Theophanes the Greek (Russian: Феофа́н Грек, Greek: Theophanes, born about 1350 in the Byzantine Empire, died about 1410 in Russia) was a Russian painter and iconographer of Byzantine origin. He was the master of Andrei Rublev. With Prokhor of Gorodets and Rublev, he painted, in 1405, the iconostasis of the Cathedral of the Annunciation in Moscow.
Theophanes the Greek's Biography
The essential facts of Theophanes the Greek's biography, reported in his epistle to Cyril of Tver, written around 1415, are due to Epiphanes the Wise. Some brief passages from the Novgorodian and Muscovite Chronicles also mention him.
A Byzantine painter, he came to Russia via Theodosia (Crimea) in the 1370's. He was the author of the frescoes in the Church of the Transfiguration of the Savior on Iline in 1378.
Theophanes decorated more than forty churches, none of which are preserved, in Constantinople, Chalcedon, Galatia Genoa and Caffa in the Crimea from where he probably went to Russia. Thanks to Epiphanius, we know that he worked in Novgorod, Nizhny Novgorod and Moscow. The iconographer brought and spread new ideas about monastic asceticism, hesychia. New iconographic traditions were created as a result.
Theophanes the Greek's Works
Theophanes came to put his experience at the disposal of Novgorod. But he himself benefited from the Novgorodian traditions already existing in Staraia Ladoga, which appear in the frescoes of the Church of St. George and the Church of the Transfiguration of the Savior on Nereditsa.
He was inspired by them, but introduced into his frescoes a dynamism, an abandonment of detail that recalls certain forms of modern art. According to Mikhail Alpatov, his ascetic, severe, tormented faces form a real "pictorial stenography" where he abandons himself to his sole inspiration.
This is a rare thing in the Orthodox Church, which is highly regulated by strict canons. His frescoes are as if illuminated by flashes of lightning and some are like a kind of photographic negative. The features are sometimes simply evoked in white or in light according to a quasi-impressionist technique.
- The frescoes of the Church of the Transfiguration of the Savior on Iline (1378) in Novgorod.
- The iconostasis of the Annunciation Cathedral in Moscow in collaboration with Andrei Rublev, 1405.
- Two miniatures from the Book of the Gospels in the Russian State Library in Moscow, painted around 1392, are attributed to him.