26.12.2011

Artist Lilia Slavinskaya, owner of the gallery Les Oreasdes - Oreads

“It all depends on education and the environment in which a person grew up. What picture he sees for the first time consciously, and sometimes unconsciously, lays a code in a person for the rest of his life. Then, according to this code, he will build his relationship with art ", - says the owner of the gallery Les Oreasdes - Oreads, artist Lilia Slavinskaya

A person's relationship with the visual arts consists of several components: the first is the family, that is, the cultural environment in which the person grew up. The second is the level of his education. The third is the habitat, city, place, house in which he grew and formed. The fourth is the level of "observance", that is, the number of pictures that a person has ever seen ...

Art, classical or contemporary, is a language that can be understood or not. The fact is that art develops continuously and there is a direct relationship between the classical and modern schools. A person who has mastered the language of classical art understands modern language and sees this continuously developing connection. If he has no experience of dealing with the cultural heritage of past centuries, it is hard for him. This language is incomprehensible because the person is not prepared. He sees nothing and does not understand anything. What to do?

Of course, it is very important when parents are attracted to culture. Much depends on their level of education and how these people equip their homes. The child has not yet been born, and the expectant mother goes to exhibitions and he “walks with her,” then he is born and almost immediately captures everything that he sees around him. Unconsciously "absorbs" all the elements of the environment - beauty or vice versa. The taste, or rather its basis, arises already at this stage. They say: "The taste is absorbed with mother's milk." This is not 100 percent correct. Of course, taste sharpens, develops over the course of life and, as I said, many factors influence its improvement. But the first and most durable, which is especially important, a person receives landmarks precisely in childhood ...

Habitat plays a huge role. A country, a city in it, a street in a city, a house on the street, an apartment in a house. In Italy, for example, every centimeter is literally imbued with art and beauty. The environment itself is artistic and this is the best textbook of beauty. Galleries, mosaics, architecture, details…. This is how taste is formed ... The influence of art on a person in general, I am sure, occurs through the details, which together turn into general harmony. Art has a calming effect on a person and, ultimately, has an impact on character.

I assign the most important role to museums. Now people travel a lot, watch, visit. The museum is the keeper of the language of fine arts. Getting there, a person begins to see the connection between the classical and modern languages, to see how this language develops harmoniously. All this becomes the reason that a person masters the language of contemporary art, which allows him to literally enjoy the most different forms of cultural manifestation.

None of the creatures that inhabit the earth, except man, create anything. Monkeys are similar to us, but they do not create anything, and even at the dawn of his birth, man tried to sculpt, paint or carve something beautiful in stone ... In a sense, the need for creativity is an anomaly for the animal world. And this need is in each of us. The ability to create and perceive is all creativity. Therefore, watching pictures is a whole creative process ...

What works in a person that was laid down in childhood, he instinctively strives for something like that. I see a lot of examples when people, having got the opportunity to acquire painting for themselves, look for and buy those paintings, the typology of which is well known to them from childhood, from school - nature, landscapes ... and they really like it. And this is good, because they get great pleasure from contemplation. For example, a person acquires a painting such as "Barge Haulers on the Volga". He likes it, he is glad, he finds rest for himself.

But time passes, the impact of the environment, museums, friends, trips affects. He suddenly likes something different! A person begins to look closely, to look deeper and more closely into this other, and it turns out that he has risen to a new level of perception. He understood another, more modern language. And then time passes and another horizon opens up for him ... So gradually he rushes on.

There is only one recipe: travel more, watch more ... Quantity necessarily translates into quality.

A.N. Yar-Kravchenko.
AM Gorky reads his fairy tale "Girl and Death" to IV Stalin, VM Molotov and K. Ye Voroshilov on October 11, 1931.
1949.

Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec.
Reading room at Melrum Castle. Portrait of Countess Adele de Toulouse-Lautrec.
1886-1887.

Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec.
Lover of reading.
1889.

