The museum icon collection as a basis for modern iconography development (from Yaroslavl Art Museum experience)

The icon collection of the Yaroslavl Art Museum includes about 2000 icons of the 13th - early 20th centuries. This collection consists of valuable masterpieces which makes modern icon-painting development successful. On the contrary, the absence of museum centers with original icons, as in Novosibirsk, for instance, complicates the development of modern icon-painting in this region considerably. The Yaroslavl Art Museum icon collection is a basis for copying and, in fact, making replicas from ancient paintings. Students of the Icon Painting School of Moscow Theological Academy replicate the monuments of the 15th - 17th centuries in the museum. All monuments are deeply examined by museum professionals; they are well-restored and have a well-preserved original paint layer. Replicating is not only a means of education, but an independent fact. In 2008, the Yaroslavl Art Museum initiated a project to create the copies of five icons of the 17th - 19th centuries from the unpreserved Assumption Cathedral in Yaroslavl. The replicas were intended for a new cathedral built in 2010 to the 1000 anniversary of Yaroslavl. The artists made copies of the most significant icons. Now they are placed in the most honorable place in the iconostasis of the cathedral. In 2013, the museum again organized making a copy of an icon with the image of Our Lady of Kazan in Yaroslavl of the end of the 17th century for the Kazan monastery of Yaroslavl. Replicating was financed by the Museum's award of 300,000 rubles it had won in the international festival "Intermuzey". Copying the Museum's collection of icons allows keeping the originals in the State Museum Fund and, at the same time, giving them a new life in the form of replicas, which corresponds to the tradition. The museum collection allows painting icons of new iconography. The whole range of knowledge the staff gained during the studying of museum collections is required. In 2001, a hagiographical icon of St. Tikhon (Bellavina) was written for St. Tikhon's Cathedral in Arkhangelsk on the model of the "Reverend Dimitri Prilutsky" icon of late 17th century. In 2004, by the order of the Tolga Female Monastery in Yaroslavl, the author of the article created an iconographic program for the new icon of "Our Lady of Tolga". Unlike other icons on the subject of the 17th - 19th centuries, five new stories developing the iconography of "Our Lady of Tolga" were included. In conclusion, the author claims that the icon collection of the Yaroslavl Art Museum is a fundamental basis for the development of modern icon-painting and creating of new iconography.

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