History and culture: The Old Believers’ icon painting of the Yaroslav province presented in Moscow

May 31, 2013 in Moscow, in the exhibition halls of the Academy of Fine Arts opened an exhibition ““The Romanov letters”. The Old Believers’ icon painting of the Yaroslavl province of the XVIII-XIX centuries from museum and private collections”. The exhibition is dedicated to the spiritual culture and art of painters-conservatives, who lived in the second half of the XVIII-XIX centuries in the small town of Romanov-Borisoglebsk (now Tutaev) of the Yaroslavl province. The monographic exhibition specifically dedicated to the phenomenon of exceptional beauty of “the Romanov icon”, exhibited in Moscow for the first time.

The exhibition presents about 70 icons and 20 iconic models from the museum, church and private collections in Moscow, Yaroslavl, Rybinsk, Tutayev and Cherepovets.

After the first opening of the pre-revolutionary “Romanov letters” by Academician N. P. Likhachev and nearly a century of neglect band with the only reference in the catalog of V. I. Antonova of 1966, the scientific interest to the “Romanov letters” was revived only in 1990-2000s.

Long forgotten, largely lost, scattered around the world Romanov icons have been brought together for the first time at the exhibition only in 2010 within the walls of the Rybinsk Museum Reserve.

The phenomenon of the “Romanov icon” is that of dominance in the religious art of this period of Europeanized Russian paintings and departing from the canons, Romanov icon painters managed to revive the achievements of Yaroslavl, Kostroma and royal masters of the XVII century, put them into a recognizable stylistic fusion. The role of “Romanov icon” in Russian iconography of the Synodal period is as great as the role of the famous Palekh letters.