Berthe Morisot.
Reading. mother and sister of the artist.
1869-1870.

Vasily Semyonovich Sadovnikov.
Nevsky Prospect near the house of the Lutheran Church, which housed a bookstore and a library for reading AF Smirdin. Fragment of the panorama of Nevsky Prospect.
1830th.

Gerard Doe.
An elderly woman reading. Portrait of Rembrandt's mother.

Ira Ivanchenko, a 16-year-old from Kiev, developed her reading speed to 163,333 words per minute, having completely mastered the material she read. This result was officially registered in the presence of journalists. Back in 1989, an unofficial reading speed record was recorded - 416,250 words per minute. When examining the brain of record holder Evgenia Alekseenko, experts have developed a special test. During the test, in the presence of several scientists, Evgenia read 1390 words in 1/5 of a second. This is the time it takes a person to blink.

Wonderful speed. "Miracles and Adventures" №11 2011.

Gerard Terborch.
Reading lesson.

Elizaveta Merkurievna Boehm (Endaurova).
He wrote all day until evening, but there is nothing to read! I would say a word, but the bear is not far off!

Jean Honore Fragonard.
Reading woman.

Ivan Nikolaevich Kramskoy.
Reading. Portrait of Sofia Nikolaevna Kramskoy.

Ilya Efimovich Repin.
Reading girl.
1876.

Ilya Efimovich Repin.
Reading aloud.
1878.

Ilya Efimovich Repin.
Portrait of E. G. Mamontova reading.
1879.

Ilya Efimovich Repin.
Lev Nikolaevich Tolstoy reading.
1891.

Ilya Efimovich Repin.
Reading (Portrait of Natalia Borisovna Nordman).
1901.

Ilya Efimovich Repin.
M. Gorky reads his drama Children of the Sun in Penates.
1905.

Ilya Efimovich Repin.
A. Pushkin at the act in the Lyceum on January 8, 1815 reads his poem "Memories in Tsarskoe Selo".
1911.

Reading room.

Annunciation (Reading Mary).

Nikolay Petrovich Bogdanov-Belsky.
Sunday reading at a rural school.
1895.

Nishikawa Sukenobu.
Oiran Ehon Tokiwa reads a letter, two courtesans on the right.
1731.

Nikikawa Sukenobu.
Three girls are reading a letter.

Nishikawa Sukenobu.
Two girls reading a book.
From the album "Fude no Umi", p.7.

Nishikawa Sukenobu.
Three girls reading books for kotatsu.

O. Dmitrieva, V. Danilov.
NV Gogol reads the comedy "The Inspector General" in the circle of writers.
1962.

Courtesan reading a book.

A man reads to two women.

Reading lesson.

Reading Mary Magdalene.

Reading boy.

Reading under a lamp.
1880-1883.

Edouard Manet.
Reading.
1865-1873.

10.06.2015

How to learn to understand pictures?

Sometimes you can hear: "I do not understand this picture!". And what is it, to understand pictures? Why do some see a masterpiece in the canvas, while others - an incomprehensible daub, unworthy even of a kindergartener. Maybe the first know something unknown to the second? Or those who believe that art should not be understood, it should be felt, are right. Who is right is an open question, but you can improve your understanding of painting. It is about this below.

Learn more about painting.

A theoretical basis in any business is necessary, and painting is no exception. Without preparation, no one will be able to distinguish Rubens from Rembrandt or Titian from Raphael. Pay attention to the styles and trends in the visual arts, to the biographies of artists (this sometimes helps to understand the master), to the analysis of outstanding paintings. If until the 20th century everything is quite simple: antiquity, Renaissance, baroque, classicism and romanticism, then realism and impressionism. This is where the clear ordering ends and various "-isms" styles appear one after another, one from another, so that not every specialist will understand. By the way, all the information you need to get a "picturesque minimum" is presented on our website.

Learn to see painting.

