The relics of saint Andrej Rubliov found
R.V. Gronoff
http://fr.rian.ru/analysis/20060526/48657936.html
Didn't find the english version.
--
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R.V. Gronoff
> Link in french here:
>
> http://fr.rian.ru/analysis/20060526/48657936.html
>
> Didn't find the english version.
>
Finally found it:
Saintly icon-painters' remains unearthed
19/05/2006 21:57
MOSCOW. (Anatoly Korolev, RIA Novosti commentator) -- The Moscow
Patriarchate kept a unique find secret for more than ten years.
The laity heard only recently that the remains of renowned icon-painter
Andrei Rublev and Daniil Cherny, his elder colleague, had been found
under one of the altars of St. Andronicus' (Andronievsky) Monastery in
Moscow.
Church hierarchs' silence is explicable, what with the reverence the
painters deserve.
The find goes back to 1992, when the Russian Orthodox Church regained
the monastery. Archpriest Vyacheslav Savinykh, Father Superior, led the
monks to restore the Savior's Cathedral, its principal shrine. The work
started with cleaning the debris and repairing the altar. The team
eventually dug as deep as massive altar foundation slabs - a holy spot
where members of the supreme clergy find their last abode. Excavations
went on, and the monks came upon four graves. The sumptuous
ecclesiastical attire of the deceased and certain other indications led
to the conclusion that none other than Andronicus, the monastery
founding father, and another three Father Superiors - Savva, Alexander
and Ephraim - were interred under the cathedral altar.
Patriarch Alexy II the Primate of the Russian Orthodox Church bowed to
the remains, and visited the excavations several times.
The work was extremely labor-consuming, and went on at a snail's pace
till a landslide made a fifth grave visible. The team came on a
sensation, intuition told Father Vyacheslav, and so he asked a top-notch
secular expert to supervise the following works. That was forensic
anthropologist Sergei Nikitin - a prominent name in his research circle.
Sculptural portraiture based on skulls has been his specialty for many
years. We know the true features of Nestor the renowned chronicler, of
the legendary Grand Duchess Sophia Palaeologa of Muscovy, the last of
Byzantine princesses, and Helena Glinska, mother of Tsar Ivan the
Terrible, thanks to the expert's endeavors. He is presently head
custodian of the medieval Royal sepulcher in the Kremlin's Archangel
Cathedral.
Sergei Nikitin sensationally proved his repute by winning a recent
contest in which delegates of an international anthropological congress
in the United States reconstructed a head after a skull. The jury judged
the results by lifetime photographs of the deceased. The Russian
contestant's sculpture was the closest to them.
So the expert came down, brush, miniature shovel and all, to excavate
the grave with the utmost care and precision. He found two skulls
instead of the one expected, a cup in which holy oil was put into the
grave, and leather articles in a fine state of preservation - small
wickerwork crosses, and simple shoes. The things evidently belonged to
modest monks rather than hierarchs. Nikitin roughly identified their age
as fifty and eighty. He made an even more sensational conclusion - the
remains had been exhumed and reburied.
One of the skulls was injured, evidently with a probing rod. As the
expert logically assumed, the exhumers did not know the exact spot in
the monastery graveyard, and had to probe the soil around to come upon
the remains.
Who of the brethren could deserve reburial with the Father Superiors
years after their death?
The answer was evident - Andrei Rublev and Daniil Cherny.
Both icon-painters belonged to the St. Andronicus community, and died c.
1430 to be buried in the monastery, says scanty extant information.
Medieval artists, of whatever renown, were doomed to anonymity when they
took monastic vows. Andrei Rublev's name survived through centuries as
rare, even astounding, exception.
A monk never signed his paintings - that would be an act of arrogance
unheard-of in the Middle Ages. Icon painting was regarded as an act of
worship not work of art. Andrei Rublev alone owed several chronicle
references to his inimitable genius.
