Descent of Noah from Ararat
1889
Christian Art
Oil on Canvas
Aivazovsky was increasingly subject to criticism from advocates of a realist style throughout his career. This younger generation of Russian artists with Ilya Repin at its forefront represented a growing social conscience among some artists. A comparison of Repin’s “Barge Haulers” and “Descent of Noah from Ararat” revealed their temperamental differences and Aivazovsky’s conservatism. He creates an illusion around the Old Testament story of Noah and his family as they load the animals down from the postdiluvian resting place of the ark sustained by supposedly eternal truths and uncorrupted by radical human dissent from those truths. This implied message of reassurance would have been an anathema to artists like Repin who believed art should question and not reassure.
Ivan Aivazovsky
Romanticism
Born: 29 July 1817, Theodosia, Ukraine
Nationality: Ukrainian
Died: 20 May 1900, Theodosia, Ukraine
Aivazovsky was a Romantic painter. He is considered one of the greatest masters of marine art. Following his academic education at the Academy of Arts in Saint Petersburg, Aivazovsky travelled to Europe and briefly lived in Italy in the 1840s
Jezzie G 