Classicism
lastic diligence and a blind faith in the incontrovertibility of the foreign æsthetic doctrine. All the stranger then, appears to us the delight of their contemporaries in this impersonal art. The enthusiasts of our national painting went as far as to prefer the "austerity" of Yegorov and Shebuyev to the "mannerism" of the French and Italian schools. In reality, these Russian masters were even colder, even more devoid of life than their models, but they were far from having the colossal knowledge of David, Guérin, Girodet, Ingres, and even of the Italians Camucini, Pinelli and others. Shebuyev's most refined compositions betray the Russian model and somehow reveal a distant connection with the feeble icon painters of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. As to Yegorov, there is in him more scholastic drill than ardour: all his works are rather school-room compositions than the result of free, significant artistic efforts.
These two masters are cold, common-place, and, to a considerable degree, impotent. Yet, despite their failings, it cannot be said that there is nothing agreeable in their works. Of course, their most celebrated productions are their worst. Such are: Yegorov's icons, his "Flagellation of Our Saviour," and Shebuyev's famous, but rather ineffective plafond in the Tzarskoye Selo Church. But their drawings, sketches and studies are
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