As you know, "theory without practice is dead", so it is worth stocking up with catalogs of art galleries or albums with reproductions of various artists. Opening a random picture, you need to try to independently determine its style, genre, trend, era, and, if possible, the artist. This exercise can be done every day, but do not get carried away and make guessing an end in itself.

Train your sense of beauty.

The next step is to switch to real canvases. Every city has a museum or art gallery. At least once a month, visit it and see with your own eyes "living" works of art, which should already become a little clearer for you.

Try to distinguish between good and bad canvases.

Of course, the feeling of beauty is a very subjective concept, but masterpieces have been created in the history of mankind, the beauty of which no one doubts. It is the comparison with these benchmarks that can help you. True, one should not approach such a comparison mechanically. Notice three elements: line, color and volume. What dominates the picture? What gets the most attention? Answering these questions will help you gain a deeper understanding of the picture. Abstract pictures create big problems for understanding. The beauty of such creations is very often controversial. The difficulty in perceiving abstraction lies, first of all, in the absence of a coherent plot. But such pictures urge the viewer to turn off logic and look inside himself. As it was said at the beginning, painting does not need to be understood, it needs to be felt, because any painting is, first of all, emotions.

One of my favorite topics in art is painting about reading)))

What a spiritualized, meaningful and benevolent person reading people!

It seems to me that these are the best moments of life. When a person is carried away into the invisible world, turns on his fantasy, imagines pictures from the pages of books, he becomes a wizard. Pictures with family reading are especially touching. How good it is, how right it is!

I have already collected a whole collection of paintings on this topic. Today - the first part of the work.

Charles Edward Perugini (1839-1918), Girl Reading

I place the pictures in the order in which they came to me. I was unable to establish the authors of some of them.

This one, for example.

The young lady writes and rereads the amorous message. Forgetting about the letter, I indulged in light thoughts))) Love shines in her righteous eyes.

May God grant her happiness!

The next picture is also without the author. But what a scene of family life is captured on it!

The father of the family is deep in his serious reading. Mom reads a book to the children aloud. One of the children is studying, writing something in a notebook. And all this under the coziest large lampshade. What are they all great!

And how well it reads in the summer in the garden! The scent of flowers, fresh breeze, gentle sun. Idyll!


Allan R. Banks

Sweet reader in a yellow dress. Sitting comfortably in a chair and hovering somewhere in the clouds)))


Fragonard, Jean Honore (1732 - 1806)

This girl is also good. So homely, modest.

Will be a good wife and mother - there is no doubt about that.

Huntington Daniel. Study In A Wood.

Girl reading a book. I got so carried away that I forgot about everything in the world. Worries about the heroes of the novel.


Franz eybl

Two pictures of men highly commendable.

The first is emotional, addicting. Collected a large library. I am sure that he is working in the field of education.


Johann Hamza (1850-1927)

The second - philosophically smokes a pipe and is also full of ideas and reflections.


Pierre-auguste renoir

A real lady should be just that))) It is always pleasant to talk to her, as she read a lot and has good taste and manners. But at the same time, she is simple and respectful to any interlocutor.


Thomas Benjamin Kennington (1856-1916). Lady reading by a window.

Even from the back you can see how good and smart the lady at the table is. Paintings, photos on the walls, flowers in a vase, sophisticated outfit and hairstyle. She probably has a wonderful voice, she sings and plays music, and loves art dearly.


Fernand Toussaint (Belgian Painter, 1873 - 1955)

Thought, carried away by thoughts to unknown lands. They used to say - hovers in the empyrean. Makes some plans, and maybe castles in the air. May her dreams come true!


Paul Barthel

In ancient times, when knights fought for their ladies in tournaments, ladies read sublime treatises in order to be able to inspire fans to new feats)))


James Archer

A pure girl selflessly reads and there is so much intelligence and charm in her face!


