Compositional analogies in the Kyiv-Pechersk Lavra’s churches painting at the beginning of the 21st century

Abstract

The purpose of the article is to enucleate and analyse the compositional analogies in the Kyiv-Pechersk Lavra’s churches new painting, the early 2000s. The research methodology is based on historical and cultural analysis, art study analysis, and empirical observation. The scientific novelty of the study. The author performed the art study analysis of compositional analogies in the Kyiv-Pechersk Lava’s church decorations created according to new programmes in the early 2000s. In the paintings and icons of the Church in Honour of the Icon of the Mother of God ‘The Life-Giving Spring’, she observed analogies with the revered Orthodox icons, as well as with the icons and paintings of the Lavra churches of the 1890s – 1910s (based on archival visual sources). As for the altar mural paintings in the Church of All Venerable Fathers of Pechersk, she revealed and analysed analogies with compositions on archival photos introduced into scientific circulation. She studied the plot, iconographic, academic connection of the painting of the early 2000s with the Lavra’s painting of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The author observed the transformations of primary compositions in the mural paintings of the early 2000s. Conclusions. In the painting decoration of the Church in Honour of the Icon of the Mother of God ‘The Life-Giving Spring’ (the early 2000s), O. Borovyk and the artists used analogies of the Lavra’s icon painting, mural painting of the 1890s – 1910s, as well as highly revered Orthodox icons as an artistic key. Among them were icons (H. Popov) and murals (I. Yizhakevich) of the Church of Venerable Anthony and Theodosius of Pechersk with the Refectory Chamber (beginning of the 20th century), the mural composition of the Great Church (V. P. Vereshchagin, 1897–1901). In the decoration of the Church of All Venerable Fathers of Pechersk (2002), artists under the supervision of O. Borovyk chose compositions from archival photos from the collection of the National Preserve ‘Kyiv-Pechersk Lavra’. Compositional analogies are performed on the basis of the common visual language of samples and modern painting, the language of academic painting. The artists continued the academic tradition in the church painting of the Kyiv-Pechersk Lavra. The compositional analogies were implemented as citation of icons, mural compositions in full or in fragments with local changes. Sometimes the new murals took on a new symbolic and emotional sound.