![]() The Virgin Mary's gaze is directed out to the left over her child's head, rather than directly towards the viewer (which was at that time a convention within Byzantine Iconography). In addition to this nuance, the rendering of the skin and faces of the pair in Rublev's icon have a realism of great sophistication for the time. Even this slightest deepening of angle from the original lends a greater and more powerfully recognisable emotional connection between mother and son. For instance, the Virgin's head has what would be later recognized as a typical Rublev tilt, a deeply tender inclination. Rublev's version, though compositionally almost an exact replica, reveals some significant differences. Within the Orthodox Church it is believed that the copies of a sacred icon possess the same divinity as the original. It is a typical example of Byzantine Iconography and has been copied countless times. ![]() The original was gifted to the Great Prince of Kyiv in 1130 from the Patriarch of Constantinople and has survived to become one of the most venerated icons of the Russian Orthodox Church. This piece, attributed to Rublev, is a copy or the "original" or "first" Virgin of Vladimir which now lives in the Tretyakov Gallery. Following the nationalisation of monastic libraries in the early 20 th century, the Khitrovo Gospel was incorporated in the holdings of the Russian State Library in Moscow. ![]() Khitrovo subsequently bequeathed the manuscripts to the Trinity Monastery where Rublev was a monk. It takes its name from Bogdan Khitrovo, a boyar who obtained the original Slavic manuscripts from Tsar Fyodor III. ![]() The Khitrovo Gospel is based on East Slavic manuscripts of the 1390s. The figure's elegant line and contours, its soft coloring of azure blue and fresh green, and the boy's expressive facial features, lend the image a lightness and gayety that was typical of Rublev's style. A young winged boy is placed within a circle. Though some historians are willing to attribute all the miniatures to him, the angel, the symbol for the evangelist Matthew, is the only one about which there is general consensus that it is a Rublev. The miniatures feature four Evangelistic portraits and four pictures of their symbols: the angel, the bull, the lion and the eagle. The Khitrovo Gospel is a Russian gospel book of eight full-page miniatures from the late 14th or early 15th century. His work brought an element of authenticity and intense personal feeling that was only matched by those Italian masters the likes of Giotto and Masaccio, who were associated with the period of the proto/early Renaissance. Rublev's peaceful and quiet figures are rendered in an economy of elegant lines and contours and a subtle, yet minimal, modelling of facial features.Rather than position his worshipers outside the scene, his works invited them a route into the painting through deep contemplation and spiritual reflection. He strived to do more than tell religious stories and he used painting to evoke a higher feeling. Rublev would often test the conventions of icon painting by doing away with a narrative plot line, preferring to focus on a single moment.This strategy allowed for a more private mode of worship and it was to be duly adopted by the Moscow School of Iconography - the school allowed for a general relaxation of the severe intensity of traditional iconographic painting thereby effecting a more worldly relationship between state and church. Hitherto, the convention of Byzantine iconography was for the subjects to engage the viewers' gaze directly whereas Rublev's subjects typically averted the direct gaze of the viewer. Rublev's icons possess a sense of realism that showed a level of sophistication that in some ways echoed the work of the Italian Naturalists.His icons and frescoes were formed of light and gentle color bringing a new harmony to the art of Russian Orthodox iconography. Whereas Byzantine painting had tended towards the sinful and cataclysmic, the "Rublev rival" (as some have called it) brought a new optimism and light to religious painting.
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