The earliest dates to 1405, when a Moscow chronicler mentioned three
painters - Andrei Rublev, Theophanes the Greek and Fyodor of Gorodets -
in an entry concerning the decoration of the newly-built Annunciation
Cathedral in the Kremlin. Theophanes, Byzantine emigre, was a star of
the first magnitude. It was a tremendous honor for the two Russian
painters to be selected from among several icon-painting schools and
hundreds of masters representing them to work at altar murals and icons
side by side with him.
Another reference followed three years later, concerning the Dormition
Cathedral in Vladimir, at which Andrei Rublev and Daniil Cherny worked
together. Vladimir was then See of the Patriarch of Russia, and its new
cathedral was to become Russia's principal shrine.
The latest lifetime reference was made fifteen years after, when Andrei
Rublev and Daniil Cherny were decorating the Savvino-Storozhevsky
Monastery near Zvenigorod, in the Moscow environs.
Andrei Rublev's glory reached its peak, according to medieval monastic
standards, in 1430, with written references to his demise and burial in
St. Andronicus' Monastery, whose monk he became several years before death.
A medieval icon-painter needed to attain the utmost perfection to earn
written and oral references. Besides, Rublev's was a time too
drama-laden to pay attention to any person. Closely following one
another were a Tatar raid of Ryazan, Khan Mamai's embassy killed off in
Nizhny Novgorod, the Battle of Kulikovo, Khan Tokhtamysh pillaging
Moscow, Muscovites' war with Ryazan, Smolensk coming into Polish
possession, the death of Vasily I the Grand Duke of Muscovy, the
transfer of the Vladimir princely seat to Moscow and, to crown it all,
the plague.
That was a time when West European art reached its peak with the Van Eyk
brothers making altar paintings for St. Bavo's Cathedral, the principal
shrine of Ghent. Only one artist from among their Russian contemporaries
rose above his brethren to elevate the concept of altar icon to the
status of the crux of spiritual harmony in Eastern Christendom.
The mid-19th century brought the attribution of several renowned holy
images to Andrei Rublev. What mattered even more, he was identified as
painter of The Trinity, his supreme achievement and one of the highest
attainments of the world's sacred art. Art scholars have only now taken
stock of his extant works, of which there are a mere dozen - seven icons
of a Kremlin cathedral iconostasis, scanty mural fragments in Vladimir,
three badly injured icons of the Savvino-Storozhevsky Monastery - the
Savior, Archangel Michael, and St. Paul - and, last but not least, the
precious Trinity, in the cathedral of the Holy Trinity Laura of St.
Sergius, the only of the Rublev icons that came to this day excellently
preserved. The pious community of Zvenigorod used icons to cover
sauerkraut tubs, and one was made a ladder step.
The graves of Andrei Rublev and Daniil Cherny were not even neglected
but utterly forgotten. The only written reference to them was in the
manuscript chronicle compendium by Brother Jonas of Yaroslavl, who wrote
that the holy men's relics were in St. Andronicus' Monastery under a
decrepit belfry that was pulled down, and the spot was trampled by the
human foot to desecrate it.
It took Russia three centuries to realize what Andrei Rublev meant to
it, as the chronicle entry testifies. The newfound reverence moved St.
Andronicus monks to probe the soil on the site of the pulled-down belfry
late in the 18th century in search of the holy relics. They were a
success, and the remains of Andrei Rublev and Daniil Cherny were exhumed
for reburial with honors among the Father Superiors. Monastery papers
certainly mentioned it, but the St. Andronicus archive perished when
fire consumed a greater part of Moscow during the Napoleonic invasion of
1812.
The grave is truly a miraculous find, considering that even Leonardo da
Vinci's grave has been lost - that despite ample information about his
last days. Leonardo died in the Royal castle at Cloux, on May 2, 1519,
King Francis I never leaving his bedside till he gave his last breath,
and was buried in a highly honored cemetery in the same castle, all
French courtiers attending the funeral.
Andrei Rublev was the highest spiritual pillar of the Russian Middle
Ages. His icons stay unsurpassed for five centuries - paragons of
artistry, and of piety that makes them not figurative images but silent
prayers.