Między tradycją a nowoczesnością. Ikony rosyjskie w XIX w.

The aim of this article is to address the polemics about the long-standing stereotype in the history of art that Russian iconic paintings of the 19th century were secondary and mediocre in artistic terms and, therefore, of little interest for researchers. The author tries to show that this stereotype was largely created by Russian intellectuals of the second half of the nineteenth century, who betray an extremely critical attitude to contemporary iconic painting, despite the fact that the overall picture of Russian iconic painting of the nineteenth century is very complex and combines features of different visual traditions. The author defends the thesis that in the Russian iconic painting of the nineteenth century, tradition and contemporaneity are seamlessly combined, visible both at the level of theological reflection and at the level of artistic performance, and also that the nineteenth century is characterized by the ever-widening difference between the so-called folk icon” (“krasnuszka”) and the aesthetics of intellectual elites, shaped under the influence of realistic Western European painting.