Christmas in Russia

Your birth, O Christ our God

Has shed upon the world the light of knowledge;

For through it, those who worship the stars

Have learned from a star to worship You, the Sun of Justice

And to recognize You as the Orient From On High.

Glory be to You, O Lord!

Troparion

Christmas, one of the brightest, most joyful and significant holidays, has always been celebrated in Russia in a particularly heartfelt way. It seems that the Russian nature itself with its winter, snow, short days and rare sunlight as a gift of God, as well as New Year, needs a vibrant ceremonial decoration and provokes spiritual awakening.

The Russian Museum cannot help but celebrate the great holiday of the Nativity of the Saviour and the secular New Year with a special exhibition. Moreover, the various collections of the largest museum of national art in Russia make it possible to explore this eternal theme in its entirety.

The exhibition features icons depicting the Nativity scenes created by numerous local iconographic schools in the 16th–19th centuries. The public can also see ancient images of the Mother of God representing various canons, cast icons, folding icons, crosses and podeai. The main selection criterion is authenticity and high quality of works.

The paintings from the 18th to the 20th centuries displayed at the exhibition testify to the unchanging relevance of Christmas subjects throughout the history of Russian secular painting. The show also features works by John Augustus Atkinson and Gérard de la Barthe, travelling painters who depicted sliding down ice chutes and Moscow’s Christmas festivities with joy and amazement. But certainly, the most natural embodiment of winter, the time of the Nativity and Epiphany, are in the paintings of Russian artists Nikifor Krylov, Konstantin Juon, Nikolai Dmitriev-Orenburgsky and many others. In Soviet times, despite the anti- religious traditions, the explicit Christmas allusions were encoded with images of the Mother and Child (by Kliment Redko and Sergei Romanovich), fir trees and Christmas trees, skating and sleigh rides, compositions with an icon as if it were just a furnishing and not a sacred object, and pictures of festive feasts that always accompanied the Holy Days. At the end of the 20th century, religious subjects regained the status of spiritual significance (Eleonora Zharenova’s city landscapes where temple buildings are crowned by trumpeting angels; Olga Efimova’s The Mother of God in Fields, or German Egoshin’s simple and solemn The Nativity of Christ – all from the 1990s).

The same subjects are explored in Russian graphic art from different periods. The exhibition includes works by Grigory Gagarin, Pyotr Basin and Fyodor Solntsev (the first half of the 19th century), graphic works by Vasily Denisov, Kuzma Petrov-Vodkin and Nadezhda Lermontova (the first half of the 20th century), and more recent drawings (Zaven Arshakuni and Boris Ermolayev).

In addition to the Mother of God, the Infant Jesus and the Holy Apostles, the exhibition presents a multitude of the heavenly host in various representations. The epigraph of the exhibition is Fidelio Bruni’s touching painting The Worship of Angels. The magnificent and impressive decorative sculptures take pride of place: cherubim and seraphim, archangels and angels – highly professional gilded carvings after Bartolomeo Rastrelli’s drawings from various St Petersburg churches – and a great number of wooden angels created by folk masters enjoy primitivist features, imparting the inimitable sincerity and bright folklore expressiveness to the images. The gem of the exhibition is a crèche featuring the complete Nativity scene: the Mother of God and St Joseph, a manger with the baby Jesus, the Star of Bethlehem, the Magi and shepherds, the donkey and the ox. This magnificent set of wooden sculptures was made by St Petersburg master Boris Sergeyev in 1995.

Of course, the exhibition presents Christmas and winter accessories that surely accompany this festive period: painted sleighs, patterned knitted mittens, as well as the variety of wonderful Christmas cards (the Russian Museum owns a significant collection of publications made by the Community of St Eugenia) and gifts: lacquer boxes (made by Palekh and Mstyora masters), painted Dymkovo clay toys and Christmas tree decorations in the form of figured gingerbreads.

All this bright variety of items from many departments of the Russian Museum and, first of all, works of Old-Russian and Folk Art have the mission to create an inspired Christmas and winter mood in the spirit of the centuries-old national tradition!

The Russian Museum is pleased to share the joy of the holiday with its visitors!

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