Procession of the cross in the Kursk province. Social significance of the painting

Vasily Perov has always been interested in Russian types. He even returned from a trip to Italy, where the Academy of Arts sent him for his merits, ahead of schedule, because he considered that that life was incomprehensible to him, and he would not be able to create something of his own there. Perhaps his most resonant painting was “Rural Procession at Easter.” Some praised the painting for its truthfulness, while others were indignant: lest the artist end up in exile to Solovki for his insolence.

At first glance, the painting by Vasily Perov, painted in 1861, depicts uniform disgrace. The drunken priest can barely stand on his feet, and next to him lie men in even worse condition. And the procession is not in its best shape. The icon in the woman’s hands is scratched, and the old man walking next to him holds the image upside down.

The action takes place on Bright Week (the week after Easter), so the picture does not depict a procession around the temple on Easter night, as it might seem. So what then happens on Perov’s canvas?

The fact is that in the Russian Empire priests were not paid salaries. As a rule, parishes had land plots and a tiny subsidy from the state. Therefore, in an effort to increase their income, the priests came up with the custom of glorification at Easter. In the week after the Holy Day, the priests went to peasant farmsteads. They entered each hut and sang church hymns. The peasants, in turn, had to thank the priests for their wishes of prosperity with a gift or money.

In reality, things didn't look so good. The priests, trying to go around as many houses as possible, sang chants very quickly. The peasants believed that they were simply being robbed. After all, Easter was the most economically difficult time, when after winter there was no money left, and food supplies were running out. To get rid of the priests, they were most often given alcohol and escorted out of the hut.

It was this side of the relationship between the church and the peasants that Vasily Perov depicted in his painting. It is worth noting that his painting caused a storm of indignation both in church circles and among artists. The painter Vasily Khudyakov wrote an emotional appeal to Tretyakov, who acquired the painting “Rural Procession at Easter” for his collection:

“And other rumors are circulating that they will soon make a request to you from the Holy Synod; On what basis do you buy such immoral paintings and display them publicly? The painting (“Priests”) was exhibited on Nevsky at a permanent exhibition, from where, although it was soon removed, it nevertheless raised a big protest! And Perov, instead of Italy, would like to avoid ending up in Solovki.”.
Tretyakov had to remove the painting from the exhibition.

But there were also those who considered the true situation of the peasants in the picture of the forefather Perov. Critic Vladimir Stasov spoke of the painting as truthful and sincere, conveying real types of people.

Another incredibly emotional painting by Vasily Perov cannot leave anyone indifferent.

While still living in Chuguev, in the mid-1870s, Repin found a great subject for a painting, “he finally found an “idea” for himself,” he reported to V.V. Stasov. The artist took, as he himself said, the plot is very complex, it will take three years of work to paint the picture, but “it’s very worth it.” He will paint the picture in Moscow, because “there is no more convenient place.” What this plot is, what the future painting represents, Repin does not say, and “will not tell anyone” until the painting is completed.
It was about the "Procession". The idea was grandiose. The paintings created by Repin in Chuguev and depicting images of people from the people and oppressors of the people, such as “The Timid Peasant”, “The Peasant with the Evil Eye”, “Protodeacon”, excellent in themselves, were essentially just a stage on the way to “ Procession of the Cross,” a kind of sketches. Already the first sketch of the new painting, made by Repin in 1877, reveals the artist’s ideological plan - the opposition of rich and poor, clergy and peasants, government and people, and in the development of the final version, in the images of peasants, another thing is emphasized - the spiritual wealth of the simple Russian people, enslaved , humiliated, living in poverty, but smart, hardworking, dreaming of a new life.
Repin's plan met with great sympathy from all his friends, especially from I.N. Kramskoy. The spectacle of religious processions attracted Repin as a child, when he and his mother visited a monastery near Chuguev. “We gladly entered the dense maple forest... and were in time before the start of the gospel... After a long service in the church, the revealed icon was carried to the well. The crowd scattered throughout the shady forest and was so beautifully illuminated in spots in the dense hazel trees. The boys loudly clapped their palms on the maple leaves.” But children's impressions were only colorful and spectacular. Gold and silver banners, shiny decorations of icons, priests' robes sparkling in the sun, crowds of people in festive clothes - all this, of course, attracted the boys. But now, when he - a great artist - saw the religious processions in Chuguev, the childish perception of bright colors faded into the background, and the main thing, the main thing, was the exposure of modern Russian reality.

