Authors

Discussion

The paper examines the role of emotions as a mediator in the interaction between art and history in Russian history painting at the moment of its formation and rapid development at the turn of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The second half of the eighteenth century in Russia was marked by a growing interest in the national past, reflected both in an increasing number of historical texts and in derivative works that engaged with history to varying degrees. The Petrine reforms functioned as a watershed, dividing Russian history into “before” and “after”: while “new,” post-Petrine Russia was associated with what is generally summarised as Europeanisation, the “old” era appeared as a kaleidoscope of lost and forgotten fragments, requiring excavation and reinterpretation. Interest in the “ancient” was accompanied by a critical reassessment of Russia’s own genealogy and the need to construct historical material into a coherent narrative affirming autocracy as the most stable form of governance. Nineteenth-century modernity, with its ideas of historicism, further intensified this interest: engagement with temporally distant events both distanced Russia from European influence, overshadowed by the ghost of the recent French Revolution, and supported the construction of a national identity modeled on other European states.

This interest in the “ancients” developed into a comprehensive program in which artists were assigned a distinctive role. They were not merely executors but active participants, endowed with the creative capacity to transmit and amplify constructed narratives of the national past. History painting, as the principal academic genre and a key element of the ideological system, proved ideal for this task. Traditional biblical and mythological subjects were supplemented by episodes from Russian history of varying temporal distance, while the inherent discursivity of this genre transformed it into a medium capable of unfolding the intended subject before the viewer.

Expressions, understood as the depiction of affective experience, were essential to history painting. Their pragmatics went beyond narrative exposition and aesthetic effect: through the universality and legibility of emotional matrices, they reduced the temporal distance between viewer and past events and shaped a specific perception of historical episodes, thereby enhancing the reception of the constructed narrative. Drawing on the works of Kiprensky, Ugryumov, and other artists, the paper demonstrates how the multidimensional nature of emotions and the concept of character became integral components of the artistic-ideological program. The demand for excavation of the national past, the democratisation of emotions, and growing attention to individual sensuous experience shaped a new optic for perceiving historical figures, reflecting the expectations of both patrons and society at large.