Meal

The artist is Perov

This picture of Perov can be called the most striking example of a work of critical realism in Russian art of the 1870s. Meal – food and general monastery feast. The work of the same name by the outstanding master of the genre picture was perceived by contemporaries as a kind of exposure of the era. The plot with the image of a meal talked about hypocrisy of monasticism. Various vices of a person – gluttony, self -interest, pride, envy – are captured in the picture in the images of the ministers of the church sitting at the table, symbolically located between the images of asking the alms of the beggar and the crucified Christ. Bright sunlight is pouring into the windows, which gives hope for the possibility of spiritual cleansing.

The Russian Museum. From the icon to the present. 2005. With. 176.