2025.3

Last year, the collection of books on art studies in Russian was enriched by an important scientific research work: the monograph by Professor Alexander P. Lobodanov, Dean of the Faculty of Arts at Lomonosov Moscow State University, titled "Leonardo da Vinci: Set Designer, Musician, Artifex".

This paper outlines this work, serving both as a detailed commentary and a personal reflection on the insights derived from the study. The author of the article intentionally avoids the term 'review', as the idea and intent of the paper is not to review and critique, but to respond to the significant research, which offers a fresh perspective on the image of the great Italian master, which remains largely unknown to the Russian-speaking audience.

The purpose of the paper is not to clarify or expand upon the ideas presented in the monograph, but rather to broaden the discussion of specific topics raised within it. Due to the limited scope of this paper, only a few key issues will be selected, those that seemed major to the author's viewpoint.

In this article, the essay is considered as a genre of documentary fiction, which conveys a series of impressions from an observer, structured in accordance with the principles of an artwork. In all the texts studied, the author's idiosyncrasy is marked by a vivid personality. Notably, it is conveyed using maximum expressivity, implying the creation of a special flavour of qualitative features of objects, phenomena and actions presented as a work of art. When choosing the means of artistic expression, Spanish authors prefer rarely used, often archaic language forms. Consideration of literary and cultural essays written in the form of philosophical and lyrical sketches allows us to conclude that their Spanish authors, obeying the task of creating the most perfect aesthetic representation of someone else's geocultural space for their readers, carry it out focusing on the traditional dominants of creative perception — history and mythology. The space directly connected with mythology is of the highest value for the Spanish observer: places associated with ancient myths evoke creative awe and are designed to revive long-forgotten archetypes of knowledge in the imagination of contemporaries. In this way, they establish a special relationship with the outside world ('mundus realis'), transforming it through aestheticizing interpretation, and place the reader in the world of their imagination ('mundus imaginabilis'), giving reality a special value and perfect form. Thus, the creative act of the master of the word elevates the image to the height of an artwork and changes the reader's perception of the world, who gets an ability to see the sacred meanings hidden from a profane gaze.

The article studies the views of Alexander A. Ivanov, a prominent Russian artist, concerning the way the scholarship in Rome, being awarded at the end of an academic course, generally contributed to the shaping a graduate from the Petersburg Academy of Arts. The study of a wide range of historical sources, including unpublished ones, allows for outlining Ivanov's views on the advantages and disadvantages of staying in Italy, which he describes as "the true fatherland of artists". His idealised image of the country was largely shaped by comparing and contrasting it to the daily reality of Rome, which, in his view, at every turn concealed temptations for an inexperienced artist. The thorough analysis of the material provides a deeper understanding of Alexander Ivanov's system of aesthetic views in general, as well as adds invaluable insights into his life and artistic biography

The article outlines the characteristics of interpretating artworks. The author proceeds from Umberto Eco’s theory of “openness”, according to which the process of perceiving an artwork is centered on the recipient, who inevitably adds their “existential situation” to the information received. The author aims to demonstrate the way Eco’s theory promotes awareness of the limits of interpretation, determined by such factors as historicity, context and integrity of the text, while the society acts as its guarantor. The author brings out that a work of art is always “broader” than its author; otherwise stated, it has the potential to generate new cultural meanings. Additionally, the author highlights that the interpreter relies on the so-called “zero-degree values” to explore the text’s every potential (including meanings beyond the author’s original intention), which are shaped by the historical and socio-cultural context. This theoretical review provides every fact to conclude that, despite the range of approaches to analysing artworks is supposed to expand under new information and communication technologies, Eco’s methodological system of studying the prerequisites and constraints of interpretation should be considered universally applicable and could be exploited to investigate new forms of communication.

Studying a work of art is traditionally considered as an act of communication aimed at extracting some information — a message. However, the ‘communication’ with a piece of art has limitations, as the researcher does not communicate anything to the artwork. However, while interpreting the received message the scholar adds new meanings to it, and at the same time serves as a medium, transmitting both the well-received message and their interpretation to a third party in another act of communication (for example, to the reader of a scientific paper). The article explores some natural prerequisites and constraints of both ‘communication’ with a piece of art and the message we receive, which arise from two factors: what we know about the artwork (metaknowledge) and how accurate this knowledge is. The paper provides vivid examples to illustrate the mistakes caused by disregarding the work of art as a source of information. Notably, the roots of such mistakes not infrequently stem from the researcher’s biases rather than the characteristics of the artwork itself. Quite often the challenges posed by such ‘communication limitations’ cannot be overcome, while these limitations cannot be ignored; the researcher could only accept their existing. Additionally, the author demonstrates the technique of “in terviewing” a piece of art, emphasizing the need to reassess the primarily obtained information about the object.

The article explores visual representations of one of the most well-known biographical narratives in Russian culture — the story of young Lomonosov's journey to Moscow. It is argued that the "road" episode, originally everyday in nature, gradually acquired symbolic meaning and was reinterpreted as a visual narrative about the "path to science," reflecting the ascent from the lower social strata to the heights of knowledge and public recognition. It is substantiated that the artistic images created did not merely illustrate a biographical episode but helped to form a stable visual formula conveying cultural meanings such as the thirst for knowledge, the pursuit of self-development, and the movement toward a goal. Special attention is given to the analysis of compositional solutions, artistic techniques, and symbolic elements through which artists transformed realistic depictions into metaphorical images. Overall, the article demonstrates how visual art contributes to the consolidation of significant biographical plots in collective cultural memory.

