky
The miracle of the tape recorder
I learned about Father Pavel Troitsky after the death of Fr. Vsevolod Shpiller. I visited Agrippina Nikolaevna’s apartment. One day a letter came from Father Paul in which he wrote that the tapes that they wanted to send him—recordings of Father’s services. Vsevolod's Liturgy and the reading of the canon of Andrei of Crete were handed over to me.
I was amazed. I knew nothing about Father Paul.
Agrippina Nikolaevna explained to me: “He is very perspicacious, he sees something in you.”
I was perplexed.
A.N. - It's simple. Everything is according to Orthodoxy. Someone just loves you and wants to make you happy.
The next day, November 25, 1984, Father Vladimir Vorobyov in the church (then still in Veshnyaki) explained to me: “Hieromonk Pavel is the spiritual father of Father Vsevolod. This is an absolutely holy man. Nobody told him about you. He just saw that you loved listening to Father Vsevolod’s sermons and went with a tape recorder to people to listen, and he sent it to you. This is God's mercy. If necessary, God will send you a tape recorder."
- I went to people with someone else’s tape recorder and with someone else’s recordings of Father Vsevolod.
Father Vladimir warned me not to tell a single soul about this gift and about the elder.
Even earlier, on November 5, 1984, I turned to Father Vladimir with a request to pray that the Lord would send me a tape recorder to practice singing. I had someone else’s, and it had to be given away. We really wanted to hear the Liturgy, but the cassettes given by Father Paul did not fit into this tape recorder. I was upset.
Agrippina Nikolaevna, having learned about this, asked: “How much does a tape recorder cost?”
When I arrived with string bags to Agrippina Nikolaevna, she pointed her hand at the envelope lying on the table and said: “Here, please take it and tomorrow go and buy yourself a tape recorder. This is a gift from above for you. I just received my pension for four months. The idea to make such a gift appeared today."
When I bought a tape recorder and we listened to Father Vsevolod’s service, I showed Agrippina Nikolaevna a letter in which I asked Father Vladimir to pray that the Lord would send me a tape recorder.
Agrippina Nikolaevna: “This is not Agrippina, it was God who sent you a tape recorder. This is a gift from above for you. Only the gift does not fall from the sky, but comes through people.”
I still have both the tape recorder and Father Vsevolod’s recordings.
This is how we met Father Paul.

For twelve years, Agrippina Nikolaevna accompanied Father Paul in the camps and exile: “And you know, there I saw so many miracles that I almost got used to them. There's nothing to eat. There is nothing. Suddenly someone knocks on the window - some exiled archimandrite will bring pieces of bread.”
Agrippina Nikolaevna talked about the last days of Father Vsevolod: “He was silent all the time. There were people around him, but he was silent. We even thought that he would not recognize us. I bent over him and asked: “Father, do you recognize me?” And he answered me: “I don’t answer stupid questions. She has been following me for two months (of illness) and I don’t recognize her.”

Temptation
May 1985.
I started a rebellion against Father Vladimir. I didn't want to work as a janitor. O. Vladimir did not give his blessing to change jobs. I decided that I was leaving him. At this time I wrote a letter to Father Paul.
“Father Pavel.
I'm dying. I'm losing the meaning of life. I ask for your help. Thank you for the amazing gift - a recording of Father Vsevolod’s service. Stay healthy"
Seryozha May 2, 1985
The answer was reported by Father Vladimir on June 28.
“Father Pavel has read your letter and tells you not to go to those old women whom it is difficult for you to go to.”
At that time I was visiting an old disabled woman on Arbat. The old woman did not sleep at night from horror. There were dark forces in the apartment. I started getting sick. Conflicts began with Father Vladimir. Father Paul's answer was clear.
In another letter he thanked Father Paul. He described the dark forces present in this apartment (and the restless soul of the deceased woman).
The blessing has come (January 1986)
Don't go to any old ladies. Go only to the Kiselevs and Ksenia Alexandrovna (Kaloshina). (Ksenia Alexandrovna did not know about Father Pavel)
I asked Father Vladimir for forgiveness. Father Vladimir forgave.
They didn't leave the old lady. Other people came to see her.
And I worked as a janitor.
Lecture
December 23, 1986
On Catholic Christmas, I went to the Polytechnic Museum for a lecture on atheism. A furious argument ensued between me and the lecturer. The audience was divided. The lecturer demanded that a criminal case be opened against me for false reporting of events. The police were called. I prepared to be arrested. A miracle happened. After the film, at the end of the lecture “Pastor on a Slippery Slope” (about a Catholic priest who is a spy), I was surrounded by a crowd of elderly people and, asking the most ridiculous questions, they brought me to the subway.*) For some reason they didn’t touch us.
O. Pavel was not informed about this scandal. A letter came from him (January 2, 1987).
Seryozha:
“Congratulations on the Nativity of Christ and the New Year. I still wish to visit Father Vladimir and think less about unnecessary things. And not attending lectures that are not at all useful. Quietly go about your business as usual.
May the Lord bless you all.
Hieromonk Pavel, who loves you.
January 1987"
“I still wish to visit Father Vladimir” - I worked at the Assumption Church in Zvenigorod and rarely began to visit Father Vladimir.
“Think less about unnecessary things” - I thought about the posthumous apparitions of Father Vsevolod. Father Paul saw my thoughts.

