Pskov school of icon painting

The Pskov school was the tradition of icon painters working in the wealthy medieval city-republic of Pskov, one of the three great centres of Russian icon painting beside Novgorod and Moscow. Its masters are anonymous, but their works are unmistakable: everything - from the cutting of the pine plank to the building of the faces - follows Pskov's own system rather than the canons of its neighbours. The fourteenth century is the school's classical period: its icons are painted on pine boards with thick, hand-applied gesso that is never polished smooth, so the colour planes keep the freshness of a surface just laid on. Surviving panels run from the early thirteenth century - the Deesis from the Church of Nikola of Kozhe - into the sixteenth, with narrative hagiographic cycles arranged around a central image. Monumental painting goes back further, to the twelfth-century frescoes of the Transfiguration Cathedral at the Mirozhsky Monastery.

Defining characteristics

• Rough, hand-applied gesso ground, never polished smooth, so paint sits on a visibly worked surface
• Pine plank panels with simple, consistent workshop joinery
• Faces built on the school's own construction, independent of Novgorod and Suzdal models
• Warm, earthy colour dominated by ochres, deep reds and browns
• Expressive, emotionally charged figures with a direct human warmth
• Narrative hagiographic cycles arranged around a large central image

Example works

• Deesis from the Church of Nikola of Kozhe — Anonymous Pskov master (c. 1200-1300)
• Prophet Elijah in the desert with Hagiographic cycle — Anonymous Pskov master (c. 1275-1325)

Sources

• Pskov school of icon painting - WikiArt institution
• Псковская икона - Псков (Russian Wikipedia) encyclopedia

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