ИСТИНА

In this paper I will argue that the appearance of the icon-painter’s patternbook (litsevoi ikonopysnyi podlinnik) in the 16th century was one of the crucial factors in the development of the Russian art after 1453. It considerably changed the basic Byzantine concept of icons as spatial images mediating between the earthly and heavenly realms. Moreover, the patternbook transformed the whole process of icon painting which was reduced to reproduction of fixed schemes, then painted by the conventional colors. The common contemporary perception of icons as flat and decorative pictures charged with particular religious messages goes back to this unofficial reform, which declared the following to Byzantine models, but in practice destroyed the principles of the Eastern Christian iconicity.