Display of faith
There is something very moving about religious art. It goes far beyond aesthetic appeal or brushwork technique, and appeals directly to the soul. So writing about an exhibit of Ukrainian icons for this Houston Chronicle piece was both challenging and fascinating for me.
Ukrainian Christianity through the ages
By MONICA RHOR FOR THE CHRONICLE
In the Hall of Paleontology, troops of schoolchildren and toddlers scurry, skitter and squeal among ancient dinosaur bones and Tyrannosaurus rex fossils.
But tucked away in a corner of the Houston Museum of Natural Science, amid hushed tones and an air of veneration, the glory and grandeur of a great cathedral awaits. Here, under arched ceilings and muted lights, are the finely crafted treasures of nine centuries of Ukrainian Orthodox Christianity.
Ornately designed chalices, gospel covers and tabernacles gilded in silver and gold. Intricately embroidered liturgical vestments and altar cloths woven of velvet and golden thread. Icons, painted in deep shades of red, green and blue, and hinting of the rich influences of Byzantine and Western art.
“These are more than paintings. They relate the word of God, so we tried to treat them with reverence,” said Dirk Van Tuerenhout, the museum’s curator of anthropology, as he walked through the exhibit, The Glory of Ukraine: Sacred Images From the 11th to the 19th Century.
The bulk of the exhibit’s 77 pieces comes from the holdings of the oldest monastery in Ukraine, the Kyiv-Pecherskaya Lavra, also known as the Monastery of the Caves. The monastery, whose beginnings can be traced to 1051, is a massive complex that once encompassed cities, towns and villages, and housed an art school that drew students from across Eastern Europe and Russia.
Ravaged during World War II, the monastery was reconstructed and today boasts a collection of more than 70,000 paintings, metalwork, embroidery and icons — religious images depicting saints, angels and holy beings, and sometimes thought to have miraculous powers.
The pieces in the Houston exhibit offer a hint of what might be found in Ukrainian Orthodox churches, which typically contain an iconostasis – or a wall of icons and religious paintings that separates the nave from the sanctuary. Instead of one single painting, an iconostasis would be covered with dozens of icons and religious images, Von Tuerenhout explained.