DOI Heft:
No. 229 (May 1912)
DOI Artikel:Vasnetzoff, A.: Pictures of old Moscow
DOI Seite / Zitierlink: https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.21156#0296
A. Vasnetzoff's Pictures of Old Moscow
PICTURES OF OLD MOSCOW
BY A. VASNETZOFF.
The pictures of which reproductions are
here given have been selected from a series on which
the painter Professor Apollinarius Mikhailovitch
Vasnetzoff has been engaged for some years past,
and which by their vivid and truthful portrayal of
the mediaeval architecture and social life of the old
Russian capital have earned for him a high place
among the Russian artists of the present day.
In some of these pictures we see the city as
it was about the close of the sixteenth century, the
days when the ruler of Russia was that “ cruell,
bloudye, and merciless ” monarch, Ivan IV., whose
name is always coupled with the appellation of
“the Terrible.” In those days, as for long years
afterwards, most of the houses of Russia were
built of wood, the “ great inconvenience ” of which)
in the words of a contemporary English writer, was
“ the aptnes for firing, which happeneth very oft
and in very fearful sort, by reason of the drinesse
and fatnesse of the firre.” In the annals of
mediaeval Moscow, indeed, more than one vast
conflagration is recorded, and as a consequence of
this wholesale destruction the only buildings that
have survived till the present day are the few that
were built of stone. Hence in resurrecting, as it
were, the old city from the ashes of the past the
artist has necessarily had to gather his material
mainly from the descriptions and narratives left by
writers of the period. He has himself given a
clue to the sources of information whence he has
derived his data in an interesting chapter con-
tributed by him to the second volume of Grabar’s
“History of Russian Art” (“ Istoriya Russkago
Isskousstva ”). It is clear from this essay that the
artist has fortified himself for his task by diligent
research, and thus his pictures may be accepted as
historically accurate in their details.
Professor A. Vasnetzoff is a professor at the
School of Fine Art in Moscow, where he settled
some fourteen years ago. In 1901 the Imperial
Academy of Arts bestowed on him the rank of
Painter-Academician, and subsequently elected
him one of its forty permanent members. Besides
his Old Moscow pictures, he has painted numerous
landscapes not of an historical character.
“OLD MOSCOW: THE KEEPER OF THE BOOKSTALL ON THE SPASSKY BRIDGE”
(HirschmanrCs Collection)
BY A. VASNETZOFF
273
PICTURES OF OLD MOSCOW
BY A. VASNETZOFF.
The pictures of which reproductions are
here given have been selected from a series on which
the painter Professor Apollinarius Mikhailovitch
Vasnetzoff has been engaged for some years past,
and which by their vivid and truthful portrayal of
the mediaeval architecture and social life of the old
Russian capital have earned for him a high place
among the Russian artists of the present day.
In some of these pictures we see the city as
it was about the close of the sixteenth century, the
days when the ruler of Russia was that “ cruell,
bloudye, and merciless ” monarch, Ivan IV., whose
name is always coupled with the appellation of
“the Terrible.” In those days, as for long years
afterwards, most of the houses of Russia were
built of wood, the “ great inconvenience ” of which)
in the words of a contemporary English writer, was
“ the aptnes for firing, which happeneth very oft
and in very fearful sort, by reason of the drinesse
and fatnesse of the firre.” In the annals of
mediaeval Moscow, indeed, more than one vast
conflagration is recorded, and as a consequence of
this wholesale destruction the only buildings that
have survived till the present day are the few that
were built of stone. Hence in resurrecting, as it
were, the old city from the ashes of the past the
artist has necessarily had to gather his material
mainly from the descriptions and narratives left by
writers of the period. He has himself given a
clue to the sources of information whence he has
derived his data in an interesting chapter con-
tributed by him to the second volume of Grabar’s
“History of Russian Art” (“ Istoriya Russkago
Isskousstva ”). It is clear from this essay that the
artist has fortified himself for his task by diligent
research, and thus his pictures may be accepted as
historically accurate in their details.
Professor A. Vasnetzoff is a professor at the
School of Fine Art in Moscow, where he settled
some fourteen years ago. In 1901 the Imperial
Academy of Arts bestowed on him the rank of
Painter-Academician, and subsequently elected
him one of its forty permanent members. Besides
his Old Moscow pictures, he has painted numerous
landscapes not of an historical character.
“OLD MOSCOW: THE KEEPER OF THE BOOKSTALL ON THE SPASSKY BRIDGE”
(HirschmanrCs Collection)
BY A. VASNETZOFF
273