Description:
Gates of Mystery: The Art of Holy Russiaby Roderick Grierson
Publisher: Intercultura, 1994
ISBN is 9780963537409 / 0963537407
Softcover
8.5 x 10.8 inches, 336 pages
The use and making of icons entered Ancient Russia following its conversion to Orthodox Christianity in AD 988.
As a general rule, these icons strictly followed models and formulas hallowed by Byzantine art, led from the
capital in Constantinople. As time passed, the Russians widened the vocabulary of types and styles far beyond
anything found elsewhere in the Orthodox world.
The personal, innovative and creative traditions of Western European religious art were largely lacking in
Russia before the 17th century, when Russian icon painting became strongly influenced by religious paintings
and engravings from both Protestant and Catholic Europe. In the mid-17th-century changes in liturgy and
practice instituted by Patriarch Nikon resulted in a split in the Russian Orthodox Church. The traditionalists,
the persecuted "Old Ritualists"… Read More