Boyarynya Morozova
Vasily Surikov (1848 to 1916) · 1884 to 1887
A sledge cuts through the snow of a Moscow street, and on it, chained and dressed in black, sits a noblewoman raising two fingers in the air. She is Feodosia Morozova, one of the richest women in Russia in the sixteen seventies, being dragged to prison for refusing to accept the church reforms of Patriarch Nikon. The two fingers are the old way of making the sign of the cross, and they are her defiance. The crowd around her divides: some laugh, some weep, a holy fool in rags returns her gesture, and a young woman in a yellow headscarf bows deeply.
Surikov, who came from Siberia and loved the texture of old Russia, built this enormous canvas out of dozens of individual portraits. Notice how the composition moves: the sledge and the crowd flow from left to right, and the line of Morozova's raised arm anchors the whole picture. The colours of the winter street, the mixture of dirty snow, fur, brocade and painted wood, are handled with astonishing freedom. The artist said the idea came to him when he saw a black crow on white snow, and that contrast of black against white is what you see first and remember last.
The painting was shown at the Wanderers' exhibition in eighteen eighty seven and bought by Pavel Tretyakov at once. It made Surikov the leading historical painter in Russia, and its subject, a believer who chooses suffering over compromise, took on new meanings in every later era. Look for the boy running beside the sledge, whom Surikov painted from a village child, and for the artist's own touch of humour in the beggar sitting in the snow with his bare feet.
Did You Know? Surikov said the idea for the picture came to him when he saw a black crow sitting on white snow.
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