Narrator: Dressed in white, this Russian bride is surrounded by family as her hair is brushed out in preparation for her wedding. She will wear two braids around her head, covered by a headdress – never again the single braid of the unmarried girl. She looks down, perhaps at her sister, with emotion. Here’s Galina Epifanova:
Epifanova: I'm a specialist of Russian culture and Russian philosophy.
The bride is sad, since she will never return to her family. And she doesn't know what her life will be like now - and most often, she didn't know her groom, because the marriage was arranged by her parents.
Narrator: The painting was made by Konstantin Makovsky in 1889. It sets the scene in a Boyar, or noble, household, two hundred years earlier.
Epifanova: This part of the house was intended only for women and small children up to seven years old.
Narrator: As well as dressing the bride, an important ritual was the singing of wedding laments - a farewell to freedom. Here are some words from one traditional song:
Epifanova: My dear mother, have pity on me, mother, as you used to. I don't want to get married - after all, I'm still so young.
Narrator: Makovsky creates a sense of colorful magnificence and history with the women’s costumes and ceremonial headdresses, or kokoshniks. But actually there’s some artistic license here. The headdresses, with their many shapes, were from different Russian regions and wouldn’t have been worn by a single family. And a bride of the 1600s wore red or gold – white was for burial shrouds. But by the late nineteenth century, white had become fashionable for brides in Russia as well as the west, where Makovsky exhibited the painting to great acclaim.
