Among the cultural peculiarities of the 17th century is a heightening of contradictions at various levels of its structure. While the idea of personal identity was becoming more common, the traditional understanding of art, which could not fathom signatures on icons, remained in place. The active infusion of ideals from Western European painting was accompanied by a torturous search for true Byzantine images. The centralization of artistic processes occurred simultaneously with a new distribution of art centres.

Rapid economic growth occurred in the Upper Volga region in the 17th century, particularly in the cities of Kostroma and Yaroslavl. The art made in these locations, despite their apparent similarity, had characteristics that distinguished them from one another stylistically. The area had its own traditions of jewellery art and gold embroidery, and created their own original wood carved pieces. In the 17th century, Yaroslavl was the second largest city in the Tsardom of Muscovy, under the Metropolitan of Rostov and Yaroslavl, while Kostroma was under Moscow’s. In the first half of the century there was no significant difference in style between icon painters from Yaroslavl and Moscow, but that situation began to change in the 1660s. While icon paining in the capital could be distinguished by its “lifelike” style, à la Simon Ushakov, Yaroslavl icon painters preferred complicated symbolic compositions, and there icon painting advanced in accordance with achievements attained in the first half of the century.

Semyon Spiridonov Kholmogorets worked for customers in Yaroslavl, as he found his inspiration in the great masters who painted at the turn of the 16th to the 17th century. Like the works of Prokopy Chirin and Nikifor Savin, Kholmogorets’ works are stunning in the precision of their execution, the exquisite decoration, and the fragility of the figures, but, being a disciple of the Stroganov school, Semyon Kholmogorets was also one of the finest representatives of the art of the latter part of the century. More than once he turned to the biblical images painted by Pieter van der Borcht, as is evident in the border scenes in his icon Christ Pantocrator on the Throne with 28 Border Scenes (particularly its last border scene, “The Resurrection”, which hearkens back to an engraving of the same name by the Flemish painter).

The cities of the Upper Volga region were known for their excellent mural painters; it was a rare church in the Tsardom of Muscovy that had frescos executed during the last half of the 17th century without the participation of artists from Kostroma or Yaroslavl. We can get an idea of the style in which Kostroma native Gury Nikitin worked from the icons Our Father and Symbol of Faith, as well as the composition Miracle by the Feodorovskay Icon of the Mother of God, which at one time was a border scene on an image of the Mother of God. Their style has much in common with the monumental painting done by Kostroma icon painters. The earliest icons with border scenes depicting the history of the Feodorovskaya Icon of the Mother of God – a relic from Kostroma that became a symbol of the restoration of the state during the reign of Michael Feodorovich Romanov – were made in the second half of the 17th century. The scene from the icon of the Feodorovskaya Mother of God in the Russian Museum’s collection depicts the moment when a light beaming from the icon blinded the Mongol soldiers, helping Kostroma’s Grand Duke Vasily vanquish his enemies on Lake Svyatoe.

The close stylistic ties between icon and monumental painting persisted in the art of the Volga region until the beginning of the 18th century, as we can see from the Yaroslavl image The Prophet Elijah in the Desert, which has a close counterpart in the frescos on the Yaroslavl Church of the Beheading of John the Baptist, built in 1694–1695. Although the actual painting of the church was done in the “lifelike” manner, and the landscape in the background is executed in a realistic fashion, other details – the ragged mountains, the architecture’s light and fanciful gables, and, finally, the iconography itself (the piece’s composition recalls a revered icon from the Church of Elijah the Prophet in Yaroslavl) – show the master painter’s loyalty to local artistic traditions.