Title: St. Sergius the Builder
Artist: Nicholas Roerich
Medium: Tempera on canvas
Size: 73.6 x 177 cm
Date: 1925
Location: Private Collection
Venerable St. Sergius of Radonezh (ca. 1314 –September 1392), also known as Sergey Radonezhsky or Serge of
Radonezh, was a spiritual leader and monastic reformer of medieval Russia, and
is one of the Russian Orthodox Church's most highly venerated saints. Born within
the Rostov principality, the future saint received the baptismal name of
Bartholomew (Varfolomei in Russian) in honor of the Apostle Bartholomew. Upon
his parents' death, Bartholomew went to Khotkovo near Moscow, where his older
brother Stefan was a monk. He persuaded Stefan to find a more secluded place to
live the ascetic life, and in the deep forest at Makovets Hill they decided to
build a small cell and a church dedicated in honor of the Trinity. After some
time Stephen left, and Sergius became increasingly well-known as a profoundly
spiritual figure in the Russian wilderness, attracting followers and eventually
organizing them into a community that became the famed Holy Trinity Monastery.
This image portrays the legend of a bear that used to come to
the holy man. Seeing the animal did not come to harm him, but rather to get
some food, the saint brought a small slice of bread from his hut, and placed it
on a log or stump. The bear learned to come for the meal thus prepared for him,
and having eaten it went away again. If there was no bread, and the bear did not
find his usual slice, he would wait about for a long while and look around on
all sides. At this time Sergius had no variety of foods in the wilderness, only
bread and water from the spring, and these were very scarce. Often, bread was
not to be found; then both he and the bear went hungry.
Nicholas Roerich (October, 1874 – December, 1947) was a
Russian painter, writer, archaeologist, and theosophist, who in his youth was
influenced by a movement in Russian society around the spiritual. He believed
that although earthly temples and artifacts may perish, the thought that brings
them into existence does not die but is part of an eternal stream of
consciousness—man’s aspirations nourished by his directed will and by the energy
of thought. Finally, he believed that peace on Earth was a prerequisite to
planetary survival and the continuing process of spiritual evolution, and he
exhorted his fellow man to help achieve that peace by uniting in the common
language of Beauty and Knowledge. Nicholas Roerich died in Kullu on December
13, 1947. His body was cremated and its ashes buried on a slope facing the
mountains he loved and portrayed in many of his nearly seven thousand works.
