The theme of Italy in the works by Vasily Surikov

Abstract

For the first time in the historiography of the Russian art, this article deals with the problem of the Italian voyage undertaken by Vasily Surikov in 1884. It poses the question of how the impressions of this voyage reflected in his art, first of all in the development of the basic idea of Surikov’s masterpiece, the large picture “Boyarynya Morozova”. It’s also important to point out that in the course of his voyage Surikov created some very interesting art works, mostly — landscapes in the form of watercolour. For incomprehensible reasons, art historians didn’t pay any attention to these works, although at least some of them are very interesting from the point of view of their high artistic quality. Therefore, these watercolours constitute the principal thing to study in this paper. At the same time, its goal consists in demonstrating that Surikov for the first time applied in these works some very characteristic artistic devices he would use later while executing his masterpiece “Boyarynya Morozova”. At the same time, it’s essential to study in detail the content of some Surikov’s letters written abroad. Such analysis allows us to make a conclusion that there are no grounds to consider the influence of pictures by the Old Masters the main factor in the formation of “Boyarynya Morozova’s” colouristic system.

The profound investigation of the watercolours by Surikov leads to the conclusion that on their base the Russian painter could understand what is the concept of the historical picture which had developed in his art by the mid-80s. From that time on, his main goal consisted in finding appropriate way to combine two things. On the one hand, the painter had to show historical attributes (i. e., costumes, household items, etc.) while, on the other, he tried to represent them using the means of outdoor painting. In Italy, for the first time in his artistic career, Surikov could give to the historical objects highly realistic appearance depicting them in the full daylight. This practice was later developed in his watercolours representing the historical monuments of the Ancient and Renaissance architecture as well as in his only easel painting created in Italy, “The Scene in the course of the Roman Carnival”. While working on this picture, Surikov came to the conclusions helping him to understand better the ways how to depict the historical events. This was the main result of his Italian voyage which was developed later in the painterly ensemble of “Boyarynya Morozova”.