1917
oil on canvas
123 х 125

The painting was produced on the eve of the 1917 revolution; it is a double portrait of major Russian philosophers of the 20th century: Pavel Aleksandrovich Florensky (1882–1943) and Sergei Nikolayevich Bulgakov (1871–1944). Father Pavel Florensky is shown in the foreground wearing white sacerdotal clothes, deep in meditation. His theological treatise "Pillar and Assertion of Truth" (1914) is a seminal work of Russian philosophical school. Florensky's view of the world is based on pan-unity metaphysics, which expressed the fundamental intuitive faith of Russian spiritual consciousness in a harmonic integrity, interconnection and unity of existence. A major scientist and cultural figure, father Pavel was victimized in 1937. Sergei Nikolayevich Bulgakov is shown wearing black layman clothing, a rebellious expression on his face. Bulgakov passed from being a legal marxist to religious philosophy; in 1918, he was ordained. Bulgakov emigrated from Russia in 1923. He was prophetic in predicting a transformation of atheist Soviet state into an authoritarian regime with a leader cult.

at 10, Lavrushinsky Lane, Hall 39