Friends
We were gathering with friends at the apartment of one possessed person. These were Theological Tea Parties. This is how we sought God. There was no need to inform Father Pavel about this. A letter came from him.
“I send a blessing to Seryozha, and so that he sticks to Father Vladimir Vorobyov, obeys him in everything and spends less time with friends. It's better to be alone. God bless you all.
Hieromonk Paul, who loves the Lord. 26/16 –1-1987"
Subsequently, two thirds of the participants in our tea parties left the Church and Orthodoxy.

Prayer
I wrote a letter to Father Paul, begging him to meet with him. I wrote that I would pray to the Mother of God about this. I prayed for almost a month. Spiritually the meeting took place.
After communion. During prayers to the Mother of God. May 10, 1987
This was a manifestation of the intelligent energy of the presence of Hieromonk Paul.
We saw each other. Father Paul was not very pleased with my prayers.
I told Father Vladimir about this.
-Dissatisfied?
- Not very happy.
-You had a spiritual meeting. But do you want to break his retreat?
-How is he in prison?!
-Yes.
-Well, then this is some kind of childhood.
Father Paul warned that if other people found out about him, he would close himself off from those to whom he was now writing.
A letter arrived from Hieromonk Pavel written on May 10 (the day of the meeting).
Father Paul also answered my problems with which I approached him.
“I send a blessing to Serge. I received his letter.
It is best to go to church, where they serve more spiritually. There is no need to change the temple. God bless everyone.
Hieromonk Paul, who loves the Lord. 10/5 –27/4 1987 Easter"

Father Paul sent Easter eggs. They were wrapped in napkins and each was signed: “Zoe”, “Katyusha”.
It was written to me: “Christ is risen, Seryozha”
I kept this gift as a shrine. Later, when I angered Father Paul, the egg itself split into two parts.

In June 1987, I mentioned Father Paul for the first time in a letter to Father John Krestyankin.

In September 1987, we were engaged in the transfer of the ashes of the mothers of the Spaso-Blachernae Monastery, Schema nun Seraphima and Schema nun Maria.
Difficulties arose. We turned to Father Paul. I also wrote him a letter.
He wrote that I have no humility. I asked about the monastic path.
In his next letter to Zoya and Ekaterina Vasilievna Kiselev, Father Pavel
answered:
“With God’s help, your schema-monks will be transported, and their bodies will lie where they are laid.
I beg you very much, do not engage Seryozha in empty talk about me.
He sent me a letter. There is absolutely nothing to read.
He writes that he has no humility. Who among us has it???!
Humility does not come suddenly. You need to work a lot on yourself, then humility will come.
I ask him very much, let him stick to his confessor and not look for others.
They do not seek good from good. Take care of what you have.
Seryozha asks me for photographs. I do not have them. Why are they needed?
God bless you all.
Jeremiah Paul, who loves the Lord. 18/9 –1/10 1987"

O. Vladimir, having read this letter, laughed. I said that I was not looking for other confessors.
-This is told to you for the future.
In due time this future came.

In May 1988, he wrote a letter to Father John Krestyankin describing the posthumous apparitions of Father Vsevolod. He also wrote about Father Paul. Father John responded in detail to each appearance of Father Vsevolod. He was silent about Father Paul.
Father Vladimir was angry and very alarmed, believing that Father John did not know Father Paul. He said that this could lead to irreparable consequences and he doesn’t even know how bad it could be for me. “There may be unpredictable consequences from the fact that you do not listen to such people.”
Later, during confession, Father Vladimir told me: “Fr. Paul sent a letter.” He is very unhappy. He writes that he does not know Father John.
-Father, I was sure that they knew each other.
-Repent. Repent.

