Sergei Fyodorov: Baptism fresco
Title: Baptism fresco
Artist: Sergei Fyodorov (b. 1959, Russian)
Location: Rochester Cathedral (C of E)
Date: 2001–4
One of very few traditional frescoes done in contemporary times. The application of paint to wet plaster extended the artist’s work to a three-year period. Depicting the Baptism of Christ, it was dedicated on St John the Baptist’s Day in 2004.
Born in 1959, the Russian artist Sergei Fyodorov is an important contemporary painter of icons and frescoes. Having studied art in Moscow, Fyodorov was first exposed to icons in a public gallery rather than a church. Inspired and moved by the works of master icon painters such as Andrei Rubliov, he tried to make an icon for himself by studying from a book. This was a dangerous and subversive act in Soviet Russia, where the creation of religious icons was against the law. By chance he met a monk who invited him to stay at one of the few remaining monasteries to learn the craft of making icons. Over the next three years he slowly acquired not only the necessary technical skill but also what he regards as the most important part of his education, the ability to ‘see the real iconographer, taking a real approach, deeply involved in the whole story he was painting, living inside the tradition in which he worked’, as Fyodorov said in interview with the critic Rachel Campbell-Johnston.
Sergei Fyodorov studied at Moscow School of Art, and with his father, Zenon, also a Russian icon painter. Since moving to the UK he has completed many commissions in both the UK and Russia and his work can be seen in Westminster Abbey and Winchester Cathedral.
Medium: Fresco
Permanent display
See Sergei Fyodorov’s Fresco on the Ecclesiart map here.
Commissioner: The Very Revd Edward Shotter, and the Masonic Provinces of East and West Kent
Other artworks in churches by Sergei Fyodorov: Deesis, 1996, Winchester Cathedral; Christ, Blessed Virgin Mary with the Christ Child, 1994, Westminster Abbey