“The Stone Age” Painted frieze. Fragment 2

In the end o the XIX century knowledge of archeologists, anthropologists and ethnographist of the Russian academic school about ancient people living in the Stone Age were based on recently found archeological findings, including items of ancient art, that overwhelmed not only the world of scientists. But even in the published in 1881 fundamental two-volume research by A.S.Uvarov “The Archaeology of Russia: The Stone Age” the artist could not find answers to complicated questions, that he had during the work process over the painting. As Vasnetsov remembered, “The Stone Age” was ordered by Uvarov – the programme was given by him, but in very common features, for example, manufacturing animals’ skin, flinty tools, pots, controlling fire, hunting a mammoth. However, a mammoth hunt was suggested by me… Scenes and persons as well as costumes were made up by me. Details: animal bones, flinty tools were pointed partly by Anuchin and Sizov.” The painting became the first artistic reconstruction of the ancient humans’ world in Russian art. Igor Grabar, painter, critic and historian of art, wrote about this picture: this is “the only in European pictural art composition, that makes people believe in these ancient humans authenticity”. According to the contemporaries, “the Stone Age” was painted in the summer house of famous arts patron Savva Mamontov, in Abramtsevo near Moscow, that Vasnezov with his family visited in the summer of 1883 and 1884. The artist managed to find a persuasive type of appearance for his characters. They are not similar to the sketches from nature of peasants of closest villages and guests of the painter's studio in Abramtsevo among whom young Valentin Serov was. Artistic intuition allowed to create in the painting the image of the natural world and a human that are many millenniums far from us. The tradition to present the humanity past in forms of antiquity influenced to the way Vasnezov depicted main characters of “The Stone Age” – so called “the dreamer” and the head of a tribe. Their perfect beauty is a dominant of the whole painting and confronts kept apart in the hall wild scene of the night feast. Later in his diaries Vasnezov developed and summarized the main theme of the painting “The Stone Age”: “Human with his being inevitably and powerfully influenced, influence and will influence on the life of the whole Earth in a good and in a bad way, depending on his moral and spiritual development and state” (1909).