Bulleid george lawrence

Needless to say, a woman reading a book is the best sight for a real man)))


Dolphin Anjolras

Here I was attracted by the bright outfit of the girl, but the main thing is that she does not rush around in it around the house, but quietly, calmly reads a book. He does the right thing.

Marianne (Preindlsberger) Stokes (1855 - 1927)

From childhood, you need to captivate kids with reading, then they will grow up as worthy and decent people.


Jan Frederik Pieter Portielje

A love letter, and possibly poetry. Blowing inspiration)))

Vittorio reggianini

The boys climbed into a hammock and read a book together. The sun smiles at them with pleasure.


Steven christopher seward

The title of this painting is Meditation.

Indeed, reading literary works is meditation. And we all need to remember to read books more often.

Pierre Auguste Cot (1837-1883). Meditation.

On a summer evening in 1978, a weighty parcel was delivered to the office of the publisher Franco Maria Ricci in Milan, where I worked as an editor in the foreign languages ​​department. Having opened it, instead of a manuscript, we saw many illustrations depicting a huge number of the strangest objects with which the most bizarre actions were performed. Each leaflet was titled in a language that none of the editors could recognize.

The accompanying letter said that the author, Luigi Serafini, created an encyclopedia of an imaginary world, strictly adhering to the laws of constructing a medieval scientific compendium: each page illustrated in detail a certain entry written in an absurd alphabet, which Serafini invented for two long years in his small apartment in Rome. To Ricci's credit, it must be said that he published this work in two sumptuous volumes with a delightful introduction by Italo Calvino, now it is one of the most curious collections of illustrations known to me. "Codex Seraphinianus", consisting exclusively of invented words and pictures, should be read without the help of the generally accepted language, through signs, the meaning of which is invented by the inquisitive reader himself.

But this is, of course, a bold exception. In most cases, the sequence of characters corresponds to the established code, and only ignorance of this code can make it impossible to read. And yet, in spite of this, I walk through the exhibition halls of the Rietburg Museum in Zurich, looking at Indian miniatures depicting mythological scenes from plots about which I know nothing, and trying to reconstruct these legends; I sit in front of prehistoric drawings on the rocks of the Tassilin Plateau in the Algerian Sahara and try to imagine the escape of giraffe-like animals; I leaf through a Japanese comic magazine at Narita Airport and come up with a story about characters I’m not destined to understand.

If I try to read a book in a language I do not know - Greek, Russian, Sanskrit - I, of course, will not understand anything; but if the book is supplied with illustrations, then without even understanding the explanations, I can usually say what they mean - although it will not necessarily be exactly what the text says. Serafini relied on the creativity of his readers.

Serafini had a forced predecessor. In the last few years of the 4th century, Saint Nile of Ankira (now Ankara, the capital of Turkey) founded a monastery near his hometown. We know almost nothing about Nile: the day of this saint is celebrated on November 12, he died around 430, was the author of several moralizing and ascetic treatises intended for his monks, and more than a thousand letters to abbots, friends and parishioners. In his youth, he studied with the famous John Chrysostom in Constantinople.

For centuries, until detectives from science plucked his life to the boneless, Saint Nile was the hero of an amazing story. According to the collection of the 6th century, which was compiled as a life chronicle, and now stands on the shelves next to adventure novels, Nil was born in Constantinople into an aristocratic family and became prefect at the court of Emperor Theodosius the Great. He married and had two children, but then, overwhelmed by spiritual torment, he abandoned his wife and daughter, and either in 390 or 404 (the narrators of this story are variable in their imaginary accuracy) joined the community of ascetics on Mount Sinai. where he and his son Theodulus led a reclusive and righteous life.

According to the "Lives", the virtue of Saint Nile and his son was so great that "aroused the hatred of demons and the envy of angels." Obviously, the dissatisfaction of the angels and demons led to the fact that in 410 the Saracen robbers attacked the skete, who cut most of the monks, and the rest, including the young Theodulus, were taken into slavery. By the grace of God, Nile escaped both swords and chains and went in search of his son. He found him in some town between Palestine and Arabian Petra, where the local bishop, touched by the saint's piety, ordained both father and son to the priesthood. Saint Nile returned to Mount Sinai, where he died at a venerable age, lulled by embarrassed angels and repentant demons.

