Layout and design V. SAVCHENKO
Photography B.B. ZVEREVA
Publishing house "Russian Book" 1992
Isolated lubok is one of the varieties of folk fine art. Its emergence and widespread existence occurred in a relatively late period history of folk art - the middle of the 18th and 19th centuries, when many other types of fine art folk art- wood painting, book miniatures, printed graphic popular prints - have already gone through a certain path of development.
In the historical and cultural aspect, the painted lubok is one of the hypostases of the folk pictorial primitive, standing close to such types of creativity as painted and engraved lubok, on the one hand, and with painting on spinning wheels, chests and the art of decorating handwritten books, on the other. . It accumulated the ideal principles of folk aesthetic consciousness, the high culture of ancient Russian miniatures, and popular prints based on the principles of naive and primitive creativity.
The drawn popular print is a relatively little studied line of development of folk art of the 18th-19th centuries. Until recently, there was almost no mention of painted popular prints in the literature. Therefore, getting to know him cannot but be of interest to connoisseurs and lovers of folk art.
The painted popular print was not a special collector's item; it is quite rare in library and museum collections. The State Historical Museum has a significant collection of this rare type of monument (152 items in the catalog). It was formed from sheets received in 1905 as part of the collections of such famous lovers of Russian antiquity as P. I. Shchukin and A. P. Bakhrushin. In the early 1920s, the Historical Museum bought individual pictures from collectors, private individuals and “at auction”...
In 1928, some of the sheets were brought by a historical and everyday life expedition from the Vologda region. The collection of the State Historical Museum can give a complete picture of the artistic features of the hand-drawn popular print and reflect the main stages of its development
What is the art of hand-drawn folk pictures, where did it originate and develop? The technique of making hand-drawn popular prints is unique. The wall sheets were made with liquid tempera, applied over a light pencil drawing, traces of which are visible only where it was not subsequently erased. The craftsmen used paints diluted in egg emulsion or gum (sticky substances of various plants). As you know, the painting possibilities of tempera are very wide and, with strong dilution, it allows you to work in the technique of transparent painting with translucent layers, like watercolors.
Unlike mass-produced printed lubok, hand-drawn lubok was made by hand by craftsmen from start to finish. Drawing the drawing, coloring it, writing titles and explanatory texts - everything was done by hand, giving each work an improvisational uniqueness. Drawn pictures amaze with their brightness, beauty of design, harmony of color combinations, and high ornamental culture.
Painters of wall sheets, as a rule, were closely associated with the circle of folk craftsmen who preserved and developed ancient Russian traditions - with icon painters, miniaturists, and book copyists. It was from this contingent that, for the most part, the artists of the popular print were formed. The places of production and existence of popular prints were often Old Believer monasteries, northern and Moscow villages, preserving the ancient Russian handwritten and icon-painting traditions.
The drawn popular print was not as widespread as printed engraved or lithographed pictures; it was much more local. The production of painted wall sheets was concentrated mostly in the north of Russia - in the Olonets, Vologda provinces, and in certain areas along the Northern Dvina and Pechora. At the same time, painted popular prints existed in the Moscow region, in particular in Guslitsy, and in Moscow itself. There were several centers where the art of painted popular print flourished in the 18th and especially in the 19th centuries. These are the Vygo-Leksinsky monastery and the adjacent monasteries (Karelia), the Upper Toima region on the Northern Dvina, the Kadnikovsky and Totemsky districts of the Vologda region, the Velikopozhenskoe hostel on the Pizhma River (Ust-Tsilma), Guslitsy in the Orekhovo-Zuevsky district of the Moscow region. There may have been other places where hand-drawn pictures were produced, but they are currently unknown.
The art of hand-drawn popular prints was started by the Old Believers. The ideologists of the Old Believers at the end of the 17th - beginning of the 18th century had an urgent need to develop and popularize certain ideas and themes that substantiated their adherence to the “old faith,” which could be satisfied not only by re-writing Old Believer writings, but also by visual means of transmitting information. It was in the Old Believer Vygo-Leksinsky hostel that the first steps were taken to produce and distribute wall pictures with religious and moral content. The activities of the Vygo-Leksinsky monastery represent a most interesting page in Russian history. Let us briefly recall it.
After the church reform of Patriarch Nikon, those who disagreed with I-mime, “zealots of ancient piety,” among whom were representatives of different segments of the population, mainly peasants, fled to the North, some began to settle along the Vygu River (formerly Olonets province). New residents cut down the forest, burned it, cleared arable land and sowed grain on it. In 1694, a community led by Daniil Vikulov was formed from the settlers who settled on Vyga. The first Pomeranian community of the hermitage-monastic type was at its beginning the most radical organization of the non-priestly persuasion, rejecting marriages, prayer for the Tsar, and promoting the ideas of social equality on a religious basis. For a long time, the Vygov hostel remained the highest authority for the entire Pomeranian Old Believers in matters of faith and religious and social order. The activities of the brothers Andrei and Semyon Denisov, who were abbots (film-arches) of the monastery (the first - in 1703-1730, the second - in 1730-1741), were of an exclusively broad organizational and educational nature.
In the monastery, which received a large number of immigrants, the Denisovs established schools for adults and children, where they subsequently began to bring students from other places that supported the schism. In addition to literacy schools, in the 1720-1730s, special schools for scribes of manuscript books and a school for singers were established; icon painters were trained here to make icons in the “old” spirit. The Vygovites collected a rich collection of ancient manuscripts and early printed books, which included liturgical and philosophical works, on grammar and rhetoric, chronographs and chroniclers. The Vygov hostel developed its own literary school, focusing on the aesthetic principles of ancient Russian literature.
Works of the Pechersk Center
Denisov, I. Filippov, D. Vikulov. Middle XIX century Unknown artist Ink, tempera. 35x74.5
Acquired “at auction” in 1898. Ivan Filippov (1661 -1744) - historian of the Vygovsky monastery, its fourth cinematographer (1741 -1744). The book he wrote, “The History of the Beginning of the Vygovskaya Hermitage,” contains valuable materials about the founding of the community and the first decades of its existence. About S. Denisov and D. Vikulov.
The Denisov brothers and their associates left a number of works that set out the historical, dogmatic and moral foundations of the Old Believer teachings.
Crafts and handicrafts flourished in the monastery: copper casting of dishes, crosses and folds, tanning, wood dressing and furniture painting, weaving birch bark products, sewing and embroidery with silk and gold, making silver jewelry. Both the male and female population did this (in 1706, the female part of the monastery was transferred to the Lexa River). Approximately a hundred-year period - from the mid-1720s to the 1820-1830s - was the heyday of the economic and artistic life of the Vygovsky monastery. Then came a period of gradual decline. The persecution of the schism and attempts to eradicate it, repressions that intensified during the reign of Nicholas 1, ended with the ruin and closure of the monastery in 1857. All prayer houses were sealed, books and icons were taken away, and the remaining residents were evicted. Thus, the literacy center of the large northern region, the center of the development of agriculture, trade and unique folk art, ceased to exist.
Another Old Believer community that played a similar cultural and educational role in the North was the Velikopozhensky monastery, which arose around 1715 on Pechora, in the Ust-Tsilma region, and existed until 18542. The internal structure of the Velikopozhensky hostel was based on the Pomeranian-Vygovsky charter. It conducted quite a significant economic activity, the basis of which was arable farming and fishing. The monastery was the center of ancient Russian book learning and literacy: peasant children were taught reading, writing, and copying books. Here they also engaged in painting wall sheets, which was, as a rule, the lot of the female part of the population3.
It is known that in the 18th-19th centuries the population of the entire North, especially the peasantry, was strongly influenced by Old Believer ideology. This was greatly facilitated by the active work of the Vygo-Leksinsky and Ust-Tsilemsky monasteries.
Many places that adhered to the “old faith” existed in the Baltic states, the Volga region, Siberia, and central Russia. One of the centers of concentration of the Old Believer population, which gave Russian culture interesting works of art, was Guslitsy. Guslitsy is an ancient name for an area near Moscow, which received its name from the Gus-Litsa River, a tributary of the Nerskaya, which flows into the Moscow River. Here, at the end of the 17th - beginning of the 18th centuries, fugitive Old Believers of the priestly consent settled (that is, those who recognized the priesthood). In the Guslitsky villages in the 18th-19th centuries, icon painting, copper foundry, and woodworking crafts were developed. The art of copying and decorating books became widespread; they even developed their own special style of ornamentation of manuscripts, which differed significantly (as did the contents of the books) from the northern Pomeranian. In Guslitsy, a kind of center of folk art was formed; the production of hand-drawn wall pictures occupied a large place in it.
The origin and spread of the art of hand-drawn sheets of religious and moral content among the Old Believer population of the North and center of Russia can be interpreted as a kind of response to a certain “social order”, if we apply modern terminology. Educational goals and the need for visual apologetics contributed to the search for an appropriate form. In folk art, there already existed proven examples of works that could satisfy these needs - popular prints. The syncretic nature of popular popular pictures, combining image and text, the specificity of their figurative structure, which absorbed the genre interpretation of subjects traditional for ancient Russian art, could not have been more consistent with the goals that initially stood before the Old Believer masters. Sometimes artists directly borrowed certain subjects from printed popular prints, adapting them for their own purposes. All borrowings relate to instructive and moral subjects, of which there were many in engraved folk pictures of the 18th-19th centuries.
What was the overall content of the painted popular print, and what were its distinctive features? The subjects of hand-drawn pictures are very diverse. There are sheets dedicated to the historical past of Russia, for example the Battle of Kulikovo, portraits of figures of the schism and images of Old Believer monasteries, illustrations for apocrypha on biblical and evangelical subjects, illustrations for stories and parables from literary collections, pictures intended for reading and chanting, wall calendars-saints .
Pictures related to the history of the Old Believers, views of monasteries, portraits of schism teachers, comparative images of the “old and new” churches make up a fairly significant group. Interesting are the images of the Vygo-Leksinsky monastery, which were often included by artists in a complex composition of large pictures. On the sheets “Family tree of A. and S. Denisov” (cat. 3), “Worship of the icon of the Mother of God” (cat. 100) there are detailed images of the male and female monasteries, located respectively on the banks of the Vyg and Lexa. All wooden buildings were carefully depicted - residential cells, refectories, hospitals, bell towers, etc. The thoroughness of the drawings allows us to examine all the features of the architectural layout, the traditional design of northern houses with gable gable roofs, high covered porches of huts, onion-shaped chapel domes, hipped tops of bell towers. .. Above each building there are numbers, explained at the bottom of the pictures - “forge”, “literate”, “cookhouse”, which makes it possible to get a complete picture of the layout of the monasteries and the location of all its economic services.
On the “Family tree of A. and S. Denisov” the view of the monastery occupies only the lower part of the sheet. The rest of the space is given to the image of a conventional family tree, on the branches of which, in ornamental round frames, are portraits of the ancestors of the Denisov-Vtorushin family, going back to Prince Myshetsky, and the first abbots of the hostel. Plots with a “teaching tree”, where the Denisov brothers and their like-minded people are presented, were very popular among artists of popular prints.
Portraits of the founders and abbots of the Vygovsky monastery are known not only in variants of the family tree, but there are individual, paired, and group portraits. The most common type of images of Old Believer mentors, whether individual or group portraits, is the one where each “elder” is represented with a scroll in his hand, on which the words of the corresponding saying are written. But they cannot be considered portraits in the generally accepted sense of the word. They are executed very conditionally, according to a single canon. All Pomeranian teachers were depicted flatly, strictly frontally, in the same poses, with a similar position of the hands. Hair and long beards are also rendered in the same manner.
But despite following the established canonical form, the artists were able to convey the individual traits of the characters. They are not only recognizable, but also correspond to those descriptions of their appearance that have come down to us in literary sources. For example, in all the drawings Andrei Denisov has a straight, elongated nose, lush hair that curls in even rings around his forehead, and a wide, thick beard (cat. 96, 97).
Paired portraits, as a rule, are made according to a single scheme - they are enclosed in oval frames, connected to each other by a characteristic baroque-type ornamental decoration. One of these portraits shows Pikifor Semyonov, cinematographer of the Vygovsky monastery from 1759 to 1774, and Semyon Titov, who is known to have been a teacher in the women’s section of the monastery (cat. 1). A special type of group images were figures placed in a row on long strips of paper glued together from separate sheets (cat. 53, 54). These sheets were probably intended for hanging in large rooms.
A significant number of works are devoted to the rituals of the “old” and “new” churches and the correctness of the sign of the cross. The pictures are built on the principle of contrasting the “Old Russian Church tradition” and “Nikon’s tradition.” Artists usually divided the sheet into two parts and showed differences in the image of the Calvary cross, the patriarchal staff, the method of folding the finger, the seals on the prosphora, that is, in what the Old Believers differed from the followers of Nikon’s reform (cat. 61, 102). Sometimes the drawings were made not on one, but on two paired sheets (cat. 5, 6). Some masters genreized such images - they showed priests and the public in the interior of the temple, and gave different appearances to people serving in the “old” and “new” churches (cat. 103). Some are dressed in old Russian dress, others in short, new-fangled tailcoats and tight trousers.
