“The most beautiful word on earth is mother”: a gallery of paintings by Russian artists. Essay on painting B
A huge number of books, musical works have been written on the topic of the Great Patriotic War, and many films have been shot.
This topic is truly inexhaustible, because it has turned the lives of several tens of millions of people upside down and divided it into “before” and “after”.
Unfortunately, not all mothers, wives and daughters waited for their sons, husbands, fathers from the front, from the battlefields.
I believe that paintings or other artistic means can convey only a small part of the pain and suffering that people had to endure in those years.
One of these destinies formed the basis of V. Igoshev’s painting “She’s Still Waiting for Her Son.”
It shows an elderly woman standing at the open gate of her old house.
Her eyes are full of longing, sadness, expectation, suffering.
I think she's been in this position for a long time.
Every day a woman goes to this place in the hope that her beloved son will return, safe and sound.
She invariably looks into the distance, but, unfortunately, the miracle does not happen.
Perhaps she herself understands that there is no point in suffering and waiting, but she can’t help herself.
The whole meaning of her post-war life boils down to this.
Behind the grandmother's back is a house with a clean, open window.
There are flowers on the windowsill, and the frames are painted blue.
The woman tries as best she can to keep it in good condition, but every year it becomes more and more difficult for her to do this.
Next to the window, the author painted thin white birch trees, as if reminding us that we need to live on, no matter what.
Despite the tragedy of the picture, the woman is shown in a white blouse and scarf, and a black skirt.
From under the scarf we see the heroine's gray hair.
Her face is wrinkled and her eyes are narrowed.
We can only guess what thoughts are visiting her gray-haired head at this moment.
Maybe she remembers how her son went to the front, how he grew up... In any case, her thoughts are only about one thing - about her own, only child, whom she will never see again.
"Maternal happiness."
1869.
Private collection.
"Young mother with child."
1871.
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.
"A young mother watching her sleeping child."
1871.
Private collection.
"The Happiness of Motherhood."
1878.
Private collection.
"Motherland".
1883.
Private collection.
"Mother with child."
1887.
Private collection.
"Mother".
1932.
Alexander Maksovich Shilov.
“In the cell (Mother Paisia). Pyukhtitsa Monastery.
1988.
1. A woman in relation to the children she gives birth to.
The son stroked his mother’s hand in confusion and was silent. ( M. Gorky. Life of Klim Samgin.)
2. The female in relation to her cubs.
At night they carry them [lambs and kids] to their mothers. ( Sholokhov. Upturned virgin soil.)
3. Addressing a female person.
Lizanka stood up from the hoop and began to clean up her work. - What are you talking about, my mother! Deaf or something! - the countess shouted. ( Pushkin. Queen of Spades.)
4. The name of a nun, as well as the wife of a clergyman (priest, deacon), usually attached to the name or title.
Mother Pulcheria herself, the Moscow abbess, sent her bows and gifts from pilgrims. ( Melnikov-Pechersky. In forests.)
What (or how) did the mother give birth?- without clothes, naked.
“Dictionary of the Russian language. Moscow", "Russian language". 1982
Albrecht Altdorfer.
"Christ says goodbye to his mother."
1520.
National Gallery, London.
When a person is suddenly overtaken by trouble, his family and friends often receive some signal of misfortune. At the same time, paintings fall, dishes burst, clocks stop, visions arise, and doubles of the dying person appear. When one boy, left in the care of his grandmother, began to drown in the river, his mother, being thousands of kilometers away, clearly saw her child flopping desperately in the water. He was caught, and it was decided not to tell his mother anything, so as not to bother her in vain. But the mother came, told all the details of the adventure, showed the place where the boy almost drowned. This and many other similar cases are described in L. Vasilyeva’s book “Suggestion at a Distance.”
Anatoly Strozhkov. "There is a mysterious connection between living beings." “Behind seven seals” No. 7 2005.
Vasily Vasilievich Vereshchagin.
“Letter to the Motherland (Letter to Mother).”
1901.
Mother was called mother, mother, mother, mother, mother, parent.
Vasily Belov. "Lad." Moscow, "Young Guard". 1982
Vasily Grigorievich Perov.
"Mother with a sick child."
