THE MOST COMMON ICONOGRAPHIC PLOTS OF V.M. VASNETSOV IN THE PROGRAMS OF PAINTING ORTHODOX CHURCHES IN THE EAST OF UKRAINE AT THE END OF THE 20th – BEGINNING OF THE 21st CENTURY
THE MOST COMMON ICONOGRAPHIC PLOTS OF V.M. VASNETSOV IN THE PROGRAMS OF PAINTING ORTHODOX CHURCHES IN THE EAST OF UKRAINE AT THE END OF THE 20th – BEGINNING OF THE 21st CENTURY

Summary/Abstract: The painting of St. Vladimir’s Cathedral in Kyiv, which appeared in the late 19th century thanks to the work of the outstanding artist V.M. Vasnetsov, served as the beginning of a new trend in religious art, more precisely, in monumental church painting. Creating new compositions, the artist was based on texts from the Holy Scriptures. The motives of V.M. Vasnetsov also played an important role in the design of Orthodox churches in the East of Ukraine, painted in the late XX – early XXI century, that is, in the historical period after the celebration of the 1000th anniversary of the Baptism of Rus’. The purpose of the work is to determine the most common iconographic scenes (created by V.M. Vasnetsov) in Orthodox churches in the east of Ukraine, as well as the reasons that incline designers and customers of church painting to such a choice. iconographic, iconological, cultural, hermeneutical, historical-comparative, observational, analysis and synthesis, semiotic. Results. The most widespread plots were “The Last Judgment”, “The Crucified Jesus Christ” and “The God of Hosts”, written in 1885–1896 for the Kyiv Vladimir Cathedral (to the 900th anniversary of the Baptism of Rus’). The “Last Judgment” is depicted on the western wall, the plots “The Crucified Jesus Christ” and “God Sabaoth” are most often located in the vaults of the central and lateral parts of the temple. Nevertheless, among the works of V. Vasnetsov there are also plots that have not aroused interest among modern masters and customers of painting: for example, the compositions “The Bliss of Paradise”, “The Temptation of Eve”. The reason for “ignoring” these plots is most likely that these works are closest in style to paintings on religious themes, but not to icon art and are completely far from icon painting canons. One of the reasons for the wide distribution of Vasnetsov’s motifs at the end of the 20th century is the availability of these subjects for reproduction by secular artists, not icon painters, who are unfamiliar with the canons of the classical Byzantine icon painting style. Most of the Orthodox churches built and restored during this historical period were painted by such masters. There-fore, the use of plots by V.M. Vasnetsov is typical for Orthodox churches, painted in whole or in part in the style of academic painting. The inclusion of these plots in the program of church painting often does not imply compositional unity with all other plots, and often they stand out against the general background. Common to most of Vasnetsov’s stories is the perception of time. Even in complex iconographic compositions, time is instantaneous, that is, the events depicted occur simultaneously, which gives the plots greater richness and even tension.

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