Page:Benois - The Russian School of Painting (1916).djvu/133

 that is, during the period of the highest development of the positivistic tendencies in Russia. And yet the picture "Christ in the Desert" strikes one because of its hollowness, the lack of conviction and the absence of a definite idea. Kramskoy approached his theme too cautiously, too calculatingly,—his mind stirred up by no inner tempest; he intended to lay bare mankind's greatest and most complicated notions by means of the plainest materials sliced out directly from life. Kramskoy forgot the specific laws of painting, the relative poverty of its means and, at the same time, he neglected its peculiar wealth. The human figure represented among cliffs which are scrupulously copied from nature, and draped in unbearably accurate folds, is wholly incapable—without verbal commentaries—of expressing the multitude of ideas that agitated and tormented the artist's mind, despite the suffering expressed on the face of the figure. So that this fairly satisfying work, though touching in its lofty seriousness, in no way indicates Kramskoy's dependence on Ivanov's deep revelations, although the former was rather fond of pointing out this imaginary dependence.

The same imprint of excessive reserve and cautious tameness lies on Kramskoy's other works, in which he took the liberty of deviating from the canon of realism. His "Ruslan," his "Nymphs" are minutely deliberate