The icon as performer and as performative utterance: The sixteenth-century Vladimir Mother of God...

174 RES 57/58 SPRING/AUTUMN 2010

Figure 2. Constantinople, The Vladimir Mother of God, early twelfth century. Tempera on canvas and wood, 104 x 69 cm. Tretiakov Gallery, Moscow.

The sixteenth-century Vladimir Mother of God in the Moscow Dormition Cathedral

MARIE E. GASPER-HULVAT

The icon as performer and as performative utterance

This article is expanded from a presentation given at the April 2008 Frick Symposium. I am deeply indebted to Dale Kinney, whose mentorship made this project possible.

1. V. Hillings, “The Virgin of Vladimir,” in Russia!: Catalogue of the Exhibition (New York: Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation, 2005), pp. 6–7, no. 13.

2. I draw upon the work of J. L. Austin, Judith Butler, and Rebecca Schneider. Other useful sources for the theoretical grounding of performance and performativity include: H. Bial, The Performance Studies Reader (London and New York: Routledge, 2004). J. Loxley, Performativity (London and New York: Routledge, 2007); The Sage Handbook of Performance Studies, ed. D. S. Madison and J. Hamera (Thousand Oaks, Calif.; London; and New Delhi: Sage Publications, 2006).

3. Specifically with respect to the dynamic aspects of hierotopical projects, Lidov notes, “Performativity, dramatic changes, [and] the lack of strict fixation shaped a vivid, spiritually intensive, and concretely influential environment.” A. Lidov, “Hierotopy. The Creation of Sacred Spaces as a Form of Creativity and as a Subject of Cultural History,” in Hierotopy: The Creation of Sacred Spaces in Byzantium and Medieval Russia, ed. Alexei Lidov (Moscow: Indrik, 2006), p. 39. See also, A. Lidov, “The Flying Hodegetria: The Miraculous Icon as Bearer of Sacred Space,” in The Miraculous Image in the Late Middle Ages and Renaissance, ed. E. Thunoe and G. Wolf (Rome 2004), pp. 291–321; A. Lidov, “The Sacred Space of Relics,” in Christian Relics in the Moscow Kremlin, ed. Alexei Lidov (Moscow: Radunitsa, 2000) pp. 13–18.

4. B. A. Uspensky, “‘Khozhdenie posolon’ i Struktura Sakral’nogo Prostranstva v Moskovskoi Rusi,” in Hierotopy, ed. A. Lidov (ibid.), pp. 544–545.

5. N. Isar, “The Vision and Its ‘Exceedingly Blessed Beholder’: Of Desire and Participation in the Icon,” RES 38 (Autumn 2000): 62. Italics mine. Isar entitled her article in Lidov’s Hierotopy “Chorography (Chôra, Chorós)—A Performative Paradigm of Creation of Sacred Space in Byzantium.”

6. J. L. Austin, How to Do Things with Words (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1962).

7. B. V. Pentcheva, “The Performative Icon,” The Art Bulletin 88, no. 4 (December 2006):631–655.

Within the nine-sentence catalog entry for a sixteenth-century Russian icon (fig. 1) in the Guggenheim’s 2005 “Russia!” exhibition, only two sentences pertain to this particular object. Such a choice by curator Valerie Hillings was hardly an omission: The other seven sentences concern the twelfth-century icon (fig. 2) from which the sixteenth-century one was copied, and detail the former’s prominent place in Russian history.1 Indeed, the meaning of the sixteenth-century icon is tightly bound to its prototype, which did not come to New York. In most conventional accounts, the image on both icons is important because of the history Hillings recites; however, I propose that the history is made important by the sixteenth-century icon and the political program of its creators. This icon can be understood as both performer and performative utterance, participating in and enacting a narrative that established Moscow as the site for the teleological conclusion of Christian history. I seek to pursue the implications of the twentieth-century discipline of performance studies for this particular icon as a case study for further elucidating the meaning and function of icons in general.2

Such an approach is not unprecedented; recent scholarship on Byzantine and Russian icons includes several examples where authors utilize terms and ideas related to performance studies. Alexei Lidov organized a significant body of work related to “hierotopy,” a term

he coined to designate the study of the ongoing creation of sacred space, particularly within the Byzantine sphere; this field of research broadly encompasses performances in such locations and the means by which such performances cocreated the spaces in which they were enacted.3 The philologist Boris Uspensky, in an article discussing liturgical movement within ecclesiastical space, compares the iconostasis and solea of the Orthodox church to “something not unlike a proscenium,” a term that typically denotes the architectural structure that surrounds the visible areas of a theatrical stage.4 In her discussion of Byzantine vision, Nicoletta Isar describes one image as “conflating speech act and visual sign,”5 thereby making use of the term conventionally used as equivalent to the “illocutionary act” coined by the progenitor of performativity studies, J. L. Austin.6 Most extensively, Bissera Pentcheva devotes an entire article to “The Performative Icon,” in which she discusses the multi-sensory experiential characteristics of the dynamic icon in its intended ecclesiastical context.7


8. Russian chronicles note a flurry of activity in 1514 with respect to the twelfth-century Vladimirskaia, including a significant renovation involving cleaning, repainting, and adding a new frame. Additionally, between 1513 and 1515 the interior of the Kremlin Dormition Cathedral was redecorated by members of the School of Dionysius, the same group to which the sixteenth-century icon is attributed. It is entirely plausible that the icon was created in conjunction with this commission or to commemorate the renovation of the Byzantine Vladimirskaia. However, other sources may indicate its production prior to 1511, under the tenure of Metropolitan Simon; and twentieth-century scholar Engelina Smirnova dates the icon to 1519. I. Bentchev, “Zum Verhältnis von Original, Kopie und Replik am Beispiel der Gottesmutter von Vladimir und anderer russischer Ikonen,” in Russische Ikonen: Neue Forschungen, ed. Eva Haustein-Bartsch (Recklinghausen: Verlag Aurel Bongers, 1991), p. 162, fn. 57. E. Smirnova, Moscow Icons: 14th–17th centuries, trans. Arthur Shkorovsky-Raffé (Oxford: Phaidon, 1989), p. 298.

