Thursday: Red Square, Iconography

Our tour this morning was to teach us about iconography. All icons are believed to be created by God, so none of them are signed, and we know the artist for only a few of them. Up until the late seventeenth century, the only art was religious art, mostly icons. Many of the icons had miracles associated with them, making them more valued.

 We met our tour guide outside the Red Square and first learned a little about the square itself.  The name Red Square comes from a word meaning red or beautiful. It was named long before the Communist Revolution. Red Square is right next to the Kremlin. Right in front of the left hand entrance to the square through the Resurrection Gate , we stopped at a bronze plaque outside the Iberian Chapel which commemorates the kilometer zero of Russia, the place from which all road markers begin. People standing on the plaque were making wishes and throwing coins.

The picture above was taken from in front of Saint Basil's Cathedral. The towers on the left side of this picture are part of the Kremlin wall. Lenin's Mausoleum is just out of view on the left side against the Kremlin wall. The State Historical Museum where we had lunch is straight ahead. Resurrection gate is just right of the historical museum. You can see why it needed to be removed if they were going to bring tanks into the square. On the right, Kazan Cathedral is visible but difficult to see--just right of the white building. The building on the extreme rights is a tiny section of the GUM shopping mall, a very exclusive shopping center. The Soviets used to drive tanks into the square. The Iberian Chapel blocks the main traffic into the square on the Northwest corner and was torn down during the Soviet era to make room for tanks to parade the square. Today the chapel and the Resurrection Gate have been rebuilt. (pre-Soviet picture, picture in Soviet times:the gate on the right was removed as well as the Kazan Cathedral which would be to the right of that, current picture of gate and of cathedral, both rebuilt in the 1990s.) There has been discussion of resuming the tank parade into the square, but with half of the square blocked by the rebuilding of this gate, it will be interesting to see if and how this happens. (I guess there's plenty of room on the other side. This article is from May 9, less than a month away).

This is a view of the Resurrection Gates from inside of Red Square. 

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A small amount of the Resurrection gates and a closer picture of the Resurrection Chapel. Those are worshippers, not tourists, queueing up.

From the Resurrection Gate, we could see across the square to St. Basil's Cathedral which we toured much later. In front and to the left of that was the Lobnoye Meste, a circular platform built in the16th century for making important announcements.

Kazan Cathedral was commissioned in the 1630s to celebrate the victory over the Poles in the time of troubles. It was demolished in 1936 and rebuilt in 1990-1993. The churches are named after an icon.





















The Kazan icon is of Mary and Jesus and is supposed to have come from Constantinople. Jesus is standing, and Mary's arms are not shown. Our guide told us that the story behind it is that a mother lost her arms for some reason, and since she couldn't take care of her baby, Mary helped. That's why the Kazan icons show Mary without arms. Because many miracles are associated with this icon, 9 copies have been made, and no one knows which is the original or if the original still exists. The Kazan Cathedral also contained the oldest icon, Mary and Jesus (theotokos) from 1100s. It showed Mary holding a sitting Jesus, so it wasn't the Kazan theotokos. The original icons were made from wood with a gesso composed of fish gut and chalk. I imagine that the iconography shop would have been quite pungent.

All Russian orthodox cathedrals look east because Christ is supposed to return in the east. Each onion dome often but not always houses a picture of Jesus on the inside. The inside is often decorated with frescoes of Biblical scenes or saints and always contains rows of icons in front (iconostasis) blocking the private part where only the priests can go, like the Old Testament tabernacle. Besides the physical structure of the building, a couple of things stood out. First all the women wore scarves, and the men removed their hats. Secondly everyone stands. Not even the tsar was allowed to sit. Sometimes there were benches on the back wall although I never saw anyone sitting in them. We didn't stick around long enough to see if people stayed for the entire service every day, and some of them seemed to go quite long.

Every orthodox church has a wall of icons in front known as the iconostasis. The traditional icon has 5 rows, but this can vary especially in smaller churches. The top row is Old Testament saints with the row below that being Old Testament prophets. In smaller churches these two rows were often combined or left out in a smaller church. The third row was generally Christ as judge (Deisis) in the center. On either side were icons on saints making supplication with Mary on one side and John the Baptist on the other. This is generally right above the Beautiful Gates where the priest comes out during the service. This row was always present although a really small chapel might only have the icon of Jesus with a couple of icons in supplication. Below that, when it followed the prescribed pattern, were smaller panels containing scenes from the gospels, the twelve important feasts of the year. The bottom row of icons is generally local icons. To the left of the Beautiful Gate, the name for the door in the middle leading to the room where only priests can enter, is an icon of Mary. To the right is an icon of Jesus. Next to that is an icon depicting the name of the place. These two icons are supposed to represent the progression from Jesus' birth to his second coming. The second icon on the right always depicted the name of the church. The Church of the Assumption, for example, had an icon of Christ's assumption. The Church of St. Nikolaus had an icon of St. Nikolaus. The only time this changed that I observed was when the church was named after Christ in which case the icon immediately to the right of the doors represented both.

Some of the icons showed St. George slaying the dragon, a familiar face to those of us from the west. This is because George became a martyr in the third century before the East /West schism in 1054. When he became a Christian, he refused to fight as a soldier and became one of the first martyrs. Apparently that wasn't glamorous enough, so a legend of him killing the dragon was created. St. George killing the dragon is Moscow's coat of arms , so we kept meeting him. I bought an icon of him in Sergiev Posad on the last weekend of our trip.

The next church we visited was just outside the Red Square inside a small courtyard. The church had not been rebuilt on the outside, but had undergone quite a lot of renovation on the inside. This one is named after the icon Christ not made with human hands. The story our guide told us is that the iconographer was having a difficult time portraying Christ's dual nature, so Luke took a cloth and made an exact representation of Christ's face, hence this icon. That is why this icon always has a cloth in the background.











The final church we visited was a street over just across the street from a shopping mall. This church was being renovated both inside and out. I bought Vicki's Bible here. It appeared that all marks of the church had been covered over by the Communists, but now the church was being uncovered again. Outside, the onion dome had been added and the walls covered with new stucco. Either the communists had removed all the stucco or the restorer had removed the old stucco to get a fresh start. Inside, the frescoes were being repainted and cubby holes in the wall carved out again. The iconostasis was new, not unusual. The original icons if saved (and most weren't) for the most part stayed where they ended up during the Soviet era, often in a museum. The churches had to settle for replicas generally.








Elizabeth, the sister-in-law of the last tzar, Nicholas II, married the Russian duke Sergei who was later assassinated by a revolutionary. Elizabeth forgave the assassin and even visited him in his cell, asking him to repent. He refused a pardon and hung 3 months later. Elizabeth then sold all her jewels and in 1909 opened the Convent of Sts. Martha and Mary becoming its abbess. She reached out to the very poor and ill. In 1918 at the request of Lenin she and several others were thrown into a deep mine where she led the others in singing before they eventually died.

After we finished our monastery tour, we went back to Red Square and had a business lunch in the basement of the Historical Museum, #1 Red Square. After lunch we discussed American politics with a woman from Switzerland, a fellow member with Monica of the International Women's Club. The atmosphere was regal, and the food, outstanding.













http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_Orthodox
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iconostasis
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iconography

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