1878.
Vasily Ivanovich Surikov.
"Salome brings the head of John the Baptist to her mother Herodias."
1872.
“Two mothers. Mother is adopted and natural."
1906.
Samara Regional Art Museum, Samara.
"Mother and daughter".
1886.
State Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow.
Engraving by I.M. Bernigerota.
Mid-18th century.
"Johanna Elisabeth, Princess of Anhalt-Zerbst, née Princess of Holstein-Gottorp, mother of Empress Catherine II."
1870s.
“The Motherland is calling.”
1941.
Elizaveta Merkuryevna Boehm (Endaurova).
“The blue eyes look so sad and meek. I haven’t forgotten, you know, orphan of Mother’s affection!”
Ivan Akimovich Akimov.
“Grand Duke Svyatoslav kissing his mother and children upon returning from the Danube to Kyiv.”
1773.
"Mother with child."
1915.
Karl Pavlovich Bryullov.
"Mother Waking Up to Baby's Cry."
1831.
Karl Steuben.
"Peter the Great, saved by his mother from the fury of the archers."
"Mother".
1913.
"Mother".
1919.
Drawing for the magazine "Flame".
Leonardo da Vinci.
"The fetus is in the mother's womb."
"Breastfeeding mother"
M. Savitsky.
"Women-mothers".
Fragment of the painting “Patriotic War. 1944."
Unknown artist.
“Portrait of a Woman (Alleged portrait of the mother of the poet M. Yu. Lermontov).”
Nicholas Konstantinovich Roerich.
"Mother of the World"
1930.
Nikolay Nevrev.
“Peter I in foreign attire in front of his mother Queen Natalya, Patriarch Andrian and teacher Zotov.”
1903.
"Mother and son".
Between 1716 and 1742.
"A mother teaches her daughter to write."
Ferdinand Georg Waldmüller.
"Portrait of the mother of Captain von Stirl-Holzmeister."
Frederic Leighton.
"Mother and Child".
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In different parts of the former Soviet Union, a few monuments have been erected to mothers who did not receive their sons from the front.
In the village of Alekseevka, Kinelsky district, Samara region, on May 7, 1995, on the eve of the 50th anniversary of Victory in the Great Patriotic War, a grand opening took place memorial to the Volodichkin family. The mother of warriors, Praskovya Eremeevna Volodichkina, stands surrounded by nine cranes, as a symbol of expectation and faith. Nine cranes are nine sons who gave their lives in the name of Victory. Praskovya Eremeevna Volodichkina escorted her nine sons to the front. The woman was left alone - her husband died back in 1935. Before the war, the mother did not even have time to say goodbye to the youngest - Nikolai. Having finished his service in Transbaikalia, he was supposed to return home, but he still drove past his native place, only throwing a note rolled up from the window of the car: “Mom, dear mother. Don't worry, don't worry. Don't worry. We're going to the front. Let's defeat the fascists and everyone will return to you. Wait. Yours Kolka.” He never returned. As did his five other brothers. After the sixth funeral in January 1945, the mother’s heart could not stand the loss. Three of her sons returned from the front seriously wounded. From a huge family in which, if not for the war, there were many children, grandchildren, great-grandchildren, there was no one left.
Anastasia Akatievna Larionova, a resident of the village of Mikhailovka, Sargat district, Omsk region, saw off her seven sons to the front: Gregory, Panteleius, Procopius, Peter, Fedor, Mikhail, Nikolai. All of them died on the fronts of the Great Patriotic War. For her maternal feat, on June 22, 2002, in the regional center of Sargatskoye, she was erected a concrete monument, which was dedicated to all Russian mothers who lost their sons during the war. The monument represents the figure of a woman who is depicted standing at the gate in simple formal clothes. The mournful face is framed by a scarf, grief is imprinted in the wrinkles of the forehead. Eyes are directed into the distance in the hope of seeing the native silhouettes of the children. The left hand is pressed tightly to the heart to contain its pain. On May 9, 2010, on the day of the 65th anniversary of the Victory, the concrete monument was replaced by its exact copy, but made of bronze.
