40. Day, Mai 1, 2018
The May Day has brought us rain, cold (currently 11 degrees, 12:57 clock) and storm with 10 wind forces, in gusts 11, and outside so all sorts of flying around in the area.
Best weather to go on painting!
On his ring finger of the right hand, "Artjom" visibly wears a bandage, or a cloth or leather rag wrapped around his finger and knotted with string ...:
It does not seem to be a fresh wound (no blood can be seen!) But more to protect an already elderly wound.
Maybe a piece of the finger is missing or it is stiff due to an earlier wound, or ...
One can speculate very well!
It is interesting, first of all, that on all of the sketches, drawings and studies created before the large painting, this bandage is missing or invisible.
At the very beginning, when Repin started to work on his picture, "Artjom" should look like this - without a fur cap, without a kaftan and a coat, with a bleached thimble, on which only the typical individual crest bell worn by all Zaporozhian Cossacks could be seen. ..:
As Repin's designs became more concrete, he put "Artjom" on his papacha and gave him his clothes ...:
In the first two pictures he painted of the famous scene (now in Kharkiv and Minsk), "Artjom" is even more on the edge of the scene - in one version his right hand is hidden ...:
In the second version, "Artjom" is already quite in the center and put his right hand a colleagu on the shoulder - but of a bandage is again nothing to see ...:
Why does this bandage appear in the grand final version?
Nothing happened by chance on the picture, everything is planned exactly, "through-composed" - and full of allusions to the circle of friends and acquaintances of the painter.
The two friends of Ilya Repin, who are considered as possible role models of Artyom, the journalist and writer Vladimir Alexeyevich Giljarowski (former research) ...
... and the director of the St. Petersburg Conservatory, Aleksandr Ivanovich Rubez (current research) ...
... both had no such bandage!
But another close friend of Repin had one, as you can see here ...:
And that was the sculptor and engineer Mikhail Ivanovich Mikeshin!
**continued next post**