Morning
1917
Several aspects of Kuzma Petrov-Vodkin’s Morning — the composition and the flat dimensions and space — reflect the artist’s interest in Old Russian painting and the early Italian Renaissance. The images of the mother and son, with their icon-like postures and austere facial expressions, are like a Russian version of the theme of the Virgin and Child. The pensive woman tenderly holding the baby is both a peasant woman from the banks of the River Volga and the Mother of God giving her son up to the world. The other female figures are both bathers and the holy women who accompanied Christ to the Cross. The complex imagery appears to reflect the moods of the period — the First World War and the revolution. Russian Museum: From Icons to the Modern Times. Palace Editions, St Petersburg, 2015. P. 280.