The beard. The non-obvious roles of a sign in Russian iconography

Abstract

The article describes the role of the beard as an iconographic sign of the Old Russian art. Making a brief overview of medieval Russian ideas about the beard, the author proceeds to analyze iconography and demonstrates that in different visual contexts, the beard had a range of unobvious meanings. The hair on the character’s face marked not only his gender (male) and age (young man, mature man, old man). In a certain context, the presence or absence of a beard indicated a child-parent relationship (King Solomon most often does not have a beard, as he is depicted next to his father King David). Certain types of beard indicated a hermit. When it appeared on face of the soul of the deceased, the beard helped to concretize the depicted, de-anonymize the figure. The beard on the angel’s face maked him an ambiguous character (like the punishing angels on the Euphrates River from the Revelation of John the Theologian). With demons, the beard served as a sign of hierarchical supremacy – it is the way to depict the demonic “princes”, leaders, etc., including Satan. Finally, at the end of the Russian Middle Ages, various “enemies” began to be painted with moustaches and beardless faces. That reflected the negative perception of shaving in general and foreigners shaving their faces. After Peter the Great’s cultural reforms, the same sign in the Old Believer miniature began to indicate “heretics”-Nikonians having their beards shaved.