Restitution: art released from captivity. Life78 calculated the losses and gains of the Hermitage Robbery is bad form: you give an indemnity

Anyone who loves Russian painting has probably been to the Russian Museum in St. Petersburg (opened in 1897). Of course have . But it is in the Russian Museum that the main masterpieces of such artists as Repin, Bryullov, Aivazovsky are kept.

If we remember Bryullov, we immediately think of his masterpiece “The Last Day of Pompeii”. If you talk about Repin, then the picture “Barge Haulers on the Volga” appears in your head. If we remember Aivazovsky, we will also remember “The Ninth Wave”.

And this is not the limit. “Night on the Dnieper” and “Merchant’s Wife”. These iconic paintings by Kuindzhi and Kustodiev are also in the Russian Museum.

Any guide will show you these works. And you yourself are unlikely to pass by them. So I simply have to tell you about these masterpieces.

Adding a couple of my favorites, albeit not the most “promoted” ones (“Akhmatova” by Altman and “The Last Supper” by Ge).

1. Bryullov. The last day of Pompeii. 1833

4 years of preparation. 1 more year continuous operation paints and brushes. Several fainting spells in the workshop. And here is the result - 30 square meters, which depict last minutes the lives of the inhabitants of Pompeii (in the 19th century the name of the city was feminine).

For Bryullov, everything was not in vain. I think there was no artist in the world whose painting, just one painting, would have created such a sensation.

People flocked to the exhibition to see the masterpiece. Bryullov was literally carried in their arms. He was dubbed the revived one. And Nicholas I honored the artist with a personal audience.

What struck Bryullov’s contemporaries so much? And even now it will not leave the viewer indifferent.

We see a very tragic moment. In a few minutes all these people will die. But this doesn’t put us off. Because we are fascinated by... Beauty.

The beauty of people. The beauty of destruction. The beauty of disaster.

Look how harmonious everything is. The red hot sky goes perfectly with the red clothes of the girls on the right and left. And how spectacularly two statues fall under a lightning strike. I'm not even talking about the athletic figure of a man on a rearing horse.

On the one hand, the picture is about a real disaster. Bryullov copied the poses of people from those who died in Pompeii. The street is also real; it can still be seen in the city cleared of ashes.

But the beauty of the characters makes what happened look like ancient myth. As if beautiful gods got angry at beautiful people. And we are not so sad.

2. Aivazovsky. The ninth wave. 1850

This is the most famous picture Aivazovsky. Which even people far from art know. Why is she so famous?

People are always fascinated by the struggle between man and the elements. Preferably with happy ending.

There is more than enough of this in the film. It couldn't be more action-packed. Six survivors desperately cling to the mast. Rolling nearby a big wave, ninth wave. Another one follows her. People face a long and terrible struggle for life.

But it's already dawn. The sun breaking through the torn clouds is hope for salvation.

Aivazovsky’s poetry, just like Bryullov’s, is stunningly beautiful. Of course, the sailors have a hard time. But we can't help but admire the transparent waves, sun glare and lilac sky.

Therefore, this painting produces the same effect as the previous masterpiece. Beauty and drama in one bottle.

3. Ge. Last Supper. 1863

The two previous masterpieces of Bryullov and Aivazovsky were received with delight by the public. But with Ge’s masterpiece everything was more complicated. Dostoevsky, for example, did not like her. She seemed too down to earth to him.

But the churchmen were most dissatisfied. They were even able to achieve a ban on the release of reproductions. That is, the general public could not see it. Right up to 1916!

Why such a mixed reaction to the picture?

Remember how the Last Supper was depicted before Ge. At least . A table along which Christ and the 12 apostles sit and eat. Judas is among them.

For Nikolai Ge, everything is different. Jesus reclines. Which was exactly in line with the Bible. This is exactly how the Jews ate food 2000 years ago, in the Eastern way.

Christ has already made his terrible prediction that one of his disciples will betray him. He already knows that it will be Judas. And asks him to do what he has in mind without delay. Judas leaves.

