Russian Icon, 19th Century, The Fruits of the Passion of Christ. This small icon, probably coming from a familiar and intimate environment used for meditation and prayer, depicts Christ being crucified on a cross similar to a tree, from which angels branch out like flowers, bearing globes with symbols of the Passion. From the top of the cross, a hand points to the open door of a walled city; this is the heavenly Jerusalem, over which God the Father reigns. The message is clear: The sacrifice of Christ, who redeemed original sin, made the salvation of humanity possible. Below left, under the arches of a temple on which another hand that branches off from the cross places a crown, are the four Evangelists, representing the Church founded by Christ. On the right, death, in the form of a skeleton on horseback, is defeated; while further down in the corner, the underworld opens up, conceived as a huge mouth emerging from a cave where the devil, chained to the cross, holds the soul of Judas, the traitor apostle. The icon, accompanied by inscriptions that illustrate every detail, celebrates the sacrifice of Christ, and the victories over the devil, death and sin. It therefore seems to be the visual transposition of a sermon addressed to the faithful. Icons with the Crucifixion and the fruits of the Passion had a certain diffusion in Russian painting between the end of the seventeenth century and the first decades of the following century; having an illustrious prototype in an engraving made in 1682 by Vasily Andreev, an artist of the Armory Palace in the Moscow Kremlin. There is a similar example in the Uffizi Gallery in Florence, made in a provincial workshop in central Russia around 1730-1740, which finds particular affinities with the present icon both in the pictorial technique and in the composition. Tempera on wooden panel, 51 x 41 cm.