9. E. Sendler, Les Icônes de la Mère de Dieu (Paris: Desclée de Brouwer, 1992), pp. 143–144.

Historical contexts

In the case of the aforementioned sixteenth-century icon, the central image depicts the Vladimir Mother of God, or Vladimirskaia, framed by a border of alternating images of important saints and the twelve main annual liturgical feasts. It was painted around 1514, and, for purposes of brevity and clarity, I hereafter refer to this icon as the “1514” Vladimirskaia, with the caveat that the 1514 dating is far from conclusive.8 I refer to the early twelfth-century icon, of which the “1514” Vladimirskaia is a copy, as the “Tretiakov Vladimirskaia,” due to its present location in the Tretiakov Gallery collection in Moscow.

The Tretiakov icon was not Russian-made, but was imported from Byzantium to Kyiv between 1125 and 1131, a gift from the Byzantine patriarch to the Grand Prince of Kyiv. During the third quarter of the twelfth century, the Mother of God began to perform miracles through this icon. It was observed levitating in mid-air in the center of its church of residence, in southern Rus’ near Kyiv. This was interpreted as a sign that the Mother of God desired that her icon be relocated, causing Andrei Bogoliubski, the son of the grand prince, to move the icon north to Vladimir, the point past which his horses refused to advance due to another Marian intervention.9 She then proceeded to enact further miracles through this icon, intervening in history to protect the icon’s present city of residence. In 1395, the icon first visited Moscow, when it performed its most renowned miracle, the delivery of Moscow from the impending Mongol attack led by Timur. In each of these events, the miracle-working properties of the Tretiakov

However, in the first three of these examples, the use of performance and performativity terminology primarily serves to convey more effectively the authors’ arguments with respect to a variety of theoretical frameworks, performance not among them. And while Pentcheva’s article explicitly takes performativity as its focus, it highlights the experiential aspects of performance with reference to Byzantine image theory. In comparison to previous studies, I seek to amplify the use of performance and performativity theory in order to illustrate the value of such application within the iconic milieu.

Figure 1. The School of Dionysius, The Vladimir Mother of God with Feasts and Saints, early sixteenth century. Tempera on canvas and wood, 107.5 x 69 cm. Dormition Cathedral of the Kremlin, Moscow.

Gasper-Hulvat: The icon as performer and as performative utterance 177

12. Lidov, “The Sacred Space” (see note 3), p. 14.13. A. I. Anisimov proposed this theory; see Bogomater’

Vladimirskaia: K 600-letiyu Sreteniia ikony Bogomateri Vladimirskoi v Moskve 26 avgusta (8 sentyabrya) 1395 goda (Moscow: Avangard, 1995), p. 48; L. A. Shchennikova, “Chudotvornaia Ikona ‘Bogomater’ Vladimirskaia’ kak ‘Odigitriia Evangelista Luki,’” in Chudotvornaia Ikona: V Vizantii i Drevnei Rusi (Moscow: Martis, 1996), p. 265. David B. Miller also attempts to discern the use and location of the Tretiakov Vladimirskaia during the fifteenth century, and even questions its permanent placement in Moscow prior to Ivan IV’s reign: D. B. Miller, “Legends of the Icon of Our Lady of Vladimir: A Study of the Development of Muscovite National Consciousness,” Speculum 43, no. 10 (October 1968):659–660.

10. P. Bushkovitch, Religion and Society in Russia: The Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries (New York, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992), p. 103.

11. Isar, “The Vision” (see note 5), pp. 58–59. B. V. Pentcheva, Icons and Power: The Mother of God in Byzantium (University Park: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 2006), p. 1.

In the medieval Eastern Orthodox context, there is easy slippage between the categories of sacred and miracle-working—for every object within the church has the potential to work miracles at any moment.12 It is unclear to what extent the medieval Russian viewer understood the copies of the Vladimirskaia to be equivalent to the Tretiakov Vladimirskaia. For example, shortly after the 1395 miracle defeating Timur, two copies of the Tretiakov Vladimirskaia were painted, one each for the Moscow and Vladimir Dormition Cathedrals (figs. 3 and 4). Scholars have proposed that during the fifteenth century, the Tretiakov Vladimirskaia traveled repeatedly between these two cathedrals, and the copies were used as replacements for the Tretiakov Vladimirskaia when it was visiting the other city.13 If this was the case, we can understand the copies as taking on the role of the twelfth-century icon in its absence—performing the Vladimirskaia image in its stead and through its repetition. The replica purportedly granted the same access to the Mother of God and her protective powers.

However, if the copies were entirely equivalent to the older icon, why would the Tretiakov Vladimirskaia have needed to travel between the two cities at all? In an entirely anachronistic analogy, could we understand the copy to be acting as a sort of understudy, taking on the role of the “star” at times when the more famous actor was unable to play the title role in the liturgical drama? When the understudy takes the stage, the performance is no less valid an execution if the leading actor had played the role. However, if the audience seeks to behold the renowned performer, not the understudy, the performance can never be quite as authentic without the aura of the star on stage. Yet if the audience is more attentive to the ensemble production or the nuances and talent of the understudy’s performance, the absence of the star performer’s aura becomes much less significant.

