Page:Benois - The Russian School of Painting (1916).djvu/138

 and old Russian iconography, to which Vasnetzov applied, without much taste, a rather hollow pathos and fairy-tale effects. The Cathedral of St. Vladimir, at Kiev, decorated by him, cannot bear comparison with the ideal Christian temple, the dream of Ivanov. Just like Flandrin's attempt to restore the Roman-Byzantine painting, like the works of Steinle and of Cornelius' disciples, who endeavoured to return to the purely German style of Dürer,—Vasnetzov's efforts will hold in the history of art an honourable, though not very considerable place. These phases of the church painting of the nineteenth century are infinitely inferior to Ivanov's grandiose conceptions, to his lofty magnificence and prophetic might.

Besides, even in the purely pictoral respect, Vasnetzov's canvases are far below Ivanov's works. In comparison with Ivanov, Gay is a barbarian, yet, as his portraits prove beyond doubt, he did not completely forsake the artistic traditions. It was as though he disdained further development and would not take advantage of the achievements of his times out of conviction, rather than because of any other reason. But Vasnetzov was different. He was the true child of the seventies and eighties, the dreariest period in the history of Russian painting. Vasnetzov's technique is feeble and bears the imprint of a dilettante's timidity,