Exhibition "Wooden sculpture in a Russian Orthodox church"

The exhibition is held as part of a grant from the President of the Russian Federation to support creative projects of national importance in the field of culture and art.

The project is the creation of an exhibition of Orthodox wooden sculpture from the funds of the museum, in which the sculpture will be displayed in combination with multimedia augmented reality, which allows virtually placing the sculpture in the space where it was originally located in the temple. The exhibition space will be complemented by three figures and texts written in Braille for tactile perception by the visually impaired.

Sacred art for Russia is one of the essential aspects of its cultural identity and largely determines its place in world culture. Therefore, an Orthodox church is perceived not only as a place for praying and performing the sacraments, but also as a treasury of Russian national culture.

There is a prejudice about the unacceptability of sculptural statues in an Orthodox church interior. But it is resolutely refuted by surviving works, the oldest of which date back to the Middle Ages, being the heirs of early Christian practice. Monumental sculptural sculptures made of wood, iconographically close to traditional icon painting, have been known in Russia since the XIV century. This is, first of all, the image of Nikola Mozhaisky, the original of which has survived to this day. Its reproduction from the beginning of the 16th century is the figure of the saint, kept in the Kaluga Museum of Fine Arts, from the Dormition Cathedral in Przemysl. This image was revered as a miraculous icon. It is followed by chronologically later sculptures that served as an accessory to the church interior as a prayer image.And only a wide Europeanization of the culture of Peter the Great opens the doors of the Russian temple, originally in the capital, for decorative sculpture with its statues.

The exposition presents statues of Mary Magdalene from the Odigitrievskaya church (mid-18th century), centurion Longinus from the Trinity Cathedral of the Lyutikov monastery (second half of the 18th century) and centurion Longinus from the Kaluga Provincial Museum (last quarter of the 18th century), which were part of the composition of the Crucifixion. A group of figures from the Church of the Transfiguration "under the mountain" in Kaluga (late 18th century), included in the exhibition, gives an idea of its character. The figure of the Suffering Christ (the second half of the 18th century) from the Kaluga Tikhonovaya Hermitage corresponds to the Catholic models according to the iconographic type. Such statues were usually placed in icon cases that resemble a dungeon.

The decoration of the temple with such statues had its supporters and opponents. The latter saw a connection with the Catholic artistic tradition. In reality, it was mediated. The difference between a sculptural prayer image and decorative statues, mainly associated with the iconostasis, always remains noticeable. And this functional role justifies the secular character of the latter, characteristic of the era of their creation.

The exhibition will run until December 20.