In November 2010, on the initiative of employees of the rural library of the Sokolovsky rural settlement of the Gulkevichsky district of the Krasnodar Territory, a monument to a mother of many children was erected at the burial site Efrosinya Babenko, all four of whose sons died on the battlefields during the Great Patriotic War. The woman herself died 15 years after the end of the war; she had no relatives or friends left.
In 1975, in Zhodino (Republic of Belarus) near the Brest-Moscow road, a monument to the Patriot Mother was unveiled, the prototype of which was Anastasia Fominichna Kursevich (Kuprianova), who lost five sons during the Great Patriotic War. The sculptural composition represents the moment of farewell to a mother and her sons, who are leaving along a symbolic path to protect the Motherland, free their home from the enemy, and return peace and happiness to all mothers on Earth. The youngest son Petya, his mother’s favorite, looked back in her direction for the last time...
Monument to mother Tatyana Nikolaevna Nikolaeva, who lost six of her eight sons in the war. The village of Izederkino, Morgaushsky district, Chuvashia. Tatyana Nikolaevna gave birth to and raised 8 sons. Grigory, Alexander, Rodion, Frol, Mikhail, Egor, Ivan, Pavel took part in the Great Patriotic War. Grigory, Egor, Ivan, Pavel died in battle. Frol and Rodion died soon after the war from their wounds. In May 1984, a monument to the glorious Chuvash mother T.N. Nikolaeva was unveiled in her native village. She was included in the Honorary Book of Labor Glory and Heroism of the Chuvash Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic in 1978.
Monument Kalista Pavlovna Soboleva in the distant Arkhangelsk village of Shakhanovka, Shenkursky district. In 2004, an article was published in the newspaper Pravda Severa: “In our region, in the Shenkursky district, in the village of Shakhanovka, there lived a woman whose name you should also know well. This is Kalista Pavlovna Soboleva, whose sons did not return from the battlefields of the Great Patriotic War. Kalista Pavlovna did not receive a single blood of her own - from 1905 to 1925. Having learned about the Victory, she put seven photographs on the table, filled seven glasses with bitters, invited her fellow villagers to remember her sons - Kuzma, Ivan, Andrey, Nikita, Pavel, Stepan, Joseph... Kalista Pavlovna lived poorly, walked in bast shoes. She worked on a collective farm and was awarded the medal "For Valiant Labor in the Great Patriotic War of 1941 - 1945." Like all collective farmers, she did not receive a pension for a long time, only in Khrushchev’s time they began to pay her six rubles a month, then 12, and then 18. Her fellow countrymen sympathized with her, helped her plant and dig potatoes. She died in the mid-sixties. "
In 2004, a monument was erected on the central square in the Omsk region in the village of Krutinki Akulina Semyonovna Shmarina, mother of five sons who died on the fronts of the Great Patriotic War.
In Zadonsk - a monument to the mother Maria Matveevna Frolova. Diagonally from the monastery, in a public garden, near the monastery hotel, there is a sculptural group - the Sorrowful Mother and a number of obelisks with the names of her sons. Mikhail, Dmitry, Konstantin, Tikhon, Vasily, Leonid, Nikolai, Peter... This Russian woman-mother, who raised and raised 12 children, had eight sons taken away by the war.
A monument was erected in the village of Bub, Perm Territory Yakovleva Matryona Ivanovna. During the war, she sold everything she had: house, livestock, things. She came to the village council with a bag of money (100 thousand rubles) with the words: “Buy an airplane with this money. My sons are fighting, we need to help.” We bought the plane. The sons did not return from the war, not one. And for the rest of her life, Matryona Ivanovna lived in the houses of fellow villagers in turn; everyone was honored that she would live in their house. The monument to Matryona Ivanovna was erected by fellow villagers.
The personification of all mother-heroines was the Kuban peasant woman Epistinia Stepanova, who placed on the altar of Victory the most precious thing she had - the lives of her nine sons: Alexander, Nikolai, Vasily, Philip, Fyodor, Ivan, Ilya, Pavel and Alexander.
Marshal of the Soviet Union A. A. Grechko and Army General A. A. Epishev wrote to her in 1966:
“You raised and educated nine sons, blessed nine of the people dearest to you to perform feats of arms in the name of the Soviet Fatherland. With their military deeds, they brought the day of our Great Victory over our enemies closer and glorified their names. ...You, the soldier's mother, are called by the soldiers their mother. They send you the filial warmth of their hearts; they bow their knees before you, a simple Russian woman.”