November 1988.
An old woman who lived with Zoya and Ekaterina Vasilievna died.
A memorial service was served at the apartment. Father Vladimir, Father Alexander Saltykov, Father Arkady Shatov served.
During the funeral service, before reading the Gospel, together with Father Vladimir we contemplated Father Paul, looking at us from spiritual infinity.
Still asked Father Vladimir
-Was Father Paul at the funeral service?
-Was.
-For me this is all the more joyful. After all, I have been under punishment for a long time and, as it were, rejected by it.
O. Vladimir – There is no need to say that. Not rejected at all. You're just under strictures.
Then Zoya Vasilievna told me that Father Paul had sent a letter in which he thanked the priests for the memorial service and for their help in burying the old woman.

October 26, 1991.
Feast of the Iveron Icon of the Mother of God.
I was sick and alone. For the last time I felt Father Paul’s loving gaze on me. Contacted him:
“Father Paul, bless me to enter the monastery”

November 6, 1991
News of the death of Hieromonk Pavel Troitsky.
With tears I read the memorial service for Father Paul.
Let this be a temptation - I write about what I know.
Then, at the most inopportune moment, the soul felt the loving attention of Father Paul. My memorial service did not add anything to him, but he was touched by my memory of him and gratitude to him. It was a manifestation of absolute love and absolute holiness.

*)Later, lecturer Pishchik died in a car accident.

**) One elderly lady asked: “Do you really believe that men can give birth?”
-?!
-Why, in the Bible it is written: “Abraham begat Isaac, Isaac begat Jacob, etc.”

Another person said: “I don’t go to church because there are only Jews there. There are Jews on the iconostasis, and Jews in the temple.”

From the article/file "Schemonuns Seraphim and Maria"

(When I talk about a luminous wife, I mean that which is impossible to contemplate with physical vision, that which is revealed to the inner eyes. Just as the thoughts of another person are revealed to the inner eyes, what happens inside his sense of “I”, physically sightless, but absolutely real for spiritual vision. My sense of “I” sees the feeling of “I” of another person who has died, does not have a body, but is nearby. This feeling of “I” of another is as real as my sense of “I” is real, this is the soul of a person. One can say the visible energy of the soul, but with a coefficient of otherworldliness, since the soul resides in revealed eternity, so that both eternity and the visible world exist simultaneously. This is well reflected in ancient icons.)

One day the author witnessed Metr. Anthony Blum's exit into the spiritual cosmos. This was during his visit to Moscow in 1988. Vladyka was late for a meeting with people in the House of Artists on Kuznetsky Most, and decided to take a look at the people waiting for him. An abyss opened, the Lord saw every person. Twenty minutes later he arrived for a meeting at the House of Artists. When I am asked to explain what I mean by the unfolding of eternity, I give the example of a rubber ball. We live, as it were, on the surface of a rubber ball. This is our world. But this ball is cut and there appears another space. This is best reflected in the ancient icons of the Dormition of the Mother of God by such masters as Theophanes the Greek; this is a living experience. In the later icons there is ornateness and conventionality, but the experience itself is not visible. In one of his sermons, Father Vsevolod said that we are separated from the spiritual world by a thin shell of our existence.

Drawing "Father Vsevolod Shpiller on the eve of his funeral service"

Drawing "Invocation" Appearance of Father Vsevolod at the Liturgy of Basil the Great, a week after his death

Drawing "Appearance of St. Vsevolod Shpiller to Patriarch Pimen on February 7, 1984. Nikolo-Kuznetsk Church. Feast of the Icon of the Mother of God "Quench My Sorrows"

Drawing "Conversation with Father Vsevolod on the day of his remembrance"

Drawing "Fr. Vsevolod at the Feast of the Icon of the Mother of God Recovering the Dead 1984 (40 days have not yet passed)"

Drawing "O. Vsevolod at the All-Night Vigil in the Church on Preobrazhenskaya

Drawing "At the service of Father Vladimir"

Drawing "O. Vsevolod in the kitchen of his apartment. (after death)"

Drawing "O. Vsevolod in the hallway. After death."

Drawing "Panikhida in Kuzminki"

Drawing "Agrippina Nikolaevna and Father Vsevolod at the door of the temple. Cauznets"

Drawing "Listening to the liturgy of Father Vsevolod"

Drawing "Transparent silhouette"

Drawing "Arch. John the Peasant's exit into metaphysics" Pechora of Pskov

Drawing "O. John Krestyankin among us in the apartment (metaphysically)"

Sketch "Arch. John the Peasant after his death" St. Michael's Church.

