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Da Vinci's adventures in Russia: details about our Leonardos

From it is read that about 15 paintings by Leonardo da Vinci have survived (in addition to frescoes and drawings). Five of them are kept in the Louvre, one each in the Uffizi (Florence), the Alte Pinakothek (Munich), the Czartoryski Museum (Krakow), the London and Washington National Galleries, as well as other lesser-known museums. However, some scholars argue that there are actually more paintings, but disputes over the attribution of Leonardo's works are an endless occupation. In any case, Russia holds a solid second place after France. Let's take a look at the Hermitage and remember the history of our Leonardos together with Sofia Bagdasarova.

"Madonna Litta"

Angelo Bronzino. Contest between Apollo and Marsyas. 1531–1532. State Hermitage

There are so many paintings depicting the Virgin Mary that it is customary to give the most famous nicknames. Often the name of one of the previous owners sticks to them, as happened with Madonna Litta.

The painting, painted in the 1490s, remained in Italy for many centuries. Since 1813, it was owned by the Milanese Litta family, whose representatives knew very well how rich Russia was. It was from this family that the Maltese knight Count Giulio Renato Litta came, who was in great favor with Paul I and, leaving the order, married Potemkin's niece, becoming a millionaire. However, he has nothing to do with Leonardo's painting. A quarter of a century after his death, in 1864, Duke Antonio Litta turned to the Hermitage, which had recently become a public museum, with an offer to buy several paintings from the family collection.

Antonio Litta was so eager to please the Russians that he sent a list of 44 works offered for sale and asked a museum representative to come to Milan to view the gallery. The director of the Hermitage, Stepan Gedeonov, went to Italy and chose four paintings, paying 100,000 francs for them. In addition to Leonardo, the museum acquired Bronzino's "Contest of Apollo and Marsyas", Lavinia Fontana's "Venus Feeding Cupid" and Sassoferrato's "Praying Madonna".

The picture arrived in Russia in a very bad condition, it had to be not only cleaned, but immediately transferred from the board to the canvas. This is how the first Leonardo appeared in the Hermitage.

By the way, here is an example of disputes over attribution: did Leonardo create the "Madonna Litta" himself or with an assistant? Who was this co-author - his student Boltraffio? Or maybe Boltraffio painted it in its entirety, based on a sketch by Leonardo? This issue has not yet been finally resolved, and the "Madonna Litta" is considered a bit dubious.

Leonardo da Vinci had many students and followers - they are called "leonardesques". Sometimes they interpreted the legacy of the master in a very strange way. This is how the type of nude "Mona Lisa" appeared. The Hermitage has one of these paintings by an unknown author - "Donna Nuda" ("Nude Woman"). It appeared in Zimny ​​during the reign of Catherine the Great: in 1779 the Empress acquired it as part of the collection of Richard Walpole. In addition to her, the Hermitage also houses a large collection of other Leonardesques, including a copy of the dressed Mona Lisa.

Lavinia Fontana. Venus feeding Cupid. 1610s. State Hermitage

Leonardo da Vinci. Madonna Litta. 1490–1491 State Hermitage

Leonardo da Vinci, school. Donna sucks. State Hermitage

"Madonna Benois"

This painting, painted in 1478-1480, was also named after its owner. Moreover, it could well be called "Sapozhnikov's Madonna", but "Benois", of course, sounds more beautiful. The Hermitage acquired it from the wife of the architect Leonty Nikolaevich Benois (brother of the famous Alexander), Maria Alexandrovna Benois. She was born Sapozhnikova (and, by the way, she was a distant relative of the artist Maria Bashkirtseva, which she was proud of).

Previously, the painting was owned by her father, the Astrakhan millionaire merchant Alexander Aleksandrovich Sapozhnikov, and before him by his grandfather Alexander Petrovich (grandson of Semyon Sapozhnikov, who was hanged in the village of Malykovka for participation in the Pugachev rebellion by one young lieutenant named Gavrila Derzhavin). The family told that the Madonna was sold to the Sapozhnikovs by wandering Italian musicians, who, no one knows how, were brought to Astrakhan.

