Religious Painting
natural, "magical" light, who gave some scenes the force of an eye-witness' tale—such a man could not betray all this overnight and return to the inconsistencies of his early life or to lose himself in the desert of unbelief. Ivanov was too original and powerful a personality for this. His very struggle with himself, long and obstinate, out of which he emerged a conqueror, full of hopes and plans, exhibits his tremendous power: that of tenacity, and that of progress. Strauss's doctrine itself would most likely have been transformed and borne fruits of beauty. A deeply mystical nature, like Ivanov's could not suddenly lose its mysticism and turn into a common-place, or, what is worse, weak-headed realist.
Death bore him away in the most significant moment of his life. . . . Probably death was moved by pity for the endless sufferings of this martyr, who, on his return home, would have undergone one more painful trial. Ivanov came back to Russia at a moment when all mystical preaching must have seemed a wild anachronism, when all that was fresh and young in Russian art broke off most resolutely with the aesthetics created by Romanticism, and turned to immediate depiction of reality and to the propaganda of civic principles.
Before passing to the history of realism in Russian art, we shall briefly mention several artists who may be
101
