15th
16th
17th
A01=Justin Willson
ages
artisan
artist
Author_Justin Willson
Category=AB
Category=AGA
century
church
czar
east
eastern
enamel
enamelwork
eq_art-fashion-photography
eq_bestseller
eq_isMigrated=1
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
fifteenth
forthcoming
great
icon
ikon
illuminated
image
ivan
manuscript
middle
moscow
mural
muscovite
painting
sculpture
seventeenth
sixteenth
slavic
spiritual
terrible
tsar
tsarist
workshop
Product details
- ISBN 9780226848051
- Weight: 454g
- Dimensions: 178 x 254mm
- Publication Date: 16 Jul 2026
- Publisher: The University of Chicago Press
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Hardback
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An examination of the values and debates that shaped early East Slavic art.
The Moods of Early Russian Art describes an alternative early modernity at the easternmost border of the European cultural sphere, where the Renaissance marked a return not to secular humanism but to the religiosity and art of the Middle Ages. Charting a kind of “Renaissance in reverse,” art historian Justin Willson explores how the value placed on style and virtuosity faded in importance as the Church cultivated miracle-working images during the reigns of Ivan the Great and Ivan the Terrible. Arguing for a broader unity of interests among artistic workshops across the Muscovite landscape—a system of interconnected values that he explains using the language of “moods”—Willson examines icons, illuminated manuscripts, enamelwork, and murals, tracing how the interpretive framework of the age shifted from the “aesthetic” and “literal” moods to the “intoxicated” and “romantic” over the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries.
The Moods of Early Russian Art describes an alternative early modernity at the easternmost border of the European cultural sphere, where the Renaissance marked a return not to secular humanism but to the religiosity and art of the Middle Ages. Charting a kind of “Renaissance in reverse,” art historian Justin Willson explores how the value placed on style and virtuosity faded in importance as the Church cultivated miracle-working images during the reigns of Ivan the Great and Ivan the Terrible. Arguing for a broader unity of interests among artistic workshops across the Muscovite landscape—a system of interconnected values that he explains using the language of “moods”—Willson examines icons, illuminated manuscripts, enamelwork, and murals, tracing how the interpretive framework of the age shifted from the “aesthetic” and “literal” moods to the “intoxicated” and “romantic” over the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries.
Justin Willson is assistant professor in the Department of the History of Art at Yale University.
