What is going on in the painting ‘Religious Procession in Kursk Province’ by Ilya Repin?

According to legend, the Kursk-Root Icon of the Mother of God ‘Znamenie’ (‘Sign’) was discovered by a hunter in the roots of a tree on September 8, 1295. As soon as he picked it up, a spring gushed from this place. Later, a monastery was built there, in the outskirts of Kursk – the Kursk-Root Pustyn. It was believed that the holy image protected from troubles. 

At the end of the 16th century, by order of Tsar Fyodor Ioannovich, it was taken to Moscow and returned back in 1618, placing it in the Znamensky Monastery in Kursk itself, which was specially built for it. At the same time the first procession took place there. Since then, every year during the ninth week after Easter, the icon was transferred from the Znamensky Cathedral to the Korennaya Pustyn Monastery and, in September, it would be returned to its original place. These religious processions, during which the believers covered a distance of 30 kilometers, were considered the largest in Russia, and gathered up to 60,000 people. 

Stereoscopic painting

The original sketch of the painting ‘Religious Procession in Kursk Province’ appeared in 1877, but several years passed before Ilya Repin finished it. He worked on it in Moscow, Abramtsevo, Khotkovo and, in the Summer of 1881, he visited the Korennaya Pustyn Monastery.

Artist Ivan Kramskoy, having learned about Repin’s idea, supported him in every possible way, saying that Repin had struck gold. He finished ‘The Religious Procession’ in 1883 in St. Petersburg and immediately presented it at the next exhibition of the ‘Peredvizhniki’. 

The public, finding themselves in front of the painting, felt a slight dizziness: there was a feeling as if a large crowd was moving straight towards them and this procession had no end, hidden by yellow road dust. There are more than 70 characters in it. At the head of the procession are peasants carrying a lantern covered by a dome with colorful ribbons. Following them, two women carefully carry the icon case of the venerated icon. The shrine itself, shining in the sun, is in the hands of a plump landowner. And, behind her, a veritable sea of people. 

The pilgrims are being guarded by policemen and specially elected officials: there is a policeman lashing a whip on someone who is being overly zealous. Horsemen are also pushing the poor people, who are following to the left of the procession. 

Writer Korney Chukovsky wrote in his memoirs that only Leo Tolstoy could depict so voluminously a multitude of characters, each with his own character, “from the very thick of the people”, as Repin did. "All this multitude of gaits, beards, bellies and low foreheads and banners and whips and sweaty hair – all this is so naturally glued together and intertwined into one mass, as nowhere else in any painting. <…> If you look at this entire procession for 10 minutes, its stereoscopic nature will reach the point of illusion and its background will recede far into the depths, at least a quarter of a verst."

The triumph of art 

As in the case of the famous painting ‘Barge Haulers on the Volga’, Repin's new painting left no one indifferent.

Some enthusiastically said that it was a triumph of modern art, calling the painting “a living piece of folk faith”. Others reproached the artist for bias. They wrote that the painting reflected both the greatness of Russia and its “everyday ugliness”. 

Collector Pavel Tretyakov immediately bought the painting for 10,000 rubles and placed it in the Tretyakov Gallery. It is still there today.