A few of the most famous Russian Christian artists:
19th C: Repin Ivanov Polenov Kramskoy Nesterov Semiradsky
Contemporary: Ryzhenko Glazunov Morgun Afonina
Our top 10 favorites: A purely subjective list of paintings and artists we love.
To see all of the over 100 paintings in this series, click here.
About this series: As we learned about Russia's traditional faith, Russian Orthodox Christianity, we discovered an enormous, mostly forgotten treasure of striking Christian paintings, mostly unknown in the West, starting from approximately the early 1800s, and continuing to this day.
So far we have cataloged over 150 images, and are discovering more all the time. We will gradually be getting them all online. If you know of a painter or sculptor which we can add to the series, please let us know in the form below. You can see the entire list of what we already have online here.
From Wikipedia:
'Jesus and the Sinner Woman' - painting by Russian artist Vasily Polenov (1844–1927), dated 1888. Belongs to the State Russian Museum in St. Petersburg. Size - 128" × 240" (oil on canvas). The plot of the picture is connected with the story of Christ and the sinner woman in the Gospel of John.
Link to high resolution image.
Jewish scribes and Pharisees bring an adultress before Jesus, who was busy teaching his group. The scribes want to embarrass Jesus: if he adheres to the law, the woman would have to be stoned; if he sticks to his own principles, he would be breaking the law.
After a while he comes up with the famous answer: "Let he who is without sin cast the first stone." One by one the men leave the scene.
Polenov was a gifted painter of landscapes. He made this painting, which some consider his masterpiece, after traveling to the Middle East in the early 1880s.
Details:
Vasily Dmitrievich Polenov (1 June 1844 – 18 July 1927) was a Russian landscape painter associated with the Peredvizhniki movement of realist artists. His contemporaries would call him the “Knight of Beauty” as he embodied both european and russian traditions of painting. His vision of life was summarized as following: “Art should promote happiness and joy”. As a painter and a humanist, he would truly believe in the civilizing mission of Art, Culture and Education.
About the Great Russian Christian Art series:
Russia has a wonderfully rich heritage of Christian and Bible-themed painting which reached its zenith in the second half of the 19th century, as part of the realist school. Many of the canvases are enormous, filling an entire wall of a large public hall. Some of them took decades to complete. They are a striking and beautiful testimony to how deeply ingrained Christianity is in Russian history, culture, philosophy, thought, indeed, in her very soul. They are a delight to behold.
As Russia emerges as a leader in the return to traditionalism, this style of painting is again in vogue, and there are also several contemporary Christian painters creating extraordinary canvases. Indeed, Moscow has an excellent art academy dedicated to this style, a topic we covered in the profile of Ilya Glazunov, a leading, recently deceased painter in this genre. See: A Conservative Russian Lion With Real Mass Influence – The Painter Ilya Glazunov
Many of these paintings and artists are hardly known in the West, dismissed by the secular, atheist, globalist modern 'art' vogue. We are delighted to bring you this series, which consists of several dozens of works. You can see all of the works in this series by clicking here.
We think you’ll enjoy them as much as we do.
Take action! Resist the assault from the rainbow mafia: