Palazzo Leoni Montanari

 The leading international experts who undertook a scientific study of the collction regard it as probably the most important outside Russia, and as probably the most important outside Russia, and as very significant in certain sectors even by comparison with those held in the country of origin.

 The rooms display only about one-third of the nearly five hundred ancient panels making up this great collection. The rest are kept in a repository equipped with the most sophisticated modern technology that boasts a restoration workshop and a specialized library, and constitutes a centre of studies for specialists and art lovers in general.

 The icons are arranged in such a way as to underline some basic themes of the Greek Orthodox liturgy adopted by the Slav peoples after their mass conversion to Christianity at the end of the first millenium. A further aim is to convey the subtly conceptual but also highly emotional cultural connotation typical of the Russian tradition.
 The primary effort is to evoke the specific liturgical environments and their particular forms. Attention is focused especially on the characteristic way the iconography of the icons is arranged as a function of prayer and worship to form the iconostasis or “screen of icons”. This serves in Orthodox churches to divide the presbytery, the sancta sanctorum reserved for sacrifice, from the hall reserved for the congregation.
 The first room recalls this hieratic structure with a splendid pair of royal doors (which once provided access between the priest and the congregation) and the essential figures of an ideal iconostasis: Christ the Pantocrator, The Archangels, the Apostles and the Prophets.
Just how the iconostatsis actually appeared in a Russian Orthodox church is shown at the beginning of the display by a nineteenth – century panel depicting this archetectonic-liturgical structure (as a souvenir for travellers). The themes of veneration are presented in canonical fashion.

 The whole of the upper floor of Palazzo Leoni Montanari is reserved for the display of a selection of Russian icons from the rich collection built up in the 1990s by the Ambroveneto, now part of the Banca Intesa. The initial nucleus of this collection came with the purchase en bloc of the considerable number of paintings once owned by a collector in the Veneto region. It was subsequently enriched with shrewd purchases on the international market designed above all to document the earliest periods of Russian painting (from the thirteenth century to the sixteenth). Examples of the highest quality can now be admired, often the twins of works held in the public museums of Moscow and Saint Petersburg.

 The leading international experts who undertook a scientific study of the collction regard it as probably the most important outside Russia, and as probably the most important outside Russia, and as very significant in certain sectors even by comparison with those held in the country of origin.

 The rooms display only about one-third of the nearly five hundred ancient panels making up this great collection. The rest are kept in a repository equipped with the most sophisticated modern technology that boasts a restoration workshop and a specialized library, and constitutes a centre of studies for specialists and art lovers in general.

 The royal doors (which are opened wide during the paschal liturgy to announce the Resurrection) are set at the bottom in the centre. They are customarily hung with images of the protagonists of the Annunciation (the essential moment of the Incarnation) and the four Evangelists (the historians of the events), sometimes replaced by the Doctors of the Church. Images of the Saints worshipped locally are placed to the sides of the doors at the bottom. Above we have superim-posed registers showing the feasts of the annual liturgical calendar (twelve canonical feasts, but the number can vary) and then the Deesis (Christ flanked by the Virgin Mary and John the Baptist). On top of this we have the Apostles, then the Prophets, then the Patriarchs, and finally scenes from the life of Christ in the crowning cornice of small domes.

 By virtue of the quality of the painting and the ornamentation of silver leaf, the royal doors presented here constitute an exquisite example of Muscovite art in the late sixteenth century. The severe Christ the Pantocrator and the flaming archangels Michael and Gabriel are fifteenth-century works from the northern privinces. It is known that the side areas of the iconostasis could include larger “back” doors, as is documented by the example from the collection depicting the Prophet Daniel.
After this initial illustration of the iconostasis, to which the icon is related in all its various forms, the visitor proceeds in a descreet penumbra along a route presentating the most significant “occasions” of the discourse through images peculiar to this mystical world.

 Before we deal with this iconographic universe, there is a precious panel (and very rare document) representing the Council of Nicaea, the meeting of bishops that established the theological lefitimacy of religious images. A number of “prefigurations” drawn from the Old Testament (the symbolic evocation of the Trinity in the three youths taht appeared to Abraham and the stories of Elijah and the Chariot of Fire) then prepare the way for episodes from the Gospels themselves.

