![]() Both Tarkovksy and Bruegel use active backgrounds within a full frame: the foreground action may become subordinated to what is occurring in the background, or it may turn into a background through the emergence of a new foreground. The most explicit quotation from painting in the film is, it has been pointed out, by Pieter Bruegel the Elder (c.1525/30–1569). What is ‘most important’ is not only the role of the artist, but the fact that during Rublev’s lifetime Russia was entering the beginning of the end of almost two hundred years of Tatar domination as well, something which is also very much present in the film. ![]() The director did not mean to persuade the viewers that the action was taking place in the fifteenth century, and he intended to mix (at least in his view) the ‘neutrality of interiors and of costumes’ with their ‘utter authenticity’ – neutrality which, added to contemporary speech, would ‘help us to speak of what is most important without getting distracted’. He wanted the film to be ‘contemporary not only in the completely contemporary resonance of its main issue’. Tarkovsky was not deterred by this paucity of details. ![]() Some sparse contemporary sources record that Rublev collaborated in the decoration of, among others, the Cathedral of the Annunciation in the Moscow Kremlin (1405), the Cathedral of the Dormition in Vladimir (1408), and the Cathedral at Andronikov Monastery (c.1410s). Only a single icon can be credited to him with certainty: the famous Old Testament Trinity, which depicts the three angels who visited Abraham in Genesis 18.1–8. Little is known about the real Andrei Rublev (c.1360/70–c.1430), perhaps the most renowned Russian icon painter. ‘For us the story of Rublev is really the story of a “taught” or imposed concept which burns up in the atmosphere of living reality to rise again from the ashes as a fresh and newly discovered truth.’ So wrote Andrei Tarkovsky (1932–1986) about Andrei Rublev in his book Sculpting in Time, in which he set down his memories and thoughts on cinema. Andrei Tarkovsky, Andrei Rublev (USSR, 1966 183 minutes) ![]()
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