History of a Book: The exhibition “The Spiritual Alphabet. Old-Believer Hand-Drawn Pictures (Lubok)” in Saint-Petersburg

The exhibition “The Spiritual Alphabet. Old-Believer Hand-Drawn Pictures (Lubok)” held from April 16 to June 26, 2013 at the State Museum of the History of Religion (St. Petersburg), presents a unique collection of Old-Believer Hand-Drawn Pictures (Lubok) of the XVIII–XIX centuries.

The exhibition includes Old-Believer script books, pomorian icons, and decorative-applied objects: copper casting, woodcarving and embroidery which rediscovered the Old-Believer religious traditions and culture.

The origins of the museum collection are the selected items from the Vasiliy Druzhinin collection. This famous researcher of Old Belief was the first who open the artworks of the far north sketes as an essential part of the Russian culture.

The majority of the exhibition items are the artworks of the Vygovsk Hermitage of Pomorye’s artists. Founded in the late XVIIth – early XVIIIth century the monastery became ideological and cultural center of Old Believers of Pomorian community – “Pomorian Jerusalem”. It was the birthplace of the art of the hand-drawn pictures in the first quarter of the XVIIIth century.

Insistent necessity of proving the genuineness of their belief urged Old Believers to make use of visual means of communication, for example by creating wall-drawing pictures apart from copying the texts of their apologists. These popular drawings combined a text and an image in one item.

Among the stunning example is an Unknown artists painting “A Dispute over the Faith”. It was painted on the same hand-drawn picture, which presented the divide between Old Believer and Nikonians (followers of the Patriarch Nikon).

Also, until April 30 in the Reading Room of the Science Library is open a book exhibition “Old Believers”. The exhibition presents books and albums, telling the stories of the Old Believers. Some windows are devoted to the history of the Old Believers in Russia, a collection of laws of the lubok and sectarians since the time of Peter the Great to the early XX century, pre-revolutionary educational publications for Believer schools and bibliography splitters, and exhibited richly illustrated editions of antiquities and religious shrines of the Old Believers, and periodic publications and calendars.

The book exhibition is accompanied with a display of engravings with images of different costumes of Old Believers from the publication of 1795.