Vladimirskaia were consistently large-scale, public, and political, as opposed to many other Russian miracle-working icons that were credited with personal, healing miracles.10

I deliberately avoid invoking the term ”original” to describe the Tretiakov Vladimirskaia, despite the significant temptation to do so. When describing Russian icons, this term is highly problematic and ambiguous. For a medieval Orthodox Russian, every icon was in fact a copy, with the ”original” being the icon’s prototype, the person in flesh and spirit who was represented in the iconic image. Yet this unity of flesh and spirit was itself an icon of the ultimate prototype, with humanity having been made in the image (eikon) of the likeness of God. For icons depicting Christ and Mary, such duplication becomes even more complex, since the Incarnation was an occasion where God purposefully adopted human flesh in the body of Christ. In Christ, then, we encounter a visible image of God; in Mary, we find the fleshly materiality into which the logos entered in order to create the visible Christ.11 Thus, as a reference to the Incarnation, every icon of Mary is a justification of the orthodox (in the etymological sense of “right belief”) veneration of all icons.

An icon of Mary is dependent upon the identity of its prototype—Mary’s human body—for its validity as an object suitable for veneration. However, when dealing with copies of a miracle-working icon such as the Vladimirskaia, the identity of the prototype is destabilized. The miracle-working icon acquires something akin to the status of a relic due to the miracles it has performed. Its copies depict not only the image of the Mother of God, but also the tangible miracle-working icon itself. The “original” thus becomes ambiguously multiple. The singular identity of the miracle-working object is inscribed by means of significant historical events. Such an identity exceeds the conventional icon’s status as a simple representation of a saintly prototype, as more recent history is implicated in its meaning. By interacting with the icon within the context of its miracle-working and in expectation of future similar miracles, the worshippers helped to establish the identity of the icon and its copies performatively.


must be appropriate for the invocation of the particular procedure invoked.” In this situation, it appears the duplicates were appropriate for the procedure of granting access to the Mother of God. This would be in contrast to, for example, a contemporary Catholic image of the Virgin Mary, which could not provide the Orthodox believer the same kind of access, or be used in liturgy or worship without committing heresy, therefore constituting an “unhappy” functioning of procedures. See Austin (note 6), pp. 14–15.

14. Austin proposed six conditions that were “necessary for the smooth or ‘happy’ functioning of a performative,” the second of which was that “the particular persons and circumstances in a given case

the renown of the specific miracle-working object, the Tretiakov Vladimirskaia, continued to be utilized by clergy and statesmen to enact performances symbolically to help unify Russian lands ideologically. It is significant that the auratic twelfth-century icon found its permanent home in Moscow, while a replica remained in the icon’s namesake city of Vladimir.

The value of the Tretiakov Vladimirskaia, and the equivalence of its copies to their prototype, would entirely depend upon the expectations of its audience: clergy, state leaders, soldiers, commoners. The “scripts”—the acts of worship, the liturgical rites, and the processions in which she participated—significantly established and maintained the identity of the Vladimirskaia. The “understudy,” or replica, could meaningfully, or happily, participate in these performances without making them “infelicitous” or “hollow,” to borrow terms from Austin.14 Nevertheless,

Figure 3. Andrei Rublëv (?), The Vladimir Mother of God, early fifteenth century. Tempera on canvas and wood, 102 x 68 cm. Dormition Cathedral of the Kremlin, Moscow.

Figure 4. The Vladimir Mother of God, early fifteenth century. Tempera on canvas and wood, 102.2 x 69.5 cm. Vladimir and Suzdal Museum of History, Art, and Architecture, Vladimir.


18. A. Gordine, “En quête de la composition originelle de la Vierge de Vladimir,” in Cahiers Archeologiques 50 (2002):141. The Nikonian Chronicle, ed. Serge A. Zenkovsky, trans. Serge A. and Betty Jean Zenkovsky (Princeton, N.J.: The Darwin Press, The Kingston Press, 1988), vol. 4, p. 175. Alternatively, it is possible that the frame was created in Moscow by Greek artisans, see T. V. Tolstaya, The Assumption Cathedral of the Moscow Kremlin (Moscow: Iskusstvo, 1979), p. 67.

19. This included the tracing of the Muscovite princes’ genealogical line to a certain Prus, a mythical brother of the Roman Emperor Augustus, and the marriage of Grand Prince Ivan III to the last Byzantine emperor’s niece, Sophia Palaeologina, who had spent her youth in Rome and who introduced Byzantine court ceremony

15. J. Butler, Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity (New York: Routledge, 1990), pp. 17, 24–25.

16. A term described by A. Gell in Art and Agency: An Anthropological Theory (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1998).

17. My interpretation of miracles is significantly influenced by a discussion of death’s performative nature: P. Phelan, “Andy Warhol: Performances of Death in America,” in Performing the Body, Performing the Text, ed. Amelia Jones and Andrew Stephenson (London, New York: Routledge, 1999), p. 229.

The replicas of the Vladimirskaia were collective iterations created through the combined efforts of their icon painters, spiritual guides, and beholders. It was in the repeated enactment of its image that the Vladimirskaia also established its identity. Paradoxically, the Tretiakov Vladimirskaia became more significant and more singular as it was copied repeatedly. By marking the prototype’s absence as significant, as requiring remediation by means of a duplicate, the duplicate itself performatively crafted the identity of the prototype. And its copies acquired greater significance as the singular prototype continued to be revered and to perform more miracles. The identity of embodied repetition applies not only to the Tretiakov Vladimirskaia, but even more so to the “1514” Vladimirskaia. For the “1514” icon repeated the Vladimirskaia image, but it also puts forth a unique combination of repetitions with the addition of the framing images painted upon the same board.

