Three Babylonian Youths in the Paintings of St. Sophia Cathedral in Kyiv
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.18523/2617-8907.2020.3.29-35Keywords:
St. Sophia of Kyiv, three Babylonian youths, fiery furnace, monumental painting, frescoAbstract
In order to realize our own identity, we look closely at the past, at the sacred cult tradition of our ancestors. The real treasury of this tradition is St. Sophia of Kyiv, a monument of the first half of the 11th c., where hundreds of images of holy men, women and youths have been preserved. Among the saints of all times, children occupy an important place in the Orthodox calendar. Orthodox piety has a special love for children who have fallen victim to sudden violent death. This article analyzes how the Old Testament story “Three Hebrew youths in the fiery furnace” is illustrated in the monumental fresco painting of St. Sophia of Kyiv. The characterization of the images of the holy youths, specification of the attribution of their individual images and accentuation of the role of the plots in the general system of painting are given. The Babylonian youths are depicted four times in the monumental painting of St. Sophia Cathedral. In three cases, it is the primary fresco painting of the 11th c. in the central nave, St. George’s Chapel and the choirs. In the fourth case, this is a 17th c. painting in the central nave. According to the Byzantine tradition, in the paintings of St. Sophia of Kyiv the images of the three children are related to the theme of the Saviour’s Resurrection, which was relevant at the time of the creation of the cathedral. The multiple depiction of the three Babylonian youths in the monumental painting of St. Sophia of Kyiv testifies to the popularity in old Rusian religious art of these young righteous and the miracle that happened to them “in the fiery furnace”, as well as to the symbolic importance of this Old Testament story in the baptism of Rus and in the inheritance of old traditions in the art of Ukraine.
Manuscript received 15.03.2020
References
Age of Spirituality. Late Antique and Early Christian Art. Third to Seventh Century. Catalogue of the Exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art (19.11.1977 – 12.02.1978). 1979. N.Y.: Metropolitan Museum of Art and Princeton University Press.
Cabrol, Fernand, and Henri Leclercq, ed. 1920. Dictionnaire d’Archeologie chretienne et de Liturgie. Vol. 3. Paris.
Golovan, I. A. 1973. “Novye dannye po ikonografii drevnei rospisi Sofii Kievskoi. [New data on the iconography of the ancient painting of St. Sophia of Kyiv].” In Sofiia Kievskaia: Materialy issledovanii [St. Sophia of Kyiv: Research Materials], 46–9. Kyiv: Budivelnyk [in Russian].
Kievskii Sofiiskii sobor [St. Sophia Cathedral of Kyiv]. 1887. In Drevnosti Rossiiskogo gosudarstva [Antiquities of the Russian State], 4. St. Petersburg [in Russian].
Koreniuk, Yurii. 1999. “Z istorii restavratsii Sofii Kyivskoii [From the history of the restoration of St. Sophia of Kyiv].” Ant : Informatsiino-dovidkovyi visnyk arkheolohii, mystetstva, kulturolohii [Ant : Information and Reference Bulletin of Archeology, Art, and Cultural Studies] 1:19–24 [in Ukrainian].
Kornіenko, Viacheslav. 2011. Korpus graffiti Sofii Kyivskoi (XI – pochatok XVIII st.). Ch. 3: Tsentralna nava [Graffiti corps of St. Sophia of Kyiv (11th – beginning of the 18th century). Ch. 3: Central nave]. Kyiv: Horobets [in Ukrainian].
Lopukhin, Aleksandr. 1910. Tolkovaya Bibliya ili Kommentariy na vse knigi sv. Pisaniya Vetkhogo i Novogo Zaveta [Explanatory Bible or Commentary on all books of St. Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments]. Vol. 7. Petersburg [in Russian].
Moldovan, Aleksandr. 1984. Slovo o zakone i blagodati Ilariona [A word about the law and grace of Hilarion]. Kyiv: Naukova dumka [in Russian].
Nikitenko, Nadezhda. 1999. Rus i Vizantiia v monumentalnom komplekse Sofii Kievskoi: Istoricheskaia problematika [Rus and Byzantium in the monumental complex of St. Sophia of Kyiv: Historical issues]. Kyiv: M. S. Hrushevsky Institute of Ukrainian Archeography and Source Study of the NAS of Ukraine [in Russian].
Nikitenko, Nadezhda. 2008. Sviataia Sofiia Kievskaia [Saint Sophia of Kyiv], ed. by N. M. Kukovalska. Kyiv: Horobets, 2008 [in Russian].
Nikitenko, Nadezhda, and Viacheslav Kornienko. 2014. Sobor sviatykh Sofii Kievskoi [The council of saints of St. Sophia of Kyiv]. Kyiv: M. S. Hrushevsky Institute of Ukrainian Archeography and Source Study of the NAS of Ukraine [in Russian].
Nikitin, S. I., A. A. Tkachenko, and A. A. Lukashevich. 2009. “Vavilonskiye otroki” [“The Babylonian youths”]. In Pravoslavnaya Entsiklopediya [The Orthodox Encyclopedia] 6:481–6. Moscow: Tserkovno-nauch. tsentr “Pravoslavnaya entsikl.”. Accessed March 12, 2020. http://www.pravenc.ru/text/153809.html [in Russian].
Osharina, Olga. 2006. “Siuzhet «Tri otroka v peshchi ognennoy» v koptskom iskusstve” [“The plot “Three youths in a fiery furnace” in the Coptic art”]. Antichnaya drevnost’ i sredniye veka [Antiquity and the Middle Ages] 37:22–31 [in Russian].
Pogrebniak, Nikolai, archpriest. 2005. “Vetkhozavetnyye proobrazy Rozhdestva Khristova: Prorok Daniil v liturgicheskom predanii i ikonografii” [“Old Testament types of the Nativity of Christ: Prophet Daniel in liturgical tradition and iconography”]. Moskovskiie Ieparkhialnyie Vedomosti [Moscow Diocesan Sheets] 9–10 [in Russian].
Polnoe sobranie russkikh letopisei. T. 2. Ipat’ievskaia letopis’ [The complete collection of Russian chronicles. Vol. 2. Ipat’ievskiy Chronicle]. 2001. Moscow: Yazyki russkoi kultury [in Russian].
Ryasna, Tamara. 2018. Z istorii restavratsii stinopysu Sofii Kyivskoi [From the history of restoration of the wall paintings in St. Sophia of Kyiv]. Vinnytsya: Vinnytska oblasna drukarnia [in Ukrainian].
Wilpert, Joseph. 1903. Die Malereien der Katakomben Roms. Freiburg-im-Breisgau: Herder.
Downloads
Issue
Section
License
Copyright (c) 2020 Serhii Bozhko
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
Authors who publish with this journal agree to the following terms:
a) Author(s) retain copyright under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License that allows others to share the work (copy and redistribute the material in any medium or format) and adapt the work (remix, transform, and build upon the material for any purpose, even commercially) with an acknowledgement of the work's attribution.
b) The journal allows the author(s) to hold the copyright without restrictions and allows the author(s) to retain publishing rights without restrictions.
c) Authors are able to enter into separate, additional contractual arrangements for the distribution of the work (e.g., post it to an institutional repository or publish it in a book), with an acknowledgement of its initial publication in this journal. (See Self-Archiving Policy).
d) Authors are permitted and encouraged to post their work online (e.g., in institutional repositories) prior to and during the submission process, as it can lead to productive exchanges, as well as earlier and greater citation of published work (See The Effect of Open Access).