We do not know what the monastery of St. Nile was like or where exactly it was located, but in one of his many letters he describes an example of the ideal church decoration, which, as we can assume, he used in his own chapel. Bishop Olympiodorus consulted with him about the erection of a church, which he wanted to decorate with images of saints, hunting scenes, images of animals and birds. Saint Nile, approving the saints, branded hunting scenes and animals, calling them "idle and unworthy of a brave Christian soul" and suggested depicting scenes of the Old and New Testaments "drawn by the hand of a gifted artist" instead. These scenes, placed on both sides of the Holy Cross, according to Nile, "will serve instead of books for the uneducated, tell them about the biblical story and amaze them with the depth of God's mercy."

Saint Nile thought that the illiterate would come to his church and read the pictures as if the words were in a book. He imagined how they would look at the wonderful decoration, not in any way reminiscent of "idle ornaments"; how they will look at the precious images, linking them with those that have already formed in their heads, invent stories about them or associate them with the sermons they have heard, and if the parishioners are still not completely "unlearned", then with fragments from Scripture.

Two centuries later, Pope Gregory the Great spoke in accordance with the views of St. Nile: “It is one thing to worship a painting, and quite another to study the Holy Scriptures with the help of a painting. What writing can give to the reader, pictures give people illiterate, able to perceive only by sight, because in pictures the ignorant see an example to follow, and those who do not know how to read, realize that in some way they are able to read. And therefore, especially for the common people, the pictures are somewhat similar to reading. " In 1025, the Council of Arras decreed: "What ordinary people cannot learn by studying the Scriptures, they are able to obtain by looking at pictures."

Although the second commandment given by God to Moses specifically states that one cannot create "any image of what is in the sky above, and what is on the earth below, and what is in the water below the earth," Jewish artists decorated religious objects even during the construction of the Temple of Solomon in Jerusalem. Over time, the ban became more strictly enforced, and artists had to invent compromises, such as giving forbidden human figures bird heads so as not to paint human faces. Disputes on this issue resumed in Christian Byzantium of the 8th-9th centuries, when the emperor Leo III, and later the iconoclastic emperors Constantine V and Theophilus, began to fight icons throughout the empire.

For the ancient Romans, the symbol of God (like the eagle for Jupiter) was a substitute for God himself. In those rare cases when Jupiter was depicted with his eagle, the eagle was no longer a designation of the divine presence, but became an attribute of Jupiter, such as lightning. The symbols of early Christianity had a dual nature, denoting not only the subject (a lamb for Christ, a dove for the Holy Spirit), but also a certain aspect of the subject (a lamb as a sacrifice of Christ, a dove as a promise of salvation of the Holy Spirit). They were not meant to be read as conceptual synonyms or simply copies of a deity. Their task was to graphically expand certain qualities of the central image, comment on them, emphasize them, and turn them into separate plots.

And, in the end, the main symbols of early Christianity lost some of their symbolic functions and became, in fact, ideograms: the crown of thorns denoted the Passion of Christ, and the dove - the Holy Spirit. These elementary images gradually became more complex, becoming more and more complex, so that entire episodes of the Bible became symbols of certain qualities of Christ, the Holy Spirit or the Virgin Mary, and at the same time, illustrations for some sacred episodes. Perhaps it was this wealth of meanings that Saint Nile had in mind when he proposed balancing the Old and New Testaments by placing scenes from them on both sides of the Holy Cross.

