Alexander Andreevich Ivanov was born in 1806 in St. Petersburg. His father, Andrey Ivanov, was an artist, the professor of the Academy of Arts. It was his father who first taught Alexander art, and since 1817 till 1824 he was studying in the Academy of Arts. One of his first notable works, made while in the Academy, was Priam Asking Achilles to Return Hector's Body (1824). For the picture Joseph Interprets the Butler's and the Baker's Dreams in a Prison (1827) he was awarded the big gold medal by the Society for the Promotion of Artists and sent to Italy as a pensioner of that society.

He went to Italy in 1830 and since 1831 settled in Rome. He traveled all over Italy a lot studying the masterpieces of art. During his first years he painted Apollo, Hyacinth and Cypariss Singing and Playing Music (1831-1834) and The Appearance of Christ to Mary Magdalene (1834-1836), which were greatly appreciated by his contemporaries and approved by his sponsors in St. Petersburg. At about 1833 Ivanov conceived a plan to paint a large picture The Appearance of Christ to the People (1837-1857). This picture truly became the work of his life, he worked on it for twenty years. Over 100 sketches, numerous detail drawings, and large-scale designs, most of them in oil, preceded the monumental composition. Its size is 540 x 750 cm. In the foreground of the picture there is a number of male figures, some already undressed, waiting to be baptized in the Jordan River by John the Baptist. While John the Baptist, in his garb of animal skin under a long mantle, a crosier in his left hand, turns and raises his arms dramatically towards the lone figure of Christ, who appears on a rocky rise in the middle ground, behind him a broad plain and distant mountains.

Ivanov also painted several genre pictures such as Ave Maria (1839), Bridegroom Buying a Ring for His Fiancee (1839) and very beautiful landscape studies: Olives Near Cemetery in Albano. New Moon (1842-1846), A Tree Branch (1840s-1850s), Via Appia (1845), Water and Stones Near Palacculo (1850s). In 1850s he conceived another grandiose plan to paint a series of large frescos illustrating the Bible, in a palace, specially built for this purpose. In preparation to this project he painted tens of sketches in watercolour with the various scenes from the Bible. Ivanov died from cholera in St. Petersburg in 1858, several months after his return to Russia.

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Although Alexander Ivanov lived and worked during the period of Romanticism, he did not accept Romanticism and its aesthetics. Ivanov is known to have said that Romanticism ruins art. This thought found confirmation in all of his creative efforts. His huge painting The Appearance of Christ to the People (The Appearance of the Messiah) is unparalleled in Western European art in both spiritual profundity and the manner of execution.

That period saw the struggle between Romanticism and the old style which is usually called Classicism. The leading exponent of Classicism, Ingres, was sternly opposed to the Romanticism of Delacroix. We know Ingres as the author of wonderful portraits that are remarkable for their subtle and acute characterization. However, Ingres was indifferent to strong human feelings. Even in such picture as Stratonika, or the Illness of Antiochus, the image of Stratonika is static and does not convey any moral message.

Corot is the only French artist who was close to Ivanov, but, unfortunately, they never met in Italy. Corot was influenced neither by Classicism nor Romanticism. Only the fact of his turning to landscape can be explained by romantic influences. Later in life, he painted his Baptism against the background of a typically Corot landscape, but basically this picture represents something different than The Appearance of Christ to the People. Nor could Ivanov find anything useful in the work of German Romantics. There were almost no artists in Germany who produced historical paintings. However, during the first years of his stay in Italy, Ivanov succumbed to the spell of Overbeck and Cornelius. He expressed gratitude to Overbeck for that master's keen interest in his art and for helping him in choosing themes. Ivanov respected his opinion, for Overbeck knew "how to penetrate the heart."

When studying at the Academy of Arts in St. Petersburg, Ivanov was influenced by the academic doctrine that inculcated Classicism as the only genuine style in art. But in his own works, Ivanov always strove to show his independence from academism, calling it a "formal trend." Throughout his artistic career he uncom-promisingly rejected academism because of its ruinous impact on artists.

In Italy Ivanov saw the art of the Old Masters. He placed Raphael above all others and retained this admiration for the great artist to the last days of his life. Other masters, such as Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo, also attracted Ivanov. He discovered for himself Titian, Tintoretto and Veronese, then Giotto, Fra Angelico, Giovanni Bellini, and Botticelli, whom he characterized as "exponents of the style that has gone never to return."