 We begin with the feast days, which commemorate the essential events in the life of Christ and the Virgin Mary. These are distributed through the year to privide models also for everyday life. From the birth of the Virgin Mary to her death, with the Resurrection of Christ as the fulcrume, the mystery of the Incarnation and Redemption is celebrated in its significant stages in paintings that rigorously oveserve the canonical constraints of the iconography handed down over the centuries.

 As clearly illustrated by the Menology or figured calendar that introduces this section, the liturgical calendar follows the chronological succession, the liturgical calendar follows the chronological succesion of events according to the biblical texts. It begins with the Birth of the Virgin and the Annunciation/Incarnation and goes on to the various episodes in the life of Jesus (with particular emphasis on the events of the Passion, as recalled by the paschal cycle) up to the Death of the Virgin Mary (corresponding to the mid – August feast day), which brings the cycle to a close. This section opens symbolically with the face of Christ Painted by No Human Hand (connected with an ancient mediaeval tradition) and documents the various fest days of the year as described above. The icons include some of the masterpieces of the collection (exceptional both for their very early dates and for their exquisite pictorial quality), such as the thirteenth-century Descent into Hell, the Nativity from Gastinopole and the Deposition (both fifteenth-century works). There are also a number of spectacular monumental panels, including the transfiguration, the Pentecost and the Death of the virgin Mary, dating from the seventheenth and eighteenth centuries.

 These initial sections already provide excellent examples of the different traditional schools of ancient Russia, based in Novgorod, Moscow, Tver, Poskov and the provincial centers in the north, as well as the different compositional formats used.

 These range from simple panels depicting single episodes to works of far greater complexity, such as the Six Feasts (a fifteenth-century panel from the Novgorod school). This icon creates an expertly orchestrated symphony that combines episodes in the lives of Christ (Baptism, Resurrection and Ascension) and the Virgin Mary (birth and death) with the venerated image of two patron saints, Athanasius of Alexandria and Sergius of Radonezh. The great seventeenth – century panel of the Descent into Hell with Twenty-Six Scenes of the Passion exemplifies the extremely elaborate organisation of the more conceptual icons. The table is divided into multifunctional areas of differing hierarchical value. The central area bounded by a green line is dedicated to the crucial episode of the Resurrection, which is never depicted in the Russian tradition as an actual event but rather in terms of its immediate consequences. The succesive episodes thus depicted are set below in Hell, from which the righteous are released, and above in Paradise. This block is surrounded by twenty-six small scenes illustrating the events of the Passion to forms a narrative palimpsest charged with dramatic tension. The content of the scenes is explicitly indicated in writing, as is customary in the tradition of Russian icons.

 This arrangement of various episodes around a central fulcrum reappears in other conceptually complex paintings and especially the icons of patron saints, whose venerated figures in the centre are set in context, as it were, by the events of their lives or the legends associated with them.

 The next stage provides something of an opportunity for reflection on the mysteries connected with Christ’s act of salvation, as commemorated by the liturgical celebrations, and its consequences for mankind. Themes of theological speculation (such as the Wisdom of God) are accompanied by occasions for moral contemplation such as the Death of the Righteous Man and the Sinner or the Fruits of the Passion of Christ, and above all the apocalyptic messages contained in incredibly intricate allegories of the Last Judgement (presented in three different versions from different periods and schools). In the great scene of the Fianal Reckoning, Teeming with picturesque motifs, the punishments of the damned are connected to the Garden of Eden by the winding coils of the serpent of original sin, on which the various way stations are meticulously indicated with white circles marking sinners and sins, from falsehood to sloth, from just to theft, and so on.

 The next section is devoted to the Virgin Mary, whose cult became widespread throughout the whole of Russia from the the very outset of the conversion to Christianity promoted by Vladimir, the great prince of Kiev.