Both the saints and the feasts on the frame of the “1514” icon duplicated images that occupied tiers of the iconostasis, or icon screen, that separates the altar from the nave in Orthodox churches. The festal images—but not the saints—were specifically copied from a gold frame or oklad donated to the Tretiakov Vladimirskaia at the beginning of the fifteenth century (fig. 5). This oklad was brought in 1410 from Constantinople to Moscow by Metropolitan Photius, a Byzantine ecclesiastic newly appointed Metropolitan of all Russia by the patriarch of Constantinople.18

The replication of the oklad upon the sixteenth-century icon leads us to consider how the icon might have been useful as a performative utterance by the Muscovite ruling elite. In the early sixteenth century, Muscovite rulers, both sacred and secular, attempted to establish a teleological narrative placing Moscow at the center of the end of Christian history.19 After Constantinople’s fall in 1453, Russia came to see itself as the only truly Christian nation left on earth, and

The identity of any one of these iterations of the Vladimirskaia wavers between singularity as object and multiplicity as replicated image. In performativity theory, the identity of the embodied self comes to be defined by the repeated enactment of behaviors that are socially defined by self and others simultaneously defining their own identities. Identity is an action, rather than a state, doing rather than being. Identity is performed by an actor- subject who did not entirely exist prior to the act itself. The entity that embodies—or does—an identity is both subject and object, simultaneously acting and acted upon.15

Human beings “do” performative identities in the ontological constructions of theorists such as Judith Butler. However, one questions whether ascribing performative characteristics to an object, instead of a person, fundamentally alters the nature of those characteristics. In the case of the Vladimirskaia icons, the objects were certainly acted upon by socially defined forces; their identities were activated by the workings of people or spiritual beings. They also performed actions; in anthropological terms, they constituted “objects with agency.”16 Lastly, the actions of Mary become the actions of her icon and vice versa, because an icon and the spiritual entity it depicts are not entirely distinguishable.

Furthermore, the iconic object explicitly participated in the citation of repeated cultural codes, as each singular miracle cited and built upon the iterative power of previous and future miracles. The miracle-performing icon participates in an oscillation between the singular, present apprehension and the pervasive, ongoing collective history of repetitions. In addition, the miracles themselves take part in a similar tension, as inexplicable interventions of the immaterial and everlasting into material, temporal existence. The miracle represents a vivid moment of inutterability, a space in a narrative that can always only be partially filled. The narrative can only hope to bracket the indescribable with meaning, and that meaning can only be constructed by appropriating evocative brackets from previously uttered narratives.17 The miracle requires a co-construction of comprehension in partnership with other forms of comprehension already in existence and coming into existence.


20. M. S. Flier, “Till the End of Time: The Apocalypse in Russian Historical Experience Before 1500,” in Orthodox Russia: Belief and Practice under the Tsars, ed. V. A. Kivelson and R. H. Greene (University Park: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 2003), pp. 127–158.

21. Displayed during important liturgies throughout the church year, these relics reassured the populace of their country’s holiness and its pivotal place in salvation history. See Lidov, “The Sacred Space” (note 3), p. 13.

and symbolism to Moscow. The most important document of this narrative came from a monk named Filofei, who wrote a letter some time between 1515 and 1523 in which he built a theological defense of Moscow as the only legitimate capital of the only remaining autonomous Orthodox nation and its princes as divinely ordained protectors of the faith. “Filofei’s Concept of the ‘Third Rome,’” in Medieval Russia: A Source Book, 850–1700, ed. Basil Dmytryshyn, 3d ed. (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1991), p. 260; N. V. Riasanovsky and M. D. Steinberg, A History of Russia, 7th ed. (New York, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), pp. 99–100, 115; A. Voyce, Moscow and the Roots of Russian Culture (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1964), p. 151; S. Zenkovsky, Medieval Russia’s Epics, Chronicles, and Tales (New York: E. P. Dutton, 1974), p. 24.

Jerusalem—the location of Christ’s return at the imminent end of the world.20 This belief was also based on a perceived inheritance of the legacy of Constantinople. Muscovite leaders amassed a significant quantity of relics related both to Constantinople and Jerusalem in an attempt to transfer these cities’ holiness to Moscow.21 Additionally, both state and church leaders sought to reaffirm the Byzantine legacy by marking the importance of the Tretiakov Vladimirskaia. This monument functioned as the palladium of the Russian people in ceremonies and ideologies adopted from Byzantine practice and connected Moscow to Constantinople via a geographical route of succession that Muscovite rulers sought to establish as canonical.

In preceding centuries, Constantinople had given the Tretiakov Vladimirskaia to Kyiv, and subsequently it moved through Vladimir to Moscow. The seat of the Metropolitan, along with the Muscovite ruling dynasty’s ancestors, followed this same path. Muscovite rulers sought to promote this transference as an indication of the divine plan to bring the locus of Christian holy power to Moscow, which their dynasty was destined to lead. Furthermore, in its reiteration on the “1514” icon, the gold oklad—a gift from Constantinople to Moscow by means of a Metropolitan—supported the symbolic argument for Moscow as heir to the Byzantine legacy. It reminded viewers of Constantinople’s continued involvement in Russia’s, and specifically Moscow’s, development through history, not just once in the gift of the Tretiakov Vladimirskaia in the twelfth century, but actively and regularly through the era of Constantinople’s decline, presumably in order to prepare its successor for the monumental charge of protecting the faith.

Constantinopolitans had developed an elaborate cult and ceremonial practice devoted to the Mother of God. This included the renowned “Tuesday miracle” in which, every week, the Hodegetria icon levitated and spun in mid-air, in conjunction with a procession around the city. By incorporating the entire urban space, these processions actualized the whole city as the Heavenly Jerusalem, a sort of massive living icon.22 Muscovites adopted the Constantinopolitan practice

Muscovites as inhabiting the “Third Rome,” following Constantinople as the second. Furthermore, Muscovite leaders envisioned themselves as guarding the New

Figure 5. Constantinople, Oklad for the Vladimir Mother of God, early fifteenth century. Embossed gold and gold filigree, 105 x 70 cm. Museum of the Kremlin, Moscow.