I.N. Kramskoy, while in Moscow, saw this painting in Repin’s studio, which was actually just begun, and, returning to St. Petersburg, expressed his delight to Stasov, and he, as always, was not slow in informing Repin about it. Replying to Stasov’s letter, Repin says that Kramskoy really admired the “Religious Procession,” but “it seems to me that he is exaggerating.” Repin further reports that he continues to work on the painting. And in conclusion he says: “In general, I work a lot in Moscow and with pleasure.” And Stasov, who had not yet even seen the initial sketch of the “Procession of the Cross,” in an article where he spoke so negatively about the painting “Princess Sophia,” wrote: “You impatiently ask: when will Repin start a new real work again, when will he give us more one perfect creation, like “Barge Haulers”. There are rumors that he has an amazing half-finished painting “The Procession” in his studio. Last year’s “Deacon” (Stasov is talking about Repin’s painting “Protodeacon”) was only one of the sketches for this painting. Imagine what this artistic creation will be like, for whom such sketches exist, masterpieces in themselves.”

Repin continues to work on “The Procession of the Cross” with ever-increasing enthusiasm. In July 1878, Repin wrote to Stasov that he continued to paint the painting “Religious Procession”, made sketches for the painting, “I came across an interesting subject,” “I have a rather large garden at my apartment, and I paint sketches in it in the sun and in the air.” . Repin writes sketches for the “Religious Procession” in Moscow, and in Zvenigorod, and in the Trinity-Sergius and Savvinsky monasteries, in Abramtsevo and in Khotkovo, he travels and walks a lot, alone or in company with his artist friends Polenov, Levitsky and Vasnetsov . He admires the beautiful Moscow River and the monastic antiquities. In and around Moscow he finds “amazing everyday pieces.” In the Savvinsky Monastery near Zvenigorod, Repin saw “a holy fool, a miracle!” Work begins on sketches for “The Hunchback.” At first it is only the head, a face distorted by suffering, then - a sitting hunchback, with a gloomy, stern face, speckled with wrinkles, then - a half-length image of a hunchback, in whose gesture a striving forward already appears, finally, the last sketch - a hunchback in full height, in the position , close to the picture - he rushes forward, pushing away the tenth, blocking his path to the icon.
Repin worked hard on this painting. On August 9, 1881, he wrote to Stasov from Khotkov that in the winter of this year he would still live in Moscow, finishing the “Religious Procession” and that he was now busy with sketches for this painting. “It’s a pity, the weather is terrible, there are almost no sunny days, but I should have everything in the sun!”
And a little later he reports that he is working mostly on “The Procession,” but the film will not be finished this winter either. It will have to end, he writes, in St. Petersburg.
Repin traveled to the outskirts of Kursk, to the famous Root Hermitage, famous for its religious processions, visited Kiev and Chernigov - watched the religious procession from the Trinity Monastery. His longtime friend, artist N.I. Murashko, a comrade at the Academy of Arts, with whom Repin was visiting in Kiev, later recalled how Repin observed the religious procession: “We arrived quite early and took a place on one of the hills... Around us and everything was noisy nearby... There was a parade and a procession of the clergy... Repin was somewhat embarrassed and seemed annoyed, noticing that some of the clergy were calmly talking during the procession itself.” And in Repin’s “Procession of the Cross” the priests talk among themselves about something that is by no means sacred...
For almost the entire 1881, Repin worked hard on the painting. “This week I worked all in the sun, with great success,” he wrote to P.M. Tretyakov, “I made the most difficult, in all respects, sketches of the deacon’s and cleric’s vestments; Moreover, I came across an interesting wanderer (walking by); but I was terribly tired this week. If I had been able to work through at least half of September with such “success,” I would have collected all the materials for the religious procession.”
In April 1882, he informed Stasov that he would write “The Procession” in the summer, and would finish it in the Tretyakov Gallery, where there were free rooms. The “Religious Procession” was finally completed only in St. Petersburg, but everything important in the picture was painted during the Moscow period of the artist’s life.

