The Icon and the Axe

If the idea of the temple represents a final flight of fantasy, the murals themselves show a deep relation to the problem that had haunted him since beginning his "Appearance of Christ to the People": how can one depict the perfection of Christ in the world of imperfect men? All the murals were to be built around a monumental series portraying the earthly life of Christ. Under the influence of David Strauss' Life of Christ, which he first read in French translation in 1851, he began to conceive of Christ primarily as a human being, whose story of heroism and suffering had been needlessly complicated and etherealized by the historic churches. Abjuring all traditional models for representing the life of Christ, Ivanov's starkly original sketches show a lonely figure passing through real suffering, cruelty, and indifference. There is no trace of sentimentality or artificial adornment. Christ emerges as an almost totally passive figure surrounded by mobs of people and phalanxes of pharisees, with the scourging and crucifixion treated in particular detail. In only two of the 120 scenes in the published version of the series is there any real animation on the face of Christ. In the wilderness, when he is being tempted by the devil, Christ is seated facing straight ahead in the manner of Christ enthroned on the icons, but he is looking nervously at Satan out of the corner of his eye. In the last picture, which shows Christ on the cross, he is looking straight ahead at the viewer with a weird and piercing look that bespeaks less physical suffering than some terrible unspoken doubt about himself.116

Ivanov recognized that he was plunging on to something entirely new. He insisted that the murals did not belong in any existing church and disavowed all links with the pre-Raphaelites, with whom he is often erroneously compared. He was, he insisted in 1857, the year of his visit to Strauss in Tubingen, attempting to "unite the techniques of Raphael with the ideas of the new civilization."117 He wrote to Herzen (who like Gogol before him and Chernyshevsky after him was attempting to enlist support for his efforts) that he was "trying to create a new path for my art in the sketches," and later confessed that "I am, as it were, leaving the old mode of art without having any bedrock for the new."118 In 1858 he set off, after twenty-eight years of absence, for St. Petersburg to exhibit at last his "Appearance of Christ to the People" and to solicit the support of the new Tsar for his temple. Disappointed by public indifference upon arrival and exhausted

morally and physically by his strange quest, Ivanov died only a few days after the first showing of his work in St. Petersburg.

Ivanov's "Appearance of the Messiah" must be judged as a failure by almost any standard. The corrupt figures in the foreground dominate the picture and seem totally indifferent to the distant figure of Christ, who seems strangely insignificant and almost unrelated to the picture. The much-labored face of Christ lacks any clearly defined characteristics and conveys an expression of weakness and even embarrassment.

It is perhaps fitting that this final artistic legacy of a monumental and prophetic age should be dominated by the figure of John the Baptist, who stands at the center of the canvas as its most majestic personality. The day of John the Baptist had been the most elaborate official holiday of Russian higher masonry. Chaadaev had encouraged Russians to believe that "great things have come from the desert" and had written on the title page of Kant's Critique of Pure Reason that "I am not the savior, but he who announces his coming."119 Ivanov had tried first to create and then to become Christ, but he had left behind only sketches of human suffering and a noble failure dominated by the ascetic prophet who can do no more than announce that someone mightier is coming.

John the Baptist was known in Russia as "the forerunner" {predtecha), a designation that seems particularly appropriate for Ivanov. His vision of universal Russian rule aided by "public artists" and adorned with "temples of humanity" seems at times like an anticipation of Soviet ideology. His initial stylistic experimentation anticipates the emancipated search for new art forms in the late nineteenth and the early twentieth century. His final realism and preoccupation with suffering helped usher in the bleak, semi-photographic style that was to dominate painting until the 1890's. Nonetheless, for all his qualities as a prophet and precursor, Ivanov stands at the end rather than the beginning of an age. His life and work represent a final heroic effort to attain a kind of moralistic self-transformation into the likeness of Christ.