Perceptions and Descriptions of Art in Pre-Mongol Rus'*

Abstract

What did art mean to the inhabitants of pre-Mongol Rus’? In trying to answer this basic and impossible question, one would have thought that a sensible first step though by no means the only or the last step - might be to inquire of the inhabitants themselves, to see what they said or wrote about art, about its nature, its significance and qualities. Strangely, no such systematic or comprehensive inquiry has been conducted (or at any rate, none appears to have been published). There are of course copious studies of sources relating to individual objects and categories of object; there are studies of some of the reported functions of art; and there are surveys of aesthetics based largely on translated Byzantine texts or on later Muscovite texts. 1 But a general analysis of native perceptions, based on an analysis of the language and habits of native description, seems to be lacking.

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