The religious procession in the Kursk province (1880-1883) is one of the most famous paintings by Ilya Repin. It is traditionally believed that the painting depicts a procession of the cross accompanying the miraculous Kursk Root Icon of the Mother of God, which is transferred annually, on the 9th Friday after Easter, from the Cathedral of the Sign in Kursk and the Kursk Root Hermitage, where the icon remained until the 12th (24th) September, after which she returned to Kursk.

The religious procession attracted from 30 to 60 thousand participants in the second half of the 19th century and was among the most popular religious processions in Russia.

The artist was critical of the procession depicted. The “pure” public, protected by mounted guards from the “gray”, is a kind of freak show, one face more absurd than the other.

Security is rampant. The simpler the characters in the picture, the more sympathetic they are to Repin. The men carrying the icon already look decent. The hunchback being driven away from the icon evokes sympathy.

In general, we have before us a canvas that combines the splendor of painting technique and the traditional Wanderers-populist attitude towards what is depicted: it is obvious that the author does not particularly believe in God (in any case, he does not consider it necessary to drag a huge crowd behind icons), and social stratification upsets him.

A painting is not a photograph.

We know the ceremony of religious processions with the Root Icon, approved back in the 1830s, and this allows us to understand that the artist was quite free with what he saw. All elements and participants who seemed to Repin to be harmful to the composition were removed from the procession.

For example, many cavalrymen of the Kazan Dragoon Regiment took part in the real religious procession.

But, apparently, Repin considered it necessary to emphasize the role of the police, and the army seemed to him inappropriate to the direction of the picture - and so the dragoons disappeared.

In any case, it should not be mistaken for the Root Icon - in all religious processions, the main shrine is traditionally (and in our time too) carried in front, only crosses, banners and church lanterns are carried in front of it.

By the way, the object on the stretcher on the right in the foreground is also not the Root Icon.

The clergy fled.

The Kursk clergy also departed near the city limits. To further accompany the icon, the path was divided into four segments, on each of which the icon was accompanied by the village clergy: the dean, six priests and four deacons. And only at the monastery itself the procession of the cross was met by his brethren with the archimandrite.

Repin, without adhering to photographic accuracy, further strengthened this note: in the picture we see only two priests, two hieromonks and a deacon.

Compared to the countless crowd of ordinary people, the clergy is almost absent. At the same time, apparently, the four priests are not official participants; they are walking in the crowd.

In general, of the eleven clergy appointed to accompany the icon, ten disappeared somewhere, leaving the deacon to take the rap for everyone.

Repin hit the nail on the head: the clergy, and especially the academic scientists, had little approval of the religious style of the common people, associated with the veneration of artifacts. Bishops, starting from the Elizabethan era, treated relics, icons, religious processions, kissing of shrines, etc. from positions reminiscent of the Anglican Low Church: we ourselves are not interested in this and seem unnecessary, but if someone believes, then we will not interfere .

As the most famous episodes of this latent conflict, we can recall the death of the Moscow Metropolitan Ambrose, who was torn to shreds in 1771 by zealots of Orthodoxy for forbidding the people from kissing the Bogolyubsk Icon during a plague epidemic, as well as the obvious resistance of the clergy to the canonization of Seraphim of Sarov in 1903.

Having cleared the canvas of clergy, Repin tells the viewer: before you is the faith of the common people and the ruling class, who at the same time cannot unite in faith and overcome social barriers, but not the faith of the clergy.