Events related to the history of the Old Believer movement also include stories dedicated to the Solovetsky uprising of 1668-1676 - the action of the monks of the Solovetsky Monastery against the reform of Patriarch Nikon, against conducting services according to new corrected books, which resulted in an anti-feudal popular uprising during the struggle. The Solovetsky “sitting”, during which the monastery resisted the tsarist troops besieging it, lasted eight years and ended in its defeat. The capture of the Solovetsky Monastery by Voivode Meshcherinov and the reprisal against disobedient monks after the surrender of the fortress were reflected in a number of wall paintings, two of which are kept in the Historical Museum (cat. 88, 94). The dating of the sheets indicates that the plot attracted the attention of artists both at the beginning and at the end of the 19th century, just as interest in the book -S. Denisov’s “The Story of the Fathers and Sufferers of Solovetsky” (1730s), which served as the basis and source for writing these pictures.
Works of the Moscow Center
Depiction of the massacre of Voivode Meshcherinov
with participants in the Solovetsky uprising of 1668-1676.
Depiction of the reprisal of Voivode Meshcherinov against participants in the Solovetsky Uprising of 1668-1676.
Beginning of the 19th century Artist M. V. Grigoriev (?) Ink, tempera. 69x102
There is no name. Explanatory inscriptions (in order of sequence of episodes): “Besiege the voivode of the monastery and set up a detachment of many cannons, and attack the monastery with a fiery battle, day and night, without a mustache”; “Tsarist governor Ivan Meshcherinov”; "royal howls"; “coming out with a slander... from crosses, icons and kandils and killing them”; “martyrs for ancient piety”; “the abbot and the cellarer, drawn by howls to Meshcherinov for torment”; “I drove the cruel scum out of the monastery into the bay of the sea and froze them in the ice, and their lying bodies were incorruptible for 1 year, because the flesh clung to the bone and the joints did not move”; “to Tsar Alexy Mikhailovich,” I am in pain, and I, if he accepted punishment for sin before the saints, and wrote a letter, hand it over to Tsarina Natalia Kirilovna, so that he would not send the monastery to Meshcherinov; “the messenger of Meshcherinov”; way in the city of Vologda a messenger from the governor Meshcherinov with a letter about the destruction of the monastery. "Acquired "at the auction" in 1909. Literature: Itkina I, p. 38;
The pictures depict the events of the suppression of the speech of the monks of the Solovetsky Monastery against the reform of Patriarch Nikon. Both sheets illustrate S. Denisov’s book “The History of the Fathers and Sufferers of Solovetsky,” written in the 1730s. Currently, six variants of wall sheets on this plot have been identified, three of which are directly dependent on each other and go back to a common original, and three arose independently of this group, although their creators created, adhering to the general tradition of embodying this plot.
The picture (cat. 88) reveals a textual and artistic dependence on the handwritten story “A Facial Description of the Great Siege and Devastation of the Solovetsky Monastery,” written at the end of the 18th century. and came out of the Moscow workshop, where at the end of the 18th and beginning of the 19th centuries. master M.V. Grigoriev worked. The presumptive attribution of the picture to the artist Grigoriev was made on the basis of its stylistic similarity with the master’s signature works. (For more details on this, see: Itkina I, Itkina P.)
On a sheet made at the beginning of the 19th century, the drawing is built on the principle of a sequential story. Each episode is accompanied by a short or lengthy explanatory caption. The artist shows the shelling of the monastery from three cannons, which “stayed to beat the monastery with a fiery battle day and night”, the storming of the fortress by archers, the exit of the surviving monks from the gates of the monastery to meet Meshcherinov with an icon and crosses in the hope of his mercy, cruel reprisals against the participants uprising - the gallows, the torment of the abbot and cellarer, monks frozen in ice, the illness of Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich and the sending of a messenger with a letter to Meshcherinov about ending the siege, the meeting of the tsar's and Meshcherinov's messengers at the "city of Vologda". In the center of the sheet is a large figure with a raised saber in his right hand: “Royal Governor Ivan Meshcherinov.” This is the main bearer of evil, he is highlighted both by his scale and by the severe rigidity of his pose. The author’s conscious introduction of evaluative moments into the picture is noticeable in the interpretation of not only governor Meshcherinov, but also other characters. The artist sympathizes with the tortured defenders of the Solovetsky fortress, showing their inflexibility: even on the gallows, two of them clench their fingers in the two-fingered sign. On the other hand, it clearly caricatures the appearance of the Streltsy soldiers who participated in the suppression of the uprising, as evidenced by the jester's caps on their heads instead of military attire.
But the emotional intensity of the plot does not overshadow the task of creating an artistically organized picture. In the compositional and decorative structure of the sheet as a whole, one can feel the tradition of rhythmic popular print. The artist fills the space between individual episodes with images of randomly scattered flowers, bushes, and trees, executed in the typical decorative manner of folk pictures.
A comprehensive study of this drawing allows us to make an assumption, based on an analogy with signed works, about the name of the author and the place of creation. In all likelihood, the miniature artist Mikola Vasilyevich Grigoriev, who was associated with one of the Old Believer workshops for copying books in Moscow, worked on the popular print.
Subjects related to specific historical events of Russia's past are very rare in popular prints. These include a unique wall painting by artist I. G. Blinov, depicting the battle on the Kulikovo Field in 1380 (cat. 93). This is the largest leaf among all that have come down to us - its length is 276 centimeters. In the lower part, the artist wrote the entire text of “The Tale of the Massacre of Mamayev” - a well-known handwritten story, and at the top he placed illustrations for it.
The picture begins with scenes of a gathering of Russian princes, coming to Moscow at the call of Grand Duke Dmitry Ivanovich, to repel the countless hordes of Mamai advancing on Russian soil. At the top there is a picture of the Moscow Kremlin, with a crowd of people at the gates seeing off the Russian army on their march. Orderly ranks of regiments are moving, led by their princes. Individual compact groups of horsemen should give an idea of a crowded army.
From Moscow the troops march to Kolomna, where a review was held - the “arrangement” of the regiments. The city is surrounded by a high red wall with towers; it is visible as if from a bird's eye view. The artist gave the outline of the assembled troops the shape of an irregular quadrangle, repeating in mirror image the outlines of the walls of Kolomna, thereby achieving a remarkable artistic effect. In the center of the fragment are soldiers holding banners, trumpeters and Grand Duke Dmitry Ivanovich.
The compositional center of the sheet is the duel between the hero Peresvet and the giant Chelubey, which, according to the text of the Legend, served as the prologue to the Battle of Kulikovo. The martial arts scene is highlighted on a large scale, freely placed, and its perception is not interfered with by other episodes. The artist shows the moment of the fight when the riders galloping towards each other collided, reined in their horses and prepared spears for the decisive blow. Right there, just below, both heroes are depicted killed.
Almost the entire right side of the sheet is occupied by a picture of a fierce battle. We see Russian and Horde horsemen huddled together, their fierce duels on horseback, warriors with drawn sabers, Horde soldiers shooting from bows. The bodies of the dead are spread out under the horses' feet.
The story ends with the image of Mamai's tent, where the khan listens to reports of the defeat of his troops. Next, the artist draws Mamai with four “temniks” galloping away from the battlefield.
On the right side of the panorama, Dmitry Ivanovich, accompanied by his entourage, walks around the battlefield, lamenting the great losses of the Russians. The text says that Dmitry, “seeing many dead beloved knights, began to cry loudly.”
In this work, with a long page and many characters, the author’s conscientiousness and hard work, which are the highest certification of a master, are striking. Each character has a carefully drawn face, clothes, helmets, hats, and weapons. The appearance of the main characters is individualized. The drawing exceptionally successfully combines the folk popular print tradition with its conventions, the flat-decorative nature of the image, the generality of lines and contours, and the techniques of ancient Russian book miniature, reflected in the graceful elongated proportions of the figures, in the way of coloring objects.
As a model, I. G. Blinov used for his work, created in the 1890s, a printed engraved popular print, issued at the end of the 18th century, but significantly rethought it, and in some places changed the order of the episodes to make the presentation more harmonious. The color scheme of the sheet is completely independent.
Sheet made in Gorodets
Second half of the 1890s. Artist I. G. Blinov. Ink, tempera, gold. 75.5x276
Title: “The militia and campaign of the Grand Duke Dimitri Ioannovich, the autocrat of All Russia, against the evil and godless Tatar Tsar Mamai, defeat him with God’s help to the end.” Inv. No. 42904 I Ш 61105 Received from the collection of A.P. Bakhrushin in 1905.
Literature: Battle of Kulikovo, ill. on the inset between p. 128-129; Monuments of the Kulikovo cycle, ill. 44 The Battle of Kulikovo in 1380 is one of the few events in Russian history captured in monuments of folk fine art. The picture, which has the largest size among hand-drawn popular prints, contains text and graphic parts. The text is based on “The Tale of the Massacre of Mamayev,” borrowed from Synopsis (Synopsis is a collection of stories on Russian history, first published at the end of the 17th century and later reprinted several times). The picture was attributed to the artist Blinov on the basis of stylistic and artistic similarity with the second sheet on the plot of the Battle of Kulikovo, stored in the Gorodets Museum of Local Lore (info. No. 603), which bears the signature of I. G. Blinov. The plot of “Mamaevo’s Massacre” is known in an engraved popular print: Rovinsky I, vol. 2, no. 303; vol. 4, p. 380-381; vol. 5, p. 71-73. Currently, 8 copies of engraved popular prints have been identified: I "M I I, pp. 39474, gr. 39475; GLM, kp 44817, kp 44816; State Historical Museum, 74520, 31555 I Sh hr 7379, 99497; Yaroslavl Museum-Reserve, 43019. Blinov's drawn SHEETs basically repeat the engraved original, and it is precisely that popular print, as the study of the texts shows, that arose earlier than others, between 1746 and 1785. Both times the artist used the same engraved sample.
“The Tale of the Massacre of Mamayev” is known in manuscript manuscripts. The artist I. G. Blinov himself repeatedly turned to the miniatures of “The Legend”, creating several facial manuscripts on its plot (GBL, f. 242, No. 203; State Historical Museum, Vost. 234, Bars. 1808). He created the drawn sheets independently of the book miniatures.
Cases of recycling printed popular prints with historical themes are isolated. You can name only one more picture called “Oh ho ho, the Russian man is heavy with both his fist and his weight” (cat. 60). This is a caricature of the political situation of the 1850-1870s, when Turkey, even together with its allies, could not achieve an advantage over Russia. The picture shows a scale, on one board of which stands a Russian man, and on the other board and on the crossbar hang numerous figures of Turks, French, and Englishmen, who with all their strength cannot force the scales to go down.
The picture is a redrawing of a lithographed popular print, which was reprinted several times in 1856-1877. It almost without changes repeats the funny and absurd poses of the characters climbing the crossbar and ropes of the scales, but here there is a noticeable rethinking of the physiognomic characteristics of the characters. The Russian peasant, for example, has lost in his drawing the beauty that lithograph publishers gave him. Many characters look funnier and sharper than in printed popular prints. Turning to the genre of political caricature is a rare, but very illustrative example, indicating a certain interest of its creator in social issues and the existence of a demand for this kind of work.
Moving from plots relating to specific historical events to topics related to the illustration of various parables from teaching and hagiographic collections (Paterikon, Prologue), collections such as the “Great Mirror”, biblical and evangelical books, it should be said that in the popular consciousness many myths were perceived as a true story, especially those related to the creation of man, the life of the first people on earth. This explains their particular popularity. Many biblical and evangelical legends in folk art are known in apocryphal interpretations, enriched with details and poetic interpretations.
Drawings illustrating the story of Adam and Eve were usually placed on large sheets and were built, like other multi-plot compositions, according to the principle of a story (cat. 8, 9). One of the pictures depicts paradise in the form of a beautiful garden surrounded by a stone wall, in which unusual trees grow and various animals walk. The master shows how the creator breathed a soul into Adam, made a wife from his rib and commanded them not to taste the fruits of the tree growing in the middle of the Garden of Eden. The narrative includes scenes where Adam and Eve, succumbing to the persuasion of the tempting serpent, pluck an apple from the forbidden tree, how, expelled, they leave the gates of heaven, over which a six-winged seraph hovers, and sit in front of the wall on a stone, mourning the lost paradise.