And just at the door we seem to encounter him. He throws his cloak over himself to go into the darkness. Both literally and figuratively. His face is almost invisible. And his ominous shadow falls on those who remain.

Unlike Bryullov and Aivazovsky, there are more complex emotions here. Jesus deeply but humbly feels the betrayal of his disciple.

Peter is outraged. Him hot character, he jumped up and looked after Judas in bewilderment. John cannot believe what is happening. He is like a child who has encountered injustice for the first time.

And there are less than twelve apostles. Apparently, for Ge it was not so important to fit everyone in. For the church, this was fundamental. Hence the censorship bans.

Test yourself: take the online test

4. Repin. Barge Haulers on the Volga. 1870-1873

Ilya Repin saw barge haulers for the first time on the Niva. And I was so struck by their pitiful appearance, especially in contrast to the summer residents vacationing nearby, that the decision to paint the picture immediately matured.

Repin did not paint sleek summer residents. But there is still contrast in the picture. The dirty rags of the barge haulers are contrasted with the idyllic landscape.

Maybe for the 19th century it didn’t look so provocative. But for modern man this type of employee seems depressing.

Moreover, Repin depicted a steamship in the background. Which could be used as a tug so as not to torture people.

In reality, barge haulers were not so disadvantaged. They were fed well and were always allowed to sleep after lunch. And during the season they earned so much that in the winter they could feed themselves without working.

Repin took a highly horizontally elongated canvas for the painting. And he chose the angle of view well. The barge haulers come towards us, but do not block each other. We can easily consider each of them.

And the most important barge hauler with the face of a sage. AND young guy, which will not adapt to the strap. And the penultimate Greek, who looks back at the goner.

Repin was personally acquainted with everyone in the harness. He had long conversations with them about life. That's why they turned out to be so different, each with their own character.

5. Kuindzhi. Moonlit night on the Dnieper. 1880

“Moonlit Night on the Dnieper” is the most famous work Kuindzhi. And no wonder. The artist himself very effectively introduced her to the public.

He organized personal exhibition. IN exhibition hall it was dark. Only one lamp was directed at the only painting in the exhibition, “Moonlit Night on the Dnieper.”

People looked at the picture in fascination. The bright greenish light of the moon and the lunar path was hypnotizing. The outlines of a Ukrainian village are visible. Only part of the walls, illuminated by the moon, protrudes from the darkness. Silhouette of a mill against the backdrop of an illuminated river.

The effect of realism and fantasy at the same time. How did the artist achieve such “special effects”?

In addition to mastery, Mendeleev also had a hand here. He helped Kuindzhi create a paint composition that shimmered especially in the twilight.

It would seem that, amazing quality from the artist. Be able to promote your own work. But he did it unexpectedly. Almost immediately after this exhibition, Kuindzhi spent 20 years as a recluse. He continued to paint, but did not show his paintings to anyone.

Even before the exhibition, the painting was purchased by Grand Duke Konstantin Konstantinovich (grandson of Nicholas I). He was so attached to the painting that he took it trip around the world. The salty, humid air contributed to the darkening of the canvas. Alas, that hypnotic effect cannot be returned.

6. Altman. Portrait of Akhmatova. 1914

Altman’s “Akhmatova” is very bright and memorable. Speaking about the poetess, many will remember this particular portrait of her. Surprisingly, she didn’t like him herself. The portrait seemed strange and “bitter” to her, judging by her poems.

In fact, even the poetess’s sister admitted that in those pre-revolutionary years Akhmatova was like that. A true representative of modernity.

Young, slender, tall. Her angular figure is perfectly echoed by the “shrubs” in the cubist style. And a bright blue dress goes well with a sharp knee and a protruding shoulder.

He managed to convey the appearance of a stylish and extraordinary woman. However, he himself was like that.

Altman did not understand artists who could work in a dirty studio and not notice the crumbs in their beard. He himself was always dressed to the nines. And he even sewed underwear to order according to his own sketches.

