[ альбом ]
Произведения искусства
в новых находках советских археологов.
// М.: «Искусство». 1977. 216 с.
Содержание
I. А.А. Формозов. Искусство каменного и бронзового веков. — 6
II. И.В. Яценко. Искусство эпохи раннего железа. — 43
III. A.М. Беленицкий. Искусство античных и средневековых городов Средней Азии. — 105
IV. B.П. Даркевич. Древняя Русь X-XIII вв. — 159
Список иллюстраций. — 199-215
List of illustrations. — 199-215
Литература. — 199-215
Literature. — 199-215
Введение. ^
Со времён Ренессанса археологические раскопки служили одним из важнейших источников пополнения художественных собраний. В России уже с XVIII века раскопки в Сибири и Северном Причерноморье постоянно обогащали коллекции Петровской кунсткамеры и Императорского Эрмитажа произведениями скифского, античного и древнетюркского искусства. Успешные исследования наших археологов XIX века позволили выпустить в конце столетия обильно иллюстрированное шеститомное издание «Русские древности в памятниках искусства» И.И. Толстого и Н.П. Кондакова. Оно охватывало памятники железного века на Кавказе, в Сибири и Средней Азии, находки в древнегреческих городах и некрополях, в скифских и славянских курганах. Это издание вызвало столь большой интерес, что выпуск, посвящённый античному искусству Причерноморья, был переведён на французский язык и опубликован в Париже С. Рейнаком.
Общеизвестны достижения советской археологии, восстановившей многие яркие, но забытые этапы в развитии культуры на территории СССР. Работы наших учёных по-новому осветили не только историю хозяйства или социального строя, но и ранние периоды в истории искусства. Замечательные произведения художников каменного века, скульпторов и живописцев из античных и средневековых центров Грузии и Армении, Узбекистана и Таджикистана, древнегреческих и древнерусских ювелиров охарактеризованы как в специальных статьях и монографиях, так и в ряде научно-популярных книг и альбомов.
Следует признать, однако, что новые интереснейшие находки произведений древнего искусства обычно не сразу попадают в поле зрения искусствоведов и широкого круга читателей. Сведения об этих находках публикуются в основном в разного рода малотиражных сборниках, бюллетенях, местных изданиях и не скоро переходят оттуда на страницы обобщающих работ. Это обстоятельство и побудило издательство «Искусство» подготовить специальное издание, посвящённое произведениям древних художников, обнаруженным при раскопках в СССР за последние десять — пятнадцать лет.
Авторы — археологи — столкнулись при этом с большими трудностями. Материала оказалось так много, что поневоле пришлось отказаться от исчерпывающей полноты и сосредоточиться лишь на четырёх крупных темах: искусстве каменного и бронзового века, искусстве скифов и других кочевников начала железного века, искусстве античных и средневековых городов Средней Азии и древнерусском искусстве. За пределами нашего альбома остались такие важные темы, как искусство античного мира на Кавказе, творчество древних мастеров Закавказья, средневековые памятники в Туве, Забайкалье, на Дальнем Востоке и т.д. Некоторые любопытные находки последнего времени ещё не опубликованы теми, кому посчастливилось их сделать, и также не вошли в наше издание. Несмотря на это, нам кажется, что включённый в альбом материал даёт достаточное представление и о художественных сокровищах нашей страны и об успехах советских археологов.
Summary. ^
The album is devoted to works of art found in the USSR territory during archaeological excavations in the last 10-15 years.
The most ancient ones date back to paleolithic times. They include small female figurines cut from mammoth tusks and ochre rock-paintings of Kapova Cave in Bashkiria, showing mammoths, rhinoceroces and bizons, which were the main hunted animals in the Ice Age. Rock-engravings were created also at later stages of the Stone Age. The earliest rock-engravings in Kobystan, near Baku, showing dancing scenes, figures of wild bulls, horses, etc., date to mesolithic. New neolithic petroglyphs were found on the White Sea in the Zalavruga area. Complex scenes of a narrative nature have been pecked on flat granite rocks: those of hunting the white whale in the sea and chasing of elks by hunters on skis and with bows in their hands. The discovery of bone sculptures in the Moscow Region and Latvia and wood carvings in the Komi ASSR, also date to this period. The rock-engravings and sculpture of Siberia's taiga-covered regions — Angara petroglyphs and figures of beasts found near Tomsk — are akin to neolithic art of the European part of the USSR. The forest and taiga dwellers remained hunters all the way up to the Bronze Age. Because of that their art also resembles in many ways the art of paleolithic hunters.
