A Haymarket Khozhdenie na osliati: Raskolnikov’s Donkey Walk and the Failures of Iconic Performativity

In sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Moscow, Orthodox priests and celebrants reenacted Christ’s entry into Jerusalem on Palm Sunday in a ritual known as the Donkey Walk (Khozhdenie na osliati). Art historian Alexei Lidov has interpreted this reenactment as a “spatial icon,” in which city and inhabitants co-create a dynamic, living “Entry into Jerusalem” icon. This paper reexamines the final chapters of Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment within the context of this ritual, arguing that Raskolnikov’s attempted act of penitence at the Haymarket represents a failed Donkey Walk, in which the city and its inhabitants resist the anticipated transformation, suggesting the impossibility of iconic performativity in Peter’s profane city.

The Visual Polemic in Tolstoy's War and Peace: Icons and Oil Paintings

The phenomenon of Napoleon and Napoleonism that Tolstoy attacks in War and Peace is not only—arguably, not even primarily—a textual phenomenon. The cult of Napoleon was to a great extent a phenomenon created by the visual arts; portraits of Napoleon and of key moments in his career played a central role in promoting him as a “Great Man.” War and Peace contains numerous direct and indirect references to these images, and Tolstoy uses them to build his narrative. This paper analyzes two key pairs of scenes in which Tolstoy explicitly invokes Napoleonic visual images and undercuts them by juxtaposing them to Russian icons.

Salus populi: Icons and the Protection of the People

With the outbreak of the COVID-19 global pandemic, Pope Francis prayed before an icon of the Virgin and Child in Santa Maria Maggiore and a crucifix in San Marcello, two images associated with miraculous healing and intercessory power. He subsequently had the icon and crucifix moved to St. Peter’s where they flanked the pope as he offered a special Urbi et Orbi blessing on March 27, 2020. To contextualize Francis’s use of an icon during the coronavirus outbreak, this article will trace the role of cult images in Rome during occurrences of disease and will briefly discuss the specific importance of the Santa Maria Maggiore icon for the early Jesuit order.

‘Ransom of His Soul:’ Shaped Text as Medium and Mediator in Byzantium

Shaped text in the Byzantine context has recently received considerable attention from scholars. Yet decorative, non-figural shaped texts remain relatively unexplored. Drawing on the works of Jeffrey Hamburger and Ivan Drpić, this article analyzes an instance of a decorative-shaped text in the catena of the Middle-Byzantine manuscript known as Laur. Cod. Plut. 5.9. This paper argues that the shaped text bore a significant purpose and a theological meaning for its producer, Niketas. Far from being merely decorative, the shaped text featured as its own distinct medium and functioned as a soteriological mediator between man and God.

The Soul of the Leningrad Blockade: Leonid Chupiatov’s Bogomater of the Protecting Veil

The present essay is the first article devoted to the religious paintings of the Soviet artist Leonid Chupiatov (1890–1941), with special attention to his Veil of the Mother of God over the Dying City, created during the desolate Leningrad siege winter of 1941-42. Dmitry Likhachev memorably called this work the “soul of the siege.” The article analyzes what it offers the viewer directly, as a modern version of the traditional image. It goes on to place the painting in the context of Chupiatov’s religious production, both during the siege and previous to it and to explore the circumstances which ensured its preservation against all odds. An apocalyptic context which challenges even divine compassion and saving grace, one which recapitulates the forty days of Christ in the desert—such is the immediate context of Chupiatov’s icon of the Protecting Veil in his artistic work from the winter of 1941–42. In the end, the survival of this powerful image becomes comprehensible through the connections of a fragmented religious-philosophical confraternity. The article thus represents a step towards finally acknowledging the presence of the religious image in the artistic response to the Leningrad siege.

Savoldo’s Magdalene: “True Reformations Are Internal”

The subject of Giovanni Girolamo Savoldo’s series of Magdalene paintings has long been a matter of debate. Looking at the series in the context of the reform movement in Venice in the 1520s and 1530s, when Christ’s resurrection could be viewed metaphorically, this article aims to demonstrate that Savoldo adopts a number of motifs to convey the idea of a renewing of life, which identify “Mary” as the mother. The case made here is that Savoldo’s paintings move beyond representation to the actual process of transformation, with an experiential function where the beholder was an active participant and narrative function was subordinated.