The creation of man, the life of Adam and Eve in paradise, their expulsion from paradise
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The creation of man, the life of Adam and Eve in paradise, their expulsion from paradise. First half of the 19th century. Unknown artist Ink, tempera. 49x71.5 Text below a three-part frame. Left column in 6 lines: “Sed Adam is straight from heaven... thou art.” The middle part is 7 lines: “The Lord created man, I took the finger from the earth and breathed into his face the breath of life, and man became a living soul, and he called his name Adam, and God said that it was not good for man to be alone... you will be in all cattle and beasts, because you have done this evil.” Right column in 5 lines: “Adam, after being expelled from paradise... is bitter.” Received from the collection of P. I. Shchukin in 1905. The pictures depict the initial episodes of the biblical book of Genesis: the creation of Adam and Eve, the Fall, expulsion from paradise and mourning for the lost paradise (the mourning scene has an apocryphal interpretation). In all pictures, the composition is based on a single principle. On large sheets of paper, a sequential story consisting of individual episodes is sought. The action takes place behind and in front of the high stone wall that surrounds the Garden of Eden. Artists vary the arrangement of individual scenes, draw characters differently, there are noticeable differences in the arrangement of the text part, but the choice of episodes and general solution remains unchanged. There was a strong tradition of implementing this plot. The life history of the first people was repeatedly depicted in handwritten miniatures: in front Bibles (GIM, Muz. 84, Uvar. 34, Bars. 32), in collections of stories (GIM, Muz. 295, Vostr. 248, Vahr. 232, Muz. 3505 ), in synodics (GIM, Bahr. 15; GBL, Und. 154). Engraved printed Bibles are known: Rovinsky I, vol. 3, no. 809-813. In printed popular prints and miniatures, a completely different principle of illustrating the book of Genesis is observed. Each miniature and each engraving illustrates only one episode of the story. There is no juxtaposition of consecutive scenes. |
On the popular print, which tells about Cain’s murder of Abel, in addition to the scene of fratricide, there are episodes showing the suffering of Cain sent to him as punishment for the crime: he is tormented by devils, God punishes him with “shaking,” etc. (cat. 78).
Illustration for “The Tale of the Punishment of Cain for the Murder of his Brother.”
If this sheet combines events at different times, following each other, then the other picture, on the contrary, is limited to showing one small plot. This illustrates the famous legend of the sacrifice of Abraham, according to which God, having decided to test Abraham, demanded that he sacrifice his son (cat. 12). The picture shows the moment when an angel descending on a cloud stops the hand of Abraham, who raised the knife.
Late 18th - early 19th century
Abraham's sacrifice. Late 18th - early 19th century. Unknown artist Ink, tempera. 55.6x40.3
Paper with filigree J Kool Sotr./Seven provinces (without circle) Klepikov 1, No. 1154. 1790-1800s.
There are significantly fewer gospel legends in hand-drawn pictures than biblical legends. This is apparently explained by the fact that most of the gospel myths were embodied in icon painting, and the masters of the painted popular print deliberately rejected anything that could resemble an icon. The pictures reflect mainly plots that are in the nature of parables.
The parable of the prodigal son was especially loved by artists. On the sides of one of the pictures there are episodes of the legend - the departure of the prodigal son from home, his entertainment, misadventures, return to his father's roof, and in the center of the oval - the text of the spiritual verse on hook notes (cat. 13). Thus, this picture could not only be viewed, but the text could be read and sung. Hooks are the oldest musical symbols, indicating the pitch and longitude of a sound - a common component of text sheets. The spiritual verse about the prodigal son was widespread in folk literature, most closely associated with folk visual arts.
Early 19th century
Parable of the Prodigal Son. Early 19th century Unknown artist. Ink, tempera. 76.3x54.6. Paper of a bluish-gray tint from the beginning of the 19th century.
Favorite subjects of hand-drawn popular prints are images of the sweet-voiced half-birds, half-maidens Sirin and Alkonost. These stories were also circulated in printed popular prints. They were produced starting from the middle of the 18th century and throughout the 19th century. Artists of hand-drawn sheets not only repeated engraved pictures using a ready-made compositional scheme, but also developed scenes with birds of paradise on their own.
Quite original works include images of the Sirin bird, accompanied by a legend based on information borrowed from the Chronograph. According to the text on the sheets, the singing of the bird maiden is so sweet that a person, having heard it, forgets about everything and follows her, unable to stop until he dies of fatigue. Artists usually depicted a man in fascination listening to a bird sitting on a huge bush strewn with flowers and fruits, and just below - he was lying dead on the ground. To drive the bird away, people scare it with noise: they beat drums, blow trumpets, shoot cannons; on several sheets we see bell towers with ringing bells. Frightened by the “unusual noise and sound,” Sirin “was forced to fly to her dwellings” (cat. 16, 17, 18).
In the hand-drawn pictures there is a special, “bookish” understanding by the artists of the image of the bird maiden, which is not found in other monuments of folk fine art.
Another bird of paradise, Alkonost, is very similar in appearance to Sirin, but has one significant difference - it is always depicted with hands. Alkonost often holds a scroll in his hand with a saying about reward in paradise for a righteous life on earth. According to legend, Alkonost, in its effect on humans, is close to the sweet-voiced Sirin. “Whoever is in her proximity will forget everything in this world, then his mind leaves him and his soul leaves his body...” says the explanatory text to the picture (cat. 20).
Some researchers, as well as in ordinary consciousness, have a fairly stable idea that in folk art Sirin is a bird of joy, and Alkonost is a bird of sadness. This opposition is incorrect; it is not based on the real symbolism of these images. An analysis of literary sources where bird maidens appear, as well as numerous monuments of folk art (wood painting, tiles, embroidery) indicates that nowhere is Alkonost interpreted as a bird of sadness. This opposition probably has its source in the painting by V. M. Vasnetsov
“Sirin and Alkonost. Song of Joy and Sorrow” (1896), on which the artist depicted two birds: one black, the other light, one joyful, the other sad. We have not encountered earlier examples of the contrast between the symbolism of Sirin and Alkonost, and therefore, we can assume that it came not from folk art, but from professional art, which, in its appeal to Russian antiquity, used examples of folk art, not always understanding their content quite correctly.
Pictures with edifying stories and parables from various literary collections occupy a large place in the art of hand-drawn popular prints. They treat the themes of moral behavior, virtuous and vicious human actions, the meaning of human life, expose sins, and talk about the torment of sinners who are cruelly punished after death. Thus, “the meal of the pious and the wicked” (cat. 62), “about the careless and careless youths” (cat. 136) demonstrate the righteous and unrighteous behavior of people, where one is rewarded and the other is condemned.
A whole series of stories tells about punishments in the next world for big and small sins: “The punishment of Ludwig Langraf for the sin of acquisition” consists of throwing him into eternal flame(cat. 64); the sinner who has not repented of “fornication” is tormented by dogs and snakes (cat. 67); Satan orders “an unmerciful man, a lover of this world,” to soar in a fiery bath, lay him on a fiery bed, give him molten sulfur to drink, etc. (cat. 63).
Some pictures interpreted the idea of redemption and overcoming sinful behavior during life, and praised moral behavior. In this regard, the plot “Spiritual Pharmacy” is interesting, to which artists have repeatedly turned. The meaning of the parable, borrowed from the work “Spiritual Medicine” - healing from sins with the help of good deeds - is revealed in the words of a doctor who gives the following advice to a person coming to him: “Come and take the root of obedience and the leaves of patience, the flower of purity, the fruit of good deeds and drain in the cauldron of silence... eat the spoon of repentance and, having done this, you will be completely healthy” (cat. 27).
A significant section of wall drawings is made up of a group of text sheets. Poems of spiritual and moral content, chants on hook notes, edifying teachings, as a rule, were performed on sheets
large format, had a colorful frame, bright titles, the text was colored with large initials, and sometimes it was accompanied by small illustrations.
The most common were stories with edifying sayings, useful advice, so-called “good friends” of a person. In the typical pictures for this group, “On the Good Friends of the Twelve” (cat. 31), “The Tree of Reason” (cat. 35), all maxims are either enclosed in ornamented circles and placed on the image of a tree, or written on the wide curved leaves of a tree-bush.
Spiritual poems and chants were often placed in ovals framed by a garland of flowers rising from a flowerpot or basket placed on the ground (cat. 36, 37). With a single style and common technique for many sheets of oval framing of texts, it is impossible to find two identical garlands or wreaths. Artists vary, fantasize, look for new and original combinations, achieving a truly amazing variety of components that make up the oval.
The subjects of hand-drawn wall pictures show a certain closeness to themes found in other types of folk art. Naturally, most of the analogies are with engraved popular prints. A quantitative comparison shows that in the painted popular prints that have survived to this day, the subjects in common with the printed ones make up only one fifth. Moreover, in the overwhelming majority of cases, what is observed is not a direct copying of certain compositions, but a significant alteration of the engraved originals.
When using the plot of the circulation sheet, the masters always introduced their own understanding of decorativeness into the drawings. The color scheme of handwritten popular prints differed significantly from what was observed in printed materials.
We know of only two cases of an inverse relationship between engraved and drawn sheets: portraits of Andrei Denisov and Daniil Vikulov were printed in Moscow in the second half of the 18th century from drawn originals.
The wall sheets also have analogies in manuscript miniatures. The number of parallel plots here is less than in printed sheets; only in two cases is the direct dependence of the handwritten popular print on the miniature evident. In all the rest, there is an independent approach to solving the same topics. Sometimes it is possible to establish a general tradition of embodying individual images, well known to miniaturists of the 18th-19th centuries and masters of painted popular prints, for example in illustrations to the Apocalypse or in portraits of Old Believer teachers, which explains their similarity.
Several common motifs with hand-drawn pictures, for example the legend of the Sirin bird, are known in the painting of furniture of the 18th-19th centuries, which came out of the workshops of the Vygo-Leksinsky monastery. In this case, there was a direct transfer of the composition of the drawings onto the cabinet doors.
All identified cases of common and borrowed subjects cannot in any way obscure the overwhelming number of independent artistic developments in hand-drawn popular prints. Even in the interpretation of moralizing parables, the most developed genre, the masters for the most part followed their own path, creating many new expressive and rich in figurative content works. It can be considered that the theme of the hand-drawn popular print is quite original and testifies to the breadth of interests of its masters and a creative approach to the embodiment of many themes.
To characterize a painted popular print, the issue of dating is very important. A special study of the time of creation of individual sheets allows us to clarify and more fully present the picture of their origin, the degree of prevalence in a given period, and determine the time of operation of individual art centers.
Some pictures have inscriptions directly indicating the date of production, for example: “This sheet was painted in 1826” (cat. 4) or “This picture was painted in 1840 on February 22” (cat. 142). As is known, the presence of watermarks on paper can be of great help in dating. The filigree of paper establishes the boundary of the creation of a work, before which it could not have appeared.
Dates on the sheets and watermarks indicate that the oldest surviving pictures date back to the 1750s and 1760s. True, there are very few of them. In the 1790s there were already more drawings. Dating the earliest surviving paintings to the mid-18th century does not mean that wall sheets did not exist before that time. For example, there is a unique drawing from the 17th century depicting a Streltsy army setting out on boats to suppress the uprising of Stepan Razin. But this is an exceptional case and the sheet did not have a “popular” character. We can speak about the established production of hand-drawn sheets only in relation to the second half of the 18th century.
The time of greatest flowering of the art of hand-drawn popular prints was the very end of the 18th century - the first third of the 19th century; in the middle and second half of the 19th century, the number of handwritten pictures decreased significantly and increased again only at the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th centuries. The conclusions that follow from the analysis of the dated sheets are in good agreement with the general picture of the development of the art of hand-drawn popular print, which is revealed by the study of individual centers of its production.
The information contained in the inscriptions on the front or back of some sheets provides great assistance in studying the drawn popular print.
The content of the inscriptions on the back of the pictures consists of dedications, indications of the price of the sheets, and notes for artists. Here are examples of dedications or dedicatory texts: “To the most honorable Ivan Petrovich from Irina V. with the lowest bow”, “To the gracious Empress Thekla Ivanovna” (cat. 17), “To present these saints to Lev Sergeyech and Alexandra Petrovna, together with both gifts” (cat. 38) . On the back of the three pictures their price is written in cursive: “kopeck piece”, “osmi kryvenok” (cat. 62, 63, 65). This cost, although not very high in itself, exceeds the price at which printed popular prints were sold.
You can also find out the names of the artists who worked on the pictures, the social status of the masters: “...this cortina of Mirkulia Nikin” (cat. 136), “Ivan Sobolytsikov wrote” (cat. 82), “This bird was written (in the picture with the image of Alkonost .- E.I.) in 1845 by Alexei Ivanov, an icon painter, and his servant Ustin Vasilyev, an icon painter of Avsyunisky.
But cases of indicating the artist’s name on pictures are very rare. Most sheets do not have any signatures. Little can be learned about the authors of the painted popular print; there are only a few examples where some data about the masters has been preserved. Thus, local residents told something about the Vologda artist Sofya Kalikina, whose drawings were brought to the Historical Museum in 1928 by a historical expedition, and the rest was revealed bit by bit from various written sources. Sofya Kalikina lived in the village of Gavrilovskaya, Totemsky district, Spasskaya volost. From early
age, together with her older brother Grigory, she was engaged in illustrating manuscripts that were copied by their father Ivan Afanasyevich Kalikin8. Sofia Kalikina completed the drawn pictures brought to the State Historical Museum in 1905, when she was about ten years old (cat. 66-70). Judging by the fact that her drawings hung in huts until 1928 and people remembered who their author was and at what age she created them, the works were a success among those for whom they were performed.
The fact that peasant Old Believer families, engaged in copying manuscripts (and often icon painting) and drawing wall pictures, involved children in this, is known not only from the story of Sofia Kalikina, but also from other cases4.
The most striking currently known example of a combination of the activities of a miniature artist and a master of popular print sheets seems to be the work of I. G. Blinov (his picture “Battle of Kulikovo” was discussed above). It is remarkable that I. G. Blinov was almost our contemporary; he died in 1944.
