The picture is extraordinarily thought out. Each character, every object has its own philosophical meaning. Here is an old man and a young man emerging from the water – a symbol of youth and old age. The figures of the “trembling” on the right are a symbol of spiritual trembling, restraint, God’s fear. The artist tries to convey the religious plot as a real event. To do this, they created more brushes of etudes from nature to the painting.
He wrote all the characters from nature. That is why the figure, closing the crowd, he wrote, for example, from his friend, NV Gogol. This image Ivanov called “penitent sinner,” in which he reflected the writer’s complex experiences related to religion.
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