Through the Artistic Sight

     Old Ladoga itself is an object d’art. N. Rerikh called the view to Ladoga from the bluff on the Volhov bank “one of the best Russian landscapes”. Look at his pictures and you will recognize on many of them the realistic landscape of Ladoga though designed without a photographic precision, in a manner, incident only to this painter. “The gray-brown Volhov is widely stretching with its swirls and bright tails of currents in the middle; on the high banks the burial hills stand like the guards, stand not for nothing but gracefully abreast, one is more beautiful than another...Grey and yellowish islands messed with the white silhouettes of churches…backed by the rich green pine forest, mostly pine needles; through the silhouettes of pines and fur-trees the tops of the burial hills look out again.”

     Not only the beauty of this place excites the imagination. “Each place is filled with the past. This is the historical spirit”, - concludes his complimentary sentence to Ladoga N. Rerikh.

     A. Orlovsky, O. Kiprensky, A. Voronihin, I, Ayvasovsky, A. Popov, V. Maksimov visited Ladoga and lodged its beauty on their paintings. Still the artists come to these places and usually stay for a long time, if not forever.

     Verses dedicated to Old Ladoga are marked with a special spiritual tune and philosophical consideration of the time roared over this ancient land.