The activities of Ivan Gavrilovich Blinov - an artist, miniaturist and calligrapher - allow us to understand the typology of the image of an artist from a time more distant from us, although Blinov was already a person of a different formation. Therefore, it is worth dwelling on it in more detail.
Facts of the biography of I. G. Blinov can be extracted from documents currently stored in the manuscript department of the GBL "1, in the Central State Historical Archive of the USSR" and in the manuscript department of the State Historical Museum12. I. G. Blinov was born in 1872 in the village of Kudashikha, Balakhninsky district, Nizhny Novgorod province, into a family of Old Believers who accepted the priesthood. For a long time he lived under the care of his grandfather, who at one time studied in the cells of monks “in a strict religious spirit.” When the boy was ten years old, his grandfather began teaching him to read in front of icons and introduced him to the poglasitsa of ancient Russian singing. At the age of twelve, Blinov began drawing as a self-taught artist. Secretly from his father, who did not approve of his son’s hobby, often at night, he mastered writing letters, various types of handwriting and ornaments of ancient handwritten books. Blinov was seventeen years old when G. M. Pryanishnikov, a famous collector of Russian antiquities, became interested in his works, who kept book writers in his house in the village of Gorodets who copied ancient handwritten books for him. Blinov collaborated a lot with Pryanishnikov and with another major collector, the Balakhna merchant P. A. Ovchinnikov, fulfilling their orders.
At the age of nineteen, Blinov got married, three children were born one after another, but, despite the increased household responsibilities, he did not give up his favorite hobby, continuing to improve his skills as a calligrapher and miniaturist. Moving among collectors and working for them, Ivan Gavrilovich himself began collecting old books. In 1909, Blinov was invited to Moscow to the Old Believer printing house of L. A. Malekhonov, where he worked as a proofreader of Slavic type and as an artist for seven years. By that time, his family already had six children, and his wife mostly lived with them in the village. From several surviving letters from Ivan Gavrilovich to his wife and parents during his service in the printing house, it is clear that he visited many Moscow libraries - Historical, Rumyantsev, Synodal, and visited the Tretyakov Gallery; Moscow bibliophiles and lovers of antiquity recognized him and gave him private orders for the artistic design of addresses, tray sheets and other papers. In his free time, I. G. Blinov independently wrote texts and drew illustrations for some literary monuments, for example, to Pushkin’s “Song of prophetic Oleg"(1914, stored in the State Historical Museum) and to "The Tale of Igor's Campaign" (1912, 2 copies stored in the State Historical Library).
From 1918-1919, the artist began close collaboration with the State Historical Museum. He had previously brought and sold his works to the museum, now he was specially ordered miniatures for works of ancient Russian literature: the stories about Savva Grudtsyn”3, about Frol Skobeev14, about Misfortune-Grief15. V.N. Shchepkin, who at that time headed the museum’s manuscript department, appreciated Blinov’s art and willingly purchased his works.
In November 1919, the People's Commissariat of Education, at the suggestion of the scientific board of the Historical Museum, sent I. G. Blinov to his homeland, Gorodets, where he took an active part in collecting antiquities and in the creation of a local history museum. For the first five years of the museum's existence - from 1920 to 1925 - he was its director. Then financial circumstances forced Blinov to move with his family to the village. The only original monument he completed after returning to his homeland is the essay “The History of Gorodets” (1937) with illustrations in the tradition of ancient miniatures.
I. G. Blinov mastered almost all types of ancient Russian handwriting and many artistic styles of ornamentation and decoration of manuscripts. He specially executed some works in all the varieties of writing known to him, as if demonstrating the wide range of the art of ancient writing.
While paying tribute to the calligraphic skill of I. G. Blinov, one must keep in mind that he always remained a stylist. The master did not strive for a complete and absolutely accurate reproduction of the formal features of the original, but artistically comprehended the main features of a particular style and embodied them in the spirit of the art of his era. In books designed by Blinov, one can always feel the hand of the artist at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries. His work is an example of the deep development and creative development of ancient Russian book art. The artist was engaged not only in copying and rewriting ancient books, but also made his own illustrations for literary monuments. It is important to remember that Blinov was not a professional artist; his work lies entirely in the mainstream of folk art.
The legacy of I. G. Blinov is about sixty front manuscripts and four hand-drawn wall sheets. The most interesting one is “The Battle of Kulikovo” - it fully gives an idea of the scale of the artist’s talent. But his work stands apart; it cannot be attributed to any of the currently known schools of folk art.
As already indicated, most of the drawn pictures can be identified with certain centers based on their artistic features. Let's look at the main ones.
Let us remember that the ancestor of the art of hand-drawn popular prints was the Vygov Center. Since in literature handwritten books coming out of the Vygo-Leksinsky monastery are usually called Pomeranian, the ornamental style of their design is also called Pomeranian, and in relation to the hand-drawn wall pictures of the Vygo-Leksinsky center it is legitimate to apply this term. This is justified not only common origin pictures and manuscripts, but also by the stylistic similarities that are observed in the artistic style of both. The coincidences concern the handwriting itself - the Pomeranian half-letter, large cinnabar initials decorated with lush ornamental stems, and titles made in characteristic script.
Miniatures and hand drawn sheets have a lot in common in color scheme. Favorite combinations of bright crimson with green and gold were borrowed by artists of wall pictures from hand-painted masters. The drawings contain the same images as in the Pomor books, of flowerpots with flowers, trees with large round fruits resembling apples, each of which is certainly painted in two different colors, birds fluttering above the trees, holding twigs with small berries in their beaks, the vault of heaven with clouds in the form of three-petal rosettes, the sun and the moon with anthropomorphic faces. A large number of direct coincidences and analogies make it easy to distinguish the pictures of this center from the total mass of the drawn popular print. In the collection of the Historical Museum, it was possible to identify 42 works of the Vygov school. (Recall that the collection of the State Historical Museum contains 152 sheets, and the total number of currently identified pictures is 412.)
The masters of handwritten books and wall pictures have much in common in techniques and ornamentation. But it is important to pay attention to the new things that Pomeranian artists brought to painting pictures. A large wall drawing is perceived by the viewer according to different laws than book miniatures. Taking this into account, the artists noticeably enriched the palette of drawings by introducing open blue, yellow, black. The masters sought balanced and complete construction of sheets, taking into account their decorative purpose in the interior. Fragility and fragmentation book illustrations was unacceptable here.
In the wall sheets there is absolutely no iconographic interpretation of the “faces” characteristic of miniatures. The faces of the characters in the pictures are depicted in a purely popular style. This applies to both portraits of real persons, for example the Vyg abbots with their typical appearance, and the appearance of fantastic creatures. Thus, in the stories with Sirin and Alkonost, who enchant people with their beauty and unearthly singing, both birds were invariably depicted in the spirit of folklore ideas about the ideal of female beauty. Bird maidens have full shoulders, rounded faces with plump cheeks, straight noses, sable eyebrows, etc.
In the pictures one can observe a characteristic hyperbolization of individual graphic motifs, which is characteristic of popular popular prints. Birds, bushes, fruits, garlands of flowers are transformed from purely ornamental motifs, as they were in manuscripts, into symbols of blooming nature. They increase in size, sometimes reaching an implausibly conventional size, and acquire independent, and not just decorative, significance.
Often the folklore approach dominates in understanding the plot itself, as, for example, in the painting “A Pure Soul and a Sinful Soul” (cat. 23), where good and evil are contrasted, where beauty triumphs over ugliness. The composition is dominated by a royal maiden - a pure soul, surrounded by a festive glow, and in the corner of a dark cave, a sinful soul - a small pitiful figure - sheds tears.
As we see, the art of Pomeranian wall paintings, which grew from the depths of the handwritten miniature tradition, went its own way, mastering the popular element and the poetic worldview of the primitive folk.
The Pomeranian school of hand-drawn pictures, despite the stylistic unity of the works, was not homogeneous. The Vygov masters worked in different manners, which allows us to distinguish several directions that differ from each other. One of them, presented the largest number pictures, characterized by brightness, festivity, and naive popular openness. In these drawings, always executed on a white, unpainted background with bright major colors, a world of fantastic, fabulous beauty blooms magnificently. Thus, in the picture depicting the moment of Eve’s temptation in paradise, Adam and Eve are placed near an unknown tree with a lush crown and huge fruits, around them there are bushes completely strewn with flowers, over which birds flutter, above them there is a blue flat sky with even clouds (cat. .10). Harmonized beauty dominates even in such a seemingly sad and moralizing plot as “The Death of the Righteous and the Sinner” (cat. 28), where angels and devils argue about the soul of the deceased and in one case the angels win, and in the other they mourn, defeated.
The second type of Pomeranian leaves, despite its small number, deserves separate consideration. Pictures in this category are distinguished by a surprisingly refined pearly pink color scheme. The splints were necessarily of a large format and were made on a tinted background: the entire sheet was covered with grayish-pink paint, on top of which a design was applied. White was used here, which in combination with pink and gray gives a very subtle sound.
The most characteristic sheets made in this artistic manner are “The Tree of Reason” (cat. 35) and “The Bird of Paradise Sirin” (cat. 16). Both include a set of ornamental decorations common to the entire Pomeranian school: decorative bushes with birds sitting on them, stylized fantastic flowers, two-color apples, firmament with clouds and stars, but they are distinguished by the subtle elegance of color and skill of execution.
A distinctive feature of the pictures of the third category is the use of the motif of a climbing acanthus leaf. Smooth large curls of acanthus ornament dominate the composition. They decorate, for example, “The Family Tree of A. and S. Denisov” (cat. 3) and “The Parable of the Prodigal Son” (cat. 13). Acanthus leaves are combined with the same traditional multi-petal flowers, circle apples, cups of flowers, as if filled with a pile of berries, and cute Sirin birds sitting on the branches.
All Pomeranian artists, giving preference to local coloring of objects and ornamental details, constantly resorted to highlighting and blurring the main tone to create a chiaroscuro effect, to convey the play of folds of clothing, and to give volume to objects.
Considering the Pomeranian school of wall paintings as a whole, one can notice that within the directions discussed, there are popular prints of both a very high level of execution and simpler ones, which indicates the wide spread of the art of painted popular prints, in which craftsmen of various types were engaged in the production of sheets degree of preparedness.
Regarding the dating of Pomeranian works, the following is known: the bulk of the pictures were made in the 1790-1830s; in the 1840-1850s their production decreased sharply. This is explained by the wave of repressive actions that hit the Vygovsky and Leksinsky monasteries. Despite the closure of the monastery, the production of wall sheets did not stop. In secret village schools in Pomerania, until the beginning of the 20th century, the education of children of Old Believers, the copying of handwritten books and the copying of wall pictures continued.
The second center for the production of hand-drawn sheets in northern Russia was located in the lower reaches of Pechora and was associated with the activities of the masters of the Velikopozhensky Monastery. The presence of its own school for the production of hand-drawn pictures was established by the famous researcher of Russian handwritten books V. I. Malyshev. In the book “Ust-Tsilma manuscript collections of the 16th-20th centuries.” he published a drawing from the Velikopozhensky hostel, which depicts the monastery and its two abbots.
V.I. Malyshev noted the peculiarities of the handwriting of local Ust-Tsilma book copyists, pointing out that the Pechora semi-ustav, in contrast to its prototype - the Pomeranian semi-ustav - is much freer, less written out, and not so structured; simplification is noticeable in the initials and intros. Based on the peculiarities of the handwriting and the stylistic features of the drawings themselves, it was possible to add 18 more to that hand-drawn popular print sheet, which Malyshev definitely associated with the local school. Thus, at present, the Pechora school has 19 surviving sheets. Apparently, most of the works of local masters have not reached us. The Historical Museum contains only 2 drawings of this center, but from them one can characterize the originality of the Pechora pictures.
If we trace the interaction of the Pechora school of hand-drawn popular prints with graphic paintings on objects applied arts, tools of labor and hunting of the Pizhemsky and Pechora centers, closest to the places of production of pictures, it will be discovered that the latter and wood painting, which in some places has survived almost to the present day in the form of spoon painting with its special calligraphy and miniatureness, had common origins.
The leading theme of the Pechora works known to us are portraits of Vygov cinematographers, teachers and mentors of the Pomeranian consent. With full adherence to a single iconographic scheme, the images differ from those drawn in the Vygovsky monastery itself. They are more monumental, sculptural in the modeling of volumes and emphatically sparing in the overall color scheme. Some of the portraits are devoid of any frame and were intended to be hung in one row: S. Denisov, I. Filippov, D. Vikulov, M. Petrov and P. Prokopyev (cat. 53, 54). The images are almost monochrome, entirely in grayish-brown tones. The manner of execution of Pechora drawings is strict and simple.
An active role in the composition is played by the contour silhouette line, which, in the almost complete absence of decorative elements, bears the main expressive load. There is no brightness, no elegance, no ornamental richness of the Vyg tradition here, although some features that are similar to Pechora and Pomeranian pictures can still be found: the way of depicting the crown of trees, grass in the form of comma bushes on a horseshoe-shaped base.
An analysis of popular prints from the Pechora school shows that local artists developed their own creative style, somewhat ascetic, devoid of elegance and sophistication, but very expressive. All surviving pictures date back to the second half of the 19th - early 20th centuries. We do not know any earlier monuments, although from what is known about the activities of the Velikopozhensky and Ust-Tsilemsky hostels, it is clear that they were created earlier.
