The two most important painters of the St Petersburg Academy of Fine Arts in the last quarter of the 19th century - Ilya Repin and Henryk Siemiradzki - share similar biographies: both were born in the Kharkiv region, at similar times (Riepin in 1843, Siemiradzki 1844), studied together at the same academy between 1863 and 1870 (Siemiradzki arrived a year later), where they had the same teachers and participated in the same competitions, visited the same salons (one of them is Mark Antokolsky’s), and even went on similar scholarships - to Rome. At the same time, in the discourse of art criticism and history, they were depicted almost from the very beginning as the most important artistic antagonists of their time, with no points of correspondence, the representatives of two separate tendencies of: the Italian ‘idealism’-Siemiradzki and the native ‘realism’ -Riepin. This approach united the present-day subject and mimetic representation with a particular movement - ‘realism’ or ‘idealism’, often following the literary definition of these concepts.

This critical perspective, elaborated mainly by Vasilij Stasov and supported by the emerging art histories of two nations often in conflict - Poles and Russians - has permeated international circulation. Still in C. Greenberg's book Riepin functioned as the personification of the true ‘Russian’ realist, in other studies he is the artist compared to the prose of the great Russian realists, while Siemiradzki, often does not function at all in the international discourse as a Russian artist, although it was his painting that was inventory No. 1 in the Russian Museum in St. Petersburg.

In the paper, the prospect of a logocentric discourse will be examined and critically reflected upon. This will be done by juxtaposing two paintings presented simultaneously by Siemiradzki and Riepin at the Vienna World Exhibition of 1873 - i.e. Riepin's Barge Haulers on the Volga (Burlaki) and Siemiradzki's Christ and the Harlot, the former accepted as ‘realistic’ and familiar, the latter described as the beginning of a path ‘towards idealism’ and antique exoticism. Their painting technique, the role of studies ‘from nature’ and references to old master’s and contemporary painting will be examined first, followed by an analysis of the construction of the represented image and the viewer's gaze in the work i.e. the factors that make up l'effet de reel according to R. Barthes. The analysis of these ‘components’ will be juxtaposed with reception, in order to consider how art criticism created a model of perception not only of these works, but also directed the reception of the entire oeuvre of the painters in question.