Religious Painting
for he was brought to a deadlock by the two pictures which he deemed his duty to paint for the Petrograd connoisseurs. The first was "Christ Showing Himself to Magdalen" (1835, Museum of Alexandre III), conceived, though not executed, after the classical fashion. The second was the ill-fated "Christ Appearing Before the People," which tormented Ivanov for about twenty years, for he became entangled, from the very outset, in his efforts to combine in it various religious considerations with complete historical accuracy and a perfect observance of the classical traditions.
Yet in this work, too, there is the reflection of great artistic power. Separate portions of it, individual types, fragments of landscape—hint at what Ivanov could have been, had he not been crippled by his education. They show also into what a great master he could have developed, had not death taken him at the very moment when, having bidden farewell to the vagaries of his youth, he was entering upon a wholly independent and admirable road.
In the hall of the Rumyantzev Museum, where this canvas has found hospitality, all the walls are covered with Ivanov's innumerable studies for it. In the same way, as many, or even more sketches are scattered in the Tretyakov Gallery, in the collections of M. P. Botkin, and elsewhere. It is these sketches that show what
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