reader many facts about the ordinary icon, but he will find nowhere a plain statement of its size, what it looks like, how it is made, and so on. An elementary and popular work on the subject has yet to be written: may we hope for it from the pen of Prof. Minns? A more serious objection, from the present writer's point of view, is that Kondakov regards icon-painting as an art which has degenerated into a handicraft, whereas at all times in Russia it has been a handicraft which has occasionally thrown up an artist; in his discussion of foreign origins and new influences he has undervalued the unifying power of a living tradition, constantly bringing these new elements into harmony with the past.

The study of the Russian icon is comparatively recent : by the end of last century a number of collections had been formed, and a rough attempt at classification made. But their artistic interest was hardly suspected-they were treated as a branch of Russian archæology; covered as they were with thick layers of varnish and the smoke of centuries, little more than their subjects could be But when after much labour and minute care a number of them were cleaned and exhibited, the dark and smoke-begrimed icon shone out in bright colours and harmonious shades. It was a revelation. In 1899 Riepin, writing of icons and acknowledging the sincerity shown in the best of them, could see in them only disfigurement of the subject' without the least elementary knowledge of painting,' and Bunin could call them 'icons, black planks, poor symbols of God's might.' No one had dreamed of the beauty and gay colour now brought to light, and enthusiasm among Russian art-lovers rose to a very high pitch of extravagance-an extravagance which the writer must own he was tempted to share on his first sight of a representative collection in what is now the Russian Museum of Leningrad.

In 1905 another avenue for the exploration of the history of the Russian icon was opened up, of which Prof. Kondakov does not seem to have made much use. An imperial decree in that year granted a modified freedom of conscience to certain Russian sects, among them that of the Old Believers-a conservative body which had separated from the Orthodox Church in the

17th century in consequence of the reforms then introduced. They had been the object of severe repression, and their icons, of ancient design and many of them very old, were confiscated and destroyed whenever they were found, so that it became a common practice to paint over the real icon a modern one which conformed to Orthodox pattern, especially among the Moscow merchant class, while the peasants endeavoured to hide theirs from view. Some of the feelings of the Old Believers about the Orthodox, and their treatment by the latter, can be obtained from Leescov's tale 'The Sealed Angel,' in the fine translation by the Hon. Mrs Tollemache published under the title Russian Sketches,' to which we shall have occasion later to refer. When the edict of toleration was published these icons were cleaned or brought out of hiding, and thus were seen for the first time. A large number of them were presented to the new Old Believer Cathedral church in Moscow of The Assumption, including some 15th-century panels for the Royal Door of the iconostas.

A third, and still more important, stage in the history of icon-study was brought about by the removal in 1920 of the jewels and ornaments of the precious metals with which the more celebrated icons were covered, for the benefit of the famine-stricken provinces of Russia. For the first time for centuries, it was possible to see them as pictures, and to give them the expert care which their priceless value demanded. A commission, at the head of which was Prof. Igor Grabar, the historian of Russian Art and Director of the Tretyakov Art Gallery, was appointed to take charge of them as historical monuments, and, after due study of modern methods, to clean them and remove the coats of discoloured varnish and paint which overlay the original painting. So far as it has gone the result of this commission has entirely justified its appointment. The general result (of cleaning, etc.) is to show that the traditional age of the original icon is often correct, but that repainting has changed not only detail or colouring but general design so completely that the surface which later generations have known bears hardly any relation to the original painting' (p. ix).

Sir Martin Conway, who has seen the cleaners at

work, and speaks highly of their skill and patience, writes even more strongly :

owners.

'The repainting of icons, which has gone on for centuries, has been a very different affair from the ordinary repaintings and retouchings which the pictures of the Old Masters have had to endure at the hands of Museum directors and private An icon, for instance of the Virgin and Child, may have been wholly repainted as many as six or seven times with so little regard to the original design that in the end it may have come to depict a Head of Christ or of some Saint. I saw several icons which had been cleaned in strips, leaving in succession a band of each of the repaintings upon the original picture, and it was amazing to see how recklessly successive painters had dealt with the work delivered into their hands' ('Art Treasures,' p. 43).

There is no doubt that a certain amount of repainting has been absolutely necessary even in the earliest periods of Russian ecclesiastical history, a necessity arising from the method of painting and the use of candles and incense. As early as 1080 A.D. the Metropolitan John II is said to have ordered that all old icons in use should be repainted, and there are other similar orders since, but this repainting has added terribly to the difficulty of writing the history of the icon. Many of Kondakov's pronouncements on early Russian icons will have to be reviewed in the light of the knowledge we are slowly gaining, and even before this book was published, Prof. Minns was able to correct him in the very important case of the Vladimir Mother of God.

