The Portrayal of the Holy Convicts from the 5 th Step of the Ladder of John Climacus in the Russian Art of the 16th th Century

In the art of Rus' of the Late Middle Ages there is a certain number of scattered pieces of art that share an iconographic cycle of the Monastic Feats - images of different sorts of self-torture that are described in the 5 th logos of the Ladder of John Climacus. This chapter of the Ladder was copied not only as a part of the whole treaty, but on its own as well and inspired a ramified iconographic tradition first in the Byzantine Empire and then, since the 16th th century, in Rus'. These monks resort to the mortification of the flesh for their ultimate absolution. In the article, all the examples of the Monastic Feats iconography which survived from the 16th th century are taken to examination and analysed. As a result, two new attributions are proposed, one for the illuminated manuscript of the Ladder from the collection of the riznitsa of Trinity Lavra of St. Sergius and another for the vita icon of John Climacus from the Rybinsk Museum Reserve. From their analysis within the relative artistic context stems a suggestion of their Novgorod origin. In addition, a different and more early dating is proposed for the Rybinsk icon in relation to its identification with an image mentioned in the inventory of the Antoniev monastery in Novgorod. Some ideas are expressed about the choice of the subject of the Monastic Feats for the galleries of the Annunciation Cathedral in the Moscow Kremlin that were repainted after the fire of 1547. The conclusion of the article is that the spread and development of the iconography of the Monastic Feats should be ascribed to the art of Novgorod at the era of archiepiscopacy Macarius or soon after. Therefore, it is the Novgorod art that played a decisive role in the creation of the visual representation of the 5 th logos of the Ladder, one of the most expressive and impactful pieces of text in the Slavic literacy.