It was also difficult to deny him his originality. Once he caught cockroaches in his apartment, he painted them different colors. He painted one gold, called him a “laureate” and released him with the words “That cockroach will be surprised!”

7. Kustodiev. Merchant's wife having tea. 1918

“The Merchant's Wife” by Kustodiev is a cheerful picture. On it we see a good, well-fed world of merchants. A heroine with skin lighter than the sky. A cat with a face similar to the face of its owner. A pot-bellied, polished samovar. Watermelon on a rich dish.

What might we think of an artist who painted such a picture? That the artist knows a lot about a well-fed life. That he loves curvy women. And that he is clearly a lover of life.

And here's how it really happened.

If you noticed, the picture was painted during the revolutionary years. The artist and his family lived extremely poorly. Thoughts only about bread. Hard life.

Why such abundance when there is devastation and hunger all around? So Kustodiev tried to capture the irretrievably gone beautiful life.

What about the ideal female beauty? Yes, the artist said that thin women do not inspire him to create. Nevertheless, in life he preferred just such people. His wife was also slender.

Kustodiev was cheerful. Which is amazing, since by the time the picture was painted he had already been chained to wheelchair. He was diagnosed with bone tuberculosis back in 1911.

Kustodiev's attention to detail is very unusual for the time when the avant-garde flourished. We see every drying item on the table. Walking near the Gostiny Dvor. And a fine fellow trying to keep his horse running. All this looks like a fairy tale, a fable. Which once existed, but ended.

Summarize:

If you want to see the main masterpieces of Repin, Kuindzhi, Bryullov or Aivazovsky, go to the Russian Museum.

“The Last Day of Pompeii” by Bryullov is about the beauty of the disaster.

“The Ninth Wave” by Aivazovsky is about the scale of the elements.

“The Last Supper” by Ge is about the awareness of imminent betrayal.

“Barge Haulers” by Repin is about a hired worker in the 19th century.

“Moonlit Night on the Dnieper” is about the soul of light.

“Portrait of Akhmatova” by Altman is about the ideal of a modern woman.

Kustodiev’s “Merchant’s Wife” is about an era that cannot be returned.

For those who do not want to miss the most interesting things about artists and paintings. Leave your e-mail (in the form below the text), and you will be the first to know about new articles on my blog.

PS. Test yourself: take the online test

In contact with

Exhibitions are being held in many German cities to mark the 50th anniversary of the return to East Germany of 1.5 million works seized as trophies at the end of the war.

Fifty years ago Soviet Union returned East Germany 1.5 million treasures of world art captured as trophies at the end of the Great Patriotic War. Recently, 28 German museums decided to say thank you again for this and organized exhibitions where you can see the works returned to Germany.

Of course, museums were prompted to organize these exhibitions not only by a sense of gratitude. The second part of their message is this: can’t we get everything else back?.. After all, there are still at least a million stolen works in Russia...

German museums have been pushing for the return of trophy art since the reunification of East and West Germany in 1990. But Russia is very reluctant to give away the works, citing the fact that the “Rembrandts,” “Caravaggios,” and “Rubens” captured by the Soviet army should be considered compensation for the masterpieces stolen or mutilated by the Nazis from Russian museums. According to Russian laws, all works of art exported from Germany under the leadership of the Stalin Trophy Committee are the property of Russian state.

Attention Russian authorities and the media is now focused on the situation in South Ossetia, so few people are interested in exhibitions in German museums. The first exhibition of trophy art recently opened (there are nine planned in total). It is called "Fifty Years of Lost and Rediscovered Art" and takes place in Potsdam, in famous palace Sans Souci, which was once the summer residence of the Prussian King Frederick the Great.

The exhibition tells the story of the massive restitution of 1958. Then, as a sign of friendship with East Germany, 300 carriages were sent from Moscow and Leningrad, containing 1.5 million of the 2.5 million captured masterpieces exported from Germany at the end of the war. If not for this restitution, many German museums would forever be left without their main treasures. How can one, for example, imagine the Pergamon Museum without the famous Pergamon Altar? Or souvenir shops in Dresden without postcards and mouse pads depicting cherubs from the painting “ Sistine Madonna"Raphael? But all this could have remained in the Soviet Union...

