Winding Down in Moscow
Saturday, September 3rd, 2005I’m in Moscow now, starting to feel homesick and crabby, and ready for the kind of comfort food that can only come from my own kitchen. That, and green vegetables! The sausage is considered a vegetable in Russia.
I’m enjoying Moscow for a change. Usually I just get here and split, or roll into town before flying home. I did two very touristy things I’ve never done before–a visit inside St. Basil’s Cathedral on Red Square, and a day at the Tretyakov Museum of Art. There’s no mistaking st. Basil’s; nothing says that you’re where the rubber meets the road in Russia like St. Basil’s. It’s a magnificent sight (especially at night), and I never miss a peek at Red Square when I’m in town. But somehow I never made it inside the cathedral. I forked over the foreigner’s fee and when inside the cathedral that’s so beautiful that when Ivan the Terrible asked the architect if he could build one more beautful still, and he said that he could, Ivan had the man’s eyes put out.
It’s not all that big on the inside; a winding staircase brings you to the main level of several chambers, ornately painted to the ceiling in some of them, in various stages of restoration in others. I got to watch one artist carefully restoring one panel–he must be used to gawking tourists by now, he worked unflinchingly as flashing cameras went off while he worked. A beautiful iconostasis in the heart of the cathedral rose high toward the ceiling in the center. Mixed among the gawkers were the faithful, their journey here an act of devotion; the tourists were mostly respectful of those who came to worship.
It’s hard to top St. Basil’s, but the Tretyakov Gallery does it and then some. The world’s greatest collection of icons was very cool to see, but I must admit that I’m just not equipped to view them in any meaningful way. They are certainly beautiful, and the masters that created them captured humanity in the faces of the saints, in Mary and in Christ. But the exhibit seemed denatured; to have an icon in a secular setting like a museum seems antithetical to the icon’s creation in the first place. The Orthodox faith holds that icons, painted as a religious act, are in fact windows to heaven, and that prayers through the medium of an icon are a direct means of appeal for intercession. This has been mistaken by others as a kind of idolatry, but what better way to demonstrate Christian faith than to create, on earth, the means to reach the very heart of the faith?
The portrait gallery was my own highlight within the Tretyakov. I got to see several Repins which I had wanted to see for a long time, and Ivanov’s famous portrait of my own idol, Nikolai Gogol. The art of portraiture seems to have been taken over by photography, but I found myself drawn to the artist’s task of bringing a person’s many facets into play with a single work. The verisimilitude achieved by the masters was incredible, and reminded me of the lady sitting very still for her portrait (a portrait could require many sittings, and could take months):
Lady: While I’ve been sitting here, I’ve started to look out the window behind you. I do believe I could count every brick in that building across the street.
Artist: How do you think I feel about your face?
Sputnik Lee
Got more to tell you about Moscow, including an update from The Mall Of Russia. Cheers S-L
SputnikLee