Publications in the Museums section

Russian history on the canvases of Nikolai Ge

The painter Nikolai Ge became famous for his religious paintings, but his brushes also include works on historical subjects. Peter I and Tsarevich Alexei, the future Empress Catherine II and her husband Peter III, Alexander Pushkin and the Decembrist Ivan Pushchin - remember the famous paintings of Nikolai Ge.

“Peter I interrogates Tsarevich Alexei”

Nikolay Ge. Peter I interrogates Tsarevich Alexei in Peterhof. 1871. State Tretyakov Gallery

Monplaisir Palace. Photo: State Museum-Reserve "Peterhof"

Painting from the exhibition of the State Tretyakov Gallery: Nikolai Ge. Peter I interrogates Tsarevich Alexei in Peterhof. 1871

The son of Peter I and his first wife Evdokia Lopukhina, Tsarevich Alexei did not get along well with his father. Peter reproached him for his inattention to state affairs, for his kindness to his mother, imprisoned in a monastery, and for much more. When the second wife, Ekaterina Alekseevna, gave birth to Peter another son, Alexei's situation became more difficult. He fled abroad in search of allies. A year and a half later, the prince returned, but for fleeing he was deprived of the right to succession to the throne in favor of his younger brother. And soon the Secret Chancellery began an investigation into the case of Alexei - he was suspected of wanting to seize power. The Tsarevich was interrogated by Peter I.

It was this episode that became the plot of Nikolai Ge’s painting. Before starting work, Ge visited the Peterhof Monplaisir Palace, where the interrogation of the prince took place, and sketched the interior and many details of the decoration. The low-key setting depicted on the canvas matches the gloomy mood of the scene. There are only two heroes in the picture, and both of them are at the center of the plot. No external effects, no luxury, no attributes of royal power. Only the angry king-father and the traitorous son, who does not dare raise his eyes to him.

“Peter the Great is not stretched out to his full height, he does not rush, does not shake his arms, does not sparkle with his eyes, Tsarevich Alexei does not kneel, with his face distorted in horror... and yet the viewer feels like a witness to one of those stunning dramas , which are never erased from memory."

Mikhail Saltykov-Shchedrin

"Catherine II at the tomb of Empress Elizabeth I"

Nikolay Ge. Catherine II at the tomb of Empress Elizabeth. 1874. State Tretyakov Gallery

Nikolay Ge. Catherine II at the tomb of Empress Elizabeth. Sketch. 1871

Nikolay Ge. Catherine II at the tomb of Empress Elizabeth. Sketch. 1873

The title of the painting is not entirely correct: at the moment depicted in the painting, its main character had not yet become the Empress-Autocrat Catherine II, but was only the wife of Peter III Alekseevich. After the death of Elizaveta Petrovna, relations between the spouses worsened. The new emperor did not hide the fact that he was going to get rid of his unwanted wife, while Catherine hatched plans for her own salvation.

The scene at Elizabeth's tomb was remembered by many contemporaries. According to the recollections of one of the courtiers, “The emperor had no desire to participate in the ceremonies necessary for the funeral of the late empress, his aunt, and left this care to his wife, who made the best possible arrangements, possessing complete political tact.”. The subjects were offended by Peter's gaiety and carelessness and highly appreciated the reverence with which Catherine stood for long church services and prayed for the memory of the Empress.

The artist carefully studied the notes of Catherine II, the memoirs of her friend-conspirator Ekaterina Dashkova and other evidence of those events. Among them was a portrait of the Empress in mourning - it was painted in 1762 by Vigilius Eriksen. An interesting detail: in Eriksen’s portrait, the order ribbon on Catherine is blue, of the Order of St. Andrew the First-Called. Only the autocrat could wear it, therefore, the portrait was painted after the coup and overthrow of Peter III. And in the picture, the mourning dress is the same, but the ribbon, as expected, is red - the Order of St. Catherine. He was granted to the consorts of emperors. The “Imperial” blue ribbon can be seen on Peter III. His figure stands out in the background with a white camisole that would be inappropriate for a funeral. Dashkova described that the emperor came to the coffin not to mourn his aunt, but “to joke with the ladies on duty, making clergymen laugh, and to find fault with officers about their buckles, ties or uniforms”.

Among the other characters in the canvas, you can recognize Ekaterina Dashkova and other conspirators - Kirill Razumovsky and Nikita Panin. The elderly courtier walking behind Peter, but turning around to follow Catherine, is Nikita Trubetskoy. During the coup, Trubetskoy will go over to her side.

“A picture is not a word. She gives one minute, and in that minute everything should be, but if not, there is no picture.”