Those who opened these boxes of trophy works of art must have felt like children on Christmas Eve. East German museums celebrated the return of the treasures with great fanfare. But the celebrations soon ended, and nothing helped hide the unpleasant truth: almost half of the stolen works never returned to Germany.

Directors of German museums still cannot get an answer to the question of what criteria were used Soviet authorities, when they decided which paintings and sculptures to return to Germany and which not. At the opening of the exhibition in Sanssouci, the President of Prussia cultural center Hermann Parzinger suggested that the remaining works belong to those that were stolen by individuals before the arrival of the Trophy Committee.

“We think a lot of the work ended up in private collections,” Parzinger said. According to him, Germany does not hope that thanks to the exhibitions Russia will decide to immediately return the remaining trophies. the main task- establish interaction with representatives of Russian museums so that curators know what works are missing, where they are and in what condition.

Representatives of the Prussian Palaces and Parks of Berlin-Brandenburg Foundation, under whose guardianship Sans Souci is located, say that about 3 thousand works have disappeared without a trace from the palaces and castles of East Germany under their care. Of the 159 paintings that hung in the richly furnished room before the war art gallery Frederick the Great, only 99 “returned from the war.” The curators fill the empty spaces left on the walls with other captured works of art, many of which were removed from the walls of castles destroyed during the war. These works include paintings by Peter Paul Rubens, Anthony van Dyck, Rembrandt, Caravaggio, Ferdinand Bol, Guido Reni and Jan Lievens (Jan Lievens), which almost completely cover the gallery wall.

The exhibition also includes illustrations in which you can see what Friedrich’s gallery looked like before the war, as well as black and white photographs of stolen works. It is impossible not to notice that the paintings that now hang on the walls of Sans Souci no longer correspond to the taste preferences of the Prussian monarch. Most of the "gaps" were filled with canvases on religious themes, although Frederick preferred mythological painting. He liked paintings of sensual nudes and love scenes. Whoever plundered his collection in 1945 apparently had similar tastes - the magnificent Danae and Venuses, as well as Renaissance paintings, disappeared from the gallery walls. erotic fantasies Giulio Romano. In particular, a painting depicting a naked young man and girl kissing on a bed under the supervision of an elderly woman (presumably a wet nurse) was stolen.

Most mourned is the loss of Tarquin and Lucretia, Rubens' unforgettable masterpiece. Even before the Trophy Committee arrived, one Soviet officer cut the painting out of the frame and took it home. The painting lay in his attic until his death in 1999. Then a Moscow collector bought the painting for $3.5 million and paid for restoration work, after which he tried to sell it to Germany for 60 million. The German government did not want to pay that amount for the painting and tried to return the masterpiece through the courts. But the Moscow court rejected the claim, citing the fact that the owner of the painting acquired it legally.

However, not everything ends so sadly. In 1993, a veteran of the Great Patriotic War donated 101 graphic works to the German embassy in Moscow, including works by Albrecht Duerer, Edouard Manet, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec and Francisco de Goya. de Goya). Before the war, the works of art were in the Bremen Museum of Art, and in 1943 they were hidden in Karnzow Castle. That's where the officers found them. Soviet army. In 2000, the drawings and engravings returned to the Bremen Museum.

The exhibition of trophy art at the Sanssouci Castle will last until October 31. Similar exhibitions will be held in Aachen, Berlin, Bremen, Dessau, Dresden, Gotha and Schwerin.

“The British Empire is dead. So is the era of cultural trophies,” ends an article by English art critic Jonathan Johnson in The Guardian. He is echoed by J. J. Charlesworth in Art Review: the very fact of the referendum in Scotland showed that the system of the British Empire is hopelessly outdated and it is time to abandon its political illusions, and at the same time all claims to dominance in the art sphere. Ancient Greek statues, which for the last 150 years have been in British Museum, are called nothing more than “looted trophies.” Hence the campaign that has unfolded in the country to return antiquities to their homeland.

