Abstract: One of the most interesting Russian spiritual writers of the 19th century, Aleksandr Matveyevich Bukharev (archimandrite Theodore), claimed to create a system of interpretation of both biblical texts and literary-artistic data, in order to justify the political project of the churching of life. I prove that in addition to biblical exegesis and a kind of reception of the official spiritual and educational project of the era of Alexander I, Aleksandr Bukharev relied on aesthetics, on the data of Russian art. In Russian painting, which had inherited European classicism, the natural was understood as creation of an increased presence effect, potentially-iconically inscribed in various biblical or spiritual contexts rather than as one of the categories in the rhetorical system. The icon was understood by Aleksandr Bukharev as one that comprehends this closeness of life-likeness, relying on his own observations on painting, influenced by communication and disputes with Nikolai Gogol and by assimilation of his ideas about the delimitation of the visual arts, but most importantly, based on his own geographical imagination. According to Aleksandr Bukharev, the influence of the Church on society affects not only the historical, but also the geographical state of the latter, and spiritual painting is close to the icon in that it can reassemble and qualitatively divide the earth as a geographical and political reality. The study allows us to clarify both the relationship between the official aesthetic ideals of the era of Alexander I and the era of Nicholas I, and to explain the intellectual factors of the formation of Russian realism.
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