Tribes of crop farmers, whose art differed from that of the forest hunters, inhabited the south of the USSR — the territory now taken up by the Ukraine, Moldavia and Turkmenia — in the 4th — 3rd milleniums В.С. Vessels, with rich ornaments done in several paints and figurines of people and animals were unearthed in Tripolye type settlements near the Black Sea coast and in the «tepe» mounds in Southern Turkmenia.
Cattle-breeding tribes occupied the steppe zone. The stone idols, resembling the ones found long ago in the Minusinsk hollow, were their typical creations. Today these sculptures are connected with the definite Okunev type of interrments of the 2nd millenium В.С. Excavations of the Okunev graveyards also produced new works of art — stone figurines and stone plates with engravings of a fantastic beast of prey and some kind of anthropomorphic deity.
The first cast sculptures and metal weapons with geometric patterns and images of people and animals, appeared in the Bronze Age. Items of this type are known in the Northern Caucasus and in Western Siberia, where a knife with a sculpted handle was found near Omsk. The handle depicts a man on skis harnessing a horse.
A new chapter was opened in ancient art in the 8th — 7th centuries В.С., at the time when the so-called Scythian animal style was developed. Its characteristic feature is the combination of a realistic drawing with a peculiar manner in depicting the parts of animal body. Beasts of prey — lions, leopards, tigers and eagles, and also deer, goats, rams and fantastic griffons; quite often shown fighting each other — were depicted more frequently. The animal style was spread from Northern Black Sea coast to the steppes and deserts in Central Asia. Quite a few new works of this style have been lately added to the rich finds made before the October Revolution and now kept in the State Museum Hermitage gold store-room. Numerous shaped plates from horse harness, vessels for fetes, jewellery, etc., were unearthed in the graves of the Scythians, Sarmatians and their neighbours. We discovered in the Northern Black Sea coast both items made by the Scythians
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and by Greek craftsmen from the Hellenic colonies which were set up on the Black Sea. These masters often fulfilled orders of Scythian noblemen, taking into account their artistic tastes. The gold cover for a quiver with scenes from the life of Achilles, animal figures and plant ornament, found in a mound not far from Rostov-on-Don; the vessel with scenes from Scythians' life, from the Gaimanova mogila in the Zaporozhye Region, and the pectoral ornament, found in the Tolstaya mogila in Dniepropetrovsk Region, which is covered with several basreliefs, showing the life of Scythians, which the Greeks regarded as a model of sane and peaceful existence, stand out from among this group of art works. They were made in 4th — 3rd centuries В.C. The silver gilded bowls of Italic workmanship and phalars from the Sadovyi mound near Novocherkassk (1st century В.C.) date to later times when Sarmatian tribes moved to the Northern Black Sea coast from the East.
The further progress in the art of jewellery making in the South of the European part of the USSR may be seen in the items found in the buried treasure, dating back to 6th — 7th centuries A.D., near the Glodossy Village in the Ukraine and in the graves of the Alans, descendants of the Sarmatians, dating back to the 11th — 12th centuries, in the Northern Caucasus.
The relics of Ancient Greek art are represented in the album by the high-relief images of Hercules, found in the Crimea (dating back to the 3rd century В.С.); the bronze figurine of an Amazon riding a horse, and the marble sculpture of Aphrodite (2nd century B.C.) found in the Kepy settlement on the Taman Peninsula.
The samples of the Scythian animal style, made by local tribes without noticeable traces of Hellenic influence, come from the lower reaches of the Volga, the Urals, the Aral Sea, Kazakhstan and Tuva.
