Yaroslav, the son of Vladimir the Great, the first Rus, embraced the Christian religion in 988. The following year the church of The Holy Wisdom was built and consecrated. Yaroslav the Wise intended to create a rival city to Constantinople called Tsargrad or The New Rome in 990. He supplied the means to instigate the foundation of a truly great city of Novgorod to the young feudal state of Kievan Rus or Ukraine, eventually becoming, ‘The Mother of all Russian cities’, in 1037. His interests included all the arts; this prompted the recruitment of teachers and skilled craftsmen who were supplied by the Greek Emperor of Byzantium as a wedding gift… thereafter monks and monasteries blossomed and flourished. This was the start of a five-hundred year development of the Novgorod School with its Abstract Style of religious art. Follow the steps necessary to produce a panel painting using the same method and materials.