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Friday, March 30, 2007

Wednesday, March 28, 2007

Tuesday, March 27, 2007

Monday, March 26, 2007

Boards for icons

Boards for icons were maid by woodworkers, sometimes by icon painters themselves. Very often icons were painted on wooden boards. Most common wood for Russian icons was lime tree, larch or fir in the north, pine trees in Pskov. The process was slow and difficult: usually the board was cut out from the very middle layer of a log.

On the face of the board was made a shallow hollow limited by the margins of the board's edges. The older the icon (XI-XII century) the deeper the hollow and the wider the margins. Starting from the XIV century icons were painted on flat boards without margins.

Small icons were panted on single boards. Big icons consisted of several joint boards. Sometimes it is very easy to determine the time and the place where the icon board was made by the type of timbering, depth of the hollow and width of the margins.

Friday, March 23, 2007

Thursday, March 22, 2007

Wednesday, March 21, 2007

Tuesday, March 20, 2007

Monday, March 19, 2007

Friday, March 16, 2007

Thursday, March 15, 2007

Wednesday, March 14, 2007

Tuesday, March 13, 2007

Monday, March 12, 2007

Saint Dimitri

Icon painting is a sacred art

Icon painting in Ancient Rus was considered a sacred art. Artists were to follow canonical instructions directly. These rules limited artist’s self-expression on the one hand, however, made him focus on the spiritual essence of icon on the other hand. Traditions and set techniques were applied not only to the image itself, but to the choice of materials, methods for making paints and the sequence in which each element of the icon was painted.

Wednesday, March 7, 2007

Tuesday, March 6, 2007

Monday, March 5, 2007

Friday, March 2, 2007

Thursday, March 1, 2007