The first exhibition this year within the framework of the national project “Culture” – “Painting of Western Europe” opened at the Tula Museum of Fine Arts XVII-XIX centuries” from the funds of the Krasnodar Regional Art Museum named after F. A. Kovalenko. The exhibition includes twenty-five paintings, mostly Italian, Spanish, Flemish, Dutch and French artists.
The founder of the museum, Fyodor Akimovich Kovalenko, began acquiring works by Western European masters at the end of the 19th century. (1866–1919), worked as a cashier in the grocery store of the merchant Pyatkov and at the same time collected works of art. He failed, as he dreamed, to become an artist, but Kovalenko managed to realize his love for painting through collecting. At first these were small and inexpensive works, not always of good quality. Later it became possible to buy more serious things. Fyodor Akimovich donated his collection of paintings, books and archaeological treasures to Krasnodar, and in 1904 the first museum in the North Caucasus was opened.
The most active formation of a collection of foreign art took place with 1924 to 1933, when it was led by art critic, professor of the Kuban Pedagogical Institute Romuald Kazimirovich Voytsik.
According to museum researcher Yana Alalykina, “just in the late twenties and early thirties, a lot was distributed from the State Museum Fund, the Hermitage, the Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts, the Tretyakov Gallery, the Rumyantsev and Russian Museums, and the Academy of Arts to regional museums.” many worthy works of art. Wojcik understood that collections needed to be collected not only according to the principle “I don’t like this, but we like this – we take it,” but still concentrate on the formation of national schools – so that artists from different countries and movements are represented. His greatest merit is his active collection of works by Russian avant-garde artists, which is why he was arrested and sentenced to three years in a forced labor camp.”
Currently, the museum collections number about thirteen thousand works of painting, graphics, sculpture and decorative arts.
The first acquaintance of the Tula public with the Krasnodar collection took place last year – then the exhibition “Russian Avant-Garde” was organized at the Museum of Fine Arts as part of the “Culture” national project. Now it’s the turn of European classics.
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The Young Communard correspondent visited the reception and unpacking of the paintings. This process is quite slow and very thorough. The boxes are opened in the presence of employees of both museums – this is a mandatory condition when transferring works of art for exhibition. As Galina Eresko, head of the department of the Tula Museum Association branch, said, “transportation takes place in special boxes with internal cells, which maintain the required temperature from +18 to +22 degrees and a humidity level of up to 60 percent. While unpacking the paintings, we check the safety declared by the sender and only then proceed to installation of the exhibition.”
By the way, it contains many masterpieces. First of all, this is the “Portrait of Cardinal Astali Camilo-Pamphili”. According to Yana Alalykina, “Diego Velazquez fulfilled this order during a trip to Rome in 1650–1651. The painting depicts the adopted nephew of Pope Innocent X. The court artist of the Spanish King Philip IV painted the cardinal twice. One version is currently kept in the Spanish Society Museum in New York. The second belonged to the Spanish Marquis del Carpio. He was transported on a ship that crashed, and for two centuries the portrait was considered missing. And in 1834, the Spanish Consul General Gessler presented it to the Russian Emperor Nicholas I. The work was kept in the Hermitage, from where it was transferred to the Krasnodar Museum in 1933. Experts found out that this is exactly the missing portrait.”
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(In fairness, we note that the New York portrait has always been considered a truly authentic work of one of the greatest masters of world painting. Its second version, most likely, was created with the participation of the workshop. In particular, there is an assumption that Velazquez’s student Juan Pareja worked on it, and the finishing touches were applied by the brilliant Spaniard himself – Ed.).
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Among the most significant works exhibited in Tula is “Lamentation” by Annibale Carracci (one of the largest Italian artists of the era XVI–XVII centuries, founder of the famous Academy of Painting in Bologna) and “Allegory” by Luca Giordano (the most famous master of the Italian Baroque of the late 17th – early 18th centuries, a representative of the Neapolitan school), “Gatherings for the Hunt” by Philips Wouwerman (an outstanding painter and graphic artist of the golden age of Dutch art, a representative of the the so-called Italianizing movement) and a still life by Jan van Huysum (the leading master of Dutch still life of the first half of the 18th century), a portrait of Countess Anna Stroganova by Pietro Rotari (an Italian painter and engraver of the Venetian school of the Rococo era, who since 1756 worked in Russia at the court of Elizabeth Petrovna as a court artist ) and a portrait of Princess Zinaida Yusupova by Christina Robertson (a Scottish artist, a popular master of salon portraiture, who worked a lot on orders from the imperial court and the Russian aristocracy under Nicholas I).
Exhibition at the Tula Museum fine arts visit before June 2.
Recommended age 6+
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