Highly-developed states — centres of original art, which, at the same time, absorbed Hellenic, Ancient Eastern and Indian influences — used to exist in southern areas of Central Asia in the Iron Age. The palace-type building, explored in Khalchayan near the city of Termez, dates back to 1st century B.C. — 1st century A.D. the epoch of Kushan kingdom. The clay statues found there are in part replicas of Hellenic statues of Athena and Apollo, and in part are portraits of local rulers. The remnants of Dalverzin, a Kushan city ot the 2nd — 3rd centuries A.D., which also yielded interesting statues, are slightly more recent.
The finds made in the Buddhist temple in Adzhina-Tepe and in Pendzhikent city in Tajikistan date back to early Middle Ages. 7th — 8th centuries frescoes and sculptures were found there. The frescoes show episodes from the «Rustemiade», a Central Asian epic; illustrations to the Indian collection «Panchatantra» and to Aesop's fables and scenes from everyday life. There are some interesting woodcarvings, in particular, sculptures of Mitra, the sun deity, depicted as a horse-driver on a chariot; Anakhita, Venus astride a lion, etc.
Murals, depicting the arrival of envoys from King of Chaganian, a princedom in Surkhan-Darya valley, to the King of Samarkand, were found in Afrasiab, the ancient city in Samarkand. It shows a procession of riders on elephants, camels and horses going towards a pavilion where a group of richly dressed people are welcoming them.
Applied arts developed in Central Asia alongside with monumental art. The most interesting finds of this art are the openwork plates from Ak-Beshim in Kirghizin with images of Buddhist deities.
After the Arab conquest of the Central Asia (8th century) and the spread of Islam the art changed. Ornamentalism started to replace imagery. Parget carvings from Khuttal-Khulbuk in Tajikistan, Mervian glazed ceramics, etc., are samples of the rich decor of that time.
The album's fourth theme is the art of Ancient Rus. Excavations in Novgorod, Kiev, Smolensk and other cities acquainted us with the vivid art of Medieval Rus, whose progress was cut short by the Mongol invasion. Jewellery making attained great heights at the time. This can be seen, for example, from the silver bracelets, decorated with niello
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and gilding, pendants and beads, found in buried treasure in Old Ryazan in the 12th — early 13th centuries. One of the bracelets shows a psaltery-player, dressed up as a Merry Andrew and a woman dancer holding a bowl — a scene from performances by Merry Andrews, which originated in pagan times and were preserved for a long time after Russia adopted Christianity. Another bracelet is adorned with feudal heraldry insignia — a lion, a griffon and a dragon.
Many previously unknown aspects of material and spiritual culture of Ancient Rus were restored during excavations performed in Novgorod Veliki, where wood is well preserved in the marshy soil. The wooden furniture, tableware, domestic utensils, boards for making cookies and wood slivers for writing on wax are all adorned by uninterrupted weaving ornament. An oaken column, dating back to the 11th century, a detail of the entrance to a rich house, shows that the stone reliefs in Vladimir-Suzdal architecture had their prototypes in wood-carving art as well. Small sculptures and bas-reliefs were carved from wood and bone. The images of a dragon swallowing the sun and a mermaid drinking from a horn reflect the ancient pagan myths and legends. Of interest are the images of musicians found in Serensk, Novgorod and Volkovysk which show such musical instruments as psaltery, reed-pipe, bag-pipe and drum.
Items of Byzantian and West European origin are found alongside with the ones made by Russian craftsmen. The silver bowl with gilded ornaments found in Chernigov depicts epizodes from the poem about Digenis Akritas, defender of Byzantium from the pagan Saracenes. A gold lid, with ornament in relief, made in the 12th century by Lotharingian masters, was found together with the bowl. The bone plaque of the 14th century with a bas-relief image of «storming the castle of love» — a poetic allegory that was wide spread in French art of the time — was found in Novgorod.
The finds made in Ancient Russian cities speak of the definite unity in the medieval culture of the East and West and provide a key to the understanding of the process of the emergence of independent Russian culture.
The album embraces only an insignificant part of the treasures, discovered by the Soviet archaeologists in the recent years, but the material collected in it characterizes, to a certain extent, the main stages in the development of culture and art on the USSR territory.
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