25. Peter is well known for moving the Metropolitan’s seat to Moscow from Vladimir; Alexei served as ambassador to the ruling Mongols and played a leading role during the minority of Dmitrii Donskoi (1359–1389), the first Muscovite prince to pose a serious challenge to Mongol rule since the thirteenth-century invasion. See R. O. Crummey, The Formation of Muscovy 1304–1613 (London and New York: Longman, 1987), pp. 117–118; L. Nersesjan, The Splendour of Creation: The Icons of Dionisij (Milan: R. C. Edizioni, 1998), pp. 5, 10; and N. V. Riasanovsky and M. D. Steinberg, A History of Russia, 7th ed. (New York, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), pp. 91–92.

26. See Lidov, “Hierotopy” (note 3), p. 46.27. For a discussion of an icon of the Mother of God surrounded by

military saints, see Pentcheva (note 11), pp. 94–97.28. This contrasted with the Latin Church’s notion of apostolic

succession through the papal office. Such a contrast is particularly significant at this moment when Moscow was increasingly responding to political and heretical forces related to the Catholic Church. In the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, Lithuania and Poland held control

22. See Lidov, “The Flying Hodegetria” (note 3), and Pentcheva (note 11).

23. A 1498 podea, or embroidered panel that hangs below an icon as adornment, illustrates this miracle with recognizable images of contemporary Russian dignitaries. See Lidov, “The Flying Hodegetria” (note 3), pp. 294–295, and A. Lidov, “Miracle-Working Icons of the Mother of God,” in Mother of God: Representations of the Virgin in Byzantine Art, ed. Maria Vassilaki (Milan: Skira Editore, 2000), p. 53.

24. This connection originated in Mary’s replacing Roman civic goddesses such as Tyche and Victory. See Pentcheva (note 11), p. 11. In Russia, military generals visited the Vladimirskaia before battle and following victory; princes and other state servants swore allegiance to Moscow before the icon. See Tolstaya (note 18), p. 14.

in helping Moscow rise to its present prominence.25 The depicted saints are exclusively ecclesiastics, an obvious fact for contemporary viewers, due to the sharp visual contrast in contemporary Russian painting between priests’ brightly ornamented robes and the somber, plain robes of monastics. Lidov argues that liturgical vestments of the period can be read as microcosms of ecclesiastical space,26 and although the means by which these robes were depicted iconographically departs significantly from the objects’ actual appearances, we nevertheless can treat the icon’s images as citing a similar meaning. The elaborate cross patterns make reference to the interior church space and liturgical movements contained therein. The scalloped decoration that delineates the top edge of each of the festal scenes reaffirms such a symbolic connotation by abstractly representing the domes that characteristically towered above contemporary Russian churches.

The depicted saints’ ecclesiastical identity also pointed to Moscow’s direct apostolic inheritance to protect and nurture the Christian faith. Just as military saints surrounding a Byzantine icon of the Mother of God emphasized the intimate connection she maintained with the empire’s military campaigns, the bishop saints surrounding her image in the Russian context make explicit her direct connection to the leaders of the church, past and present.27 As the Eucharistic liturgy was regularly reenacted in the presence of this icon, the priests drew their authority from the figures depicted upon the icon. Apostolic authority had been passed on through the hands of the depicted bishops to their successors by means of ordination.28 Robert Taft, a preeminent scholar of Byzantine liturgics, notes that the Church Fathers depicted (typically bowing down) in

of processing through the city with icons, particularly the Vladimirskaia, in order to actualize the Heavenly Jerusalem in their own midst, and even reenacted the “Tuesday miracle.”23 Just as the Constantinopolitans had perceived the miracles of the Hodegetria—the palladium of the Byzantine empire—as assurance of the Mother of God’s continued active protection, Muscovites also took the persistence of miracles associated with the Mother of God as indication of her adoption of the new capital of Orthodoxy. And as had been the case in Byzantium, devotion to her was powerfully connected to loyalty to the state.24 In citations of previously established codes, Muscovites observed and created the perception of their city as destined to assume the mantle of Constantinople.

Such efforts attempted to substantially transfer the sacred space that had been the city of Constantinople to Moscow, not simply to recreate the image of Constantinople (and, by extension, the Holy Land), but also to fashion the Russian city upon the prototype of these holy cities—as if cities could model a prototype in the same way as icons. For these Christians, two spaces could fully participate in one another and not just symbolically. In the justification of Moscow’s place as Constantinople’s rightful heir, in the collection of relics, and in the adoption and performance of processions and rituals based on Constantinopolitan models, Moscow became Constantinople and the Heavenly Jerusalem, thus ensuring that Moscow was the appropriate geographical location for Christ’s arrival at the End of Days.

Within the frame of the “1514” Vladimirskaia, the addition of the images of the saints to the oklad’s feasts further supplemented Moscow’s claim to the legacy of Constantinople. Each saint is depicted in identical scale and style, despite the fact that the saints range from fourth-century Church fathers such as Basil the Great and John Chrysostom to fourteenth-century Russian Metropolitans Peter and Alexei, who were key figures


dragotsennogo ubora v pochitanii sviatykh ikon,” in Chudotvornaia Ikona (see note 13); and “Dragotsennyi ubor russkikh ikon XIV–XV vv.,” in Drevnerusskoe iskusstvo: Sergii Radonezhskii i khudozhestvennaia kul’tura Moskvy XIV-XV vv. (Saint Petersburg: Dmitrii Bulanin, 1998), pp. 217–228. See also Lidov, “Miracle-Working” (see note 23), p. 53; L. A. Shchennikova, “The Miracle-Working Icons of the Moscow Kremlin” in Christian Relics (see note 3), pp. 236–237.

