Materials for the History of Russian Iconography. Atlas. Part I. Tables I-CCX.

Prominent Russian historian, archaeologist and palaeographer Nikolai Likhachev (1862-1936) was one of the first researchers, who at the end of the XIX century revived interest in Russian art of icon painting, I started collecting icons, explore and restore them. The result of his activity was the work of "Materials for the history of Russian iconography," published in the publishing of two folders and contains 864 pictures with monuments of Russian icons in the 419 tables. Thus, the publication clearly reproduced the evolution of Byzantine, Italian, Greek and ancient Russian icons of art, past all kinds of Novgorod, Pskov, Moscow, Stroganov, Yaroslavl and other schools of icon painting. For this monumental work, which was the major contribution to the study of Russian painting, in 1908 received a gold medal Likhachev Russian Archaeological Society. It was expensive and inaccessible to the public edition, but it attracted the attention of a number of artists who began to study and to clear the ancient Russian icons. So there was another "discovery" of the ancient Russian icons. PP Muratov, the author of a volume dedicated to Russian icons in the "History of Russian Art" Grabar, noted that when he and other enthusiasts were present when removing the black soot from the icons, and when the light of day out bright colors and gold hatching they thought that they saw a miracle. As if from the darkness of centuries rebelled before them radiant ancient art of Holy Russia, throwing off the veil of oblivion and then destroying the widespread belief that the art of painting did not exist in Russia before Peter.