The Icon and the Axe

The painting of which Gogol spoke was Ivanov's "Appearance of Christ to the People," on which he worked for twenty-five years, drawing up more than six hundred sketches amidst one of the most extraordinary and anguished artistic searches of modern times. Ivanov's work illustrates far better than that of the more successful and uniquely gifted Gogol the profoundly disquieting effects of this search for a new prophetic message on accepted forms of art and thought.

Ivanov was born into the artistic world with every possible advantage as the gifted aristocratic son of the leading academic painter in St. Petersburg. Despite his privileged position, excellent training and prize-winning early compositions in the prevailing classical style, the young Ivanov became infected with the restlessness of the times. In 1830 he left St. Petersburg proclaiming: "A Russian artist cannot remain in a city like Petersburg which has no character. The academy of fine arts is a survival of a past century."107 In Rome he embarked on a vigorous search for a new, more meaningful style. He began a lifelong, first-hand study of classical and Renaissance art. In his own work he moved from mythological subjects in oil to somber sketches and chiaroscuro water colors of Roman street scenes and the semi-impressionistic color studies of the Italian countryside. His quest for authenticity in rendering the human form took him away from Rome to Perugia and other cities where the nude body could be studied at length in the public baths.

Throughout this early period of experimentation, Ivanov was driven by the conviction that he was living on the threshold of a new era. The solemn coronation of Nicholas I had made a profound religious and aesthetic impression on him as a youth of twenty, and he felt that a new "golden age of Russian art" was dawning.108 The responsibility of the artist was in a sense even greater than that of the political leader; for "all the aesthetic life of humanity, and, as a result, the very happiness of its future" depends on "the development of the artist's capabilities."109

After this initial period of intensive technical preparation, Ivanov turned his attention to the creation of a canvas which would serve as a kind of monumental icon for the new age: a transposition into painting of the heroic sculptural and architectural style of the early nineteenth century. The subject matter that he chose for his first efforts in this direction was invariably Biblical: Samson and Delilah, David before Saul, Joseph's brothers, and-much the best-"Christ with Mary Magdalen." Finally, in the late thirties he began to turn all his attention to the preparation of his "Appear-

IV. THE CENTURY OF ARISTOCRATIC CULTURE

3. The "Cursed Questions'

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ance of Christ to the People." In contrast to Briullov's canvas of 1836, which conveyed the negative message of the fall of Rome in an artistically sloppy and sentimental manner, Ivanov's painting was to carry a positive message in a technically perfect manner. The subject was to be the decisive moment in history when the agitated and uncertain followers of John the Baptist first caught sight of Christ. The style was to be that of Raphael, with the composition based partly on Leonardo's "Last Supper" and Michelangelo's ceiling in the Sistine Chapel.

Throughout his long labors on this painting, he was driven by a concern for authenticity that astonished all who came in contact with him. He spent long hours in synagogues studying Jewish faces, made trips to the courtrooms of Rome to study the expressions of despair on the face of condemned criminals, and invited peasants into his otherwise impenetrable study to tell them jokes and then sketch their spontaneous expressions of happiness and enjoyment. He was particularly haunted by the problem of depicting Christ in art. He sought, up until the very eve of his death, to find the oldest and most authentic representation of Christ's earthly form- studying in museums, Byzantine frescoes, and finally embarking on a trip to Jerusalem and the Near East. At the same time, his sketches for the Christ of his painting reveal a desire to incorporate the beauty of classical statuary into the representation of Christ's visage.

Slowly but inexorably, driven by some dark inner force which bears the mark either of sainthood or demonic pride, Ivanov became obsessed with the idea that he must in fact be Christ in order to be worthy of depicting him. The "golden age of all-humanity" which his canvas was to announce now required "perfection in morality as well as art." He immersed himself in reading the Bible and the Imitation of Christ. When Turgenev tried to show him some humorous drawings in the early forties, Ivanov suppressed his mirth and stared at them for a long time before suddenly lowering his head and repeating softly, "Christ never smiled."110