The third center of painted popular prints can be called Severodvinsk and can be localized in the area of the former Shenkursky district - modern Verkhnetoyemsky and Vinogradovsky districts. Severodvinsk wall pictures were also identified by analogy with handwritten front books and painted household peasant objects.
The Severodvinsk manuscript tradition began to be highlighted by archaeographers from the late 1950s, and its active study continues at the present time.
The number of surviving monuments of this center is small. The Historical Museum has five sheets.
A comparison of wall paintings with miniatures of Severodvinsk manuscripts sometimes reveals not only common artistic motifs - images of a flowering branch-tree with tulip-shaped flowers or a peculiar manner of coloring, but also direct borrowing of subjects from facial manuscripts. This is the “Royal Way” (cat. 59), the main meaning of which is to condemn people who indulge in worldly joys - dancing and games, carnal love, drunkenness, etc. Sinners are seduced and led by demons. A number of scenes in the picture, in particular scenes where demons treat a group of gathered men with wine from a barrel or seduce young girls with outfits, trying on kokoshniks and tying scarves, are borrowed from a collection containing illustrations to the Gospel parable about those invited to a feast. According to the text, those invited refused to come, for which they were punished and dragged “to the broad and spacious path,” where crafty demons awaited them. A comparison of the pictures and handwritten miniatures shows that, by borrowing the plot, the artist significantly changed the compositional structure of those scenes that served as originals for him. He performed a completely independent work, arranging the characters in his own way, giving them a different appearance and, most importantly, making them more common people and popular prints.
The Severodvinsk artistic tradition of folk art is not limited only to handwritten and popular prints. It also includes numerous works of peasant painting on wood. Severodvinsk painting is currently one of the most studied areas of folk decorative art of the North. Numerous expeditions of the Russian Museum, the State Historical Museum, the Zagorsk Museum, and the Research Institute of the Art Industry to the areas of the middle and upper reaches of the Northern Dvina made it possible to collect rich material about the artists who painted spinning wheels and household utensils, and to identify several centers for the production of painted products21. A comparison of the most characteristic works of individual schools of spinning wheel painting with hand-drawn wall pictures showed that the closest in style to popular print sheets are the products from the area of the village of Borok.
The color system of Boretsk paintings is based on the contrast of a light background and bright tones of the ornament - red, green, yellow, and often gold. The predominant color of the painting is red. Characteristic patterns - stylized plant motifs, thin curly branches with open rosettes of flowers, lush tulip-shaped corollas; Genre scenes are included in the lower “bench” of the spinning wheels.
The richness of the ornament, the poetry of fantasy, the care and beauty of the decoration of Boretsk products, as well as the local masters’ fluency in icon painting and bookmaking testify to the high artistic traditions of Severodvinsk folk art.
Popular hand-drawn pictures are similar to Boretsk paintings in a special patterned floral design, a consistent and harmonious color scheme, with the predominant use of a red tone and the skillful use of a light, uncolored paper background. Wall sheet artists loved the motif of a flowering branch with large tulip-shaped flowers. Thus, in two pictures, Sirin birds (cat. 57, 58) sit not on lush bushes hung with fruits, as was the case with Pomeranian leaves, but on fancifully twisting stems, from which stylized ornamental leaves, either pointed or rounded, diverge in both directions and large tulip-shaped flowers. The very drawing of the huge tulips in the pictures is given in exactly the same contours and with the same cutting of the petals and core, as the craftsmen did on the Toem and Puchug spinning wheels.
In addition to the stylistic commonality, you can find individual motifs that coincide in the pictures and in the wood painting. For example, such a characteristic detail as the image of the obligatory windows with carefully painted bindings in the upper part of the Boretsk spinning wheels is repeated on the sheet with the image of the Garden of Eden (cat. 56), where the enclosing wall has the same “checkered” windows. The artist who created this work demonstrates high mastery of ancient Russian drawing techniques and remarkable imagination. The extraordinary trees and bushes of the Garden of Eden with fabulous flowers amaze the viewer’s imagination and show the richness and diversity of the ideal world.
The emotional character of the ornament and the entire structure of the Severodvinsk pictures is completely different from that of other popular prints. The color scheme of Severodvinsk sheets is distinguished by the sophistication of a few, carefully selected combinations, which nevertheless create a feeling of multicolor and beauty of the world.
The Severodvinsk manuscript and popular print school grew not only on the traditions of ancient Russian art, but was strongly influenced by such large centers of artistic craft as Veliky Ustyug, Solvychegodsk, Kholmogory. The bright and colorful art of enamellers, decorative techniques for painting chests and headrests with characteristic light backgrounds, motifs of tulip-shaped flowers, bending stems, and patterning inspired local artists in search of special expressiveness of plant patterns. The combination of these influences explains the originality of the works of the Severodvinsk art center, the uniqueness of their figurative and color structure.
The dating of Severodvinsk pictures indicates a fairly long period of their production and existence. The earliest surviving sheets were executed in the 1820s, the latest date back to the beginning of the 20th century.
The next center of the handwritten popular print is known from the exact place where the wall sheets were made. This is a group of Vologda works associated with the former Kadnikovsky and Totemsky districts of the Vologda region. Of the 35 currently known pictures, 15 are kept in the Historical Museum.
Despite the sufficient territorial proximity, the Vologda sheets differ significantly from the Severodvinsk sheets. They differ in stylistic manner, in color scheme, in the absence of patterned ornamentation in Vologda pictures and in the masters’ predilection for genre compositions with a detailed narrative plot.
It is interesting to compare Vologda popular prints with other types of folk art. Wood painting was quite widespread in the Vologda region. Of particular interest to us is the art of house painting of the 19th century, marked by the absence of minute detailing and laconism of the color system - features characteristic of the old Vologda tradition. Lions, birds, griffins, which were found in the drawings on bast boxes, were transferred to the painting of individual details of the interior of the peasant hut. Wall sheets are similar to wood painting by the noticeable inclination of artists towards genre-based images, as well as the laconicism of contour graphic outlines and their expressiveness.
When comparing Vologda popular prints with facial manuscripts, it is possible to identify a number of common stylistic features in the artists’ work. According to them, by the way, a certain group of facial collections of the 19th century can be attributed to the Vologda manuscript school, which until recently was not singled out by researchers as an independent center. Typical drawing techniques in both miniatures and pictures include methods of tinting the background with a transparent layer of paint, painting the soil and hills in an even light brown tone with curves written along all lines with a wide stripe of a darker color, depicting floors in interiors in the form of rectangular slabs or long boards with the obligatory outline of the contour more dark color, shading with light gray tones of men's hair and beards in multi-subject compositions. Finally, popular prints and miniatures are united by the use of identical and, apparently, artists’ favorite color combinations, where yellow and brown tones and bright red-orange predominate.
But for all the artistic similarity of both types of Vologda graphic monuments, we will not find in them subjects that would be directly borrowed or transferred from manuscripts to pictures and vice versa.
All Vologda sheets are characterized by a detailed narrative. These are illustrations for parables, legends from the “Great Mirror”, and articles from the Prologue and Patericon. A satirical drawing, rare in subject matter, “Oh ho ho, the Russian peasant is heavy...”, which has already been discussed, is also one of the Vologda monuments.
Vologda artists clearly sought to give the drawings not so much an instructive and edifying meaning, but rather to make them entertaining, to put them in the form of a fascinating story. As a rule, all compositions are multi-figured and action-packed. It is interesting that in some pictures illustrating legends and parables about the temptation of the righteous, about punishment after death for sins, the monsters pursuing a person are depicted not as frightening, but as kind. Wolves, dragons with fiery mouths, lions, snakes, although they surround the cave of St. Anthony or, for example, drive the “evil man” into a burning lake, do not look like creatures of hellish forces, but are of some kind of toy nature. Most likely, this involuntary transformation stems from the deep connection of the masters with the centuries-old traditions of folk art, which has always been distinguished by kindness and a joyful perception of the world.
Another manifestation of the narrative, entertaining nature of Vologda works is the abundance of text included in the composition. In addition, the text part here is completely different than in the pictures of the Pomeranian school. The main thing in Vologda sheets is not the decorative beauty of the font and initials, but the information load. Thus, in the picture “It is in vain that the devil is guilty of us” (cat. 69), the plot of the parable from the “Great Mirror” is set out in a lengthy inscription under the image. Textual explanations are also included in the composition: the dialogue of the characters, as is customary in popular prints, is conveyed by purely graphic means - each person’s statements are written on long stripes drawn to the mouth. The two parts of the picture correspond to two key moments of the story, the meaning of which is that the demon exposes the peasant, who steals turnips from the old man’s garden, of lying and of trying to shift his guilt onto him, the innocent demon.
Most of the works of the local center, as evidenced by the watermarks of the paper and all the information collected by the researchers, date back to the end of the 19th - beginning of the 20th century. No earlier copies have survived or, most likely, did not exist at all. It is quite possible that the Vologda center of hand-drawn wall sheets took shape only at the end of the 19th century in connection with the development of the local manuscript school here. The noticeable revival of the art of painting on wood, which was expressed in the creation of compositions depicting fantastic animals in the interiors of peasant huts, also contributed to the flourishing of the art of painted popular prints here.
The Uslitsa center, like others, is closely connected with the local book tradition. Until recently, researchers did not have a definite opinion about the features of the style of the Guslitsky manuscripts. Currently, some articles have appeared in which the authors identify its characteristic features. Let us note those that are also characteristic of the manner of decorating wall sheets. The handwriting of the best Guslitsky manuscripts is characterized by proportionality, beauty and some elongation of letters. It differs from the Pomeranian semi-ustav by a slightly noticeable inclination of the letters and their greater thickness.
Guslitsky center
Illustrations for the teaching of John Chrysostom on the sign of the cross
Mid 19th century
Illustrations for the teaching of John Chrysostom on the sign of the cross. Mid 19th century. Unknown artist
Ink, tempera, gold. 58x48.7
The initials were made in an elegant and colorful manner, but also different from the Pomeranian one. They do not have long ornamental branches - shoots that sometimes spread along the entire field of paper, but only one lush stem - a loach flower, located next to and level with the initial itself. The inner part of the letters, always voluminous and wide, was decorated with gold or colored curls of the ornament. Often the legs of large initials are decorated with alternating multi-colored ornamental stripes.
The most characteristic distinguishing feature Guslitsky ornament - colored shading, widely used by artists to model volumes or when coloring elements of decorations. The shading was done in the same color as the main tone of the coloring. It was applied either over the white background of the paper, as if framing the main coloring, or over the main tone with a darker color. Bright blue and cyan colors were often used in the headpieces and initials of the monuments of the Guslitsky school. Such shining blue colors in combination with abundant gilding are not found in any of the manuscript schools of the 18th - 19th centuries.
The Historical Museum houses 13 pictures of the Guslitsky style. Comparison of these drawings with Pomeranian pictures (by analogy with the universally accepted comparison of the ornamentation of Pomeranian and Guslitsky manuscripts) allows us to gain a deeper sense of their originality. Often both text and visual parts are combined in equal proportions - poems, chants, illustrations for literary works. Comparing them shows that the Guslitsky masters knew Pomeranian pictures well. But the artistic solution of Guslitsky’s pictures is completely independent. This concerns the layout of the text, the combination of font sizes with the size of capital letters-initials, and the originality of the decorative frames of the sheets in general. Here, on the contrary, there is a desire not to repeat Vygov’s popular prints in any way. There is not a single case of the use of an oval frame of flowers or fruits, there are no flowerpots or baskets, so typical for framing texts on Pomeranian sheets. The names of the sheets are written not in script, but in large half-letters in bright cinnabar. The initials stand out in a particularly large scale, sometimes occupying almost a third of the sheet. One feels that the decoration of the initials was the main concern of the artists - they are so varied and beautifully colored, decorated with intricately curling flowers and leaves, and shining with a golden pattern. They primarily attract the viewer's attention and are the main decorative elements of most compositions.
What results the individual skill of the picture decorators led to can be judged by two drawings on the theme of the teaching of John Chrysostom on the correct sign of the cross (cat. 75, 76). It would seem that the plot is the same, the marks are similar, but the sheets are completely different due to different understandings of color and ornamentation.
In Guslitsky pictures, plot episodes are located in separate stamps, placed in the corners or in horizontal stripes at the top and bottom of the sheet. The framing of the central composition with stamps brings to mind iconographic traditions, the connection with which in Guslitsky’s works is quite noticeable in the modeling of the characters’ clothing, in the depiction of architectural structures, in the drawing of trees with a conventional mushroom-shaped crown located in several tiers.
The Guslitsky masters of wall paintings, like everyone else, worked with liquid tempera, but their colors were denser and more saturated.
The same pattern is observed in the plots as in the artistic features of the work of the masters of this school: borrowing general techniques and trends in the works of other centers, they sought to create their own versions, different from others. Among the painted wall sheets there are subjects found in other places where pictures were produced: “Spiritual Pharmacy” (cat. 81) or “Look with diligence, corruptible man...” (cat. 83), but their artistic solution is unique. There are also entirely original pictures: a sheet illustrating the apocryphal tale of the punishment of Cain for killing his brother (cat. 78), illustrations for the “Tombstone Stichera”, which shows the episodes of Joseph and Nicodemus coming to Pilate and the removal of the body of Christ from the cross (cat. 84) .
