“From the visible to the trans­cen­dental”. Review of: Buseva-Davydova, I. L. (2019). Russkaia ikonopis’ ot Oruzheinoi palaty do moderna: poiski sakral’nogo obraza [Russian Icon Painting: From the Armoury Chamber to Art Nouveau. The Search of the Sacred Image]. Moscow: BooksMArt Publ. 476 p.

Abstract

This review analyses Russian Icon Painting: From the Armoury Chamber to Art Nouveau: The Search of the Sacred Image (2019), a fundamental research monograph by I. L. Buseva-Davydova published by BooksMArt (Moscow) with the support of the Russian Foundation for Basic Research (project 19-112-00032). The author carries out a comprehensive examination of the evolution of Russian icon painting of the modern period, from the second half of the seventeenth century to the present. The work covers a wide range of issues that have not been discussed previously. The most important of them are the establishment and evolution of the patristic teaching on the icon, the role of legal acts of the Russian Empire and Russian icon painting in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, as well as the evolution of the sacred image in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries and the icon painting controversy of the second half of the nineteenth century. Of particular value is the development of Russian icon painting in contemporary history.