Week Twenty-Seven: The Prodigal Son by Alexander Gaun

July 6, 2019

Week Twenty-Seven: The Prodigal Son by Alexander Gaun

As we celebrate the tenth anniversary of the Sacred Art Pilgrim Collection with a survey of highlights from my on-line art listings, I have selected images for the month of July depicting Christ's Parable of the Prodigal Son in the Gospel of Luke.  My first featured piece bears witness to an fascinating revival of sacred art-making in Russia, where a secular folk art form from the Soviet period, intended to replace icon-making, now depicts religious images banned in the Communist era. It is a lacquer box illustrating the story of the Prodigal Son by Alexander Gaun, a painter trained at a Soviet technical school, who works in Mstera, a village once famed for its icons in the Golden Ring of historic cities and towns north of Moscow. In this image painted on the lid of a box made from layers of pressed paper, Gaun depicts key scenes from the parable in a circular cycle of visual vignettes from lower left to right, where we watch the wayward son leaving home with his inheritance, squandering his wealth in riotous living, finding all doors closed to him in his poverty, then, sharing slops with pigs, before returning to the embrace of his welcoming father. This sacred artifact, specially commissioned for the collection, can be seen on the Russian Lacquer Boxes page in the Schools of Sacred Art section. (John Kohan)