TEOFANE (FEOFAN), the GREEK. - Fresco painter of churches and painter of icons, active at Novgorod and Moscow in northern and central Russia in the second half of the fourteenth century and in the first two decades of the fifteenth.
Further details of his life are lacking. Before coming to Russia he had already worked at Constantinople, Chalcedon, Galata, and Caffa in the Crimea. In the city of Novgorod he first painted frescoes in the church of the Transfiguration of Our Lord (1378); at Moscow, together with Andrea Rublev, in the church of the Annunciation (1408). The celebrated icon known as “The Madonna of the Don” is also attributed to him. He also made drawings and views of cities such as Moscow and Constantinople, something hitherto new in Russia. His pictorial style is bold in its outlines, nervous in its brushwork; it differs both from the manner of the so-called second Palaeologan style and from the highly hieratic manner common among contemporary Russian painters. He is rightly regarded as one of the most distinguished representatives of Russian painting in its early centuries. Alberto M. Ammann