Foreword
such works, turned into a dry-as-dust and dead pattern, has become petrified, but even on such works rests the faint reflection of beauty, and they are able to please, though not to transport with delight. If, however, nothing—not even what is of slight importance—is to be ignored, a just proportion must be preserved in the exposition, and works absolutely beautiful must be preferred to productions relatively interesting. The most impartial history must not lose sight of this proportionality—otherwise it runs the risk of forfeiting its fundamental character and dissolving into utter confusion.
In the exposition of the history of Russian art, more than anywhere else, it is important to be guided by these principles of many-sidedness, tolerance, and harmonious proportionality. The study of Russian painting from a purely artistic standpoint would bring us to such unexpected and odd conclusions that accusations of incompleteness and partiality would inevitably follow. For the number of purely artistic aspects is less in the Russian School of Painting than in any other. A considerable period of Russian painting passed under the sign of academicism, and scarcely did it free itself from its trammels, when it found itself involved in the complex mechanism of "the social movement." During the two hundred years of the existence of Western
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