Now a second wave of restitutions is beginning in Europe. The issue of returning art objects illegally exported from conquered countries is also acute in France and Germany. However, it would be a mistake to consider this only a European problem: Japan was also forced to return South Korea about 1400 works. This trend is explained by globalization, when national idea placed below interstate interests.

In Russia the situation is different. After World War II, Soviet troops took out great amount works from museums and private collections of the Third Reich. Later, in 1955, the USSR returned the paintings to museums in East Germany and the countries that signed the Warsaw Pact. Exhibits from Germany for a long time were stored in Moscow, Leningrad and Kyiv under the heading “Secret”, although the other victorious countries had already given away most of what was taken out. As a true empire, the Soviet Union did not take into account the opinion of the European public. Only in 1992 did Helmut Kohl and Boris Yeltsin begin to discuss the possibility of returning exported works to Germany. However, at this stage everything ended: in 1995, Russia imposed a moratorium on restitution.

The problem of returning works, which arises in Western Europe, applies only to the plane of post-war trophies, while in Russia everything is much more complicated. After the revolution Soviet museums enriched themselves at the expense of private “dispossessed” collections. Therefore, critics of restitution fear that by transferring things to foreign heirs, Russian descendants of collectors will be able to assert their rights. So it's safe to say that the items below in the list will remain in domestic museums forever.

"Unknown masterpieces" in the State Hermitage

Works French artists XIX - XX centuries from the collections of Otto Krebs and Otto Gerstenberg during the Second World War were hidden and then taken to the Soviet Union. Many paintings from the collection were returned to Germany, but some are in the Hermitage.

The central place is occupied by the works of impressionists and post-impressionists. These are Edouard Manet, Claude Monet, Camille Pissarro, Vincent Van Gogh, Paul Cezanne - in total more than 70 paintings by first-rate artists.

Pablo Picasso "Absinthe", 1901

Edgar Degas "Seated Dancer", 1879-1880.

Baldin collection of graphics in the State Hermitage

The collection consists of more than 300 drawings of such famous Western European artists, like Durer, Titian, Rembrandt, Rubens and Van Gogh. The collection was accidentally found by Soviet soldiers in one of the castles, where it was transported from the Kunsthalle in Bremen. Captain Baldin saved the precious sheets from theft and sent them to Moscow. Now they are in the Hermitage.

Albrecht Durer "Women's Bath", 1496

Vincent Van Gogh "Cypress Trees on a Starry Night", 1889

Collection of Frans Koenigs in the Pushkin Museum

Banker France Koenigs was forced to sell his rich collection of drawings by old masters, and by the beginning of World War II it ended up in the Dresden gallery, from where it was removed by Soviet troops. Until the early 1990s, the drawings were kept secretly in Moscow and Kyiv. Then, in 2004, Ukraine handed over the sheets it had kept to its heirs. Moscow is not inferior: 307 drawings are in the Pushkin Museum.

Drawing by Peter Paul Rubens

Drawing by Rembrandt van Rijn

"Schliemann's Gold" in the Pushkin Museum and the State Hermitage

The objects were found by the German archaeologist Heinrich Schliemann during excavations of Troy in 1872–1890. The collection consists of 259 items dating from 2400 - 2300 BC. e. Objects made of gold, silver, bronze and stone were stored in Berlin before the war. Now the most valuable of them are in the Pushkin Museum, the rest are in the Hermitage, and it is unlikely that anything will change. Irina Antonova, former director Pushkin Museum, said this about restitution: “As long as we have the gold of Troy, the Germans will remember that there was a war and that they lost it.”

Great Diadem, 2400 – 2200 BC.

Small Diadem, 2400 – 2200 BC.

Gutenberg Bibles in the Russian State Library and Moscow State University Library

European printing originated in Germany in the 15th century. Johann Gutenberg published the first book, a 42-line Bible, in the mid-1440s in the city of Mainz. Its circulation was 180 copies, but by 2009 only 47 of them had survived. By the way, one sheet of this book costs 80 thousand dollars.

