Maxim Zalessky on the Icon Painting of the Old Believer Wanderers (The Second Half of the 19th - Early 20th Centuries)

The aim of the article is to introduce into academic discourse the data from a unique source on the history of icon painting within the most radical and little-studied Old Believer movement Wanderers (Escapists, Skrytniks), namely, the essay “Ilya Repkin and Antipa Smirnov, Their Life and Work in Connection With the General Survey of the Art of Icon Painting Among the Wanderers” by the historian of the Wanderers Maxim Ivanovich Zalessky (1894-1975). The work is part of the Kargopol Collection of the Manuscript Department of the Library of the Academy of Sciences. In this essay, written presumably at the end of the 1920s, Zalessky examines the history and evolution of the icon painting of the Old Believer Wanderers from the mid-19th c. till the early 20th c. The very emergence of a work devoted to icon-painting has no precedent among the Old Believers of the period under consideration and testifies to the special importance of this issue for the Wanderers. The adherents of this radical creed believed that the Antichrist reigned in the world, and were especially zealous for icons, worshiping only pre-Nikon images. The active growth of the adherents of the creed in the middle of the 19th c. prompted the creation of their own icon-painting. The analysis of the source allows tracing the history of the formation of icon-painting among the Wanderers based on biographies of two icon painters - Ilya Repkin and Antipa Smirnov, who Zalessky called the founders of the Wanderers' icon painting. It is established that these icon painters learned the craft from a certain Yaroslavl Old Believer icon painter. They used the miniature carving technique on stone, wood, bone, and nacre. Later, Smirnov used miniature painting in the Stroganov style as the most appropriate to the idea of escape and shelter. Repkin and Smirnov trained people who became icon painters of the Yaroslavl and Ivanovo districts. The names and number of icon painters of the Ivanovo district, the geography of their origin are given; in some cases their mentor status is established, which confirms the special importance of possessing the icon-painting craft for the elders of the Wanderers. At the same time, the source leaves open the question of the unity of the style of the Wanderers' icon painting, although Zalessky believed that by the beginning of the 20th c. they had established a kind of school, which he called “Poshekhonskaya”. The author notes the contradiction between the unique artistic talent of Antipa Smirnov and the general ideas of the Wanderers' mentors about what the “right” icon was: the focus was not the art quality, but fidelity to the conventionally understood ancient tradition of icon painting and the icon painter's moral way of life. The introduction of this unique written source is the first step towards the identification and study of the icon painting heritage of the Wanderers in the extant complex of works of the Old Believer culture, and towards the study of local icon painting centers in the different regions where the adherents of the Wanderers live.

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