The time period for creating Guslitsky wall pictures is not very wide. Most of them can be attributed to the second half - the end of the 19th century. The watermark on one sheet gives the date 1828, which is probably the earliest example.
The real local center with which the origin and spread of the painted popular print is associated is Moscow. In relation to the pictures made in Moscow, the concept of school cannot be applied. The group of these sheets is so diverse in artistic and stylistic terms that it is impossible to talk about a single school. Among the Moscow pictures there are unique examples that we have not encountered elsewhere, where the sheets are combined into small series, as was done, for example, by the artist who illustrated the legends of the biblical book of Esther. He placed the main episodes of the biblical story in two pictures, following one after another both in meaning and in the text located at the bottom of them (cat. 90, 91). The viewer unfolds a story about the choice of Esther as a wife to the Persian king Artaxerxes, about her fidelity and modesty, about the betrayal of the courtier Haman and the fearlessness of Mordecai, about the punishment of Haman, etc. Multi-tiered planar arrangement of episodes, a characteristic combination of the interior and exterior of buildings, lush baroque The compositions are framed by a bizarre interweaving of ancient Russian traditions and the art of modern times.
Considering the stylistics and artistic methods of the local centers of hand-drawn pictures known to us, one can notice that each of them, although it had its own distinctive features, developed in a single general mainstream of folk fine art. They did not exist in isolation, but were constantly aware of the achievements that existed in neighboring and even distant schools, accepting or rejecting some of them, borrowing themes or searching for original subjects, their own ways of expression.
The painted lubok is a special page in the history of folk fine art. He was born in the middle of the 18th century and used the form of printed popular prints, which by that time had a widely developed theme and was produced in large quantities. The secondary nature of the drawn popular print in relation to the engraved pictures is beyond doubt. The artists used some instructive and spiritual-moral subjects from engraved pictures. But imitation and borrowing concern mainly the content side.
Regarding artistic methods and stylistics, the hand-drawn popular print showed originality from the very beginning and began to develop independently. Relying on the high culture of ancient Russian painting, and especially the handwritten book tradition, carefully preserved among the Old Believer population, artists transformed the finished form of printed pictures into a different quality. It was the synthesis of ancient Russian traditions and primitive popular prints that resulted in the emergence of works of a new artistic form. The Old Russian component in the painted popular print seems to be perhaps the strongest. There is no sense of stylization or mechanical borrowing in it. Old Believer artists, hostile to innovation, relied on familiar, cherished images from time immemorial, and built their works on the principle of visual illustrative expression of abstract ideas and concepts. Warmed by folk inspiration, the ancient Russian tradition, even in later times, did not become isolated in a conventional world. In her works, she embodied the bright world of humanity for the audience and spoke to them in the sublime language of art.
From icon art, hand-drawn popular prints absorbed spirituality and visual culture. From book miniatures came an organic combination of textual and fine parts, methods of writing and decorating initials, careful elaboration of the drawing and coloring of figures and objects.
At the same time, painted sheets were based on the same pictorial system as popular prints. It was built on the understanding of the plane as a two-dimensional space, highlighting the main characters by means of enlargement, frontal placement of figures, decorative filling of the background, and a patterned and ornamental manner of constructing the whole. The drawn splint fits completely into the whole aesthetic system, based on the principles of artistic primitiveness. Artists of painted popular prints, as well as masters of other types of folk art, are distinguished by their rejection of naturalistic verisimilitude, the desire to express not the external form of objects, but their inner essential beginning, the naivety and idyllic way of imaginative thinking.
The art of hand-drawn popular prints occupies a special place in the system of folk art due to its intermediate position between urban and peasant art. Developing among peasant artists or in Old Believer communities, where the overwhelming majority of the population was also peasant in origin, the painted popular print is closest to the urban craft art of the Posad. Being an easel art, to some extent an art of illustration, and not the decoration of things needed in everyday life, as the vast majority of peasant art was, the painted popular print turns out to be more dependent on urban, professional art. Hence his desire for “picturesqueness”, the noticeable influence of baroque and rocaille techniques in compositional structures.
The peasant environment added another layer to the artistic nature of the painted popular print - folklore tradition, folklore poetic images that have always lived in the people's collective consciousness. The special love for the motif of the tree of life, the tree of wisdom with useful tips and instructions, for the flowering and fruit-bearing tree - a symbol of the beauty of nature, comes from the artists of hand-drawn popular prints from an ancient folklore concept, constantly embodied in objects of applied art. The motifs of large flowers, buds with the power of growth and flowering contained in them reflect the people's poetic worldview. Enjoyment of the beauty of the world, a joyful worldview, optimism, folklore generalization - these are the features that the painted popular print absorbed from peasant art. This is felt in the entire figurative and color structure of the hand-drawn wall pictures.
The history of hand-drawn popular print goes back a little over 100 years. The disappearance of the art of hand-drawn pictures at the beginning of the 20th century is explained by the general reasons that influenced the change in all popular prints.
Distributed in huge mass circulations, chromolithography and oleography, concentrated in the hands of such publishers as I. D. Sytin, T. M. Solovyov, I. A. Morozov, and others, completely changed the appearance of the city popular print, turning it into beautiful pictures “for the people.” " At the end of the 19th - beginning of the 20th century, the Moscow Old Believer printing house of G. K. Gorbunov launched active publishing activities, where popular prints of religious content were printed in large quantities. The drawn popular print was probably simply supplanted by this dominance of cheap pictures. Not directly connected with everyday life, with the production of dishes, spinning wheels, toys, the peasant craft in the field of painted popular prints, almost completely unknown to connoisseurs and patrons of the arts and therefore not finding support, as was the case with some other types of folk art, disappeared without a trace.
The reasons for the extinction of the art of popular prints in the practice of the early 20th century are both private and general. The steady development of forms of human society, changes in psychology and lifestyle associated with the process of urbanization, increased contradictions in social development and many other factors have led to turn of the 19th century and XX centuries to the transformation of the entire system of folk culture and the inevitable loss of some traditional types of folk art.
Acquaintance with painted popular prints is intended to fill the gap that exists in the study of folk art of the 18th-19th centuries. The question of ways to further develop folk artistic crafts, which is so pressing today, requires new in-depth research, a search for truly folk traditions, and their introduction into artistic practice. The study of little-known monuments of folk art can help in solving these problems.
Russian lubok is a graphic type of folk art that arose in the era of Peter the Great. Sheets with bright, funny pictures were printed in the hundreds of thousands and were extremely cheap. They never depicted grief or sadness; funny or educational stories with simple, understandable images were accompanied by laconic inscriptions and were a kind of comics of the 17th-19th centuries. In every hut similar pictures hung on the walls; they were greatly valued, and the ofeni, distributors of popular prints, were eagerly awaited everywhere.
Origin of the term
At the end of the 17th century, prints from wooden boards were called German or Fryazh comic sheets by analogy with prints, the technique of which came to Russia from Western lands. Representatives of southern Europe, mainly Italians, have long been called Fryags in Rus'; all other Europeans were called Germans. Later, prints with more serious content and realistic images were called Fryazh sheets, and traditional Russian lubok was the art of folk graphics with simplified, brightly colored graphics and clearly succinct images.
There are two assumptions why funny sheets were called popular prints. Perhaps the first boards for impressions were made from bast - the lower layer of tree bark, most often linden. Boxes were made from the same material - containers for bulk products or household belongings. They were often painted with picturesque patterns with primitive images of people and animals. Over time, bast began to be called boards intended for working on them with a chisel.
Execution technique
Each stage of work on the Russian popular print had its own name and was carried out by different craftsmen.
- At first, the contour drawing was created on paper, and the flag bearers drew it on the prepared board with a pencil. This process was called signification.
- Then the carvers got to work. Using sharp tools, they made indentations, leaving thin walls along the contour of the design. This delicate, painstaking work required special qualifications. The base boards, ready for impressions, were sold to the breeder. The first wood engravers, and then copper engravers, lived in Izmailovo, a village near Moscow.
- The board was smeared with dark paint and placed under a press with a sheet of cheap gray paper placed on it. The thin walls of the board left a black outline pattern, and the cut-out areas kept the paper uncolored. Such sheets were called prostovki.
- Paintings with outline prints were taken to colorists - village artel workers who were engaged in coloring simple paintings. This work was performed by women, often children. Each of them painted up to a thousand sheets a week. The artel workers made their own paints. The crimson color was obtained from boiled sandalwood with the addition of alum, the blue color came from lapis lazuli, and various transparent tones were extracted from processed plants and tree bark. In the 18th century, with the advent of lithography, the profession of colorists almost disappeared.
Due to wear and tear, the boards were often copied, this was called translation. Initially, the board was cut from linden, then pear and maple were used.
The appearance of funny pictures
The first printing press was called the Fryazhsky mill and was installed in the Court (Upper) printing house at the end of the 17th century. Then other printing houses appeared. Boards for printing were cut from copper. There is an assumption that Russian popular prints were first produced by professional printers, installing simple machines in their homes. Printing craftsmen lived in the area of modern Stretenka and Lubyanka streets, and here, near the church walls, they sold amusing Fryazh sheets, which immediately began to be in demand. It was in this area that by the beginning of the 18th century, popular prints acquired their characteristic style. Soon other places of their distribution appeared, such as Vegetable Row, and then Spassky Bridge.
Funny pictures under Peter
Wanting to please the sovereign, the draftsmen came up with amusing plots for the amusing sheets. For example, the battle of Alexander the Great with the Indian king Porus, in which the Greek ancient commander was given a clear portrait resemblance to Peter I. Or the plot of a black and white print about Ilya of Murom and the Nightingale the Robber, where the Russian hero both in appearance and clothing corresponded to the image of the sovereign, and a robber in a Swedish military uniform portrayed Charles XII. Some subjects of the Russian popular print may have been ordered by Peter I himself, such as a sheet that reflects the reform instructions of the sovereign from 1705: a Russian merchant, dressed in European clothes, is preparing to shave his beard.
Printers also received orders from opponents of Peter’s reforms, although the content of the seditious popular prints was veiled with allegorical images. After the death of the tsar, a famous sheet circulated with a scene of a cat being buried by mice, which contained many hints that the cat was the late sovereign, and the happy mice were the lands conquered by Peter.
The heyday of popular print in the 18th century
Beginning in 1727, after the death of Empress Catherine I, print production in Russia declined sharply. Most printing houses, including the St. Petersburg one, have closed. And printers, left without work, reoriented themselves to the production of popular prints, using printing copper boards, which were left in abundance after the closure of enterprises. From this time on, the Russian folk popular print began to flourish.
By the middle of the century, lithographic machines appeared in Russia, which made it possible to multiply the number of copies many times over, obtain color printing, and a higher quality and more detailed image. The first factory with 20 machines belonged to the Moscow merchants Akhmetyev. Competition among popular prints increased, and the subjects became more and more diverse. Pictures were created for the main consumers - city dwellers, therefore they depicted city life and everyday life. Peasant themes appeared only in the next century.
Lubok production in the 19th century
Starting from the middle of the century, 13 large lithographic printing houses operated in Moscow, producing popular prints along with their main products. By the end of the century, I. Sytin’s enterprise was considered the most prominent in the field of production and distribution of these products, which annually produced about two million calendars, one and a half million sheets with biblical subjects, 900 thousand pictures with secular subjects. Morozov's lithography produced about 1.4 million popular prints annually, Golyshev's factory produced close to 300 thousand, the circulation of other productions was smaller. The cheapest plain sheets were sold for half a kopeck, the most expensive pictures cost 25 kopecks.
Subjects
The popular prints of the 17th century were chronicles, oral and handwritten tales, and epics. By the middle of the 18th century, Russian hand-drawn popular prints with images of buffoons, jesters, noble life, and court fashion became popular. Many satirical sheets appeared. In the 30s and 40s, the most popular content of popular prints was the depiction of city folk festivities, festivals, entertainment, fist fights, and fairs. Some sheets contained several thematic pictures, for example, the popular print “Meeting and Farewell of Maslenitsa” consisted of 27 drawings depicting the fun of Muscovites in different districts of the city. Since the second half of the century, redrawings from German and French calendars and almanacs have spread.
Since the beginning of the 19th century, literary subjects from the works of Goethe, Chateaubriand, Francois Rene, and other popular writers of that time have appeared in popular prints. Since the 1820s, the Russian style has come into fashion, which in print was expressed in a rustic theme. At the expense of the peasants, the demand for popular prints also increased. Topics of spiritual, religious, military and patriotic content, portraits of the royal family, illustrations with quotes from fairy tales, songs, fables, and sayings remained popular.
Lubok XX - XXI centuries
In the graphic design of advertising leaflets, posters, newspaper illustrations, and signs from the beginning of the last century, popular print style was often used. This is explained by the fact that pictures remained the most popular type of information product for the illiterate rural and urban population. The genre was later characterized by art critics as an element of Russian Art Nouveau.