35. Paul the Silentiary, “Description of the Ambo,” in Description of Hagia Sophia, lines 221–224, see Taft (see note 29), pp. 78–79.

36. Faensen and Ivanov (see note 31), p. 512.37. Bogomater’ Vladimirskaia (see note 13), p. 11.

over Kiev and the southern and western lands of former Rus’. As bordering nations with powerful militaries, they represented serious political opposition to the rise of the Muscovite state, but as Catholic countries they also represented the encroachment of religious heresy upon Russian territories. Over the course of the fifteenth century, Lithuania effectively severed its Orthodox populace from the control of Moscow by successfully installing a separate metropolis in Kyiv to control the archbishoprics in its domain. At the close of the sixteenth century, this subsection of the Orthodox Church would accept the authority of the pope in the Union of Brest. B. A. Gudziak, Crisis and Reform: The Kyivan Metropolinate, the Patriarchate of Constantinople, and the Genesis of the Union of Brest (Cambridge, Mass.: Ukrainian Research Institute, Harvard University, 1998).

29. R. F. Taft, Through Their Own Eyes: Liturgy as the Byzantines Saw It (Berkeley, CA: InterOrthodox Press, 2006), pp. 150–153.

30. Russkaia Istoricheskaia Biblioteka (Saint Petersburg, 1876), vol. 3, pp. 309–310, 422.

31. H. Faensen and V. Ivanov, Early Russian Architecture, trans. Mary Whittall (London: Paul Elek, 1975), p. 512.

32. As Glen Peers argues: “Frames, or simply edges, margins, transitional spaces generally, were sites of interpretation and complementary signifying. [. . .] The edges of Byzantine art were not only places where multiple interpretations were provided; they were also where the reality of an image was declared, where its emergence and existence as a quasi-animate entity took place.” G. Peers, Sacred Shock: Framing Visual Experience in Byzantium (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2004), pp. 5–6.

33. Lidov, “The Sacred Space” (see note 3), p. 18.34. Much recent Russian literature examines such decorations

added to icons as pious donations. I. A. Sterligova, “O znachenii

the aforementioned podea, and even veils, all of which obscured the icon’s painting, in some cases almost completely. As such, the framing and decoration of an icon functioned in a manner analogous to the iconostasis by shielding the most holy space of the icon (or church) from the view of all but a few select clergy.

Architectural and liturgical contexts

Turning to the architectural context of the “1514” Vladimirskaia, it is important to understand just where the ambo was located spatially within the church edifice, since this was the location upon which the “1514” icon was placed. According to the sixth-century poet Paul the Silentiary, in Hagia Sophia in Constantinople, a raised, half-walled passageway connected the ambo in the middle of the nave to the solea, the raised platform, which ran along the chancel barrier, a precursor to the iconostasis.35 However, by the fifteenth century, when the Dormition Cathedral in Moscow was built, the ambo had retreated to occupy the center portion of the solea.36 This was the area directly in front of the iconostasis’s Royal Doors, and also the location at which the faithful received communion. Hence, the “1514” Vladimirskaia was situated in front of the iconostasis in one of the most significant places along its local, lowest tier. On the other hand, the Tretiakov Vladimirskaia was situated next to the altar, and therefore behind the iconostasis.37

The “1514” icon served as a portal to the sacred space of the sanctuary—a function of the entire iconostasis, in fact. However, unlike the iconostasis in general, this individual icon gave access to a very specific object within the sanctuary. In other words, while the entire iconostasis served as a signifier to infinite signifieds within the holy domain, the “1514” icon gives special priority to one particular signified. Moreover, the Tretiakov Vladimirskaia not only held great significance for the Russian land through her miracles, but she also gazed upon the altar in which the most important monarchical documents of the land were kept, and

an Orthodox church’s apse are actively concelebrating the liturgy with the priest at the altar.29 Given that the “1514” Vladimirskaia was located upon the ambo of the Dormition Cathedral,30 we might read its bordering saints as participating along with the performance of liturgical activities which took place upon the ambo. The postures of the icon’s bordering saints, many of whom are holding books, could easily be interpreted as sharing in the reading of Scripture, delivery of sermons, and leading of hymns.31

We also should not ignore the fact that these figures encircle the Mother of God on this icon. Framing is never inconsequential, and in this case, the bordering ecclesiastics represent the mediation of Mary’s holiness through church leaders to the body of the faithful.32 These figures also seem to guard her, just as saints were known to stand guard at the border of the Heavenly Jerusalem.33 Additionally, as a replica (at least in part) of the Tretiakov icon’s precious metal revetment, it serves as a painted citation of the valuable applied art objects, which decorated most contemporary miracle-working icons.34 Icon decorations in general could be quite elaborate, comprising not only frames, but also metalwork and jewels attached to the icons’ surfaces,


41. Ibid., p. 175.42. See Uspensky (note 4).

38. Tolstaya (see note 18), p. 15.39. The term “Little Entrance” marks the liturgical moment when

the Gospels are brought out amid the congregation and through the Royal Doors into the sanctuary. The Great Entrance occurs when the unconsecrated offerings are brought to the altar. See Faensen and Ivanov (note 31), p. 48.

