Orthodox Life 1978 (5)
29January, 4July
St. Andrei Rublev
by Bishop NATHANAEL of Vienna and Austria
ALTHOUGH the Venerable Andrei Rublev, Russia's greatest iconographer, has never been glorified officially, all the ancient writers who wrote about him, such as Epipnanius the Wise, Pachomius the Logothete, and most importantly, such a great Church authority as St. Joseph of Vo|okolamsk called him a saint (sviaty) and a holy monk (prepodobny.)
In the life of St. Sergius of Radonezh it is said: "The venerable and holy Andrei, surnamed Rublev, a superb and highly skilled iconographer and greatly excelling all in wisdom, having lived to an honorable old age . . . ."
St. Andrei was born between 1360 and 1370, apparently In the environs of Moscow, and definitely in the principality of Moscow. He went to the Holy Trinity-St. Sergius Monastery at an early age. There he found St. Sergius still alive (he reposed in 1392), and the personality of this great Russian saint made a deep impression on the youth, as noted by the writer of his life. After a while Andrei himself became a novice at the monastery, apparently during the abhacy of St. Nikon, the disciple and successor of St. Sergius. The Lives invariably refer to St. Andrei as a novice under Nikon.
At one time (before 1405) St. Andrei, at the order of Metropolitan Alexis and with the blessing of St. Nikon, moved from the Holy Trinity- St. Sergius Monastery to the Spaso-Androniev Monastery, which had been founded in Moscow some 40 years before by St. Sergius' beloved disciple, St. Andronik. It was in this monastery that Andrei was tonsured a monk and there he met his instructor in iconography, Theophanes the Greek, as well as Daniel the Monk, the iconpainter who was to become his lifelong friend.
All the short descriptions of the life of St. Andrei call Daniel his friend and fellow-faster. They are described in the life of St. Nikon as "men made perfect in the virtues . . . virtuous elders and painters, ever maintaining a spiritual brotherhood and great love for one another . . . And thus they departed to God in the sight of each other, in spiritual union, even as they had lived here (on earth)."
In the Chronicles the name Andrei Rublev is first mentioned under the year 1405, when together with Theophanes the Greek and the elder Prokhor Gorodetsky, he was invited to paint the Cathedral of the Annunciation in Moscow. Here we must note that St. Andrei was mentioned in third place — a sign that at that time he was young and little known. Information about the painting of the Cathedral of the Annunciation was recorded in 1409, consequently by a contemporary during his lifetime. The first known works of his which have come down to us from this time are eight icons in the second and third rows of the ikonostasis of the Annunciation Cathedral (the Transfiguration, the Entry of the Lord into Jerusalem, the Mystical Supper, etc.).
The next important large work of St. Andrei Rublev was the painting of the frescoes of the Cathedral of the Dormition in Vladimir in 1408. He did this work with his friend Daniel the Monk, and the grandiose fragments of the composition "The Last Judgment" belong to Rublev's brush.
The painting of the Cathedral of the All-Merciful Savior in the Androniev Monastery was done completely by St. Andrei, according to Epiphanius the Wise, one of his contemporaries.
St. Andrei Rublev and Daniel the Monk worked together for the last time in the 1420's, when St. Nikon asked them to paint the Cathedral of the Holy Trinity, which he had built in 1422. Before this, in 1408, while St. Andrei and Daniel were painting the cathedral in Vladimir, the Holy Trinity-St. Sergius Monastery was struck by a terrible misfortune: the Tartars led by Edigei Khan seized the monastery and burned it to the ground.
St. Nikon set about reconstructing his monastery and "impelled by a great desire to see with his own eyes the completed church, he besought the Venerable Andrei and Daniel to paint it." Now it was at this time that Rublev painted the best of his works, and perhaps even the best of all this world's paintings — the icon of the Trinity — as the Chronicle says: “in praise of his holy father Sergius the Wondenworker.”
Soon afer this all three, Daniel and Sts. Nikon and Andrei reposed, and in the life of St. Nikon it is said that St. Andrei reposed in "venerable and honorable old age." Therefore. he was at least 70 years old at the time of his death.*
Three portrait representations of St. Andrei Rublev survive to this day: 1) he is shown sitting on a scaffold, painting the icon of the Savior not-made-by-hands on the wall of a church: 2) approaching the newly-built stone church in the Trinity-St. Sergius Lavra and contemplating it; and 3) lying in his coffin and being buried by the brethren.
In the ”Responses" of St. Joseph of Volokolamsk it is stated that "Daniel and Andrei always lifted up their minds to the immaterial and divine Light,” that on the feast of the radiant Resurrection of Christ "they received great ioy, contemplating the holy icons for many hours, and were at that time embraced by divine joy and bright- ness." Here it is told how Daniel, who had died earlier, appeared to his friend and ioyfully summoned him to follow after him "into eternal blessedness.”
The Pan-Russian Local Council (the Stoglav Council) of 1581 decreed for all iconographers "to paint the holy icons not differently, but like the ancient Greek painters and like Andrei Rublev and other well known painters."
Translated by Seraphim F. Englehardt from The Orthodox Observer (Mont- real. No. 42, July, 1977).
* Rublev died between 1427 and 1430, and was buried at the Andronikov Monatery, now the site of the Rublev Museum.
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