Nikolay Ge

"Pushkin in the village of Mikhailovskoye"

V. Berne. Portrait of Ivan Pushchin. 1817. All-Russian Museum A.S. Pushkin

Nikolay Ge. A.S. Pushkin in the village of Mikhailovskoye. 1875. Kharkov Art Museum

Unknown artist. Portrait of Arina Rodionovna. 1st par. 19th century All-Russian Museum of A. S. Pushkin

Nikolai Ge’s painting “Pushkin in the village of Mikhailovskoye” is known to many: it was often published in textbooks. The plot centers on a visit to the exiled Pushkin by his lyceum friend Ivan Pushchin. However, drama is also captured here - the drama of true friendship. It was dangerous to visit the disgraced poet in exile, and his uncle Vasily Pushkin dissuaded Pushchin from the trip. However, he, a member of a secret society, was not afraid to come to Mikhailovskoye in January 1825. Alexander Pushkin later wrote about the meeting:

My first friend, my priceless friend!
And I blessed fate
When my yard is secluded,
Covered in sad snow,
Your bell rang.

For the sake of artistic effect, Ge, usually attentive to detail, deviated a little from historical truth when he painted the interior. According to the testimony of Ekaterina Fok, who visited the poet’s house more than once as a child: “Ge wrote the office in his painting “Pushkin in the village of Mikhailovskoye” completely incorrectly. This is not the office of Alexander Sergeevich, but his son, Grigory Alexandrovich". From the further description it is clear why the poet’s real office was not suitable for a large-scale canvas: “Alexander Sergeevich’s room was small and pitiful. There was just a simple wooden bed with two pillows, one leather, and a robe lying on it, and the table was cardboard, tattered: he wrote on it, and not from an inkwell, but from a lipstick jar.”.

Alexander Pushkin, depicted on the canvas, reads aloud to a friend - most likely, the comedy “Woe from Wit” by Alexander Griboedov. It was Pushchin who brought him the list of fashionable plays. She delighted the poet so much that he recited while standing. In the background is written the nanny Arina Rodionovna, who looked up from her knitting to listen to her pupil.

Ivan Pushchin recalled about his short visit to Mikhailovskoye: “We still clinked glasses, but we drank sadly: as if it felt like we were drinking together for the last time, and we were drinking into eternal separation!” The visit did not last long, but Pushchin managed to tell his friend about the secret society and his plans. In December of the same year, he went to Senate Square, after which he was convicted and sentenced to 25 years of hard labor. The friends never saw each other again.

The painting was painted by Ge for the 1st exhibition (“Itinerants”), which opened in St. Petersburg in November 1871. In particular, the relevance of the theme chosen by the artist was associated with the approaching 200th anniversary of Peter I (1672-1725) at that time. Even before the exhibition, the painting was purchased from the author by Pavel Tretyakov.

Nikolai Ge painted several original repetitions of the painting, one of which was acquired by Alexander II - it currently belongs to the collection of the State Russian Museum.

By the beginning of 1870, Nikolai Ge returned to Russia from Italy, where he lived and worked in 1857-1863 and 1864-1869. The final move took place in May 1870, when he and his family settled on Vasilievsky Island in St. Petersburg. During this period, Ge became close to progressive artists and writers and became one of the founders of the Association of Traveling Art Exhibitions (TPHV). Subjects related to Russian history of the 18th-19th centuries began to appear in his work. One of the first works on this topic was the painting “Peter I and Tsarevich Alexei” - the plot associated with Peter I was relevant in connection with the approaching 200th anniversary of his birth.

As Ge worked on the painting, he studied historical documents related to the activities of Peter I. Apparently, he discussed them with his friends and acquaintances - in particular, with the historian and publicist Nikolai Kostomarov. As a result, the initial idealization of the personality of Peter I was replaced by a more realistic assessment associated with an understanding of the cruelty and suffering that paid for the successes of the transformations of the Petrine era. Nikolai Ge himself described this situation as follows:

Nikolai Ge prepared the painting “Peter I Interrogates Tsarevich Alexei Petrovich in Peterhof” for the 1st exhibition of the Association of Traveling Art Exhibitions (“Peredvizhniki”), the opening of which was postponed several times, but finally took place in St. Petersburg in November 1871. Pavel Tretyakov bought the painting directly from the artist’s studio, shortly before the start of the exhibition - this canvas became the first painting by Ge that Tretyakov acquired for his collection.

