Tolstoy as the subject of art: painting, film, theater

When Lev Tolstoy died in 1910, he was a literary celebrity, famous well beyond the borders of his native Russia. Toward the end of his life, photographers – today we would call them paparazzi – would camp out on the lawn outside of the Yasnaya Polyana estate, following Tolstoy’s every move. His first posthumous photograph, taken on his deathbed in Astapovo, appeared in leading global media from New York to Bombay, and the newsreel documenting his funeral drew such crowds that its screenings had to be banned. Tolstoy’s death became one of the first truly international media events of the twentieth century (see Chapter 2). But the public hunger for images of the great man was already prominent much earlier in his life, when both commissioned and unsolicited portraits and photographs proliferated, creating an international Tolstoy iconography. Throughout the twentieth century, artists, filmmakers, and writers attempted to create their own vision of Tolstoy, either embracing or opposing, but always engaging with, this visual canon. This chapter will discuss Tolstoy as a subject of art in painting, cinema, and the theatre, exploring the impact of celebrity-generated images on his representation in these media.