The brothers Stephan, Feodor and Gavrila Basov`s art: marginal ornaments of old Russian manuscripts

The paper explores the decoration of manuscripts in an early printed style of the ornamentation dominant during the second half of the 16th – the beginning of the 17th centuries by the example of the works of outstanding scribes and drawing-artists brothers Stephan, Feodor and Gavrila (nicknamed Ivan) Basovs. The author applied the element-structural method and identified the influence of the artworks of the European master Israel van Mekenem the Younger and the Moscow first printers on their art. The brothers Basovs created various examples of the ornamentation: marginal ornaments, headpieces, initial letters. The present study is focused on the artistic features of marginal ornaments. The author reveals various types of the ornamental compositions and highlights distinctive features of the brothers Basovs` art. The study identified that the author's interpretation of the individual motifs of the early printed style by Stephan Basov is most clearly expressed at the creation of the complex (multicomponent) compositions with a combination of the various plant elements. Feodor Basov created ornamentation that is distinguished by the artist's inexhaustible imagination, which manifested itself in a large variability in the combination of components (for example the author's forms of fruits and birds). The Gavrila Basovs' marginal ornaments are characterized not only by the use of color, but also by the variety of compositions, many of which were multi-tiered and framing the text. The author examined the individual style of each of the brothers Basovs at the creation of marginal ornaments in the early printed style and determined the share of author's originality in its interpretation.