The boyars, peasants and police diligently trudge through the heat behind the shrine, dragging their usual conflicts behind them, while the clergy, meanwhile, have merged somewhere.

Very few police.

The police in the picture are an excellent illustration of the principle “the truth of life is not the truth of art.” The picture seems crowded with police officers beating someone, intimidating them and not letting them in.

In fact, for the entire huge crowd there are four ranks of police: a police officer, his assistant and two police officers (these are the lower ranks).

All other equestrian people with plaques are elected officials of rural societies, village elders or sotskie.

And no wonder: according to the standards of that era, there was only one full-time police officer for every 2,500 people in the rural population.

All the rest - something like vigilantes who were forcibly involved in maintaining order - could not be refused the choice of village elders and sotskys, and the sotskys were often not even paid, but they were obliged to carry out police orders (for example, to appear to guard a church procession) .

In our era, after an old man appears on the street with a handwritten sign saying “peace to peace”, within three minutes a bus with riot police and ten employees of the “E” center in plainclothes appear.

This is not how old Russia was structured: a crowd of thirty thousand people calmly walked through the halfway, accompanied by four policemen.

Not knowing the future, contemporaries (and obviously Repin among them) naively considered Russia a country overcrowded with police officers, which was fully reflected in our canvas.

Let us note that there was something to protect the icon from. In 1898, a young man, Anatoly Ufimtsev, who was driven to his limits, staged an explosion in the Znamensky Cathedral in order to destroy the icon. The Emperor did not demonstrate the zeal in protecting the feelings of believers from blasphemers, which is expected from the authorities today: given that the idiot staged the explosion at night so that people would not get hurt, the Tsar ordered the criminal prosecution to be stopped and simply exiled him to Akmolinsk for five years.

Forest.

The procession passes by a hillock on which a forest recently grew, cut down in the most barbaric manner.

Instead of selectively cutting down mature trees in a forest of different ages, the entire forest was simply razed to the ground.

This is a manifestation of the huge environmental problem of that era, the deforestation of Central Russia. The rural population grew rapidly, and peasants, desperate for land (as well as landowners, desperate for money), began wasteful and harmful destruction of forests.

The results were not long in coming: the climate deteriorated, droughts intensified, rivers became fuller in the spring and shallower in the winter.

In a broad sense, the viscous heat, well conveyed by the artist (of course, all the peasants in the procession hope that the icon will send them the rain they need for the harvest), is a consequence of the cutting down of the forest we see.

Poverty.

In the foreground we see a lantern carried by men, clearly dressed up for the festive occasion: they are wearing good-quality blue caftans, belted with colorful sashes.

We see the legs of five people, and they are all wearing bast shoes. It is impossible to believe that these people had boots, but did not put them on.

The guard blocking the hunchback's path is also wearing bast shoes. And only the more important elder, accompanying the fat lady with the icon, is the happy owner of the boots.

https://dirty.ru/

Days of free visits to the museum

Every Wednesday, admission to the permanent exhibition “Art of the 20th Century” and temporary exhibitions in (Krymsky Val, 10) is free for visitors without a tour (except for exhibitions and the project “Avant-garde in three dimensions: Goncharova and Malevich”).

The right to free access to exhibitions in the main building on Lavrushinsky Lane, the Engineering Building, the New Tretyakov Gallery, the house-museum of V.M. Vasnetsov, museum-apartment of A.M. Vasnetsova is provided on the following days for certain categories of citizens first come first serve basis:

First and second Sunday of every month:

for students of higher educational institutions of the Russian Federation, regardless of the form of study (including foreign citizens-students of Russian universities, graduate students, adjuncts, residents, assistant trainees) upon presentation of a student card (does not apply to persons presenting student cards “student-trainee” );

for students of secondary and secondary specialized educational institutions (from 18 years old) (citizens of Russia and CIS countries). Students holding ISIC cards on the first and second Sunday of each month have the right to free admission to the “Art of the 20th Century” exhibition at the New Tretyakov Gallery.

every Saturday - for members of large families (citizens of Russia and CIS countries).