40. N. P. Constas, “Symeon of Thessalonike and the Theology of the Icon Screen,” in Thresholds of the Sacred: Architectural, Art Historical, Liturgical, and Theological Perspectives on Religious Screens, East and West, ed. Sharon E. J. Gerstel (Washington, D.C.: Dumbarton Oaks, 2006), pp. 163–183.

copy of the miracle-working Tretiakov Vladimirskaia, the “1514” icon mediated the intense holiness of the object placed next to the altar. It granted access to this sacred object in a manner that marked the more ancient icon as more sacred, just as the iconostasis itself marks the sanctuary space as more sacred. Furthermore, the frame of the “1514” icon acts as a sort of veil to the internal, venerated image, just as other icon decorations served as veils, both literally and figuratively, to the holiness of their respective icons.

As the border between nave and sanctuary, the iconostasis exists as a liminal entity between visibility and invisibility, not unlike the body of Mary herself, whose flesh contained the invisible spirit in visible form.41 But the division within the church structure is of one sacred space separated from another sacred space; it is somewhat confusing why these two spaces, both sacred, are so different that they should be so emphatically divided from one another. Uspensky engages the complex semiotics of this division in a recent article examining a seventeenth-century controversy that concerned opposing liturgical movements within and outside of the altar space. He arrives at the conclusion that there was an elaborate system of analogous spaces and features within the church structure. The Royal Doors of the iconostasis and the doors leading into the church itself, along with the icons surrounding both, “are as if doubles of one another.” The space behind the iconostasis and the upper tiers of the iconostasis can be understood as the space for turning to Christ, whereas the space in front of the iconostasis, including its lowest tier and the solea, can be understood as the space for following after Christ.42

For the “1514” Vladimirskaia and its twelfth-century counterpart, Uspensky’s distinction dramatically clarifies the unique functions of copy and prototype. We can understand the Tretiakov Vladimirskaia as turning directly to Christ, simultaneously at the altar and in heaven, and using her intercessory powers to protect Moscow and its leaders. The “1514” icon allowed the public to gain access to the Vladimirskaia, while at the same time keeping her in the geographic space of the church as close as possible to the body of Christ, as it came into existence upon the altar in each consecration. The “1514” icon followed after both Christ and the altar-dwelling prototype by repeating with precision the

where, with each rite of consecration, the crucifixion of Mary’s child was reenacted through performative utterance.38

During the Little and Great Entrances (moments of the liturgy when the Royal Doors were opened), the congregation might also see the Tretiakov Vladimirskaia next to the altar.39 It was only at such high points in the regular liturgy, upon the four annual feast days dedicated to the Vladimirskaia, and during Holy Week when the doors remained continuously open, that anyone other than the most eminent ecclesiastics could visually encounter the twelfth-century icon. The iconostasis constituted a barrier, but one that was permeable. It provided the officiants with bodily access to the sanctuary, and the faithful with visual access both through the Royal Door openings and through the icons placed upon it.

Considering the iconostasis’s function as barrier begs the question of just what this wall concealed and for what purpose. In his discussion of the theology of the iconostasis, Nicholas Constas draws upon fifteenth-century religious thinker Symeon of Thessalonike’s comparison of the icon screen to the veil of the tabernacle in the Hebrew Scriptures. Constas argues that a veil of one sort or another—and even multiple layers of veils—are in fact the only means by which humankind can encounter the holy. Orthodox theology, particularly that of icons, emphasizes the perception of the divine as light. But the light of the divine is intensely blinding; that which enables sight also prevents vision when it exceeds the viewer’s capacity to behold it. “Veils,” a figurative term designating symbols in general, enable human perception of the divine. The iconostasis does not conceal the sacred from the body of the faithful, but rather reveals the sacred through a veil most appropriate to the viewers’ faculties of vision. It constitutes one of an infinite progression of veils that drape the holy of holies.40

In light of this discussion of veils, we might consider how the “1514” icon functioned as a veil as well. As a


46. One could cite numerous Byzantine mystics’ visions that make this optimization of the worship experience concrete. For example, Symeon the New Theologian (949–1022) experienced an event whereby, “suddenly there shown upon him in great profusion a divine illumination. [. . .] Thereupon the young man was no longer aware of himself. He could not remember whether he was in a house or even under a roof at all. [. . .] Even if his feet were on the ground he was not aware of it [. . .] he forgot the entire world and was altogether present in that immaterial light, and was even himself, or so it seemed to him, become light.” The not-here (the divine light) engulfs the here, and even the self. Symeon, Catechesis 22.92–99, quoted in A. Louth, “Light, Vision and Religious Experience in Byzantium,” in The Presence of Light: Divine Radiance and Religious Experience (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004), pp. 96–97.

47. Isar, “The vision” (see note 5).

43. The proscenium is a device inherently imbued with the ideologies of humanist individualism, imperialism, and colonialism. It prioritizes one ideal vantage point; gradually degraded vantage points radiate out from it. A relic of Western European paradigms far removed from the Eastern ideologies that shaped the iconostasis, the proscenium is designed primarily as a frame surrounding the object of vision, whereas the iconostasis is an entity beholden to sight in itself and also permeable to vision. R. Knowles, Reading the Material Theatre (Cambridge University Press, 2004), pp. 63–64.

44. E. S. Casey, Getting Back into Place: Toward a Renewed Understanding of the Place-World (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1993), p. 51.

45. G. McAuley, Space in Performance: Making Meaning in the Theatre (Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press, 1999), p. 86.