Also in Italy Ivanov met the writer Rozhalin who instilled in him thoughts about the great destination of art. Ivanov was very happy about his meetings with Rozhalin. "It is to you that I am indebted for my understanding of life and of how my art relates to its source - the soul," wrote the artist.

Subsequently in Rome Ivanov met Nikolai Gogol, befriended him and corresponded with him. He highly appreciated Gogol's intellect and keen power of observation..."One should examine and study all that one sees; should subjugate everything to one's brush and be able to discover in everything an inner meaning and, above all, to grasp the high mystery of creation." These lines from Gogol's story, The Portrait, can be referred to Ivanov as well.

During the last years of his life Ivanov became close friends with Alexander Herzen, Nikolai Chernyshevsky and Vasily Stasov, the progressive figures of the time.

Italian travel notes constitute a special chapter in Ivanov's legacy. He relates first of all his impressions of the frescoes by Giotto, Fra Angelico and Masaccio that he saw in Northern Italy, and of the paintings The Ascension of the. Madonna and The Murder of St Peter the Martyr by Titian that took his fancy in Venice.

Ivanov was an artist well versed in literature. Early in St Petersburg he imbibed the spirit of Winckelmann. Later in Italy he studied the first book on the history of Italian art by Lanci, the treatise on Christian antiquities by D'Agincourt and, finally, the writings of Rio, who defended the aesthetic merits of medieval art. He also devoured the works of Karamzin and Schclling.

Whatever he depicted-whether historical characters or biblical legends, landscapes or genre scenes, women or peasants-we always sense in them the force of his intellect, which at times manifests itself all too strongly. But despite such rationalism, we invariably feel in Ivanov's paintings and studies his understanding of the "inner essence of things."

We should note yet another characteristic of Ivanov's artistic method - his painstaking analysis of the object depicted and its detailed comparison with other objects. "There is not a single feature to which I have not given a careful thought," he used to say. Unconcerned onlookers failed to see why each image should need so much time to complete.

Alexander Ivanov was born in 1806 into the family of Andrei Ivanov, a professor at the Academy of Arts in St Petersburg. Little is known about his boyhood. The painting with which he completed his training at the Academy in 1 827, Joseph Interpreting Dreams to a Wine-Merchant and Bread-Giver, betrays the influence of the Caravaggesque chiaroscuro. Another academic work, Bellerophon Rides to Kill the Chimaera (1829), was done in the spirit of antiquity as it was understood at the time. The freely executed sketch of the picture is especially noteworthy. The plasticity of all the forms is amazing. The superb drawing of the steed was painted from life and has a fresh and spontaneous air about it.

In 1830 Ivanov received a grant to go to Italy. On his way to Rome he visited the Dresden Picture Gallery, where he was most strongly impressed by Raphael's Sistine Madonna. "Here for the first time I was struck by the effect of the elegant brush of Raphael," he wrote.

In Rome Ivanov started with copying. For his first copy he chose the figure of Adam from one of Michelangelo's frescoes. But as he was irresistibly drawn to Raphael, he zealously copied individual figures from the works of the great master. He took particular interest in The Miracle, of the Mass at Bolsena because it showed a massive crowd of people swept away by spiritual inspiration.

In his Joseph and the Wife of Potiphar (1833), a sketch on a popular theme in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century painting, Ivanov achieved remarkable perfection. Whereas in Prud'hon's canvas, the pampered wife of Potiphar is shown passionately embracing Joseph, who tries to tear himself away from her, Ivanov, in his sketch, has placed the figure of Joseph at a distance, expressing by plastic means alone the confusion of his hero.

The lessons of classical Greek art, which Ivanov so deeply imbibed, are palpably manifest in the painting Apollo, Hyacinthus and Cypress Singing and Playing (1 83 1-34). The young Hyacinthus is playing the flute, Cypress is drowsing, while Apollo, as the supreme representative of the Muses, is directing this wonderful action. The group is depicted against an open background pierced with the rays of the southern sun.

The Appearance of Christ to Mary Magdalene (1835) was warmly welcomed in St Petersburg and won Ivanov the title of Academician. The artist himself, however, was not happy with the painting, referring to it as merely a "corn-cob." Yet in a fascinating preparatory drawing for it, he conveyed Mary's feelings in a freer and more natural manner.

Throughout this period Ivanov consistently pondered over the theme of The Appearance of Christ to the People. His huge painting an this subject took about twenty years to complete, and became, with time, synonymous with Ivanov's entire career.