Soviet troops took two Bibles from Leipzig. One of them is kept in the library of Moscow State University, and the existence of the other was announced by the authorities only in the 1990s. This copy is located in the Russian state library.

Scientific catalog compiled by a leading researcher State Museum fine arts them. A.S. Pushkin, specialist in Italian art Victoria Markova, includes 122 works from the fund of displaced valuables located in the Pushkin Museum since the end of World War II. It is the collection Italian painting The XIV-XVIII centuries forms the core of the once strictly classified “trophy art” stored in the Pushkin Museum. Most of the masterpieces in the post-war period were published for the first time; Until now, the location of many works remained unknown even to the scientific community. Preparation of the publication lasted more than ten years, serious research related to the restoration and study of paintings - establishing authorship and especially the history of the existence of works.

After the war, in 1945-1948, the cultural property of Germany and its allies was taken to the USSR as “compensatory restitution.” Further " trophy art"was distributed among museum storerooms, and some of the valuables were returned to the German Democratic Republic. A significant number of works of art were transferred to the Pushkin Museum. Pushkin. For the next half century, in the strictest secrecy, they were kept in the museum’s special storage room, located on the territory of the Trinity-Sergius Lavra (abolished in 1999). The turning point in this story was 1995, when the Pushkin Museum held an exhibition Twice Saved, the first open display of the valuables of the trophy fund. After the exhibition closed, some works appeared in the permanent exhibition without any fuss or mention of origin.

In 1995-1996, the Pushkin Museum hosted a couple more exhibitions from trophy funds: Five centuries of European drawing. Drawings by Old Masters from the former collection Franz Koenigs and “Schliemann’s gold”, and two years later the fate of displaced art in Russia seemed to be decided. In 1998 they accepted the federal law"ABOUT cultural values, moved to Union of Soviet Socialist Republics as a result of the Second World War and located in the territory Russian Federation" According to him, these works of art are declared national treasures. At first glance, this law put an end to the debate about future fate and the status of “trophy art”. Only 50 years after being exported from Germany to the USSR, these masterpieces could be described, studied and exhibited. However, in reality, the degree of “publicity” of items from the trophy fund still depends on the position of the management of a particular museum. Thus, the Hermitage is not afraid of the topic of displaced valuables, the origin and history of their storage in the museum are well studied, and the objects themselves regularly appear at exhibitions in Russia. In the case of the Pushkin Museum, even the very composition of the trophy funds remains a mystery, although in recent decades the situation has noticeably improved. In 2005, the Pushkin Museum showed an exhibition Archeology of war. Return from oblivion, consisting of restored antiques. Exhibitions followed in 2010 The Woven World of Egyptian Christians and 2014 Art of Ancient Cyprus, where exhibits once kept in Berlin were shown for the first time.

However, the works Italian school from the fund of displaced valuables of the Pushkin Museum still remained unknown not only to viewers, but also to specialists. Moreover, this is the first catalog published by the Pushkin Museum of one of the parts of the trophy fund - its Italian collection, “notable for its integrity, diversity and completeness.”

The first 20 pages of the publication are devoted to the history of the Italian painting fund and an overview of the collection. Starting point The creation of the inventory began with the inventory numbers of the old German General Catalog of all Prussian palaces from Königsberg to the Rhine. The numbers on the backs of the paintings provide the key to primary information - about the origin and attribution (of course, for the pre-war period) of the paintings. However, many of the paintings presented in the catalog were before the war in the private collections of a Swiss surgeon who lived in Amsterdam at the beginning of the 20th century. Otto Lanza(whose collection was acquired in 1941 by the Reich for the museum Adolf Hitler in Linz) or the German art historian Herman Voss, who led the war during the war Dresden gallery and the Fuhrer Museum that was being created at that time. Of course, provenance individual works published in the catalog have yet to be established, and the history of the existence of some paintings deserves special research. I would like to hope that such work will be carried out in the future, and the appendices published at the end of the publication will be of great help here. This is a photograph of the backs of about half of the 122 paintings in the catalog - those on which inscriptions, numbers and seals can be made out. Another important addition to the catalog is an illustrated list of works from the collection of Professor Hermann Voss. Finally, in order to assess the geography of collections, works from which, among the transferred values, ended up in Pushkin Museum, you can familiarize yourself with the index of the location of the paintings before entering the Pushkin Museum. In general, the reference apparatus of the catalog (list of literature and exhibitions, tables of correspondence of inventory numbers) is very impressive.

