Copyright

Oleg Tarasov

Published On

2024-02-09

Page Range

pp. 117–170

Language

  • English

Print Length

54 pages

4. Florenskii, Metaphysics and Reverse Perspective

  • Oleg Tarasov (author)
  • Stella Rock (translator)
Chapter of: How Divine Images Became Art: Essays on the Rediscovery, Study and Collecting of Medieval Icons in the Belle Époque(pp. 117–170)
The philosophical meaning and formal peculiarities of the icon within a system of reverse perspective were first examined by the Russian philosopher and theologian Pavel Florenskii (1882–1937). It is fundamentally important to analyze his writings to understand the basis on which to view the icon as an art form, especially given that his ideas coincided with those of many Russian and Western avant-garde artists. Particular attention is devoted to a replica of Andrei Rublev’s (1360–1428) Trinity icon (1411, or 1425–27), which belonged to Florenskii himself. As Florenskii wrote, ‘Rublev’s Trinity exists, hence God exists’ – the kernel of his symbolic concept and metaphysics of reverse perspective. Published in this chapter are drawings illustrating reverse perspective in Florenskii’s own hand, discovered in the Florenskii family archive in Moscow by the author.

Contributors

Oleg Tarasov

(author)

Dr. Oleg Tarasov is an independent scholar (Rome). The author of numerous publications on cultural history and art, his books include Icon and Devotion: Sacred Spaces in Imperial Russia, transl. and ed. by R.-M. Gulland (London: Reaktion Books, 2002), Framing Russian Art: From Early Icons to Malevich, transl. by R.-M. Gulland and A. Wood (London: Reaktion Books, 2011), and Russian Art Nouveau and Ancient Icons (Moscow: Indrik, 2016) (in Russian). Oleg obtained a Ph.D. in History at the Institute of Slavic Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences and in Art History at Department of History and Theory of Arts of the State Moscow University. He held posts at the State Moscow University, Department of History, and at the Department of Cultural History of the Institute of Slavic Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences. Oleg has been awarded fellowships at the Istituto Ellenico di Studi Bizantini e Postbizantini di Venezia, Italy, at the Getty Research Institute, USA and at Institute for Human Sciences, Vienna, Austria.

Stella Rock

(translator)
Honorary Associate at the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, School of Social Sciences and Global Studies, Religious Studies at The Open University

Stella Rock is Honorary Associate at the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, School of Social Sciences and Global Studies, Religious Studies at the Open university (UK). Her publications include Popular Religion in Russia: ‘Double-belief’ and the making of an Academic Myth (Abington & New York: Routledge, 2007); “Russian Piety and Orthodox Culture 1380–1589”, in Angold, M. (ed.), The Cambridge History of Christianity, vol. 5: Eastern Christianity (Cambridge University Press, 2007), pp. 253–75; ‘The life of dry bones: Pilgrimage to relic shrines in Soviet Russia’, in Pazos, Antón M. (ed.), Relics, Shrines and Pilgrimages: Sanctity in Europe from Late Antiquity (London and New York: Routledge, 2020).