Valery Yakobi The Last Confession Analysis

Representations of the transport of political prisoners to their place of incarceration is of increased significance within Russian art because of the practice of exiling prisoners to the far frozen corners of Siberia. The most notable depiction of the torment experienced by prisoners en route to exile is Valery Yakobi’s, The Prisoners’ Halt (1861). While it did represent prisoners suffering at the hands of the Russian penal system, that did not necessarily make unacceptable to the governmental censors. Yakobi presented the piece at the Academy of Arts exhibition in 1861 and won a major gold medal along with a scholarship to study in Western Europe. Although it may not have been as accepted during later years of more intense censorship; the …show more content…
As the title would imply the painting depicts an Orthodox priest offering a condemned prisoner his last confession before execution which he refuses because of the corrupt position of the Orthodox church as an extension of the autocratic state that he is about to lose his life in protest against. Partially inspired by the revolutionary Nikolai Minsky’s poem, ‘The Last Confession’ published in 1879 by the illegal Populist newspaper Narodnaia Voila (The People’s Will); Refusal was produced during the transition of the Populist movement from activism to terrorism marked by the assassination of Aleksandr II in 1881 by members of the ‘People’s Will’. This transition was also reflected in the changing composition of the figures, beginning sketches had a vigorous prisoner castigating the priest but the final version depicts a somber and steadfast man with the toll of imprisonment evident on the convict’s face. This painting is the most heroic depiction of a revolutionary of any of the Wanderers works on the theme and draws a natural and somewhat ironic comparison to nearly any example of martyrdom for one’s beliefs in the Christian tradition. The posture of the prisoner and the shrouded hands of both figures show the, ‘improbability of any rapprochement and the two figures remain frozen…each in his own faith.’ However, Repin does not unequivocally ennoble the prisoner. Much like he did in Arrest of a Propagandist he invites the viewer to question not only the dubious virtues of the Orthodox church with the illuminated cross representing the institution as a whole rather than the nameless priest’s profile; but it also asks the viewer to consider the beliefs of a movement which this revolutionary is losing his life for. For some