Archimandrite Cyprian Pyzhov was a pillar of the brotherhood of Holy Trinity Monastery for over sixty years. He is best known as a iconographer, and his distinctive style helped revive traditional icon painting in the Russian Diaspora. Having taught a number of notable iconographers, including Archbishop Alipy (Gamanovich), Fr Theodore Jurewicz and many others, he is rightly credited as the founder of the “Jordanville School” which adorns countless churches throughout the world today. Fr Cyprian was also the spiritual father of a number significant figures in ROCOR, including Metropolitan Laurus (Škurla) and current monastery abbot Bishop Luke of Syracuse.
Originally written in Russian, this biography was posted on the website of the Synod of Bishops (ROCOR) on April 2nd, 2026 to commemorate the 25th anniversary of his repose. The English translation was done by Seraphim Englehardt.
Archimandrite Cyprian was born Krill on 7/20 January 1903 into the noble Pyzhov family of the Tver Governorate. His father, Dimitri Mikhailovich, was connected to the Bezhetsk district, which not only affected his own youth, but also fate of his future sons. Attracted by the ideas of the narodnik1 movement, he moved from Bezhetsk, where he had studied, to St Petersburg. He served there as a zemstvo2 official and met his future wife, the artist Alexandra Strinskaya, who had graduated from the Moscow College of Art, Sculpture, and Architecture. She had worked in the studios of such masters of the brush as the Peredvizhniki3 Vasily Perov, Vasily Polenov, and Vladimir Makovsky. They married in St Petersburg and had three sons: Eugene, Kirill, and George.
Soon after Kirill’s birth, Dmitriy Mikhailovich received the post of land division captain in Bezhetsk, and the family moved there. The new job demanded much of his time; therefore, their mother looked after the children’s upbringing. They lived modestly; the children were brought up in Orthodoxy, and the young Kirill frequently visited the church of the Transfiguration of the Lord, which had been built by his ancestor, Bogdan Pyzhov, a colonel of streltsy4. For the young Pyzhovs, Bezhetsk became the city not only of their happy childhood, but also of bitter loss: in 1912, their mother died of tuberculosis.
The father and his children lived in Bezhetsk until February 1917; then all four moved to St Petersburg, where they lived in great need and hunger. By the late summer of 1918, Dmitriy Mikhailovich had received an assignment to the city of Shchigry in the Kursk Governorate and set off to take his post along with Kirill. The Civil War was already raging in the country, and the youth, desiring to take part in it in the ranks of the White forces, rushed to the front. Instead of the White Army, he accidentally found himself in the Red, but he was not a Red Army soldier for long: he soon returned to his father. After the occupation of Shchigry by the Volunteer Army, the father and son set out for Crimea, where the fifteen-year-old Kirill, realizing his dream, joined the White Army, and with it retreated to Simferopol. From there they evacuated, the shores of his homeland fading away as they sailed past Constantinople, Gallipoli, finally landing in Bulgaria…
In Sofia, he entered the Alexandrovsky Military College, where he remained three years until it was disbanded, and in 1923, he left for France to join his elder brother Eugene. Soon his father and brother George arrived there. Taking up residence together, the three Pyzhov brothers worked at house decoration and painting. With a union of artists in the Russian film studio Albatross, they created the scenery for Georg Wilhelm Pabst’s film Don Quixote (1932) with Feodor Chaliapin in the leading role. They also painted a luxurious restaurant in Montmartre. In the evenings they attended a school of painting and drawing, where professors from the Academie des Beaux-Arts taught.
