The history of the preparation of bishop Sergius’ (Golubtsov) masters dissertation “naturalistic and iconographical movements in church art and their ontological evaluation”

Abstract

This is a publication and analysis of documents, related to the polemics between bishop Sergius (Golubtsov) and L. А. Uspensky on the problem of the existence in the Orthodox Church two iconographical approaches - “traditional byzantine” and “naturalistic-realistic”. The starting point for the polemic was the thesis of bishop Sergius written for the Rhodes Convention of 1961, where he defends the existence of both approaches in iconography. In his thesis, he entertains the possibility of adding a national ecclesiastical element and peculiarities of the Russian style to pictorial art. The position of L. Uspensky saw the “realistic” tendency as “Italian stylistics” and a pale imitation of the Roman Catholic religious art, and it led bishop Sergius to writing his dissertation on this problem.