Russian sacred style in the miniatures of the illuminated chronicles of Ivan the Terrible

The Illuminated Chronicles of Ivan the Terrible is a unique artifact of both Russia’s and world art cultures. This documentary monument contains ten volumes (totally ten thousand pages) of handwritten texts with almost eighteen thousand miniatures. The author proves that the structure, composition and manner of the illustrations in this collection tend to express such metaphysical principles of the Russian civilization as versatility, conciliarity and disengagement. Both special features and originality of the Russian sacred style of the book miniatures were being formed as a result of the dialogue between the Western and Byzantine aesthetic traditions.