 In 1131 the inhabitants of this city commissioned an icon of the Virgin from a worksop in Constantinople. This was subsequently transferred to the city of Vladimir (hence the name Our Lady of Vladimir) and then to Moscow at the end of the fourtheenth century to serve as a shield against the Tartar hordes of Tamberlain. Countless copies were made of this miracle-working icon (held for many years in the Kremlin) for churches and monasteries throughout Russia. The copy in this collection, a work of the highest quality produced in Moscow in the sixteenth century, is one of the most faithful in terms of size, draghtmanship and colour.

 This celebrated image of the virgin, which is of great importance for Russia in both religious and historical terms, is accompanied in the collection by another masterpiece, Our lady of Tenderness. By virtue of its subtle air of melancholy, the expressive faces and gestures of the figures, and the softness of line and colour (characteristic of the Novgorod school), this is regarded by the experts as one of the most beautiful images of the Virgin created in the period of Rublyov and Dionisy, just after the middle of the fifteenth century.

 As is known, icons of the Virgin Mary followed standard iconographic formats derived from Bzantium (e.g. She who Points the Way, the Virgin Hodegetria) but adapted by the inclusion of specific local elements, almost as though to make them more familiar and accessible (e.g. Our Lady of Vladimir, of Kazan, of Tichvin, of Bogoljubovo, of Tolga).
Each of these names refers to historical figures or places that played a particularly important part in the history of the various icons and their worship. (A delightful compendium is offered by a late nineteenth-century panel on display here, which shows hundreds of them lined up one after the other like picture postcards).

 One of the most characteristic allegorical-symbolic representations is Our Lady of the Burning Bush (exemplified in this collection by a monumental panel dating from the seventeenth or eighteenth century), whose elaborate geometric layout creates an eight-pointed star by superimposing two rhombuses. The Virgin is depicted in the centre within a celestial sphere, the archangels in the dark-coloured corners of the first rhombus, and the emblems of the Evangelists in the bright-red corners of the second. In the cloud-like sections connecting the points of the Virgin’s star, angelic figures symbolize the natural elements and the divine will: the spirit of glory, wisdom, mercy, intellect and death. The visions of the Old Testament prohets are depicted in the corners of the panel: Moses and the burning bush (The archetype of the Virgin, hence the title of the complex iconographic work as a whole), the tree of Jesse, the inviolate city of Ezekiel and Jacob’s ladder.

 Alongside highly elaborate compositions consituting authentic works of exegesis, where the various symbols are accompanied by copious written explanations, there are also works of greater narrative immediacy whose compositional simplicity is equalled by their emotive impact. Once of these is the Apparition of Our Lady and Saint Nicholas to the Sacristan George, painted at Rostov on the Black Sea in 1705, which depicts the Legend of Our Lady of Tichvin (one of Russia’s most venerated images) connected with the monastery of the Dormition in that city. According to the legend, the Virgin indicated in person the spot where her sanctuary was to be built. Appearing in a wood, seated on a branch together with the great thaumaturge Saint Nicholas, she also gave instructions to the sacristan George that the cross surmounting the church was to be a wood rather than iron so as to recall the Passion. In a delightful setting of flowers that contrasts with the stylized rocky landscape, the good George is seen in the different attitudes adopted during this unexpected meeting, first bowed and reverent, then responsive and obedient.

 The tendency to place the arcane events from which worship and devotion stem in precise times and places familiar to the faithfull is characteristic of the Russian mentality.
The same approach serves to bring the severe figurative prototypes drawn from byzantine art closer to Russian sensibilities. This can also be seen in the icon of Our Lady of Bogoljubovo, a version of the venerated twelfth-century image commissioned by Prince Andrey Bogoljubski, which is still in Vladimir.

 The Byzantine layout illustrates Our Lady (shown in full figure and three-quarter profile) in the act of interceding with Christ of behalf of mankind, represented by praying figures and often by donors or other saints capable of acting as mediators of divine benevolence.

 Another example of this tendency to merge symbols and concepts with historical or legendary episodes of a narrative and less abstract nature is provided by the Pokrov or Protection of Our Lady. Such images are very commmon in Russian painting and the small section of works on display here ranges from the refined late fitheenth-century panel from Novgorod to a work from the time of Peter the Great, where the influence of post-western Renaissance painting is clearly visible.