The fact that images of scenes from the Old and New Testaments can complement each other, giving the “unlearned” the Word of God, was already recognized by the evangelists themselves. In the Gospel of Matthew, the obvious connection between the Old and New Testaments is mentioned at least eight times: "And all this happened, that what the Lord said through the Prophet might be fulfilled." And Christ himself said that "everything that is written about Me in the law of Moses and in the prophets and psalms must be fulfilled." The New Testament contains 275 exact quotations from the Old Testament, plus 235 individual citations.

The concept of spiritual inheritance was not new even then; a contemporary of Christ, the Jewish philosopher Philo of Alexandria put forward the idea of ​​an all-pervading mind that manifests itself in all ages. This single and omniscient mind is also mentioned by Christ, who describes it as a Spirit that “breathes where it wants, and you hear its voice, but you don’t know where it comes from and where it goes,” and connects the present with the past and future. Origen, Tertullian, Saint Gregory of Nyssa and Saint Ambrose artistically described images from both Testaments and developed complex poetic explanations, and not a single passage in the Bible escaped their attention. "The New Testament," wrote St. Augustine in his most famous couplet, "is hidden in the Old, while the Old is revealed in the New."

At the time when Saint Nile was giving his recommendations, the iconography of the Christian church had already developed ways of depicting the omnipresence of the Spirit.One of the first examples of such images we see on a double door carved in Rome in the 4th century and installed in the Church of Saint Sabina. The casements depict scenes from the Old and New Testaments, which can be viewed sequentially.

The work is rather rough, and some details have worn away over the years of the pilgrims' hands, but what is depicted on the door can still be made out. On the one hand, there are three miracles attributed to Moses: when he made the waters of Mary sweet, the appearance of manna during the flight from Egypt (in two parts) and the extraction of water from a stone. On the other half of the door are three miracles of Christ: the return of sight to the blind, the multiplication of fish and loaves, and the turning of water into wine at a wedding in Cana.

What would a mid-5th century Christian read if he looked at these doors? In the tree with which Moses made sweet the bitter waters of the river Merrah, he would recognize the Cross, the symbol of Christ. The source, like Christ, was a fountain of living water that gave life to Christians. The rock in the desert, on which Moses struck, could also be read as the image of Christ, the Savior, from whom water flows like blood. Manna foreshadows the feast at Cana of Galilee and the Last Supper. But an unbeliever, not familiar with the dogmas of Christianity, would have read the images on the doors of the Church of Saint Sabina in about the same way as, but Serafini's thoughts, readers would have to understand his fantastic encyclopedia: creating, on the basis of the drawn images, their own plot and vocabulary.

Of course, this is not what Saint Nile intended. In 787, the VII Church Council in Nicaea decreed that not only the flock cannot interpret the paintings presented in the church, but the artist himself cannot attach any particular significance to his work. “Drawing pictures is not an invention of the artist,” declared the Council, “but the proclamation of the laws and traditions of the Church. The ancient patriarchs allowed to paint pictures on the walls of churches: this is their thought, their tradition. Only his art belongs to the artist, everything else belongs to the Fathers of the Church. "

When Gothic art flourished in the 13th century and paintings on the walls of the church gave way to colored glass and carved columns, biblical iconography moved from plaster to stained glass, wood and stone. Scripture lessons were now illuminated by the rays of the sun, stood in voluminous columns, telling believers stories in which the Old and New Testaments subtly reflected each other.

And then, at about the beginning of the XIV century, the images that Saint Nile wanted to place on the walls were reduced and collected in a book. Somewhere in the lower Rhine, several painters and engravers began to transfer overlapping images onto parchment and paper. These books, almost entirely composed of adjacent scenes, contained very few words. Sometimes artists would write captions on both sides of the page, and sometimes the words came straight out of the characters' mouths in long ribbons, much like the clouds in today's comics.

By the end of the 14th century, these books, consisting of only pictures, became very popular and remained so throughout the Middle Ages in a variety of forms: volumes with pictures on the whole page, the smallest miniatures, hand-painted engravings, and finally, already in the 15th century, printed books. The first of these date back to around 1462. At the time, these amazing books were called the Bibliae Pauperum or the Bible of the Beggars.

