Vologda school of icon painting

also: Vologda icon painting · Вологодская иконопись

school 15th-17th centuries Vologda Russia needs review
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The Vologda school of icon painting was a regional tradition of Russian Orthodox icon production centered on the city of Vologda in the Russian North. Like every Russian school it worked strictly within the Byzantine-derived canon of fixed subjects and compositions, painting in egg tempera on gessoed wooden panels; within those limits its workshops developed a recognizable local idiom. Northern Russian icon painting is particularly noted for its decorative plant-motif ornament, and Vologda panels carry that taste for ornamental surfaces alongside slender figures and quiet color. The school belongs to the medieval and early modern flowering of regional Russian painting that also produced the Novgorod and Moscow schools.

Defining characteristics

  • Strict Byzantine-derived iconography: canonical subjects, poses and compositions
  • Egg tempera on gessoed wooden panels, with gilded or ochre grounds
  • Decorative plant-motif ornament filling backgrounds and borders
  • Elegant elongated figures painted with fine, smooth brushwork

Sources

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