The principal aim was artistic interpretation of sacral images within the parameters of contemporary perception. For this we used the latest digital technology.

Orientation towards maximal correctness is combined with a desire to draw attention to religious painting, an unspoken taboo for many years in Russia. In this way an attempt has been made to close the break with the pre-Revolutionary epoch in art and a precedent has been created for an integrated approach to sacral themes.

Work over many years and at many different levels is based on the utilisation of sources of varying quality, primarily the Bible, but also well-known and recently discovered apocrypha, hymnography, theological and philosophical works, scholarly treatises and of course artworks accessible to the authors.

The lower third conditionally combines elements of the Deisis and Veneration tiers. In the centre, the classical triad of the Deisis: Christ, the Mother of God, John the Baptist. Positions closer to the centre are occupied by the prime Apostles Peter and Paul, also Mary Magdalene, Equal-to-the-Apostles. After this come representatives of the Christian sainthood most revered in the Russian Orthodox Church: Nicholas the Miracle-Worker (hierarch), George the Dragon-Slayer (martyr), Seraphim of Sarov (holy father). The holy autocrats Equal-to-the-Apostles Constantine, founder of Orthodoxy and initiator of the Ecumenical Council, and the Martyred Tsar Nicholas, last of the Orthodox emperors, are placed at either end.

The composition of DEISIS requires some explanation. The project is aimed not only at believers, but also at those distant from the faith who nonetheless wish to familiarise themselves with the riches of Christian culture. Following the general logic of the multi-tier iconostasis in its historical development, the authors introduce to the selection of personae a number of alterations to the layout seen in the 15th-19th centuries. It should be noted that such alterations were not infrequent even in the strict structure of church art, and were introduced earlier to the traditional iconostasis. We need only recall that the Russian Church added tiers to the iconostasis that were absent in Greek Orthodoxy.

The Festival tier is omitted in the conventional sense. The middle third features images of Christ’s wrists enlarged and pierced by nails, which symbolically corresponds to the Crucifixion at the axis of the iconostasis. Fragments on one side of Christ carry a symbolic cartography of the Holy Land, grouped around Bethlehem and Jerusalem, where the events of the Birth and Resurrection took place. On the other side are the places (sometimes hypothetical) where the personae of sacral history from Adam to Nicholas II lived or died. The extreme left and right positions carry portraits of the forefathers of modern man. Adam and Eve form a polarised family cell whose internal tensions beget all generations of humanity. The principal pair in the deisis completes the frame of the Christ portrait in the scale of the installation.

The upper third unites the saints born before Christ and venerated by the Church in different historical periods – the patriarchs, prophets and philosophers. The principal idea of the Patriarchs tier was the homogeny of mankind, despite the varying missions and ministrations for different peoples. It is hard to comprehend sacral history without the theory of a world catastrophe (the Flood) that served as a watershed dividing civilisations. As an antitype of the Saviour in Christianity, the patriarch Enoch became an ancient archetype of righteousness for Abramic religions. Apart from the usual depiction of Shem, two other patriarchs have been included in DEISIS together with Noah, the custodian of values common to both mankind and nature (as symbolised by the Ark): Japheth and Ham. The descendants of these patriarchs (according to biblical historiosophy) now comprise a large part of the Christian population on our planet. * Contemporary exegetics leans towards a social interpretation of the triality of Noah’s sons. Therefore if Adam-Eve equal gender, Shem-Ham-Japheth refer to stratum.

* The introduction of the patriarch Ham to DEISIS may seem strange from a traditional point of view, since he was not venerated in the same way as Shem and Japheth. The negative connotations of the name Ham are well known, although this patriarch was instrumental in forming an ethnic group. Many peoples were known as Hamites, according to the biblical conception of history. This attitude gave rise to a colourful spectrum of racist-chauvinistic ideology, justifying the revival of slavery in the 16th to 19th centuries, colonial policies and suchlike phenomena, which are hard to ascribe to the historical priorities of Christianity. However, even proceeding from Old Testament doctrine, Ham was not cursed and the covenant with him (a rainbow) is of lasting significance.

