Tretyakov Gallery

"Welcome to our second home," said Judy as we walked across the threshold of the Tretyakov gallery. The first order of business was the icon gallery - their favourite. Icons are central to the Orthodox tradition. These were magical. Not only were the 800 year old paintings as luminous and mystical as they must have seemed then, but the pieces of wood they were painted on had marvellous character and added significantly to the depth of each painting. 

As we progressed through the numbered galleries, we witnessed both the progression of artistic expression through the centuries, including the introduction of dimension, and themes outside of the sacred, and then outside of the noble. We saw the raging conflicts that have rocked this country/empire/Union; the artists proved particularly adept at showing the chilling inhumanity of tyrannical leaders, such as in this portrait of Peter the Great  (1672-1725) and his son, who was tried and convicted upon his confession of plotting to overthrow the king. He was tortured and died in prison.

By Nicolas Ge, 1871

Another haunting image of Russia's reckless-until-the-point-of-self-destructive leaders is this one, of Ivan the Terrible. The epiphany in his eyes may reflect that he's registering that he's now killed all his offspring.

By Ilya Repin, 1875

Another fascinating image, one of many which took up enormous stretches of wall and merited at least 30 minutes of observation on its own, is this one of Jesus approaching a crowd. Each face could be a study, and indeed the other walls of the gallery showed 's sketches and experiments with the faces of the various onlookers.

By Aleksandr Andreyevich Ivanov 1837-1857.

These images brought to much of what Judy, Johan and I had talked about to life regarding Russian history. The pain was splashed on these massive canvases, as if the scale of the painting sought to represent the scale of the suffering and of the country implicated in the actions of so, so few. 

It was a relief to get to some of the more abstract images, like these: 

After the museum we decompressed while resting both our souls and our soles in a coffeeshop playing Katy Perry and serving very strong and delicious Viennese coffee. 

We had lots to think about.

Johan took this while I mulled over what we'd seen.