The Artistic Decoration of Svyatoslav’s Izbornik in the Context of the Decorative Arts of Rus’

The illustrated Russian manuscript known as Svyatoslav’s Izbornik was produced in the earliest phase of the reception of Byzantine Christian culture in Rus’. The aim of this article is to situate the artistic decoration of the Izbornik within the ascetic-sacral current in art of the second half of the eleventh and the first half of the twelfth century. The figural imagery is disproportionate and flat, whereas the ornament is rigorously and geometrically organized. The architectural frontispiece compositions and rectangular headpieces are clearly divided into straight and arched bands, as well as into rectangular, segmental, and curvilinearly bounded zones. Within these zones, the compositions are constructed according to border, rosette, and grid types. The manuscript displays types of geometric, abstract, and vegetal ornament (both in geometrized and more naturalistic stages), as well as zoomorphic decorative images in statically geometrized and dynamically curvilinear modes. The ornamental motifs are constructed geometrically: their outlines are inscribed in, or approximate, regular geometric forms. An impression of sumptuousness is created by the dense filling of the surfaces with small abstract elements. For the ornamentation of the Izbornik’s miniatures, a corpus of analogies is adduced from the decorative arts of Rus’ and Byzantium dating to the second half of the eleventh and the first half of the twelfth century. On the basis of stylistic comparison with the Izbornik’s decorative repertoire, analogous imagery in artefactual and archaeological material can be assigned more precise dates. The artistic design of the Izbornik is thus integrated into the broader picture of the development of Russian and Byzantine art, and the profile of the art of Rus’ in the second half of the eleventh and the first half of the twelfth century is rendered more complete through the use of material of different forms of art.

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