In Kuban, in the village of Dneprovskaya, a museum has been opened. It bears the name of the Stepanov brothers. People also call it the Museum of the Russian Mother. After the war, the mother gathered all her sons here. The things that are stored in it can hardly be called the museum word “exhibits”. Each item speaks of maternal love and filial tenderness. Everything that the mother took care of is collected here: Vasily’s violin, a notebook with Ivan’s poems, a handful of earth from Sasha’s grave... Addresses to the mother are full of filial love and care: “I think about you a lot, I live mentally with you, dear mother. I often remember my home, my family.”
In recent years, Epistinia Fedorovna, a personal pensioner of union importance, lived in Rostov-on-Don, in the family of her only daughter, teacher Valentina Mikhailovna Korzhova. She died there on February 7, 1969. The soldier’s mother was buried in the village of Dneprovskaya, Timashevsky district, Krasnodar Territory, with full military honors, where her sons were also “placed” in a symbolic mass grave. Soon a whole memorial dedicated to the Stepanovs appeared there. Equating her maternal feat to a military one, the Motherland awarded Epistinia Fedorovna Stepanova the Military Order of the Patriotic War, 1st degree.
In the big arms of a tired mother
Her last son was dying.
The field winds quietly stroked
His silver flax is gray.
Tunic with the collar open
There are stains on it.
From severe wounds
In wet plowing
His blood fell like fire.
- Didn’t I cherish you, son?
Didn’t I take care of you, dear?..
The eyes are clear
These white curls
Gave me heroic strength.
I thought that holidays would come together in life...
You were my last joy!
And now your eyes are closed,
White light in eyelashes
Became not nice. -
Seeing her sad tear,
Surrounded the mother among the fields
Nine troubles that broke the Russian heart,
Nine sons killed in battle.
Tanks froze, torn apart by thunder,
The rein horses took over.
...A mother stood up in the village on the main square
And petrified forever.
(Ivan Varabbas)
Religious themes are quite popular among Raphael's contemporaries. However, the main difference between this picture and similar ones is its fullness of lively emotions combined with a rather simple plot.
Composition
The focus is on the female figure of Madonna, who is holding her little son in her arms. The girl’s face is full of a certain sadness, as if she knows in advance what awaits her son in the future, but the baby, on the contrary, shows bright, positive emotions.
The Virgin with the newborn Savior in her arms walks not on the floor, but on the clouds, which symbolizes her ascension. After all, it was she who brought Blessing to the land of sinners! The face of a mother with a child in her arms is bright and thought out to the smallest detail, and if you look closely at the baby’s face, you will notice an adult expression, despite his very young age.
By depicting the Divine child and his mother as human and simple as possible, but at the same time walking on clouds, the author emphasized the fact that regardless of whether it is a divine son or a human one, we are all born the same way. Thus, the artist conveyed the idea that only with righteous thoughts and goals is it possible to find a suitable place for oneself in Heaven.
Technique, execution, techniques
A world-class masterpiece, this painting contains completely incompatible things, like the human mortal body and the sacredness of the spirit. The contrast is complemented by bright colors and clean lines of detail. There are no unnecessary elements, the background is pale and contains images of other light spirits or singing angels behind the Madonna.
Next to the woman and baby are saints who bow before the Savior and his mother - the high priest and Saint Barbara. But they seem to emphasize the equality of all the characters in the picture, despite the kneeling pose.
Below are two funny angels, which have become a real symbol not only of this picture, but of the author’s entire work. They are small, and with thoughtful faces from the very bottom of the picture they observe what is happening in the life of the Madonna, her extraordinary son and people.
The picture still causes a lot of controversy among experts. For example, the fact that there is no consensus on how many fingers are on the pontiff’s hand is considered very interesting. Some people see not five, but six fingers in the picture. It is also interesting that, according to legend, the artist drew Madonna from his mistress Margherita Luti. But it is unknown who the baby was based on, but there is a possibility that the author based the child’s face on an adult.