THEOPHANES (FEOFAN) the Greek. – A fresco painter of churches and an icon painter, he flourished in Novgorod and Moscow in northern and central Russia in the second half of the fourteenth century and the first two decades of the fifteenth.
No further details are known about his life. Before coming to Russia he had already worked in Constantinople, Chalcedon, Galata and Caffa in the Crimea. In the city of Novgorod he first frescoed the church of the Transfiguration of Our Lord (1378); in Moscow, together with Andrei Rublev, the church of the Annunciation (1408). From him also comes the celebrated icon known as the “Madonna of the Don.” He also made drawings and city views of Moscow and Constantinople, something hitherto unknown in Russia. His pictorial style is bold in its lines, vigorous in its brushwork; it stands apart both from the manner of the so-called Palaeologan style and from the more hieratic manner of the generality of contemporary Russian painters. He is rightly esteemed as one of the most outstanding exponents of Russian painting during its early centuries.