Lubok influenced the formation of political and propaganda posters in the first quarter of the 20th century. At the end of the summer of 1914, the publishing society “Today's Lubok” was organized, whose task was to produce satirical posters and postcards. Accurate short texts were written by Vladimir Mayakovsky, who worked on the images together with artists Kazimir Malevich, Larionov, Chekrygin, Lentulov, Burlyukov and Gorsky. Until the 1930s, popular prints were often present in advertising posters and design. Throughout the century, the style was used in Soviet caricature, children's illustrations, and satirical caricature.
Russian lubok cannot be called a modern form of fine art that is popular. Such graphics are extremely rarely used for ironic posters, design of fairs or thematic exhibitions. Few illustrators and cartoonists work in this direction, but on the Internet their bright, witty works on the topic of the day attract the attention of netizens.
“Drawing in Russian popular print style”
In 2016, under this title, the Hobbitek publishing house published a book by Nina Velichko, addressed to everyone who is interested in folk art. The work contains articles of an entertaining and educational nature. Based on the works of old masters, the author teaches the features of popular prints, explains how to draw a picture in a frame step by step, depict people, trees, flowers, houses, draw stylized letters and other elements. Thanks to the fascinating material, it is not at all difficult to master the technique and properties of popular prints in order to independently create bright entertaining pictures.
In Moscow on Sretenka there is a museum of Russian popular prints and naive art. The foundation of the exhibition is the rich collection of the director of this institution, Viktor Penzin. The exhibition of popular prints, from the 18th century to the present day, arouses considerable interest among visitors. It is no coincidence that the museum is located in the area of Pechatnikov Lane and Lubyanka, where more than three centuries ago the same printing workers who were at the origins of the history of Russian popular print lived. The style of Fryazhsky funny pictures originated here, and sheets for sale were hung on the fence of the local church. Perhaps exhibitions, books and displays of pictures on the Internet will revive interest in Russian popular print, and it will again come into fashion, as has happened many times with other types of folk art.
Russian graphic lubok (lubok, lubok pictures, lubok sheets, amusing sheets, simple sheets) - inexpensive pictures with captions (mostly graphic) intended for mass distribution, a type of graphic art.
It got its name from the bast (the upper hard wood of the linden tree), which was used in the 17th century. as an engraving base for boards when printing such pictures. In the 18th century bast replaced copper boards in the 19th and 20th centuries. These pictures were already produced using the printing method, but their name “popular prints” was retained for them. This type of simple and crude art for mass consumption became widespread in Russia in the 17th and early 20th centuries, even giving rise to popular popular literature. Such literature fulfilled its social function, introducing reading to the poorest and least educated segments of the population.
Formerly works of folk art, initially made exclusively by non-professionals, lubok influenced the emergence of works of professional graphics of the early 20th century, which were distinguished by a special visual language and borrowed folklore techniques and images.
The artistic features of popular prints are syncretism, boldness in the choice of techniques (up to the grotesque and deliberate deformation of the depicted), highlighting thematically the main thing with a larger image (this is similar to children's drawings). From popular prints, which were for ordinary townspeople and rural residents of the 17th - early 20th centuries. modern home posters, colorful desk calendars, posters, comics, and many works of modern mass culture (even the art of cinema) trace their history back to newspapers, television, icons, and primers.
As a genre that combines graphics and literary elements, lubok were not a purely Russian phenomenon.
The oldest pictures of this kind existed in China, Turkey, Japan, and India. In China they were initially performed by hand, and from the 8th century. engraved on wood, distinguished at the same time by their bright colors and catchiness.
IN Russian state The first popular prints (which existed as works of anonymous authors) were published at the beginning of the 17th century. in the printing house of the Kiev Pechersk Lavra. The craftsmen hand-cut both the picture and the text on a smooth-planed, polished linden board, leaving the text and drawing lines convex. Next, using a special leather pillow - matzo - black paint was applied to the drawing from a mixture of burnt hay, soot and boiled linseed oil. A sheet of damp paper was placed on top of the board and the whole thing was pressed together into the press of the printing press. The resulting print was then hand-colored in one or more colors (this type of work, often entrusted to women, was in some areas called "nose painting" - coloring with contours in mind).
The earliest popular print found in the East Slavic region is considered to be the icon of the Dormition of the Virgin Mary 1614-1624, the first Moscow popular print now preserved in collections from the late 17th century.
In Moscow, the distribution of popular prints began from the royal court. In 1635, so-called “printed sheets” were purchased for the 7-year-old Tsarevich Alexei Mikhailovich in the Vegetable Row on Red Square, after which the fashion for them came to the boyar mansions, and from there to the middle and lower strata of the townspeople, where the popular print gained recognition and popularity around the 1660s.
Among the main genres of popular prints, at first there was only the religious one.
Among the artists who worked on the production of engraving bases for these popular prints were the famous masters of the Kiev-Lvov typographic school of the 17th century. - Pamva Berynda, Leonty Zemka, Vasily Koren, Hieromonk Elijah. Prints of their works were hand-colored in four colors: red, purple, yellow, green. Thematically, all the popular prints they created had a religious content, but biblical heroes were often depicted on them in Russian folk clothing (like Cain plowing the land on Vasily Koren’s popular print).
Gradually, among popular prints, in addition to religious subjects (scenes from the lives of saints and the Gospel), illustrations for Russian fairy tales, epics, translated knightly novels (about Bova Korolevich, Eruslan Lazarevich), and historical tales (about the founding of Moscow, the Battle of Kulikovo) appeared.
Thanks to such printed “amusing sheets”, details of peasant labor and life of pre-Petrine times are being reconstructed (“Old Agathon weaves bast shoes, and his wife Arina spins threads”), scenes of plowing, harvesting, logging, baking pancakes, rituals of the family cycle - births, weddings , funeral. Thanks to them, the history of everyday Russian life was filled with real images of household utensils and the furnishings of huts.
Ethnographers still use these sources, restoring lost scripts for folk festivals, round dances, fair events, details and tools of rituals (for example, fortune telling). Some images of Russian popular prints of the 17th century. came into use for a long time, including the image of the “ladder of life”, on which each decade corresponds to a certain “step” (“The first step of this life is played in a carefree game...”). But why is popular print called “amusing”? Here's why. Very often, popular prints depicted such funny things that you could hardly stand still. Lubki depicting fair festivals, farce performances and their barkers, who in hurried voices beckoned people to attend the performance:
“My wife is beautiful. There is a blush under the nose, snot all over the cheek; It’s like a ride along Nevsky, only dirt flies from under your feet. Her name is Sophia, who spent three years drying on the stove. I took it off the stove, it bowed to me and fell apart in three pieces. What should I do? I took a washcloth, sewed it, and lived with it for three more years. He went to Sennaya, bought another wife for a penny, and with a cat. The cat is penniless, but the wife is a profit, whatever you give, she will eat.”
“But, shy guys, this is Parasha.
Only mine, not yours.
I wanted to marry her.
Yes, I remembered, this is not suitable with a living wife.
Parasha would be good for everyone, but it hurts her cheeks.
That’s why there aren’t enough bricks in St. Petersburg.”
A funny popular cartoon about the girl Rodionova:
“Maiden Rodionova, who arrived in Moscow from St. Petersburg and was awarded the favorable attention of the St. Petersburg public. She is 18 years old, her height is 1 arshin 10 vershoks, her head is quite large, her nose is wide. She uses her lips and tongue to embroider different patterns and embroider beaded bracelets. He also eats food without the help of strangers. Her legs serve instead of hands; she uses them to take plates of food and bring them to her lips. In all likelihood, the Moscow public will not leave her happy with the same attention that was given to the girl Yulia Postratsa, especially since seeing Rodionova and her art is much more interesting than seeing only the ugliness of the girl Yulia Postratsa.”
Russian lubok ceased to exist at the end of the 19th century. It was then that old colored sheets began to be stored and cherished as relics of a bygone past. At the same time, the study and collection of popular prints begins. Large collection the popular print was collected from the famous compiler " Explanatory dictionary living Great Russian language" by Vladimir Ivanovich Dahl. The artists Repin, Vasnetsov, Kustodiev, Kandinsky, Konchalovsky, Dobuzhinsky, Lentulov were interested in lubko.
The artistic motifs of the popular print influenced folk decorative art of the 20th century. The connection with the aesthetics of popular prints can be seen in some works by artists Fedoskino and Palekh. Some lubok traditions were used in the creation of animated films based on folk tales.
The first person to seriously study and collect popular prints was Dmitry Aleksandrovich Rovinsky. His collection included every single Russian popular print that was produced by the end of the 19th century, and that’s almost 8 thousand copies.
Dmitry Aleksandrovich Rovinsky - art historian, collector and lawyer by profession - was born in Moscow. I purchased the first copies for my collection in my youth. But at first he was interested in collecting Western engravings; Rovinsky had one of the most complete collections of Rembrandt engravings in Russia. He traveled all over Europe in search of these engravings. But later, under the influence of his relative, historian and collector, M.P. Pogodin, Rovinsky begins to collect everything domestic, and primarily Russian folk pictures. In addition to popular prints, D. A. Rovinsky collected old illustrated primers, cosmographies and satirical sheets. Rovinsky spent all his money on collecting his collection. He lived very modestly, surrounded by countless folders with engravings and books on art. Every year Rovinsky went on trips to the most remote places of Russia, from where he brought new sheets for his collection of popular prints. D. A. Rovinsky wrote and published at his own expense “A detailed dictionary of Russian engraved portraits” in 4 volumes, published in 1872, “Russian folk pictures” in 5 volumes - 1881. “Materials for Russian iconography” and “Complete collection of engravings by Rembrandt” in 4 volumes in 1890.
Thanks to his research in the field of art, Rovinsky was elected an honorary member of the Academy of Sciences and the Academy of Arts. Rovinsky established prizes for best essays in artistic archeology and for the best painting, followed by its reproduction in an engraving. He gave his dacha to Moscow University, and from the income he received, he established regular prizes for the best illustrated scientific essay for public reading.
Rovinsky bequeathed his entire collection of Rembrandt engravings, which is over 600 sheets, to the Hermitage, Russian and folk pictures to the Moscow Public Museum and the Rumyantsev Museum, about 50 thousand Western European engravings to the Imperial Public Library.
What is lubok? Why and how was it made? What does it have in common with the deck of a ship? And why did the authorities ban it? The answers are in the article!
News of various kinds have become an integral part of the life of a modern person. And it doesn’t matter where we get them from: from the Internet, from newspapers or on television. It is important for us that the information is fresh, varied and constant. And if you think that our ancestors managed without this, then you are very mistaken. In the old days, they also had their own media. And they, too, were wildly popular. And some of them were also prohibited. And they also advertised something, scolded someone, suggested something. So what did the editors of that time produce?
In the old days, there was one type of media, and it was popular print. Lubok, also known as a popular sheet or picture, is a stylized image printed on paper with comments. And since it reflects the creativity of the people rather than of professionals, it was distinguished by its simplicity, conciseness and intelligibility.
Brief history
The first popular prints (nianhua) appeared in China. Moreover, at first, each sheet was drawn by hand, and only after the 8th century did the Chinese learn to make prints. From the Middle Kingdom, popular art spread to India and Arab countries. Like all oriental painting, Asian popular prints were distinguished by their richness of colors and abundance of elements.
Lubok has been known in European countries since the 15th century. At first the images were black and white, and resembled unsightly children's coloring books; They gained color a little later. European popular prints were distinguished by a variety of subjects and were similar to modern newspapers and magazines: in large cities there were editorial factories (which later became printing houses) and shops selling them.
In some countries, lubok existed until the 19th century. They were replaced by ordinary printed newspapers and comics.
Popular prints
In the East, pictures had predominantly religious and philosophical content, but as soon as lubok came to Europe, their themes expanded significantly. Fairy tales or epics, historical and legal (images of trials filled with satire and morality) appeared. As well as pictures depicting saints (like modern calendars), horsemen and folk heroes. Jokers - humorous popular prints with caricatures, satire, jokes, toasts and fables - had a special place and great popularity.
In addition, in Europe, some large firms and enterprises ordered advertising prints telling about their products or services. Very often, lubok were used by the government and the church as propaganda or agitation. In general, popular prints used to play the same role as modern newspapers and leaflets.
Lubki in Russia
Lubok came to Russia from Europe in the 16th century and it was then called “Fryazhsky leaf”. At first, only imported pictures were on sale, but from the end of the 17th century, the Moscow Court Printing House learned how to produce them independently. Based on the method of production, they received their new name - lubok. But more on that below.
Despite the availability of domestic products for sale, imported jokers were very popular. Orthodox Church they were outraged by their “immorality and obscenity,” and things went as far as banning the sale of “heretic sheets.” The ban was introduced in 1674, and in 1721, at the insistence of the church, censorship was introduced on domestic popular prints. The so-called Izugraphic Chamber monitored the morality of the pictures.
But, fortunately, printing houses that knew how to bypass censorship flourished. Otherwise, we would not have wonderful popular prints demonstrating the folk customs of past times.
Making splints
In Russia, manufacturers of popular prints were called “Fryazh carving masters.” The very process of drawing and coloring a drawing is a sign.
