The series of paintings with the image of the saint Irinarch Zatvornik from the collection of the State Museum Reserve “Rostov Kremlin” and Borisoglebsk Museum “The House of Peasant Yolkin”

The article describes three paintings devoted to scenes from the life of the Monk Irinarkh Zatvornik, kept in the State Museum reserve “Rostov Kremlin” and Borisoglebsk museum “House of peasant Yolkin”. The goals of the study are to clarify the attribution of the studied works, to solve the question of their belonging to one or several masters, to clarify the time frame of the paintings' creation. Particular attention is paid to the palaeographic analysis of epigraphic inscriptions, as well as to the comparison of the paintings with lithographs depicting scenes from the life of St Irinarkh. In the course of the work, formal and stylistic, palaeographic and iconographic analyses were carried out, and the history of the development of the image of St Irinarkh was studied. Available publications and archival documents were studied during research in the State Museum reserve “Rostov Kremlin”, Borisoglebsk museum and the monastery, which helped to better understand the historical context and expand knowledge about the existence of these works of art for more than a century. Technical and technological research, including chemical analyses of pigments, allowed us to identify the composition of the materials used in the painting. This, in turn, provided important information confirming the data of visual and iconographic analyses and allowing to attribute the monument. The novelty of the work lies in the proposal of a new attribution of works previously attributed to the beginning of the XIX century. As a result of the research, the paintings previously attributed to the artist I. I. Samoilov were attributed to the brush of the little known V. V. Lopakov, who worked in the second half of the XIX century. The results of this article can be used in the study of the city of Rostov the Great and the village of Borisoglebsky for art historians, historians and local historians.