From this time onwards, Yu. N. Reitlinger (Sister Joanna from 1934) worked much and fruitfully. The range of her reference points and images is chronologically wide (lit. 'unrestricted') from the decorative primitives of the XIX (so-called 'icon-measles', such as the series 'Pages for Children's Reading' published under the editorship of Protoierei S. Chetverikov) to early Christian mosaics. These found their reflexion in her lively and picturesque style. A typical comment on an exhibition of icons in Prague, where a contingent of Old Believer apprentices predominated ran: 'lifelessness, stagnation...if it were not for the icons of Reitlinger. In the 30's and 40's, she painted many icon commissions in France itself and in England (among them only a few are known to the Russian public, and only 4 of which are displayed in the exhibition).

However, her great dream was 'monumental' art ('I dreamed of murals and frescos all my life). Unfortunately, for purely practical reasons this dream was only destined to be fulfilled to a very limited degree. And even some of what little she carried out has perished.

Part of the murals for the chapel of St John the Warrior in Meudon has been preserved, saved after a fire and now restored through the initiative of N.A. Struve. the most vivid and powerful scenes are those of the Last Judgement and the Heavenly Liturgy. In general, the problems of the future, knowledge of the triumph of the world (lit:vek=century)to come is the central pre..(occupation?). For the house of the Fellowship of St Alban and St Sergius in London, she created a great cycle of the Apocalypse - sharp, expressive, traditional and contemporary (now at the Monastery of Christ the Saviour near Oxford (sic)* . As is well known, Russian culture of the 20th century is intimately linked with ('nakorotke'=colloquial familiar to)an apocalyptic consciousness. There is not a single theologian who has not devoted several pages of commentary to the 'Revelations of St John the Divine'. The book about the Apocalypse by Fr. Sergei Bulgakov published in 1948 after his death was one of his best works. The murals of 1947 were a kind of artistic parallel with the theological text. The spiritual link of sister Joanna with her mentor was not broken.

* Actually at 23 Cambridge Rd, Hove East Sussex BN3 1DE