CHAPTER IV
RELIGIOUS PAINTING
(Alexander I. Ivanov, 1806–1858)
ALEXANDER IVANOV, too, belongs to Romanticism. As a man of unusual and lofty seriousness, of a truly mystical nature and of a penetrating inner vision, he deserves, more than the noisy Bryullov and the superficial Bruni, to be enrolled in the Honour Legion of true romanticists. His artistic views were undoubtedly formed under the influence of Overbeck's romantic art and Gogol's mystical preaching. Nevertheless, Ivanov must not be considered a true representative of Romanticism. In part he did not grow up to it, and in part he went beyond it. In whatever he accomplished, he remained too dependent upon the intellectuality and conventionality of classicism; in whatever he wished to achieve, in whatever he left unfinished,—half-ready, awaiting, as it were, the final consummation—Romanticism remained infinitely far behind him. He was the only one among Russian artists to approach in stature the giants of
96