The main part of the book is occupied by a catalog of works of the Italian school, they are located in chronological order, and the most numerous is the section of Renaissance painting, from the Proto-Renaissance to Mannerism, but truly outstanding works, on the contrary, date back to the 17th-18th centuries, for example paintings by Guido Reni and Pietro Antonio Rotary. Among the masterpieces published in the catalog are works by masters of the 17th century Giovanni Benedetto Castiglione, Sebastiano Mazzoni, Angelo Caroselli, Paolo Pagani from the collection of Hermann Voss. The most important monument in the catalog is the canvas Paolo Veronese Mourning(1570s), never previously published or exhibited. Within the chronology, the works are grouped according to the affiliation of the authors of the paintings to various schools. In descriptions of works, the phrase “this attribution belongs to the author of this catalogue” is often found, and this reveals the significance of the art historical research carried out in the preparation of the book. In addition to the meticulous work of a historian and archivist, who determined the origin and restored the history of many works, Victoria Markova conducted a study of the stylistic features and artistic qualities of the paintings, determining their belonging to local schools, and then identifying many of the authors. Sometimes it confirms or refutes pre-war attributions. For example, in the case of a 15th century painting Madonna and Child Enthroned with Saints Jerome and Anthony of Padua she managed to prove the authorship of the Florentine Cosimo Rosselli, contemporary and associate Sandro Botticelli and Domenico Ghirlandaio(they painted the walls together Sistine Chapel). However, in an Italian monograph on the artist from 2007, this remarkable board is represented by a pre-war photograph and is listed as a late fake.

Italian painting of the XIV-XVIII centuries. (Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts named after A.S. Pushkin. Catalog). Markova V. E.M.: Art-Volkhonka, 2014.

Very important! The Hermitage begins a measured injection of paintings by old masters into the digital catalog! No announcements or announcements. Which is probably reasonable. We have already introduced our friends to trophy pictures from the Hermitage. These were impressionist, post-impressionist, and 19th-century artists. We all kind of digested the first portion. Already Westerners are beginning to point to the captured masterpieces of Degas, Renoir, Lautrec, Cezanne, Monet, Gauguin. Van Gogh and others as a home port" State Hermitage Museum"We have already published a trophy Königsberg Rubens stored in the Hermitage; for some reason, having been restored, it is still missing from the digital collection on the official website. Now it’s the turn of the old people. For now, these are Renaissance Italians.
“Leda” was added to the homemade “Cupid in a Landscape” by the great Sienese Sodoma.

To the once again home-made signature and masterpiece “The Crucifixion with Mary, St. John, St. Jerome, St. Francis and Mary Magdalene” by the novelist Marco Palmezzano, a wonderful holy family was added.”

A very high-quality selection of paintings by the Florentine Jacopo del Sellaio has been supplemented with the wonderful composition “Dead Christ with St. Francis, St. Jerome and the Angel”


"The Holy Family with John the Baptist and Three Angels" by Francesco Granacci was supplemented with the composition "The Rest of the Holy Family on the Flight to Egypt"

All this is the most thoroughbred 16th century!
And for dessert, the work of an unknown person Italian author. "Unknown" means only one thing - discovery lies ahead!


We will monitor the Hermitage’s efforts to legalize trophy old men. You will be the first to know. In the meantime, we are waiting for the Pushkin Museum to legalize its old Italians. The museum announced it an important event. According to our intelligence data, these will be mainly authors of the Baroque era.