In his memoirs, he recounted:
I never was an adherent of any political party, but I leaned to the left, as did many of my associates, school-mates, and co-workers. I did not revere the person of the Sovereign Nicholas II or in general the idea of monarchy – it was regarded as an outdated form of government system. I had no personal persuasions; we ridiculed monarchists encountered in the emigration, and regarded their views as a right-wing party endeavor, sentimentally imposing its ideas… I thought of reverence for the Tsar as a “cult of the personality,” a necessary element for elite society. Such an attitude was characteristic of a considerable portion of emigrant society, especially of that living in Paris, Berlin, and, probably, the USA. The press had a great influence over the emigres. The liberal taint of the bygone Kerensky era reflexively hung on, imparting a decadent mindset to the readers of the newspaper “Posledniye Novosti [Latest News],” edited by Vinaver and Milyukov, the leaders of the State Duma, who deftly interpreted the causes of the revolution after their own fashion…
Following the recommendation of his physicians, Kirill moved to Nice, where he worked at decoration of fashionable villas. There, he made the acquaintance of the priest Alexander Elchaninov5, a representative of that creative intelligentsia who came to pastoral service purposefully, in answer to a call, after serious thought about the purpose of their lives. Therefore, it was hardly surprising that their pastorship turned many people away from a formal ritualism and toward a sincere Orthodox faith. For Kirill, Father Alexander, who became his spiritual father and whose memory he cherished his entire life, was precisely this kind of pastor. Father Alexander also exerted the same salutary influence on Kirill’s brother George, the future Hieromonk Gregory. Father Alexander’s matushka6, Tamara Vladimirovna, was a pupil of Pimen Maximovich Safronov, a member of the “Icon Society”7. She taught Kirill Pyzhov the rudiments of canonical icon painting. For all we know, perhaps it was precisely then that the secular artist Kirill Pyzhov left the world, and the iconographer Father Cyprian was born for Christ’s Church… These lessons in iconography would become a defining milestone not only in his life, but would also serve as the beginning of the rebirth of the ancient Russian Orthodox icon-painting tradition in the Russian emigration.
In the summer of 1932, Kirill Dmitrievich became acquainted with Hieromonk Savva (Struve) of the Printshop Brotherhood of Saint Job of Pochaev, who had arrived in Nice from Carpathian Rus’. Influenced by his stories about the brotherhood, Kirill made the decision to set out immediately for the printshop brotherhood in Slovakia. As he prepared for departure, he thought, “Even if it is Carpathian, all the same it is Rus’”. Thus, he became a novice of the monastery in the village of Ladomirova in Preshovskaya Rus’ in Czechoslovakia. In the fall of 1933, he was tonsured a rassophore monk by Archimandrite Vitaly (Maksimenko) with the name of Cyprian. He was given the obedience to paint the monastery church in 1934.
Reflecting on his early monastic years, he wrote,
Upon becoming a rassophore monk, I totally devoted myself to the painting of the church and to other monastery obediences, but the patriotic liberalism that had taken root still lurked in the left side of my soul… I received the monastic tonsure in 1936 or 1937, and in 1938, I was ordained to the rank of hierodeacon. I served on feast days with Archimandrite Seraphim (Ivanov). Life went on in its own course according to the monastic rule; I became absorbed in it with all my soul.
In 1940, he was ordained as a hieromonk by Metropolitan Anastasy (Gribanovsky) and assigned as rector of the church in the Slovak village of Vyshny Orlik, where he served without severing his connection to the monastery.
In 1940, Metropolitan Anastasy, First Hierarch of the Russian Church Abroad, came to us from Yugoslavia. I was assigned to him as cell attendant, a task that I carried out with great zeal. One morning I went to Vladyka, and he asked that the water tank be filled with water. I took the water tank, which hung over the basin, off the nail. Vladyka stopped me, saying that I should bring the water in a pitcher, but I did not obey, saying that if the water could go directly into the water tank – it would be simpler, but Vladyka repeated, ‘No, it should be brought in a pitcher.’ I did not heed his practical advice, and took the tank off the wall and went to get the water. Going out on the porch, I poured the remaining water into the grass. The spigot fell out and disappeared somewhere in the grass. I could not find it, no matter how hard I tried, I could not find this wretched spigot, which had disappeared in an space of just one square yard. I had to return to the Metropolitan’s room acknowledging my guilt. ‘There, you see,’ said Vladyka Anastasy, ‘that is for disobedience.’ I left with an awkward feeling, and in perplexity pondered, ‘Where did that spigot go?’ But the spigot was never found…
The victory of the Red Army in the Second World War forced the monks to leave Ladimirova. They went throughout Europe as wanderers, then stopped not far from Munich, where they founded the new monastery of Saint Job of Pochaev. At the very end of the war, they made their way to Berlin and came to Metropolitan Seraphim (Lyade), and he gave all of them refuge. As did all the brethren awaiting summons to the USA from Father Vitaly (Maximenko), Father Cyprian gave spiritual care to the Soviet ostarbeiters8.
