The Moods of Early Russian Art

An examination of the values and debates that shaped early East Slavic art. The Moods of Early Russian Art describes an alternative early modernity at the easternmost border of the European cultural sphere, where the Renaissance marked a return not to secular humanism but to the religiosity and art of the Middle Ages. Charting a kind of “Renaissance in reverse,” art historian Justin Willson explores how the value placed on style and virtuosity faded in importance as the Church cultivated miracle-working images during the reigns of Ivan the Great and Ivan the Terrible. Arguing for a broader unity of interests among artistic workshops across the Muscovite landscape—a system of interconnected values that he explains using the language of “moods”—Willson examines icons, illuminated manuscripts, enamelwork, and murals, tracing how the interpretive framework of the age shifted from the “aesthetic” and “literal” moods to the “intoxicated” and “romantic” over the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries.