A few of the most famous Russian Christian artists:

19th C: Repin Ivanov Polenov Kramskoy Nesterov Semiradsky

Contemporary: Ryzhenko Glazunov Morgun Afonina

Our top 10 favorites: A purely subjective list of paintings and artists we love.

To see all of the over 100 paintings in this series, click here.

About this series: As we learned about Russia's traditional faith, Russian Orthodox Christianity, we discovered an enormous, mostly forgotten treasure of striking Christian paintings, mostly unknown in the West, starting from approximately the early 1800s, and continuing to this day.

So far we have cataloged over 150 images, and are discovering more all the time. We will gradually be getting them all online. If you know of a painter or sculptor which we can add to the series, please let us know in the form below. You can see the entire list of what we already have online here.

The painting 'The Blessing of St. Sergius of Radonezh' was completed in 2005. The size of the picture - 39" x 23"

Link to high resolution image.

St. Sergius blesses Dimitriy Ivanovich Donskoy to the Kulikovo battle. What a difficult subject for a picture after the canvases already painted before you! I really wanted to portray the essence. Only the essence and nothing more. It seemed to me that the monk simply gathered these stern and obscure people going to their death, and embraced them with his heart. And so it was warm and quiet, as if the victory had already happened and everyone returned alive ... As if he did not have to, Sergius, during the liturgy, loudly call the names of the heroes at that moment leaving for Paradise with the blood-smoking Kulikov field..."

Details:

Paul Ryzhenko (1970-2014) was a peculiar artist, especially for our times. He was staunchly realist—he believed that realism was the only ‘real’ art and scoffed at modernism as the result of a morally deteriorating world—yet he was also an unabashed Christian and a deep idealist.

About the Great Russian Christian Art series:

Russia has a wonderfully rich heritage of Christian and Bible-themed painting which reached its zenith in the second half of the 19th century, as part of the realist school. Many of the canvases are enormous, filling an entire wall of a large public hall. Some of them took decades to complete. They are a striking and beautiful testimony to how deeply ingrained Christianity is in Russian history, culture, philosophy, thought, indeed, in her very soul. They are a delight to behold.

As Russia emerges as a leader in the return to traditionalism, this style of painting is again in vogue, and there are also several contemporary Christian painters creating extraordinary canvases. Indeed, Moscow has an excellent art academy dedicated to this style, a topic we covered in the profile of Ilya Glazunov, a leading, recently deceased painter in this genre. See: A Conservative Russian Lion With Real Mass Influence – The Painter Ilya Glazunov

Many of these paintings and artists are hardly known in the West, dismissed by the secular, atheist, globalist modern 'art' vogue. We are delighted to bring you this series, which consists of several dozens of works. You can see all of the works in this series by clicking here.

We think you’ll enjoy them as much as we do.