During the exhibition, Emperor Alexander II liked the painting, who also expressed a desire to buy it - but no one dared to inform him that the painting had already been sold. To resolve this problem, Ge was asked to write an author's copy for Tretyakov, and give the original to Alexander II. However, the artist stated that he would not do this without the consent of Pavel Mikhailovich, and as a result, the original was given to Tretyakov, and an author’s repetition was written for Alexander II, which later became part of the collection of the Russian Museum.

Despite the external calm of Peter I and Tsarevich Alexei, their internal state is full of emotions and emotional tension. Apparently, a heated discussion took place between them, as a result of which Peter I became even more convinced of his son’s betrayal, which is confirmed by documents laid out on the table (one of the papers fell to the floor). Before passing sentence, Peter I peers into his son’s face, still hoping to see signs of repentance on him. Alexey, under the gaze of his father, lowered his eyes - confident that Peter I would not dare to sentence his own son to death, he remains silent and does not ask for forgiveness.

The light and shade design of the composition emphasizes the difference between the characters. According to art critic Tatyana Karpova, the figure of Tsarevich Alexei is illuminated with a paler, “like lunar, deathly light,” which in this situation symbolizes the fact that “he already belongs more to the kingdom of shadows than to real life with its passions and colors.” At the same time, the face of Peter I, on the contrary, is “energetically sculpted with contrasting chiaroscuro.” The corner of the table and the red and black tablecloth hanging from it (“the colors of mourning”) seem to separate father and son and foreshadow the tragic outcome of this drama. The alternation of black and white floor tiles has several interpretations - “and an expression of the spirit of regularity of the Peter the Great era, and black and white in the characters of Peter and the prince, and the chessboard on which the final of the game lost by Alexei is played out.”

There is no evidence in historical documents that Peter I ever interrogated Tsarevich Alexei in the Monplaisir Palace, which by 1718 had not yet been fully completed - on the contrary, there are statements that “in reality this did not happen in Monplaisir.” It is also believed that it is unlikely that Peter I interrogated the prince one-on-one. Although Ge apparently knew this, he nevertheless decided to depict only Peter and Alexei in the painting in order to be able to focus on the psychology of their experiences.

The moment of painful search for a solution depicted in the picture indicates that Ge wanted to show in Peter I not an executioner, but a father who oversteps his personal passions for the sake of the interests of the state. Art critic Alla Vereshchagina noted that “for the first time in Russian historical painting, typical images of real historical figures, alien to idealization, were created,” since “psychologism determined the true historicism of the work.”

The Tretyakov Gallery also contains a sketch of this painting of the same name (1870, oil on canvas, 22 × 26.7 cm, Zh-593), which was acquired from the heirs in 1970.

There are several full-length author's repetitions of the painting of the same name. One of them is in the State Russian Museum (1872, oil on canvas, 134.5 × 173 cm, Zh-4142), where it arrived in 1897 from the Hermitage. Another repetition, also dated 1872, is in the State Museum of Arts of Uzbekistan in Tashkent. It came there from the collection of Grand Duke Nikolai Konstantinovich (according to some information, this painting was previously in the collection of his father, the Grand Duke." Writer and critic Mikhail Saltykov-Shchedrin paid great attention to Ge's painting. In particular, he wrote:

The painting “Peter I interrogating Tsarevich Alexei in Peterhof” on a 2006 Russian postage stamp

Noting that “apparently, Mr. Ge’s personality is extremely attractive to Peter,” Saltykov-Shchedrin, for his part, highly appreciates the role of Peter I in Russian history and his moral qualities. He positively assesses Peter's reforms, believing that the subsequent failures of some of them occurred not through the fault of Peter, "but because those who continued his work supported only the letter of the reforms and completely forgot their reason." Therefore, in the conflict depicted in the picture, Saltykov-Shchedrin’s sympathies are completely on the side of Peter, who feared that Tsarevich Alexei, having ascended the throne as his heir, would destroy much of what he had created. According to Saltykov-Shchedrin, “the figure of Peter seems to be filled with that luminous beauty that only the undoubtedly beautiful inner world gives to a person,” while for Tsarevich Alexei the meeting with his father also “was full of moral anxieties, but these anxieties are different, undoubtedly base.” properties" .

An article about the 1st traveling exhibition was also published by art critic Vladimir Stasov, who also considered Ge’s painting as one of the best works presented. In particular, he wrote:

At the same time, unlike Saltykov-Shchedrin, Stasov was more critical of the personality of Peter I, considering him a tyrant and despot, and Tsarevich Alexei a victim, and it was from this point of view that he criticized the composition of Ge’s painting.