The article examines a masterpiece of early Portuguese painting, the polyptych of Nuno Gonçalves, a 15th-century artist. The preserved part of the polyptych consists of several wooden panels with images of Saint Vicente, Lisbon's patron saint. Created during the Proto-Renaissance, the artwork aims to glorify the Age of Discovery, when the Portuguese were striving to build a new world empire. Gonçalves achieves remarkable skill in creating individual portraits, which positions him as a pioneer of early Portuguese portrait painting. His works serve as a testimony to the history of Portugal, its state and ethno-social structure. The artist's talent is revealed in his innovative desire to realistically portray people belonging to different social classes and corporations, and in his striving to reflect their psychological depth rather than simply catch the physical appearance. At the same time, Gonsalves' art is rich is symbolism, both offering insights into material culture subjects (clothes, costumes, weapons, books) and symbolically and emblematically outlining a deeper understanding of existence and genuine motives behind human actions.

The study outlines the transformations that Russian museum activity has undergone in the second half of the 20th century in terms of forms and meanings. The authors conduct a historical review of the music festival "December Evenings", which is a museum project initially devised to embody synthesis of various arts. The paper singles out socio-cultural aspects promoting the development of artistic and educational Russian traditions, such as salons, music circles, musical and poetic evenings of the 19th — early 20th centuries, domestic solo and chamber ensemble performance. The analysis of "December Evenings" festival programmes revealed that the principles of monothematism and monostylistics were put forward from the very first decades of the museum project functioning. The authors identify the 1986's festival to be the peak of the monostylistic concept, which featured a concert and theatrical production of the play "The Snow Maiden" by A. Ostrovsky (with music by P. Tchaikovsky), set against the exposition of paintings by I. Levitan. The combination of musical programmes, art exhibitions, theatrical productions, and inviting museums to contribute with household items of the appropriate epoch reflects a creative and sometimes provocative nature of the projects aimed at updating the museum festival's format. 1988 and 1989's festival programmes demonstrated a tendency towards conveying new museum festival concepts, based on expanding the range of themes and designing polystylistic experiments. After the passing of the festival's founder, S. Richter, outstanding Russian violist and conductor Yu. Bashmet maintained the highly-performing standards of the participants invited to the "December Evenings". Simultaneously, he transformed the format from a chamber event, preserving the traditions of home music-making, to a large-scale secular festival. To devise the festival concept the comparing and contrasting were largely used, which allowed to determine common and distinctive features in the worldview of composers and artists and their expressiveness (the festival "Harmony and Counterpoint. Russia — Germany of the 19th century", 2003). The culturological aspect identified in the "December Evenings" festival provides an opportunity to single out the factors contributing to the project's success, ensuring its social significance, and providing the potential to re-actualise social memory and shape cultural consciousness of the society. The authors highlight the role social communication — accumulating and information preserving – plays in the project and focus on its crucial function within the festival. The study also addresses the potential for a long-term development of the festival.

The article suggests a positive answer to the question whether William Shakespeare from Stratford could have visited the countries of Continental Europe, which allows one to interpret many of his texts with a fair degree of certainty and to discard the unorthodox theories offered by the disintegrators of the Shakespearean canon and by the anti-Stratfordians, as well as the not impartial theses of the politically orientated British-American academic literary criticism. The historical and literary information offered allows one to get a comprehensive idea of the problem under discussion and of the reasons of why so far consensus in this sphere has not been reached. The article also contains an overview of the significant events connected with the pre-Shakespearean and the Shakespearean periods in this history of England, which explains why so many contemporary documents had been either destroyed or lost and why in so many cases the remaining data had been either declared to be irrelevant for the Shakespeare studies or had been interpreted with no reference to the objective historical context. All this coupled with the idolization of Shakespeare eventually led quite a number of Shakespearologists to believing that his texts must have been written by somebody else. Side by side with reviewing some points of the anti-Stratfordian theories the article reveals certain facts of William Shakespeare's life and work, which are objectively relevant for reconstructing his biography and for an adequate interpretation of his works. The key idea of the paper may be formulated as follows: though the direct information concerning Shakespeare's life and works is rightly believed to be insufficient, the obstacles in this case may be overcome through carefully considering the existing direct and circumstantial evidence (analogy in this situation being the basic methodological principle) in order to create an irrefutable system of arguments in favour of attributing to their generally accepted author the Shakespearean texts which one way or another reflect the realia of contemporary Continental Europe. The main directions of the future Shakespeare studies are also outlined.

The article examines specific features of historical dance language and everyday dance language, as well as outlines the processes of form- and meaning-generation. The term "pre-stage dance" is introduced to provide a more comprehensive understanding of this type of dance expression. The paper analyses the early historical stages of pre-stage dance development, focusing on Medieval courtly culture and the Renaissance. The study reveals that before-stage, pre-stage and stage types of dance are interrelated in terms of the composition and construction of their formal structures. The research identifies three stages: early accumulation of language material through borrowing and rethinking forms from folk (pre-stage) dance; systematization of this material and the onset of constructing a unique system of expression; and the search for a composition using the language of pre-stage dance.

The article outlines the typology of modern Russian opera created in the 1990s – 2010s. This genre represents an important layer of modern Russian culture and musical art. Its development reflects the general processes occurring in these spheres of human activity, allowing us to consider opera not only in the context of musical creativity, but also in relation to other forms of art. The period in question was markedly transitional, which affected artistic processes in Russian art as a whole and in opera specifically. The transition is highlighted by the diversity and multidirectionality of artistic and aesthetic concepts, as well as the varying opinions of composers, scientists and critics regarding the definition and boundaries of the opera genre in modern music. The historical period in question demands that the traditional criteria of genre typology were revisited, and a more flexible model were devised to allow for structuring the corpus of Russian operas created from the turn of the 20th to the early 21st centuries.