 In the Pokrov, the theme of the intercession of the Virgin is combined with the glorification of the miracle-working power of her veil, which is symbolically extended over mankind (either by Our Lady in person or by angels acting for her. This conceptual motif is, however, itself combined (generally in the lower part of the composition) with the portrayal of prodigious events that took place in Constantinople. In the period of the emperors Leo and Thephonos and the patriarch Terasius (tenth century), the ‘holly fool’ Andrey had a vision of the Virgin standing with her arms raised in supplication in the palatine Church of the Blachernes. This motif of the miraculous apparition is often accompanied by an exaltation of the liturgy in the figure of Romanos the Melode (depicted on an ambo in the centre of the lower part), the author of hymns to the Virgin, upon whom the gift of song was miraculously bestowed. Tone-deaf, he had been ordered to chant on the ambo before the emperor and the patriarch. After a night of torment, the intervetion of Our Lady enabled him to perform melodiously.

 The icons are indeed ofter lyrical transpositions of the liturgical chants of the ancient fathers of the church, as exemplified by In You Every Creature Rejoices, where a hymn by Joyhn Damascene is translated into a radiant blooming image of the paradise originating from the Virgin theotokos, the Mother of God. This dreamlike vision framed by a semicircle of flame against a background of blue cosmic space show an Eden of trees and birds, a kingdom of light. The paradisaical hemisphere dominates all the orders of sanctity arranged in rows: prohets, apostoles, bishops and virgins grouped around the innocents slaughtered by Herod.

 Such works have serve to draw the attention of experts to the formal characteristics of late icons (produced from the end of the eighteenth century to modern times). These are normally dismissed as repetitive and mechanical due to a prejudice whereby only works painted in the early Russian Middle Ages (i.e. The thirteenth to fifteenth centuries, before cultural contact with the Western Europe) are regarded as true icons. The fact that later works are not displayed in Russian museums has let to their dispersion and often to irreparable loss. Organic collections such as this have fostered a radical critical reappraisal of post-classical icon production, a fuller understanding, and of course the application of different criteria with respect to the ancient icons, based on the fact that the later works are not mere copies but constitute a coherent interpretation in their own right.

 The following sections present a vast and extremely varied array of examples of what is perhaps the most popular aspect of the figurative culture expressed by the icon, namely the worship and veneration of saints. Here again the links with Byzantium were direct and decisive. The first preachers who spread the faith in the Rus of the tenth and eleventh centuries drew their tales of the lives of the key figures of the early church from this spiritual heartland and worked to spread their relics and images. These were indeed often attributed such miracle-working powers as to justify the building of churches and monasteries to safeguard them adequately (as also happened for the most famous icons of Our Lady).

 The cult of the saints workshipped in the Eastern Church was thus established in Russia, where the traditional iconography was also adopted: the prophets, the apostles, John the Baptist, martyrs of the early centuries such as Catherine of Alexandria (particular significance attaches to the association of her memory with Mount Sinai, the holy mountain par excelence), Demetrius of Sirmium, George and Parasheva. There was also great respect for the Fathers of the Church, Basil, John Chrysostom, Gregory nazianzus and other miracle workers, thinkers and leaders of the early Byzantine Church. Above them all stands the figure of Saint Nicholas of Myra (subsequently known also as Saint Nicholas of Bari, the city in the Italian region of Puglia associated with his tomb). Nicholas became very popular as a thaumaturge in Russia, the country that may have produced the largest number of devotional images of this saint for both public and private use. The small section dedicated to Saint Nicholas in Palazzo Leoni Montanari begins with the splendid panel Saint Nicholas and Eight Scenes from his Life, a sixteenth century icon divided into sections from the area of Vologda in northern Russia. This depicts the essential episodes of the legend of the venerated thaumaturge described in a lively fashion combined with a strong sense of synthesis visible in the portrayal of interiors, buildings and sea scenes. The more characteristically local works include a Saint Nicholas of Mozajsk, where the saint is seen holding a model of a church (or fortress) instead of the Gospels in one hand and a warlike sword in the other. This alludes to the legend that the city of Mozajsk was saved from invasion by the miraculous apparition of the saint armed with a sword, hence his role as patron saint and defender of the nation.