An art critic who studied Ge’s work wrote that this painting is “one of the most striking evidence of the rapprochement of Ge’s art with the art of his fellow Wanderers,” since when assessing historical figures, “he is primarily interested in the internal, psychological motives of actions,” and he is “guided by the need to evaluate people and events in their moral sense"

Among the paintings known to the general public from childhood and living in the historical and cultural memory of the people is the famous painting by Nikolai Nikolaevich Ge “Peter I interrogating Tsarevich Alexei in Peterhof.” More often this picture is simply called “Tsar Peter and Tsarevich Alexei.” The family drama of Tsar-Transformer Peter I is one of the most notable pages of Russian history. N. Ge painted this painting almost 150 years ago, reproductions of which have been reproduced in numerous art publications and postcards.

In 1872, an exhibition dedicated to the 200th anniversary of the birth of Peter I was to be held in Moscow. This gave N. Ge the idea to paint a picture from the life of the great reformer tsar: “I felt everywhere and in everything the influence and trace of Peter’s reform. This feeling was so strong that I involuntarily became interested in Peter and, under the influence of this passion, I conceived my painting “Peter I and Tsarevich Alexei.”

From the turbulent history of Tsar Peter, the artist in his painting depicts the moment when Peter I had to experience a difficult drama between the consciousness of national duty and paternal feelings. The fate of the firstborn of Tsar Peter was tragic; many circumstances played their fatal role in it. First of all, the environment in which the young Tsarevich Alexei was brought up was the environment of his mother, the boyar daughter Evdokia Lopukhina. These were the offspring of ancient boyar families who hated Peter I for his reforms and for his harsh struggle with the “big beards.”

The character of Tsarevich Alexei himself was also the direct opposite of his father’s - with his inexhaustible energy, enterprise, iron will and insatiable thirst for activity. And resentment towards the father, who forcibly exiled the young queen Evdokia to the Suzdal monastery. The heir of Peter I became not the continuer of his father's affairs, but their enemy, detractor and conspirator. Subsequently, he had to flee his native country, but returned to Russia, he was declared a criminal and now appears before the menacing eyes of his father. But here was not only the great personal tragedy of Peter the father, who lost his heir-reformer in the person of his son. The conflict, which N. Ge based the plot of the film, grows from a purely family one and already reflects a historical tragedy. This tragedy was typical for all of Russia, when Peter I, breaking the old days, built a new state on blood.

The events are interpreted by N. Ge extremely simply, the romantic excitement of his previous gospel paintings has given way to strict historical objectivity, therefore everything in his painting is vitally accurate - the chosen situation, the setting, the artistic characteristics, and the composition of the entire work. However, when starting to work on the painting, N. Ge was faced with a choice. Many then were confident in the guilt of the “son-killer tsar,” and the prince himself was declared a victim of his treacherous father. However, the historian N.I. Kostomarov, whom N. Ge knew well and considered him an outstanding talent, a historian with a clear mind, did not agree with such coverage of events. For N. Kostomarov, the machinations of Tsarevich Alexei were proven, and the execution was natural. True, he also stipulates that Peter I himself made an enemy out of his son.

This is the situation N. Ge found himself in, when he had to take a certain point of view or look for a historical guiding thread himself. If we decisively condemn the prince, then in this case we must compare him with his “virtuous” father, but the artist could not decide to do this. And he had no reason for this, for he himself admitted: “I had sympathy for Peter, but after studying many documents, I saw that there could be no sympathy. I inflated my sympathies for Peter, said that his public interests were higher than his father’s feelings, and this justified cruelty, but killed the ideal.” And then N. Ge decided to combine the efforts of a historian and an artist. He works tirelessly in the Hermitage, studying all the paintings and graphic images of Peter I and Tsarevich Alexei. In Monplaisir in Peterhof, he visited Peter’s room, looked at his clothes and personal belongings, then returned to his workshop and began making sketches and sketches.

At first, in pencil sketches, Peter I was depicted alone: ​​sitting at the table with his head down, he is thinking painfully. Before him lie documents that irrefutably prove his son’s guilt. But so far the family drama that N. Ge so wanted to artistically materialize is not felt, and a new sketch appears. On it, the powerful figure of the seated king is silhouetted against the background of a window, in the rays of bright daylight. The son stands nearby, tired and hopelessly hanging his head. But the artist refused this option, since the exaltation of one hero at the expense of another was too obvious. In the final version of the painting, Peter I sits at the table and looks at his son with a gaze. A stormy explanation has just taken place, and Tsar Peter seems to be waiting for an answer from his son. The prince, like a ghost man, stands as if shackled, looking down in confusion.