From the 4th century, when Christianity became the religion of the civilised world (the habitable world) and the era of the Orthodox Church began (with the Councils), antagonism between pre-Christian cultural heritage and the New Testament gradually disappeared. The achievements of the past were increasingly seen as a preparatory stage in the formation of Christian culture. Elements crystallised in ancient teaching on the one hand date from the epoch of mankind undivided and the first religions (as symbolised by the figures of Adam, Enoch and Noah), and on the other hand prophetic revelations testify to the expected Divine Incarnation. The so-called ‘Hellenic philosophers’ were featured in the Prophets tier, which included not only philosophers in the academic sense, but also oracles, founders of arts and crafts, etc. Until the late 19th and early 20th centuries it was still possible to find the Twelve Sibyls, Hermes, Orpheus, Homer, Plato, Aristotle, Virgil, Ovid and others in Russian icons.

Bearing this in mind, and the fact that the contemporary version of Christianity has undergone significant change in comparison with the Middle Ages (when the upper tiers of the iconostasis were formed), the Prophets and Philosophers tiers are combined. Old Testament prophets are represented by Moses, herald of the transcendent God and historical founder of Judaism, the oldest Abramic religion. For Judaism, Christianity and Islam the image of the Queen of Sheba is very important and often included in the Sibyls. The gospel story of the magi who came to worship the Infant Christ draws our attention to the beliefs preached by the Prophet Zoroaster. We now know that his teaching deeply influenced all three Abramic religions, particularly in the field of ethics and eschatology. Hippocrates, the father of medical science, consolidated the humanist values essential to life that were later adopted by Christian civilisation. Alexander the Great was for many years regarded as an ideal ruler by both the Eastern and Western worlds, and his activity prepared the ground for the formation and propagation of Christianity.

The required features were selected from an exclusive bank of primary images (some 60,000 photographs of 350 models), each time varying different elements for the twenty-three faces. A fundamental condition was orthogonal projection, which excluded any distortion due to perspective. Every subject depicted (portrait) was created from a multiplicity of details, elements and factors, so that each one separately has its own vantage point of digital filming distinct from the others, and as a result, its own point of observation for the viewer. Consequently every section comprising a part of the total image (1000 in each portrait) has an autonomous point of illumination, which gives an effect of total individuality practically unattainable in traditional painting, graphics, sculpture or photography. Hence the impression of ‘unreal’ light reflected by images modelled in this way. As the viewer’s gaze scans across the image, each fragment of the portrait is perceived as if from an endlessly distant vantage point, like the image as a whole. In this context, the digital multi-composite lighting can be called a web of light. Each fragment has its own source of light and a luminous web is radiated across the entire surface of the image.

This is not a dissolution of traditional imagery, but rather a dilation of the field of analogy, uniquely realised at both the figurative and verbal levels of the project. Since DEISIS belongs to secular culture, despite the association with religious tradition, it includes working analogues for individual psychological perception of sacral themes. From a specific point of view, the portraits and other images in the project relate to iconography in traditional art, while the essays and biographical sketches relate to hagiography.

Exclusivity is defined less by the ‘manual’ quality that appears when the image is printed and aerographed, than by the integration of a digital bank of information for each specific digital picture. The top-quality photography of subjects and subsequent formation of an electronic database is of prime importance. At present it consists of 200,000 photographs at 34 megabytes each. A graphic station with seven fixed hard discs at 120 gigabytes each plus sockets for synchronic use of another seven Mobiltracks applications of the same capacity provide operative access to the required file. All this allows free movement within the digital bank, which is specially structured and aimed at such strategic projects as HOTEL RUSSIA, DEISIS, RUSSIAN LANDSCAPE, MOSCOW PANORAMA, THE LIFE OF INSECTS and MAP OF THE WORLD.

Photography of the subjects uses in most instances a macro- or tele-lens with various attachments and devices. Preferred lighting is combined (natural and artificial), which adds unusual plastic effects to the image. An important link in this technological chain is use of a special wide-format printer (EPSON™ 9600), which allows for preparation of a genuinely original print. All stages of the process without exception are similarly exclusive.