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Journal of Undergraduate Research

Keywords

Christ, Christian, Russian art, Christ's image

College

Humanities

Department

German and Russian

Abstract

When Russia converted to Christianity in A.D. 988, it accepted the religious traditions of Byzantine culture. Through one of these religious traditions, the developing art form of icons, the image of Christ entered the social and cultural lifestyles of the ancient Russians. In the icons Christ appears as a somber, mystical and primitively painted figure. His image acquired historical, philosophical, and ethical significance in a series of 19th century paintings by A.A. Ivanov, I.N. Kramskoy, V.D. Polenov, N.N. Ge, and others. Notably, as I researched the transformation of Christ’s image in Russian art, one tendency was apparent: Christ is never represented as a distant God. Instead, Christ appears as a human being in whom the divine and human unite, reflecting ideals and contemporary realities of Russian society. This tendency has influenced the deep religiosity of the Russian culture.

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