They were mostly located in barracks and differed from the other barracks only by small onion domes and crosses set up on the roofs. The simplest churches are the third type, which includes all churches set up in the camps and transit stations, where the refugees remained for a short while. One may differentiate between three types of churches and chapels founded by émigrés since 1918: (1) newly-built émigré churches in a Russian style, (2) churches which were rented or loaned from other Christian confessions, (3) makeshift or provisional churches. With the slender figures of the saints, the soft colors, and the clear execution, these icons are reminiscent of the Moscow School of Andrei Rublev, while the icons in the hero chapel are reminiscent of those of the Stroganov School. Its iconostasis consists of six rows of icons in the Old Russian style, and consciously follows the pre-Petrine tradition. With its lofty central tower, it is reminiscent of the Cathedral of the Ascension at Kolomenskoe. The Leipzig Church of Saint Alexis is an exception it was built in 1912-13 in memory of the Nations, which was fought near Leipzig. The ornamentation of the iconostasis was with icons in the “Russian realistic style” of the time, with many accessories such as frames and columns. Most of these churches were built in the eccentric brickwork of Moscow’s Saint Basil Cathedral. Among these are the churches in Vienna, Bad Ems, Baden-Baden, Stuttgart, Wiesbaden, Weimar, Cannes, San Remo, Pau, and other cities. Icons from this period can be found in any number of Russian churches in the West that were built in the 19th century as an embassy, memorial, and resort churches. A naturalistic, Italian-influenced style correspondingly encroached on iconography this new style no longer had anything in common with the Old Russian iconography. Individual painters specialized in parts of the painting such as faces, head, garments, lettering, etc. The high point of this development was in the last decades of the 19th century when icons were mass-produced. The turn towards worldly motifs in the 17th and 18th centuries brought completely new styles in painting, which ultimately resulted in a change in iconography. The general anonymity of the artists of this early period was explained by the “theology of iconography”, because icons may not be an expression of creative, artistic individuality, but rather a manifestation of the heavenly prototype “as not painted by hand.” An iconographer may not raise any personal artistic claim. Names such as the iconographer Theophanes the Greek or Andrew Rublev (the end of the 15th century) are an exception. To simplify this characterization, one could call Old Russian Art “anonymous” and the New Russian Art “personal.” Old Russian art was not bound to a particular artist, but rather bespoke a particular style (Novgorod, Kiev, Pskov, Vladimir-Suzdal or Moscow style) or, as in iconography, a particular school (e.g., Stroganov). Indeed, since then there have also been individual epochs of the New Russian Art such as Russian Rococo or Classicism (especially in the new residences in Petersburg), then the Russian Empire of Alexander I, and historicism under Nicholas I, though these styles differ basically from those of Old Russian Art. These developments were not limited to the building style, though this was the most obvious change, but also included the realms of sculpture and painting, and even iconography, ecclesiastical chant, church architecture and the sacred arts in the broadest sense. The elements of Old Russian Art have been increasingly lost since that time. Two great epochs of Russian art, Old and New Russian Art, can be historically separated from one another. In the place of the sober strict Russian style came the loose forms of Western European style with their individually stamped artistic forms of expression. Italians, Germans, and French dominated the new Russian art in all areas: architecture, sculpture, music and other branches of art received new impulses from the West. The forced opening of Russia to the West by Peter the Great brought Western artists to Russia. In Russian art, the 18th century was a deep abyss.
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