Essentially, these Bibles were large picture books with one or two scenes on each page. For example, in the so-called "Biblia Pauperum of Heidelberg" of the 15th century, the pages were divided into two halves, an upper and a lower one. The bottom half of one of the first pages depicts the Annunciation, and this picture should have been shown to believers on the day of the holiday. This scene is surrounded by images of four Old Testament prophets who foresaw the coming of Christ - David, Jeremiah, Isaiah and Ezekiel.

Above them, in the upper half, are given two scenes from the Old Testament: God curses the Serpent in the Garden of Eden, and Adam and Eve timidly stand nearby (Genesis, Chapter 3), as well as an angel calling Gideon to action, who spreads the sheared wool on the threshing floor to see if the Lord will save Israel (Judges chapter 37).

Chained to a lectern, opened on the right page, Biblia Pauperum showed these twin pictures to believers in sequence, day after day, month after month. Many did not understand at all the words written in Gothic letters around the characters; few people could understand the historical, allegorical and moral significance of all these images. But most people recognized the main characters and were able to use these images to find a connection between the plots of the New and Old Testament, simply due to the fact that they were depicted on the same page.

Priests and preachers, no doubt, could rely on these images, reinforcing the story of the events, decorating the sacred text. And the sacred texts themselves were read aloud day after day, throughout the year, so that in their lives people listened to most of the Bible many times. The main purpose of the Biblia Pauperum was not supposed to have been to provide a book for the illiterate parishioners to read, but to provide the priest with something like a prompter or topical guide, a starting point for preaching to help demonstrate Bible unity to the flock. If so (there are no documents that would confirm this), it quickly became clear, as with other books, that it can be used in different ways.

The first readers of Biblia Pauperum almost certainly did not know this name. It was invented already in the 18th century by the German writer Gotthold Ephraim Lessing, himself an enthusiastic reader, who believed that "books explain life." In 1770, beggar and sick, Lessing agreed to take on a very low-paid position as librarian from the languid Duke of Braunschweig at Wolfenbüttel. There he spent eight terrible years, writing his most famous play, Emilia Galotti, and a series of critical essays on the connection between various forms of theatrical performance.

Among other books in the Duke's library was the Biblia Pauperum. Lessing found an inscription in its margins, clearly in a later type. He decided that the book needed to be cataloged, and the ancient librarian, relying on the abundance of drawings and a small amount of text, considered that the book was intended for the illiterate, that is, for the poor, and gave it a new title. As Lessing noted, many of these Bibles were too richly ornamented to be considered books for the poor. Perhaps what was meant was not the owner - what belonged to the church was considered to be owned by everyone - but accessibility; The accidentally named Biblia Pauperum no longer belonged to scholars alone and gained popularity among believers who were interested in its subjects.

Lessing also drew attention to the similarity between the book's iconography and the stained glass windows in the Hirschau monastery. He suggested that the illustrations in the book were copies of the stained glass; and attributed them to the years 1503-1524 - the time of the ministry of Abbot Johann von Calw, that is, almost a hundred years before the "Biblia Pauperum" of Wolfenbüttel. Modern researchers still believe that it was not a copy, but now it is impossible to say whether the iconography of the Bible and stained glass windows was made in a single style that had been developed over several centuries. Nonetheless, Lessing was correct in noting that the "reading" of the pictures in the Biblia Pauperum and the stained-glass windows were essentially the same, and at the same time had nothing to do with reading the words written on the page.

For the educated Christian of the 14th century, a page from the ordinary Bible contained many meanings that the reader could learn about through the accompanying commentary or his own knowledge. It was possible to read at will for an hour or a year, interrupting and postponing, skipping sections and swallowing a whole page in one sitting. But the reading of the illustrated page "Biblia Pauperum" was almost instantaneous, since the "text" with the help of iconography was displayed as a whole, without semantic gradations, which means that the time of the story in the pictures had to coincide with the time that the reader should have spent on reading ...