The origin of the custom of icon-painting is traced by Kondakov to the Egyptian portraits of the dead which were deposited with their mummies, of which examples are to be seen in the National Gallery and the British Museum. They were produced by the encaustic method, that is, by the manipulation of heated coloured wax with a spatula on a wooden panel. Such portraits of martyrs and confessors, laid on their tombs or in shrines, attracted in due course a part of the honour done to their memory, and we find the icon as an adjunct to worship as early as Chrysostom or Gregory of Nyssa. The fact that the icons of the Saviour, the Virgin, and the saints always face the worshipper is an inheritance from these Egyptian portraits. Very few

early icons exist; there are two pilgrims' icons brought from Sinai or Egypt at Kiev, both of the sixth century, one of St John the Baptist, the other of Our Lady. Of the latter, the oldest icon known, we should have expected a fuller description in this place as Kondakov's Iconography is not translated.

The iconoclastic controversy (726-843 A.D.) cuts right across the history of the Byzantine icon. We have no single example of Byzantine icon-painting older than the ninth century,' every painting of an earlier date was systematically destroyed. A few ancient icons from the East may have survived. Kondakov thinks that the icon of the Virgin carried off from Constantinople in 1204 and preserved in St Mark's at Venice under the name of 'Nicopoea' is pre-iconoclastic, though some Western critics assert that it is a tenth-century copy of a fifthcentury painting. The icon of Our Saviour' in the Lateran Chapel of the Sancta Sanctorum at Rome is also considered pre-iconoclastic, while the icon of the Mother of God in Santa Maria Maggiore has a traditional history as far back as 871 A.D.

None of these pre-iconoclastic icons enters into the history of Russian art; Russians would see and copy no icons till the tenth and eleventh centuries, and of these we have fortunately some examples remaining. The chief among them is the famous Vladimir Mother of God at Moscow, formerly in the Uspenski Sobor, now in the Historical Museum. It is said to have been brought in a ship from Constantinople to Vishgorod near Kiev, removed from there to Suzdal in 1155, brought to Vladimir in 1161 on the completion of the Cathedral there by Andrew Bogolyubsky, and removed to Moscow in 1395. It is the Palladium of the Russian State, incomparably the most famous of its wonder-working icons. Kondakov, founding his objection on the iconography of its subject, dated it as 14th century; tradition carried no weight with him, or rather its existence was an argument against its truth, a position too common with critics of his generation-it is only of recent years that we have learnt to inquire what lies at the base of tradition. In the case of the Vladimir Mother of God, cleaning has disclosed three re-paintings—the first in the middle of the 13th century, possibly after its stripping

by the Tartars in 1237; a second at the beginning of the 15th century, not impossibly by Rublev; and a third in 1574. Prof. Minns reproduces a photograph of the faces of the icon as it is now seen, showing startling differences from the final state of the icon as well as from early copies. Our Lady of Bogolyubov,' which is recorded to have been brought to Kiev with the Vladimir icon, is accepted by Kondakov as a twelfth-century copy; he rejects the notion of Byzantine origin for the sole reason of its size.

If we are to accept the somewhat sweeping assertion of Kondakov, no icon dating from the days of the supremacy of Kiev is in existence, not even the wonderworking copy of the Vladimir Mother of God, said to have been painted by Alipi, the only early Russian icon painter whose name is preserved. This icon, in the Cathedral of Rostov the Ancient, is dated by him as of the 14th century for reasons of style (which no longer hold good). There are, however a certain number of icons of the eleventh and twelfth centuries still to be found in Russia-one of them is reproduced in Sir Martin Conway's Art Treasures'-the origin of which will have to be rediscussed when they are cleaned and photographed.

With the decline of Kiev in the twelfth century and the transference of power to Suzdal, two new schools of icon-painting become evident, one with its centre at Suzdal and Vladimir, the other at Novgorod in the north. One hesitates to say that the Suzdal school is a discovery of Kondakov, but when one compares the relative spaces allotted to Suzdal and Kovgorod in Prof. Grabar's History of Russian Art' with that in Kondakov, it would almost seem so. To Suzdal are allotted the icons which 'adopted Byzantine models, technique, and draughtsmanship in all their purity and accuracy,' it alone 'retained a fine feeling for drawing icons and a mastery of colour.' The Novgorod school, on the contrary, becomes a mere provincial school in every sense of the word, sticking right through the 14th century to the reproduction of bad and clumsy models. The Tartar invasion of 1237 destroyed Suzdal, and its craftsmen fled north or west, while Novgorod remained free and unharmed; but still, when two centuries later the tide of Tartar invasion