. . . People will eventually find the satisfaction of their spiritual desires and truth will thus be asserted on earth. . . This idea underlying 7'he Appearance of Christ was different from the ideas of romantic struggle, and sheds light on what the artist meant by calling his subject "universal."

Ivanov did a multitude of preliminary sketches, studies and drawings for this painting. Thus, seeking the figure of St Andrew, he at first meticulously reproduced the features of an old man with a stiff beard and an open forehead, but seeing that was just a model and nothing else, he revealed the salient traits of St Andrew the Fisherman in the next study. However, this did not satisfy Ivanov either, and only later he arrived at the final image full of wisdom, warmth and understanding.

Among the surviving preparatory drawings and studies for the picture there are numerous female heads depicting dark-haired girls with large dark eyes, whose images the artist picked out from the crowd. In these female portraits, Ivanov followed in the footsteps of Orest Kiprcnsky, an artist who knew very well how to convey the spiritual beauty of his sitters.

The most striking image is embodied in the Head ofa Woman with Earrings and a Necklace (1840). Looking at us is a broad flat face with prominent cheek-bones which can hardly be called beautiful. Traces of past experience left an imprint on the woman's face, in which Ivanov tried to show the emotional sufferings of the Messiah himself.

In his landscape studies, Ivanov turned to simple, unpretentious spots of nature. Once, on a gloomy day at Albano, near the graveyard of the capucines, he recorded and immortalized a modest, even ungainly motif (Soil near the Graveyardof the Capudnes at Albano. 1840). At another spot, on the slope of a hill, Ivanov'sgaze was arrested by several young olive-trees which loomed against the background of a distant valley. The picture is painted with minute attention to every detail of the foliage and soil. The bleak outlines of the moon imply approaching evening (Olive-Trees by the Albano Churchyard. New Moon. I 840). In all of Ivanov's studies, the viewer can precisely guess at the time of day.

Three landscapes. The Appian Way at Sunset, A Branch and Tree in the Shadow Above the Water in the Vicinity of Castel dandolfo (all late 1840s), all rank among Ivanov's masterpieces. In the foreground of The Appian Way at Sunset, we see a heath treated in a somewhat generalized manner: in the middle ground is a small hill, then a group of ruins, and behind them, at a distance, the buildings and dome of the Cathedral of St Peter depicted on a very small scale.

None of Ivanov's works reveals so clearly the course of his researches as the study, Seven Boys. In this study, the artist, without relying on his flair or imagination, attempted to solve en plein air the problem of illuminating a multifigurc group, which he waste recreate in his Appearance of Christ to the People. Ivanov knew how to dissolve the colour patch into its complementaries and in this respect he anticipated Impressionism, which developed much later in France. Working en plein air, he enjoyed the opportunity to reproduce new aspects of reality with a completeness unprecedented in classical art.

As ever before, Ivanov felt an urge to penetrate the innermost truth of biblical legends. After studying The Life of Christ by David Friedrich Strauss, he set out to devine the human message of the biblical legend and to reveal the poetical framework of biblical texts. His series of drawings, the so-called Biblical Sketches, is remarkable for its austere character. In the scene with Zachariah, who is stricken with dumbness by a heavenly messenger, we see only two figures, but each one has a majestic aura about it. The angel's figure emanates miraculous light and that light fills the entire scene.

In The Sermon of St John the Baptist, the artist no longer adheres to the principle he followed in his Appearance of Christ. St John is shown amidst a group of people gathered close around to hear what he is saying. We find this scene more realistic than the one in The Appearance of Christ.

In the drawing. Those Who Knew Christ Are Watching His Crucifixion, Ivanov presents the images of people gripped with deep compassion, as a result of which the scene acquires a new humanitarian meaning.

Ivanov's biblical sketch. The Appearance of Christ to Mary Magdalene, is interpreted in a completely different vein than the same scene in his oil painting of 1835. Nothing is left of the former theatricality, every-thing looks natural and more realistic. Compared to a similar drawing by the typical Nazarcne Janssen, this sketch vividly illustrates how far removed from the Nazarene canons Ivanov was. Janssen depicted Christ and Mary Magdalene in the spirit of Gothic miniatures.

During the last years of his stay in Italy, Ivanov devoted a great deal of effort to landscape painting. Dating from this period is a watercolour drawing entitled The Sea, in which the artist boldly constructs space. There is no object in the drawing which has a scale. Everything has acquired the character of something irrelative and eternal. The picture of nature is reduced to a combination of several tones. Devoid of any artificial effects, this small watercolour can be regarded as the very incarnation of nature.