“It is important to take into account,” wrote the Canadian philosopher Marshall McLuhan, “that old prints and engravings, like modern comic books, gave very little information about the position of an object in space or at a certain point in time. The viewer, or reader, had to participate in complementing and explaining the few clues given in the signature. Not much differ from characters in engravings and comics and television images, which also give almost no information about objects and suggest a high level of complicity of the viewer, who has to think out what was only hinted at in the mosaic of dots. "

As for me, centuries later, these two types of reading combine when I take up the morning newspaper: on the one hand, I slowly skim through the news, articles continuing somewhere on the other page, related to other topics in other sections, written in different styles - from deliberately impassive to caustically ironic; on the other hand, I almost involuntarily evaluate with one glance advertisements, in which each plot is limited by rigid frames, familiar characters and symbols are used - not the torment of St. Catherine and not the meal at Emmaus, but the alternation of the latest Peugeot models or the phenomenon of Absolute vodka ...

Who were my ancestors, distant picture lovers? Most, like the authors of those pictures, remain unknown, anonymous, silent, but even from these crowds several separate personalities can be distinguished.

In October 1461, after being released from prison thanks to the accidental passage of King Louis XI through the city of Meng-na-Loire, the poet François Villon created a long cycle of poetry, which he called "The Great Testament." One of the poems - "Prayer to the Virgin", written, as Villon claimed, at the request of his mother, contains the following words:

I am a beggar, decrepit, bent with old age,

Illiterate and only when she goes

Lunch in the church with wall paintings,

I look at paradise that the light streams from the heights

And hell, where the host of sinful fire burns.

Paradise is sweet for me to contemplate, hell - hateful.

Villon's mother saw images of a beautiful, full of harmony paradise and a terrible, boiling hell and knew that after death she was doomed to get to one of these places. Of course, looking at these pictures - even if they were talentedly drawn, albeit full of exciting details - she could not learn anything about the heated theological disputes that had taken place between the Church Fathers over the past fifteen centuries.

Most likely, she knew the French translation of the famous Latin maxim "Few will be saved, many will be damned"; most likely, she did not even know that St. Thomas Aquinas determined the number of those who would be saved as the attitude of Noah and his family towards the rest of humanity. In church sermons, she was shown the pictures, and her imagination completed the rest.

Like Villon's mother, thousands of people looked up and saw the paintings that adorned the walls of the church, and later also the windows, columns, pulpits and even the priest's robe when he read the Mass, as well as part of the altar and saw in all these paintings myriad plots combined one whole. There is no reason to think that it was any different with Biblia Pauperum. Although some disagree with this. From the point of view of the German critic Maurus Berve, for example, Biblia Pauperum was "absolutely incomprehensible to the illiterate."

Therefore, Berve believes that "these Bibles were most likely intended for scientists and clergy who could not afford to purchase a complete Bible, or for the" poor in spirit "who did not have the appropriate education and can be satisfied with these substitutes." Accordingly, the name "Biblia Pauperum" does not mean "Bible of the beggars" at all, but simply served as a replacement for the longer "Biblia Pauperum Praedicatorum", that is, "Bible of the poor preachers."

Whether these books were invented for the poor or for their preachers, throughout the year they stood open on lecterns, in front of the flock. For the illiterate, those who were ordered to enter the land of the printed word, the ability to see sacred texts in picture books that they could recognize or “read” obviously gave a sense of belonging, the ability to share with the wise and powerful the materiality of the Word of God.

Seeing drawings in a book - in this almost magical subject, which at that time belonged almost exclusively to the clergy and scholars - is not at all like the paintings on the walls of the church, to which they were already accustomed in the past. As if the holy words, which until then had belonged to a few who could share or not share them at their own will, were suddenly translated into a language that was understandable to everyone, even a "poor and decrepit" woman like Villon's mother.