The church was filled with ‘Osty’. They were all praying fervently. The disaster inflicted on them by the godless ones taught them to pray fervently, which gave them blessed consolation, and which is lost as soon as physical safety and prosperity touches souls. Then the spirit and striving for God grows cold, and the lowering of the ‘spiritual temperature’ of the soul begins. This is clearly observed now, 30 to 40 years later, in ‘blessed’ America. Very many of the ‘osts’ of those times acquired, sometimes by hard, one may even say virtuous, work, abundant possessions, and began to forget about God. But they did not find happiness, and their spiritual temperature sank to a minimum, until the next shake-up…
In Berlin, he made the acquaintance of the deeply believing youth, Nikolai Gamanovich and brought bringing him to the USA where he soon received the monastic tonsure with the name of Alipy, and later ordination as a priest. Fr Cyprian did not suspect that he was bringing the future Archbishop of Chicago and the Mid-West.
In 1946 Father Cyprian arrived at Holy Trinity Monastery in Jordanville (which had been founded in 1938), along with fourteen other brethren from the Pochaev monastery. At that time, fewer than ten people were living there. The newly arrived monks enlivened the brotherhood with their energetic activity. The construction of the stone cathedral dedicated to the Life-Giving Trinity was finished in 1950 (its architect was R. H. Verkhovsky), and Father Cyprian painted it together with his student Alipy. The foundations were laid and then construction began for the main monastery building and the Saint Job of Pochaev Printshop. The monastery would also have an icon-painting workshop.
In 1955, Father Cyprian was raised to the rank of Igumen, and in 1964, to archimandrite. He served as a professor at Holy Trinity Seminary, which had been opened in 1948.
In the monastery… we all were of a like mind, but apparently a ‘pink’9 bias was still burrowed away in my soul. It completely disappeared after an astonishing dream or, more likely, a light sleep. One night, my attic cell was lit up with a heavenly (there is no other way to say it) light. In the center of this light, in an oval frame of light like a rainbow, but only in a color scheme of blue rays, appeared before me a young girl in royal silvery clothing with a crown on her head. She looked straight into my eyes and with a bright smile, she said, ‘I am the Tsarevna Tatiana.’ And indeed, in her features I could see a similarity with the well-known photographs, but in a transfigured appearance. In a sort of half-fright or in ineffable amazement, I exclaimed, ‘What? You’ve come to me?’ You see, I had thought and spoken so many bad things about the Sovereign! She smiled even more brightly and so clearly pronounced the unforgettable words, ‘Now you will speak and think differently,’ and the vision vanished.
Later, the Sovereign himself came to Father Cyprian in sleep several times, in various circumstances, and even pulled him out of the water when he was drowning. The Tsesarevich also came, and invited him “to drop in for a visit.”
How can one explain the significance of these dreams? Was it not that as an iconographer I was to be first to paint the icon of the New Martyrs of Russia, and in their center, the Imperial Family?
Besides the first icon of the New Martyrs of Russia, he would also also to paint the icon of the Holy Royal Martyrs for the day of their canonization in 1981.
