Nikolai Leskov developed a great interest in the
Raskol history and movement in the early 1860s. His attitude towards it changed over time from very cautious to openly appreciative, as he came to see the
Old Believers as keepers of old Russian artistic traditions which otherwise would have disappeared without a trace, lacking governmental support. Leskov got interested in the art of
icon-painting after having met the iconographer
Nikita Racheiskov (d. 1886), whom he commemorated later by the posthumous essay "Of the Artist Man Nikita and Those Brought up by Him" (
Novoye vremya, 1886, December 25). It was in Racheiskov's studio that Leskov, while studying
Ikonopisny podlinnik (a hand-written manual of icon-painting), wrote
The Sealed Angel. The story which came out at the time when the academic studies of icon-painting began, influenced and contributed to the process, according to scholar I. Serman. Apparently, there was another reason.
The Sealed Angel, being close to a Christmas story in style and form, was warmly received at the Russian Court.
Empress consort Maria Alexandrovna and
Tsar Alexander II reportedly liked it, which must have kept both editors and censors off.
Finale The story's finale, where the Old Believers' community all of a sudden return to mainstream
Orthodoxy, was criticized as being unnatural. Ten years later Leskov conceded that, while the story itself was mostly based on real facts, the ending was made up. What happened in reality he revealed in Chapter 41 of
The Pechersk Antics set of memoir sketches. ==English translations==