In terms of the two Vladimirskaia icons, we can understand the “1514” copy as existing in the realm of the embraceable “here” while providing access to the “not-here” of the twelfth-century icon. It is this access that raises the same sense of ambivalent oscillation; while the two objects remain distinct, they also exist together as one and the same. When the not-here is the same as the here, the worshipper achieves the optimal outcome of the worship experience by fully entering into the space of the sacred in mind and body.46 The imaginary worlds existing beyond the boundaries of the proscenium in the theatrical production correspond to the infinite expanses of the Heavenly Jerusalem in the liturgical context. Always immune to the gaze, such spaces exist nevertheless for full participants in the dramatic performance. And as Isar argues, the goal of the believer is never the achievement of sight of these invisible spaces, but rather the tension and movement in the spiritual attempt to see more fully.47 For the communicant attending a worship service at the Moscow Dormition Cathedral, the aim was not to enter the altar area physically in order to more closely gaze upon the Tretiakov Vladimirskaia, but rather that the “1514” Vladimirskaia became the Tretiakov Vladimirskaia, as here and there, or me and not-me, became a unified whole.

Nevertheless, the other, the not-me, persists both in the form of the invisible and the visible. The twelfth-century icon and the sixteenth-century icon remain distinct objects to apprehend, to behold, to comprehend. Indeed, how these two objects were comprehended cannot be isolated from the element of duplication, for they remain distinct from one another and from the bodies of their viewers. As performativity theorist Rebecca Schneider discusses, the faculty of sight itself enables comprehension only when it is a matter

prototype’s features and receiving petitions in the stead of the miracle-working object. Like the doors, the two icons are “as if doubles of one another,” but instead of being located at the entry to each space, where the spatial journey begins, the two icons are each located at the respective goals or culmination points of the journeys. The Tretiakov Vladimirskaia resides at the place of the consecration of the sacrament, which is the goal of the priestly journey; the “1514” Vladimirskaia resides at the place of the reception of the sacrament, which is the goal of the communicant’s journey.

As previously mentioned, Uspensky compares the lowest tier of the iconostasis and the solea with a theatrical proscenium. Although there are inherent problems with this comparison,43 the practices of concealment and revelation inherent to the proscenium evoke theoretical concerns related to the liturgical space and the role of its icons. As phenomenologist Edward Casey notes, the distinct difference in perception between here and there is predicated upon the bodily experience of the observer.44 However, in the theatrical and ecclesiastical contexts, this distinction is somewhat blurred: An audience member, or churchgoer, in a successful act of theater or church attendance, experiences a state of being elsewhere, or at least of only partially being here. Performance theorist Gay McAuley notes that in theater, the elsewhere becomes materially at hand, yet there is a pervasive oscillation between the elsewhere, to which we are taken by the actors on stage, and our bodily experience sitting in the theater seat.45 In the liturgical setting, the worshipper experiences the continual vacillation between being overcome by the eternal sacred presence that pervades the church and the sensation of dwelling within a fragile and temporal human body. Hidden from view from the worshipper are not just the wings of the stage, or the altar space behind the iconostasis, but the divine itself, in all its ineffability.


48. R. Schneider, “Never, Again,” in The Sage Handbook of Performance Studies (see note 2), pp. 25–26.

49. Schneider writes that, “To read ‘history’ as a set of sedimented acts which are not the historical acts themselves but the act of securing any incident backward—the repeated act of securing memory—is to rethink the site of history in ritual repetition.” R. Schneider, “Performance Remains,” Performance Research 6, no. 2 (2001):105.

assert spiritual and political authority over the country as a whole. The historical and liturgical contexts of this icon converge as the “1514” icon transports its venerator not simply to the Tretiakov prototype, but moreover to her position within the spatial organization of the church, next to the altar. Both the icon and the altar transcend the earthly plane in their immediate connection to the Heavenly Jerusalem, but also, both connect to the ascendance of the Muscovite state through the miracles of the Vladimirskaia and the documents granting rule to Muscovy that were contained within the altar space. The repetition of an object with a rich history of performance—as a performer of miracles, as a performer within liturgical rites and processions, and as a performative subject and object—allowed for a nuanced and effective performative utterance to be delivered by means of the “1514” Vladimirskaia icon. It secured its meaning backwards through the previous iterations of the same images and would sustain powerful meaning for future iterations.

of seeing again. Comprehensibility is a function of narration, of the comprehended sight being replicated and framed.48 It is in a visual image’s repetition, in the selection of what to repeat and the story in which it is repeated, that meaning is ascribed to the image itself. It is not in the image where we find or are given meaning, but in its duplication in context.

The Tretiakov Vladimirskaia was known to protect its city of residence because of the stories told about it. Such narratives participated in the creation of the miracle-working icon as the palladium of the Russian land, and the “1514” icon, with the repetitions it put forth, stands as a performative utterance in this program, inscribing meaning onto the seen and unseen images of the Vladimirskaia. The “1514” Vladimirskaia educated its viewer as to why the same image’s earlier iterations were significant and how they were meaningful. The “1514” Vladimirskaia illustrated the teleological progression of power to Moscow and of time towards the Last Judgment. It implicated the Tretiakov Vladimirskaia in these progressions, assigning purpose and meaning to the miracle-working object through the paradigm of Moscow as Third Rome and heir to Constantinople. Its creation and display significantly transformed the meaning of the Tretiakov Vladimirskaia in ways that were exceedingly evocative for Muscovy’s political transformation into Russia’s leading city.

The “1514” Vladimirskaia was the product of a ruling hierarchy seeking to firmly establish itself in political and ecclesiastical power structures by means of the legacy of Russian and Christian history. The doing of history—the act of making the story of the past through the objects and events of the present—can itself be read as performative.49 By securing the meaning and memory of the past through the ritualized repetition of stories and symbols related to their rise to power, Muscovite rulers created the normative narrative that became the still-repeated story of Russian history. For it is not in the lived experience of historical events that meaning is found, it is in the narration of events past that meaning is created.

Through the “1514” Vladimirskaia, we can see how Moscow’s ruling elite successfully claimed ownership of Russia’s past—in effect, created this past—in order to

The icon as performer and as performative utterance: The sixteenth-century Vladimir Mother of God...

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