Please note that conditions for free admission to temporary exhibitions may vary. Check the exhibition pages for more information.

Attention! At the Gallery's box office, entrance tickets are provided at a nominal value of “free” (upon presentation of the appropriate documents - for the above-mentioned visitors). In this case, all services of the Gallery, including excursion services, are paid in accordance with the established procedure.

Visiting the museum on holidays

Dear visitors!

Please pay attention to the opening hours of the Tretyakov Gallery on holidays. There is a fee to visit.

Please note that entry with electronic tickets is on a first-come, first-served basis. You can familiarize yourself with the rules for returning electronic tickets at.

Congratulations on the upcoming holiday and we are waiting for you in the halls of the Tretyakov Gallery!

The right to preferential visits The Gallery, except in cases provided for by a separate order of the Gallery management, is provided upon presentation of documents confirming the right to preferential visits to:

• pensioners (citizens of Russia and CIS countries),
• full holders of the Order of Glory,
• students of secondary and secondary specialized educational institutions (from 18 years old),
• students of higher educational institutions of Russia, as well as foreign students studying at Russian universities (except for intern students),
• members of large families (citizens of Russia and CIS countries).

Free visit right The main and temporary exhibitions of the Gallery, except in cases provided for by a separate order of the Gallery's management, are provided to the following categories of citizens upon presentation of documents confirming the right of free admission:

• persons under 18 years of age;
• students of faculties specializing in the field of fine arts at secondary specialized and higher educational institutions in Russia, regardless of the form of study (as well as foreign students studying at Russian universities). The clause does not apply to persons presenting student cards of “trainee students” (if there is no information about the faculty on the student card, a certificate from the educational institution must be presented with the obligatory indication of the faculty);
• veterans and disabled people of the Great Patriotic War, combatants, former minor prisoners of concentration camps, ghettos and other places of forced detention created by the Nazis and their allies during the Second World War, illegally repressed and rehabilitated citizens (citizens of Russia and the CIS countries);
• conscripts of the Russian Federation;
• Heroes of the Soviet Union, Heroes of the Russian Federation, Full Knights of the Order of Glory (citizens of Russia and CIS countries);
• disabled people of groups I and II, participants in the liquidation of the consequences of the disaster at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant (citizens of Russia and CIS countries);
• one accompanying disabled person of group I (citizens of Russia and CIS countries);
• one accompanying disabled child (citizens of Russia and CIS countries);
• artists, architects, designers - members of the relevant creative Unions of Russia and its constituent entities, art critics - members of the Association of Art Critics of Russia and its constituent entities, members and employees of the Russian Academy of Arts;
• members of the International Council of Museums (ICOM);
• employees of museums of the system of the Ministry of Culture of the Russian Federation and the relevant Departments of Culture, employees of the Ministry of Culture of the Russian Federation and ministries of culture of the constituent entities of the Russian Federation;
• museum volunteers - entrance to the exhibition “Art of the 20th Century” (Krymsky Val, 10) and to the Museum-Apartment of A.M. Vasnetsova (citizens of Russia);
• guides-translators who have an accreditation card of the Association of Guides-Translators and Tour Managers of Russia, including those accompanying a group of foreign tourists;
• one teacher of an educational institution and one accompanying a group of students from secondary and secondary specialized educational institutions (with an excursion voucher or subscription); one teacher of an educational institution that has state accreditation of educational activities when conducting an agreed training session and has a special badge (citizens of Russia and CIS countries);
• one accompanying a group of students or a group of conscripts (if they have an excursion package, subscription and during a training session) (Russian citizens).

Visitors to the above categories of citizens receive a “Free” entrance ticket.

Please note that the conditions for discounted admission to temporary exhibitions may vary. Check the exhibition pages for more information.