The work consisted of the following: the artist (banner) drew an image on the board, and the engraver cut it out, that is, made a print. Then the copyist applied dark paint to it and made an imprint on the paper - the result was a simple picture. These sheets were handed over to the artels engaged in coloring. As a rule, children and women worked in them. The professional workers of such cartels were called flower workers. But with the advent of new, more advanced methods of drawing (lithography and engraving), such artels were disbanded.
So why did the printed pictures get such a name - lubok? Answer: the design for the imprint was applied to a linden board obtained by a special sawing method from the lower part of the tree bark. Such boards were called bast. They were used to make roofs of houses and decks of ships, and the bast obtained from young trees was good for bast.
This is the history of the popular print - special type folk art, the predecessor of newspapers, magazines and now popular comic books.
Lubok is a folk picture, a type of graphics, an image with a caption, characterized by the simplicity and accessibility of the images. Originally a type of folk art. It was made using the techniques of woodcuts, copper engravings, lithographs and was supplemented with hand coloring.
From the middle of the 17th century, printed pictures called “Fryazhskie” (foreign) first appeared in Rus'. Then these pictures were called “amusing sheets”; in the second half of the 19th century they began to be called lubok.
The drawing was made on paper, then it was transferred to a smooth board and with special cutters they deepened the places that should remain white. The entire image consisted of walls. The work was difficult, one small mistake - and I had to start all over again. Then the board was clamped in a printing press, similar to a press, and black paint was applied to the walls with a special roller. A sheet of paper was carefully placed on top and pressed down. The print was ready. All that remains is to dry and paint. Luboks were made different sizes. What colors were loved in Rus'? (Red, crimson, blue, green, yellow, sometimes black). They painted it so that the combination was sharp. The high quality of the drawing indicated that at first the popular prints were painted by professional artists, who were left without work under Peter I. And only then gingerbread board carvers and other city artisans joined. The engraver made the basis for the picture - a board - and gave it to the breeder. He bought boards ready for prints, and sent the prints for coloring (for example, near Moscow, in the village of Izmailovo, there lived lubok makers who made engravings on wood and copper. Women and children were engaged in coloring lubok prints.
How the paints were made: Sandalwood was boiled with the addition of alum, resulting in crimson paint. The emphasis was on bright red or cherry color. Lapis lazuli was used for blue paint. They made paints from leaves and tree bark. Each craftswoman painted in her own way. But everyone learned from each other, and used the best techniques in their work.
Lubki are very popular in Russia. Firstly, they retold history, geography, printed literary works, ABCs, arithmetic textbooks, Holy Scripture. Any topic was covered in popular print with the utmost depth and breadth. For example, four full pages told about our Earth. Where and what peoples live. Lots of text and lots of pictures. Lubki were about individual cities, about different events. Caught For example, there is a whale in the White Sea, and a whale is drawn on a large sheet of paper. Or how a man chooses a bride, or fashionable outfits, or “ABCs”. And all this was done with pictures. Sometimes many pictures were arranged in tiers. Sometimes there were texts on popular prints. Secondly, lubok served as decoration. Russian craftsmen gave the popular print a joyful character.
Lubok is the name comes from the word “bast” - bast, i.e. wooden(inner part of tree bark). The drawings were carved on wooden boards. These pictures were sold and distributed throughout the land of Russian ofeni (peddlers), who stored their goods in bast boxes. They treasured the popular prints very much. Nekrasov’s poem “Who Lives Well in Rus'” tells how a peasant’s hut was on fire, and the first thing he took away were pictures. There was never any grief or crying in the popular print. He only pleased and amused, and sometimes denounced, but he did it with great humor and dignity. Lubok instilled in people faith in themselves, in their strength. The peddlers of popular prints - ophens - were expected everywhere. They brought pictures with letters to the kids, pictures with fashionable clothes about love to the girls, and something political to the men. Ofenya will show such a picture and tell you what new has happened in the country.
Lubochnye pictures were accompanied by a short explanatory text. It was distinguished by its simplicity and accessibility of images, was written in a lively and figurative colloquial language and was often reproduced in poetic form. Popular prints also include hand-drawn lubok (hand-drawn wall sheets), but the main property of lubok - mass production, wide distribution - is achieved only with the help of printing.
The subjects of popular print books were varied. “Here you will find personified a dogma, a prayer, a hetya (legend), a moral teaching, a parable, a fairy tale, a proverb, a song, in a word, everything that suited the spirit, character and taste of our commoner, that was acquired by his concept, that constitutes the subject of knowledge, edification, exposure, consolation and curiosity of millions...", wrote one of the first lubok researchers I.M. Snegirev.
Initially, Russian lubok was primarily of a religious nature. Russian engravers borrowed subjects from Russian miniatures, as well as church icons. Thus, from the early printed icons, the sheet “Archangel Michael - Governor of the Heavenly Powers” (1668), 17th-century popular prints depicting scenes from icons of Suzdal, the Chudov Monastery, the Simonov Monastery in Moscow, etc. have been preserved. Often these pictures replaced expensive church paintings.
In the 18th century, secular subjects were the most numerous. The source for the grotesque of many of them was foreign engravings. For example, the famous popular print “The Fool Farnos and his Wife” is from a German model; “The Shepherd and the Shepherdess” is a pastoral scene in the Rococo style, from a drawing by F. Boucher, and the grotesque, fancifully fantastic figures of the popular print “Jesters and Buffoons” are based on etchings by J. Callot, etc.
Popular prints of folklore themes were widespread among the people, as well as “amusing and amusing paintings” - images of all kinds of entertainment and spectacles, among which the most frequently published popular prints were “Petrushka’s Wedding”, “Bear with a Goat” and especially “Battle of Baba Yaga with a Crocodile” ". The famous popular print “How Mice Bury a Cat,” which has long been considered a parody of the funeral procession of Peter I, allegedly created at the beginning of the 18th century by schismatics who fiercely fought against Peter’s reforms, also goes back to national folklore. Today, scientists are inclined to think that the plot of this popular print appeared in pre-Petrine times, although the earliest print of this engraving that has reached us dates back to 1731. Known in several versions, including “seasonal” ones (winter burial on a sleigh and summer burial on a cart), this popular print was repeatedly reprinted with slight deviations in the title (“How the mice buried the cat,” “The mice dragged the cat to the graveyard,” etc. ), V various techniques(wood engraving, metal engraving, chromolithography) not only throughout the 18th century, but almost until the October Revolution.
Many popular prints were created on the theme of the teachings and life of various social strata of the population of Russia: peasant, city dweller, official, merchant, etc. (“The husband weaves bast shoes, and the wife spins the thread”, “Know yourself, show in your house”); popular prints reflected the events of domestic and international life ("The Eruption of Vesuvius in 1766", "The Capture of Ochakov", "The Victory of Field Marshal Count Saltykov at Frankfurt in 1759"), the military life of Russian soldiers, their political sentiments, etc. During the period of hostilities, the lubok often served as a newspaper, poster, or leaflet-proclamation. Thus, in 1812-1815, a series of popular prints-caricatures of Napoleon and the French army, created by N.I. Terebnev, a famous Russian sculptor and artist, was released. A widely known patriotic popular print called “The Battle Song of the Donets”, which became widespread during the Russian-Japanese War of 1904-1905, the text to which (“Hey, Mikado, it will be bad, we’ll break your dishes”) was written by V.L. Gilyarovsky.
Popular prints with portraits of tsars were very popular among the Russian people. In 1723, Peter I introduced strict censorship of facial images royal family, which, however, did not prevent the appearance on the book market of a popular print with a portrait of the imaginary Peter III - Emelyan Pugachev and the never-reigning Emperor Konstantin Pavlovich.
Beginning in the mid-18th century, popular prints were often stitched together or published in book form with a large number of illustrations, which were later preserved only on the cover. One of the first Russian popular prints is considered to be the “Biography of the glorious fabulist Aesop,” published in 1712 and first printed in civilian type. In the form of popular prints, epics, fairy tales, dream books, adaptations of so-called knightly novels, etc. were published. The most frequently published popular books were fabulous content: “About Eruslan Lazarevich”, “Bova Korolevich”. Popular print publications on historical subjects were in great demand: “The Jester Balakirev”, “Ermak, who conquered Siberia”, “How a soldier saved the life of Peter the Great”, etc., as well as popular print calendars.
Popular prints and books were, as a rule, anonymous, did not have imprint information and were engraved by self-taught folk craftsmen, but there were also professional writers popular print books. The most famous of them was Matvey Komarov, the author of the famous “The Tale of the Adventures of the English Milord George and the Brandenburg Mark-Countess Frederica-Louise” (1782), which did not disappear from the book market for 150 years. Over time, a whole literature called popular print appeared, with its own authors, publishers, traditions, etc.
Over time, the technique of making popular prints improved: in the second half of the 18th century, copper engraving began to be used, and from the beginning of the 19th century, lithography, which significantly reduced the cost of popular prints. There have also been changes in the color of the popular print. So, if in XVII-XVIII centuries popular prints were hand-painted by individual craftsmen in eight to ten colors, but in the 19th century - usually only three or four (crimson, red, yellow and green). By the middle of the 19th century, the coloring itself acquired the character of factory production and became more rough and careless (“on the noses”). The readership purpose of lubok publications has changed: if in the 17th century lubok served all layers of Russian society with equal success, then already in the first quarter of the 18th century, the main sphere of its distribution became the growing urban population: merchants, traders, medium and small church officials, artisans. Lubok became peasant, truly widespread, already in the 19th century.
In the 18th-19th centuries, the main center for the production of popular prints was traditionally Moscow, where the first factories of the Akhmetyevs and M. Artemyevs arose. Gradually, the production of popular prints passed into the hands of small traders who had their own printing houses. In Moscow in the first half - mid-19th century, the main producers of popular prints were the dynasties of the Loginovs, Lavrentievs, A. Akhmetyev, G. Chuksin, A. Abramov, A. Streltsov, etc., in St. Petersburg - publishers A.V. Kholmushin, A.A. .Kasatkin and others. In the village of Mstera, Vladimir region, popular prints were printed by archaeologist I.A. Golyshev, who did a lot to educate the people. Lubok publications of an educational nature were produced by numerous literacy committees, the publishing houses "Public Benefit" (founded in 1859), "Posrednik" (established in 1884), etc. Lubok prints of religious content, as well as paper samples and icons, were produced in the printing houses of the largest Russian monasteries, including Kiev-Pechersk, Solovetsky, etc.
In the 80s of the 19th century, I.D. Sytin became the monopolist of popular prints on the Russian book market, who for the first time began to produce popular prints by machine, significantly improved the content and quality of popular prints (chromolithography in five to seven colors), increased their circulation and reduced retail prices. prices. Through his efforts, the so-called new popular print was created, which in its design, design, and color scheme differed from traditional sheet publications. I.D. Sytin for the first time published a series of portraits of Russian writers (A.S. Pushkin, I.S. Nikitin, M.Yu. Lermontov, N.A. Nekrasov, A.V. Koltsov and others) and selections and adaptations of their works , published popular prints on military-patriotic and historical themes, on fairy-tale, everyday, satirical subjects, popular print books, calendars, dream books, fortune-telling books, calendar calendars, lithographed icons, etc., which were purchased in the thousands directly from factories and distributed throughout Russia And
At the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries, lubok continued to be the main type of book product intended for the broad masses, and primarily for peasants and residents of the outskirts of Russia.
The role of lubok, but as a means of mass propaganda and agitation, especially increased during the years of the revolution. In this capacity it continued to exist until the early 30s. In conditions when the majority of the country's population was illiterate, the bright, imaginative and expressive art of lubok, understandable and close to millions, perfectly met the challenges of the time. In 1915, F.G. Shilov, a famous antiquarian of pre-revolutionary Russia, released a small edition of an album of popular prints entitled “Pictures - the war of the Russians with the Germans,” created by the artist N.P. Shakhovsky in imitation of the popular print of the 18th century. All pictures in the publication were reproduced in lithography and hand-colored; the text for them was written by V.I. Uspensky, a famous collector and publisher of numerous monuments of ancient Russian literature.
Many popular prints on the theme of the revolution were created by the artist A.E. Kulikov, including “Baptism of the Revolution”, “Hearing the Horrors of War”, “Woman in the Old Life”, “Who Has Forgotten the Duty to the Motherland?” and others. His works in this genre were published in 1917 by the Fine Arts section of the Moscow Council of Soldiers' Deputies, and in 1928 State Museum Revolution of the USSR, with a circulation of 25 thousand copies, published a series of postcards of six titles with popular prints and ditties by A.E. Kulikov.
Thus, popular prints represent a unique type of antique book. Among them there are original works folk art, reflecting the life, customs and aspirations of the Russian people. Each popular print today is an interesting monument and document of its era, bearing the signs and features of its time - this is the approach that should underlie the study of Russian popular prints. At the same time, censorship of lubok publications, which existed in Russia since the end of the 17th century and initially extended only to the “spiritual” lubok, and from the 19th century to all without exception, did not have a serious impact on its evolution.
The main reference book on Russian popular prints is the major five-volume work of D. A. Rovinsky “Russian Folk Pictures” (St. Petersburg, 1881). The owner of the best collection of popular prints in Russia, a tireless researcher of all state and known to him private collections, D.A. Rovinsky collected together, carefully described and commented, indicating sources, 1800 popular prints.