ST ALEXANDER SVIRSKY SURROUNDED BY SCENES FROM HIS LIFE

Hagiographic icons receive a particular spread and further development in the middle and second half of the 16th and the 17th century: the number of stamps increases, they turn into literal illustrations of hagiography and stories about the miracles of saints or venerated icons. To a large extent, artistic language loses its intrinsic expressiveness, compositions become crowded, overloaded with many figures and architectural elements, gestures become illustrative, and representations of faces become typified. Such is the icon of Alexander Svirsky with Hagiographical Scenes, painted in the mid-16th century, soon after the first hegumen of the Trinity Monastery on the Svir River was canonized in 1547. Such a large size and number of marginal scenes (a total of 129) was commissioned for the Assumption Cathedral because one of the significant victories of the young Tsar Ivan IV during his 1552 campaign to Kazan fell on the feast day of the saint. Of interest are the scenes connected with everyday monastic life, for instance, catching sturgeons, baking bread, and erecting monastic buildings.