 This is one of the examples of the “Russionizing”, of the older saints of early Christian and Byzantine origin. Some of these, like Saint Blaise and the Prophet Elijah, are indeed superimposed upon the popular religion and pagan cults existing before the arrival of Christianity. Blaise inherited attributes from Veles, the pagan god of livestock, while elijah took over the role of Perun, god of thunder and lightning.

 It is significant that the icons dedicated to these saints (and to the very popular saints Florus and Laurus) are those that contain the few realistic elements to be found in icon painting, the spread of these particular cults among the stock-breeding peoples of the steppes being indicated by the inclusion of bridled horses or sheep and cattle grazing. Examples include the Saints Modestus and Blaise, where the scene of rural life contrasts sharply with the figures of the two immobile, inflexible saints, and the refined intercessory panel of the Six Saints (another eighteenth-century work from northern Russia), which again shows the saints associated with rural activities (Blaise, Anastasia, Florus and Laurus, etc.) The lower part of this icon unusually presents a landscape with a river, grazing herds, riders galloping by, and even a glimpse of a country scene with a peasant carrying a bundle of brushwood home. The three horsemen riding through the pleasant hilly countryside are identified in writing as Pseusippos, Elasippos and Malesippos, Cappadocian martyrs and horse breeders worshiped as the patron saints of those exercising this profession.

 They are often associated with the saints Florus and Laurus, Dalmatian martyrs (whose iconography bears a striking resemblance to that of the ancient Dioscuri Castor and Pollux), as documented by the large eighteenth-century panel where these strictly earthly matters are juxtaposed to a canonical evangelical representation (the Transfiguration and the Miracle of Florus and Laurus), which somehow serves to confer unchallengeable validity upon them.

 The collection also contains many examples of icons in which the figures of patron saints (Parasheva, Eudocia and Catherine) are surrounded by a number of scenes. The imagination of the early iconographers was, however, such that totally different compositional schemes were also adopted, ranging from large groups of figures gathered together on purely emblematic grounds to ascetic figures standing wholly outside the rhythm and limitations of time and space (Saint Mary of Egypt and Macarius the Thaumaturge). The unity of time is totally ignored in the Beheading of John the Baptist. The setting can tend towards the fabulous (as in the allegorical images of Saint George) or serve to underline the prestige and glories of a religious sphere or mystical tradition (three Blessed Hierarchs, The Blessed Metropolitans of Moscow, The Blessed Monks Zosima and Savvatij of the Solovki, The Blessed Thaumaturges of the Monastery of Kiev).

 The last section is dedicated to the extremely characteristic, precious decorations produced by craftsmen that often adorn the icons as though to underline their value as objects of worship. Despite its fairly ancient roots, this practice began to develop significatnly in Russia only from the sixteenth century, reaching its peak in the later centuries right up to modern times.

 Initially, a thin strip of metal (basma) was used as a sober frame for the composition. The examples on display inlude an Annunciation and the royal doors seen during the visit.

 As time went on, the decorations (technically known as riza) became increasignly obtrusive, even to the point of covering the entire painted surface except for the faces, hands and feet (thus creating a second set of superimposed and practically extraneous garments). In the last century, this reached such a point that the icon was simply sketched out in summary fashion and the areas of bare flesh alone were painted as these would be the only things visible through the metal plates. Particular importance was assumed by the nimbus, to which a sort of separate crescent-shaped breastplate (tzata) was sometimes attached.

 In addition to gold and silver, other precious materials such as pearls and enamel were also used for decoration.

 About forty examples of this decoration are displayed separately in a kind of treasury. In addition to their devotional function in association with the paintings, these are also of particular importance for the history of the goldsmith’s craft, since the hallmarks applied in accordance with the perspicacious legislation of Peter the Great make it possible to identify the exact place of manufacture, the period, and even the name of the craftsman involved.

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