The poor made do with provincial images that are essentially folk paintings. The State Church iconographers, while generally retaining the overall patterns of earlier examples, filled those patterns with Westernized, more realistic images. At the same time traditional stylistic forms were preserved by the Old Believers and more conservative State Church painters. The two streams of Russian iconography, traditional Old Believers style and Westernized State Church style, continued simultaneously into the 20th Century. They are not always entirely distinct and cannot be strictly divided between the State Church and Old Believers.
Some icons are a mixture of traditional and Western elements and some even mix oils and tempera.
The 19th Century was a time of great spiritual renewal, exemplified by the Elders of the Optina monastery and by the best known of all Russian spiritual classics, the book known in English as The Way of a Pilgrim. Saint Seraphim of Sarov, the most noted of the 19th Century saints, prayed before a realistic icon of Mary that he titled his Joy of Joys. It was not the form, but rather the content of icons that was emphasized by such spiritual teachers. But in spite of spiritual renewals the world was changing. St. Seraphim is said to have foreseen the tumult that was to sweep over Russia in the early 20th Century.