Wants: Theotokos Match-Attax
Writer and Russian art consultant Lily Samarine writes a guest letter
A large double-sided icon showing images of the Mother of God and the Prophet Elijah with scenes from his life, available from Hargesheimer (est. €1,500)
Purists tend to turn their noses up at ‘Westernised’ Russian icons, but who could resist the odd charm of this one, with its 131 Mothers of God, a Match Attax-style assemblage of Mary’s various types and feast days. And it’s rare on two more counts: pretty big, at 45 x 38cm, and double-sided, meaning it was probably either carried during church processions, or placed on a stand and flipped according to feast days.
The icon of the Mother of God — the Theotokos (God Bearer) — has up to 700 distinct types in the Russian Orthodox tradition. Each has its own name, biography, and associated miracle, be it flying, protecting some far-flung village from sickness, or appearing in a tree.
Mary and the Christ Child are always positioned differently, emphasising specific qualities or aspects of their relationship. The differences can be subtle, but you can spot couple of weirder ones on this icon: go two left from the bottom corner of the central Mary (of the Burning Bush), and you’ll see Christ positioned inside her abdomen — it’s sometimes called Utroba or the Womb type, the inscription reading ‘Слово пл[оть] бысть’ — (‘The Word became flesh’). One up from the bottom right-hand corner of the icon is the Vzigranie (playful/joyful) type: the Christ’s Child’s head thrown back at a bizarre angle against Mary’s chin.
The 18th century predilection for systems of categorisation touched Russia too. This is a taxonomy of the Mother of God, basically. At the same time, it speaks to Russia’s particularly passionate veneration of Mary as a national protectress. In contrast to the spiritual intimacy of a single-subject icon, this one says to the flock: what a blessed, charismatic land Russia is, where there have been so many Marian miracles — she’s really looking out for us.
The flip-side (below) showing the Prophet Elijah is a good example of Western influence on Russian icon painting. In the 17th century formerly flat, serene, elongated saints got fleshier and more histrionic; abstracted golden backgrounds (the gold sometimes applied using black bread dipped in gold leaf glue, dabbed over demarcations made with garlic juice) were swapped for elaborate scenes involving colonnades, drapery and trees: a Baroque infiltration. Narrative also caught on: like the scenes from the Prophet Elijah’s life we see here. Naturalism superseded the calligraphic system inherited from Byzantine tradition. Only the Old Believers persisted in painting and collecting icons ‘unpolluted’ by Italianate artistic trends. If you’re not a purist or an Old Believer, this particular icon stands out as a pretty attractive buy.
A final note: with icons, condition is all-important. A lot of brutal restoration went on in the 20th century: dealers and restorers would deliberately distress icons that made it to the West like you might a pair of jeans; scratching off the background and sides to reveal the gesso; catering to an emergent taste for the severe and medieval. But this one’s in pretty great condition, no one has messed around with that lovely painted foliate border.
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Lily Samarine is a London-based writer, translator and Russian art consultant at Russian Art Consultancy. You can follow her own blog here: https://hackingcough.substack.com/; or her instagram @lilysamarine.
This double-sided icon showing images of the Mother of God and the Prophet Elijah was part of this week’s Art & Icons auction at Hargesheimer in Düsseldorf, Germany.