This Year’s Mai Visti at the Uffizi – Russian Icons
At the end of every year the Uffizi offers a free exhibition in the Poste Reali showing works that are rarely – if not Mai (never) Visti (seen) and this years selection, which Leslie and I went to visit yesterday, came from the archives of the private collections of the Grand Duchy of Tuscany.
There are 81 works on display, some of which have been in the possession of the Uffizi since at least 1761.
The two oldest pieces, dating back to the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries are a Marian Icon and one depicting the Beheading of John the Baptist, shown below.
I was confused by the dating of these Icons, shown as 18th Century, because they look so similar to the Byzantine works at the dawn of the Renaissance – a little stiff, stylised and formulaic – just beginning to draw from nature.
However, through the wonders of Google , I was able to confirm that the creative traditions of Western European religious art were not practised within Russia until the 17th century.
At that point of increased trade with Europe Russian icon painters were open to influence to show their story in a more realist manner – showing that they had seen stories of the Gospel of religious paintings within both Protestant and Roman Catholic churches in Europe .
The telling of Gospel stories was taken very seriously and great care was taken with the details of the incidents that augmented the development of Christianity – from the Annunciation through the Acts of the Apostles to the preaching, and consequent martyrdom of latter day Saints.
In the 17th Century there was also a change in the liturgy of the Russian Orthodox Church which led to a schism, which in turn led to a change in how the Icons were used and painted. The traditionalist “Old Believers“, continued to paint in the more Byzantine style while the State Church encouraged the development of more Western Europe Realism and small Icons were painted for personal use in homes and travelling cases.
One which interested us was this story of the Seven Sleepers of Epheus – a story which I hadn’t seen before which shows Seven Christian youths who were either imprisoned in, or had taken refuge in, a cave in Ephesus around 250 AD, a time when Christians where persecuted during the reign of the Roman emperor Decius. Legend has it that they fell asleep for 180 years and woke up again during the reign of Christian King Theodosius II. They were reported to have been seen by many of the people of the city before dying.
A similar story in also told to Muslim taken from the Qur’an (Surah 18, verse 9–26). In this case they sleep for 300 lunar years and presumably don’t wake up rejoicing in a Christian world!
The Uffizi archives suggest that many of the works on display came from the same provincial workshop in central Russia and may well have arrived in Florence between the 1768 and the 1774 whilst the Russian fleet of Catherine the Great of Russia was docked in Livorno during the war with the Turks. Many icons were deposited ( for safe keeping?) with the Orthodox Church of the Holy Trinity in Livorno.
They were collected for the Grand Duchy of Tuscany by the unpopular new rulers – the Lorraines of Austria during the rule of Grand Duke Peter Leopold – shown here with his family in what looks like the back of their new home in the Pitti Palace, in a painting by one of my favourite portrait artists – Zoffany.
This free Exhibition continues only until February 1 2015 in the Royal Post Office opposite the main entrance to the Uffizi Gallery in Florence.
