“Narrative geometry”. On the method for summing angles in Russian iconography

Abstract

The article deals with the techniques of the moveable spectator position and summing up angles in Russian iconography. Those visual techniques, described by a number of researchers, pertain to the ‘basic grammar’ of post-iconoclastic Byzantine and medieval Russian art. Firstly, the sliding spectator position and the summation of the angles made it possible to show the depicted object simultaneously from several points of view – the icon-painter represented the visual figure in several mutually exclusive (with a fixed observer position) angles. The technique was used in Russian iconography primarily to demonstrate significant objects. Thus, in the space of the composition the creator of the image conveyed all the necessary information about the depicted object, saturating the picture with various semantic nuances and creating ‘micro-stories’. Less often the same technique could also be used to demonstrate peripheral objects. Secondly, the summation technique solved another task, demonstrating the dynamics of the character’s movement. In that case, it is not the painter who ‘moves’ (mentally examining the object from different positions), rather the hero of the visual story. Fixing different moments of time, the icon-painter transforms the depicted figure so that the character’s body freezes in an unnatural position. The position of the body conveys information about the direction of the movements of the hero depicted. The paper considers both typical and specific examples of the use of those techniques in medieval Russian art.