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Icon-Painting in the Russian North: Evidence from the Antonievo-Siiskii Monastery* Ann M. Kleimola Foreigners entering the "rude and barbarous kingdom" of Muscovy along the great river road of the Northern Dvina passed within a few miles of the Antonievo-Siiskii Monastery, a remarkable cultural center of the Russian North that remained largely invisible to outside eyes. The community was founded in 1520 by the monk Antonii and four followers who settled beside a lake in the forests near the confluence of the Siia River and the Northern Dvina, about 50 miles upstream from Kholmogory. The settlement's prosperity began shortly thereafter with a grant of land from Vasilii III. By the end of the 16th century the monastery was a substantial second-tier regional church institution (the Solovetskii Monastery far overshadowed all of the other Pomor 'e monasteries), with income from landholdings, coastal saltworks in Nenoksa and Una, fishing rights including a share in the use of the Varzuga river on the Kola Peninsula, and warehouses in Vologda and Kholmogory, as well as donations from churchmen, local residents, and pilgrims1 Despite suffering three major fires in the 16th and 17th centuries, the monastery was rebuilt each time and continued to grow. Its Trinity Cathedral, completed in 1607, was one of tl1e first mason ry structures in the region. The Annunciation "winter church" and the gate-church dedicated to St. Sergii of Radonezh also were rebuilt and additional facilities, including a bell tower and cells, were constructed. The community numbered 50 monks by the 1540s, about 80 in * For assistance that made completion of this paper possible, I wish to express my gratitude to the Center for Russian, East European, and Eurasian Studies, University of minois at Urbana-Champaign; Helen Sullivan and the staff of the Slavic Reference Service , University of Illinois Libraries; Professors Shirley Glade, Gail Lenhoff, and Daniel Kaiser. 1 A. A. Kizevetter, Russkii Sever: Rol' sevemogo kraia Evropy: Rossiia v istorii russkogo gosudnrstvn (Vologda: Tipografiia Soiuza Severnykh Kooperativnykh Soiuzov, 1919), 36, 43; M. M. Bogoslovskii, Zemskoe snmouprnvleuie un russkom severe v XVII v. (Moscow: Izd-vo Irnperatorskago Obshchestva istorii i drevnostei rossiiskikh, 1909), 1: 68-71; M. V. Kukushkina, Mounstyrskie 17iblioteki Russkogo Severa: Ocherki po islorii kuizhuoi kul'tury XVI- XVII vekov (Leningrad: Nauka, 1977), 25- 29; Vladimir Bulatov, Russkii Sever: Kuign Irel'in. Pomor'e (XVI- unchnlo XVlll v .J (Arkhangel'sk: Izd-vo Pomorskogo gosudarstvennogo universiteta imeni M. V. Lomonosova, 1999), 77, 93. Rude & Barbarous Kingdom Revisited: Essays in Russian History and Culture in Honor o f Robert 0. Crummey. Chester 5. L. Dunning, Russell E. Martin, and Daniel Row land, eds. Bloomington, IN: Siavica Publi shers, 2008, 327- 39. 328 ANN M. KLEIMOLA 1588, but had grown to 184 monks and 183 lay residents (mirian vsiakikh chinov) by 16582 (See fig. 9 following p. 72.) Antonii himself set the monastery's focus on cultural activity. Book culture flourished at Siiskii. When Antonii died in 1556 the monasterial library already had 66 manuscripts. Later abbots, particularly Feodosii (1643-52 and 1662- 87) and Nikodim (1692- 1721), were bibliophiles whose personal cell libraries became part of the monasterial holdings. Nikodim alone donated 28 manuscripts. By 1701 the inventory of monastic property listed 387 manuscripts and 364 printed books3 Antonii also launched the monastery's tradition of icon-painting. A native of the Dvina hamlet Kekhta, he learned the art in his youth, as attested in a memorial inscription on a stone in the monastery refectory: "A zealous seeker after virtue and chastity from childhood, he was skilled in reading and icon-painting from the age of seven.,,4 According to tradition , as he was traveling toward the White Sea he painted icons for several village churches along the Onega, including the dedicatory icon of the Annunciation church in Turchasovo and that of the church of St. Nicholas the Wonder-Worker in the settlement attached to the Vaimuzha parishs His Life (zhitie) records that he himself painted the dedicatory icon that adorned his Trinity church. As Antonii mentioned in a 1540 petition to the grand prince requesting that an abandoned settlement nearby be granted to the monastery, the icon had already performed many miracles. A few years later the churches of the monastery burned down, but Antonii's Trinity icon survived? 2 Kukushkina, Monastyrskie biblioteki, 26, 30; Bogoslovskii, Zemskoe samoupravlenie, L 68. Illustration 1, from K. K. Sluchevskii, Po Severo-zapadu Rossii, Tom 1: "Po Severu Rossii" (St. Petersburg, 1897), 212, provides an overview of the...

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