The diffused light of a cloudy day and restrained color give the painting real intonation; all the artist’s attention is focused on the psychological expressiveness of faces and figures - their facial expressions, gestures, poses. After a heated argument, Peter’s outburst of anger gives way to painful confidence in his son’s guilt. All the words have been said, all the accusations have been made, a tense, nervous silence reigns in the room. Peter I inquisitively and intently peers at Tsarevich Alexei, trying to discern and unravel him, still not abandoning hope for his son’s repentance. Under his father’s gaze, he lowered his eyes, but the dialogue between them continues internally, in complete silence.

In N. Ge’s film, the moment of action is surprisingly precisely chosen, which allows you to understand what happened and guess about the future. And it says a lot that it will be terrible. And first of all, the red tablecloth falling to the floor, an insurmountable barrier separating the figures of father and son. With this, N. Ge achieved the main thing: the death sentence was ready to be signed not by the crowned executioner, but by the father wounded in the very heart - a state politician who had weighed everything, but still a hesitant person. The tragic collision of the painting is hidden, as it were, inside; the artist dispenses with striking color shocks here, the canvas is softly lit, almost imperceptibly. The colors in his painting do not glow, do not glow like hot coals, but live neutrally in a darkened space.

All the details are carefully written out on the canvas; they not only specify the place and time of action, but also participate in the characterization of the characters in the picture. Simple furniture and “Dutch” paintings hanging on the walls speak of Peter’s simple tastes, and in this European-looking room Alexey, who was brought up in towers, feels like a stranger. Fear of his father, lack of understanding of his affairs, fear of punishment made Alexei wary and secretive. But he also had other character traits, which the historian M.P. wrote about. Pogodin: “In sincere, sincere letters to friends he appears as he really was, without embellishment or exaggeration, and it must be admitted that all these documents speak more in his favor than to his detriment. He was a pious man, of course, inquisitive in his own way, prudent, prudent and kind, cheerful, a lover of carousing.” Nikolai Ge, according to him, sympathized with the unfortunate fate of the prince when he painted his picture.

None of the historical documents mention that Peter I ever interrogated his son one-on-one in Peterhof. The interrogations of the prince were conducted in an official setting, and, of course, N. Ge knew about this. But he deliberately transfers the action to Peterhof and limits the circle of characters in order to enhance the deeper penetration into the life and psychology of the era. The artist put this meeting at the center of his painting, since it allowed him to focus all his attention on the main thing - on the tragedy in which the characters were two close people. At this decisive moment in his life, Tsarevich Alexei was still capable of passive resistance, he had not yet lost faith that Tsar Peter would not dare to step over his duty as a father, would not dare to raise public opinion against himself by condemning the legitimate heir to the throne, as Alexei continued to be count. This unfulfilled, illusory hope continues to fuel his internal resistance. He was not a powerless victim; his stubbornness and firm refusal to submit to his father’s will has his own line of behavior, his own courage, therefore he is not a pathetic coward (although sometimes he was seen as such), but an opponent of Peter.

This required from N. Ge completely different forms and means of artistic expression, generalization - without petty, careful copying of nature. The artist was in Monplaisir only once and subsequently said that “deliberately once, so as not to ruin the impression that I took away from there.”

The painting was a great success at the First Exhibition of the Itinerants, held in November 1871. Russian writer M.E. Saltykov-Shchedrin said about N. Ge’s “The Last Supper”: “The external setting of the drama has ended, but its instructive meaning for us has not ended.” By the same principle, the artist built his picture about Tsar Peter and Tsarevich Alexei - the dispute is over, the voices have died down, the outbursts of passions have subsided, the answers are predetermined, and everyone - both the audience and history - knows the continuation and outcome of the matter. But the echo of this dispute continues to sound in the Peterhof room, in contemporary Russia, and in our days. This is a dispute about the historical destinies of the country and the price that people and humanity have to pay for the forward movement of history.

When N. Ge was already finishing work on the painting, P. M. Tretyakov came to his studio and said that he was buying his canvas from the author. At the exhibition, the imperial family liked N. Ge’s work, and Alexander II asked to keep the painting for himself. None of the emperor's retinue dared to report that the painting had already been sold. Then, in search of a way out of the current situation, they turned to N. Ge and asked him to transfer the painting to the king, and for P.M. Tretyakov write a repetition. The artist replied that without the consent of P.M. Tretyakov will not do this, and Pavel Mikhailovich said that N. Ge would write a repetition for the Tsar. And so it happened. After the exhibition, the painting was given to P.M. Tretyakov, and for Alexander II N. Ge wrote a repetition, which is now in the Russian Museum.