Historical Painting Development Program and Battle Ekphrasis in Aesthetic Thought in the Beginning of the 19th Century

Abstract

The subject of the research in the article are the categories of assessment of historical painting and the poetics of the battle image in the aesthetic thought of the early 19th century. The article deals with the views of N. M. Karamzin, G. R. Derzhavin, V. A. Zhukovsky reflected in aesthetic articles, poetry, epistolary on the cognitive nature of art and the specifics of the artistic perception of the historical process. The writers’ reasoning about historical plots, the heroic personality in history, the role and nature of the artist’s imagination significantly supplemented the academic program for the development of art. The author of the article proves that Karamzin, Derzhavin and Zhukovsky identified and substantiated the necessary components of the historical theme in painting and literature in their aesthetic reflections, which formed the thesaurus of their artistic and aesthetic thought. The result of the study was the reconstruction of aesthetic system of historical painting developed by writers at the beginning of the 19th century. The analysis of the battle descriptions by Karamzin, Derzhavin and Zhukovsky made it possible to identify the very process of their achieving vivid imagery when creating a verbal picture and to determine the mechanisms of visualization.

Keywords

• n. m. karamzin
• g. r. derzhavin
• v. a. zhukovsky
• aesthetic thought
• historical painting
• description
• visualization mechanisms