Besides painting churches and panel icons, Father Cyprian painted pictures and Nativity and Paschal cards in gouache, watercolor, and oil. As Monk Benjamin recollects in Pravoslavnaya Rus’ [Orthodox Russia]:10
Father Cyprian’s capacity for work was amazing. He could paint the walls of a church on the scaffolding under the dome all day in unbearable heat, while his young helpers could not bear even a single hour. He did this even when he was more than eighty years old. Father Cyprian once said that when he climbed up on scaffolding, all his sores abated, and there and then he made the conclusion: ‘Well, then, this is my calling from the Lord – to paint churches.’ And he made this conclusion after having painted more than ten churches in the emigration. At the age of eighty, Father Cyprian still went about general obediences, from harvesting potatoes to work in the kitchen on Sundays and feast days. Usually on his menu were “Gurevskaya’ kasha”11 and sauerkraut soup. Father Cyprian always highly esteemed Saint John Maximovich, and was close to him. Vladyka John wanted him to become a bishop, but he always refused… Father Cyprian kept a sense of humor even in the most troubling situations. Once he became seriously ill, and to such a point that Father Andrei, the iconographer, and I thought of calling an ambulance, but as a last resort we decided to bring a book of home cures and to check his symptoms. We came into his cell with a grim appearance, carrying the book. From his bed, Father Cyprian looked at us and said, ‘What, have you come to read the Psalter [over me]?!’ ‘No, we said, this is a book of home cures, we want to determine what you have.’ We began to consult aloud what to read in this book. And now again a voice from the bed: ‘You should just read from the very beginning, and go straight through, like the Psalter.’ The door of his cell was always open to everyone seeking to talk with him, whether that was a hierarch or a first-year seminarian. And his warm disposition, devoid of any unctuousness, found a warmhearted response in the souls of many who came to him.
Archimandrite Cyprian reposed on April 2nd 2001 in Jordanville. He was buried in the crypts beneath the altar of the Holy Trinity Cathedral of the monastery.
He dedicated his whole life to the development and implanting of the ancient Russian canonical school of iconography in the countries of the Russian emigration, pruning away foreign accretions. Under his influence, the so-called artistic painting “in the Italian style” was replaced with canonical frescos and icons in a multitude of Orthodox churches of the Russian emigration. It is precisely in the rebirth and establishment of this iconographic tradition, a part of Sacred Tradition, that constitutes the chief contribution of Father Cyprian (Pyzhov) to Russian Orthodox culture in the emigration.
- The Narodnik movement was a populist ideology that gained traction among the Russian intelligensia in the 19th century who felt that the upper classes had lost their connection to the “folk wisdom” of the peasant class. Some of its adherents turned towards socialism and agitation against the Tsarist regime. ↩︎
- Zemstvos were local governing units established as part of the emancipation program of Tsar Alexander II. ↩︎
- Loosely translated as “The Wanderers”, the Peredvizhniki were a loose collective of Russian realist painters who earned this title from their traveling exhibitions. It included noted artists such as Ilya Repin, Ivan Kramskoi and Viktor Vasnetsov. ↩︎
- The firearm infantry of the Russian military, which eventually grew into a social class. ↩︎
- Fr Alexander Elchaninov was a well-known spiritual father among Russian emigres in France. His spiritual journal was translated and published by St Vladimir’s Seminary Press with the title Diary of a Russian Priest ↩︎
- An affectionate title for a priest’s wife. ↩︎
- The Icon Society was founded in Paris in 1927 by Vladimir Ryabushinsky to study and promote traditional Russian icon painting. Noted theologian and iconographer Leonid Ouspensky was also a member. ↩︎
- Ostarbeiters (lit. “Eastern workers”) were Soviet citizens that lived and worked in German-occupied territory during World War II. ↩︎
- Either referring to someone with both White (monarchist) and Red (socialist) sympathies, or a crypto-communist, similar to the derogatory term “Pinko” used in mid-20th century American politics. ↩︎
- Pravoslavnaya Rus’ (2007, No. 1). ↩︎
- Lit. “Guryev porridge”, dish of sweet oatmeal mixed with nuts and raisins. ↩︎