But in fact, Sapozhnikov-grandfather acquired it in 1824 for 1400 rubles at an auction after the death of the senator, president of the Berg Collegium and director of the Mining School Alexei Korsakov (who apparently brought it from Italy in the 1790s). Surprisingly, when after the death of Korsakov his collection, which included Titian, Rubens, Rembrandt and other authors, was put up for auction, the Hermitage bought several works (in particular, Millet, Mignard), but neglected this modest Madonna. The new owner took up the restoration of the painting, at his request it was immediately transferred from the board to the canvas.

The Russian public learned about this painting in 1908, when the court architect Leonty Benois exhibited a work from the collection of his father-in-law, and the chief curator of the Hermitage, Ernst Lipgart, confirmed the hand of the master. This happened at the "Exhibition of Western European Art from the Collections of Collectors and Antiquarians of St. Petersburg", which opened on December 1, 1908 in the halls of the Imperial Society for the Encouragement of Arts.

In 1912, the Benois decided to sell the painting, the painting was sent abroad, where experts examined it and confirmed its authenticity. The London antiquarian Duvin offered 500,000 francs (about 200,000 rubles), but a campaign began in Russia for the purchase of the work by the state. The director of the Hermitage, Count Dmitry Tolstoy, turned to Nicholas II. The Benois also wanted the Madonna to remain in Russia, and eventually gave it to the Hermitage in 1914 for 150,000 rubles, which were paid in installments.

It is curious: the great futurist poet Velimir Khlebnikov, an Astrakhan and compatriot of the Sapozhnikovs, in December 1918, in his article “Astrakhan Gioconda” (the Red Warrior newspaper) exclaimed: “Can this picture be considered as a public property of the city of Astrakhan? If so, then this priceless painting should be placed in its second homeland. Petrograd has enough artistic treasures, and to take the “Madonna” from Astrakhan - does not this mean taking away the last sheep from the poor? But it did not work out - the painting did not return to Astrakhan.

Orest Kiprensky. Portrait of Alexei Korsakov. 1808. State Russian Museum

Leonardo da Vinci. Madonna Benois. 1478. State Hermitage

Vasily Tropinin. Portrait of A.P. Sapozhnikov. 1826. State Hermitage

"Savior of the World"

There are no more works by Leonardo in Russian museums, only "degraded", for example - "Saint Sebastian" by the already mentioned Boltraffio (in the Pushkin Museum since 1930). In the middle of the 19th century, Count Sergei Stroganov bought it as a work of da Vinci, and only in 1896 did the researcher Fritz Hark suggest that in fact it was a painting by his student.

However, the Russian trace is clearly traced in the fate of another painting by Leonardo da Vinci - "The Savior of the World". However, that this picture is the work of a genius, it was decided only in the 21st century.

The fact is that many of da Vinci's works, although not preserved, are known from his sketches, copies of students and descriptions of contemporaries. So, we know that he wrote "Leda and the Swan", "Madonna with a Spindle" and "The Battle of Anghiari". Although their originals have been lost, the Leonardesques Boltraffio, Francesco Melzi, Giampetrino, and even Rubens left enough copies and variations for us to be sure that such works really existed, and could imagine how approximately they looked.

The same story with the "Savior of the World": it was believed that the original was lost, and versions of the students exist - about twenty. One of these copies was bought in 1900 by the British collector Frederic Cook, and in 1958 his heirs sold it to Sotheby's for only £45 as a work by Boltraffio. In 2004, this image of Christ was acquired by a consortium of New York art dealers, cleaned of late recordings (for example, added mustaches), restored and sent for examination. And many experts agreed with the hypothesis of the owners of the painting: it was not written by a follower, but by the master himself. The press was filled with loud headlines - "The lost painting of Leonardo da Vinci has been found!".

In 2011, The Savior of the World was exhibited at the prestigious London National Gallery exhibition dedicated to Leonardo, where for the first time the maximum number of masterpieces were collected, including the Louvre (except for the Mona Lisa) and the Hermitage. There was a final legitimation of the find - it remains only to sell it.

Indeed, two years later, the image of Christ was bought by Russian millionaire Dmitry Rybolovlev. And in 2017, through the mediation of Christie's, the collector sold it to the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia, Mohammed bin Salman Al Saud, for $400 million. "Savior of the World" became the most expensive work of art in the history of the world.

"Madonna Litta" by Leonardo da Vinci

"Madonna Litta" by Leonardo da Vinci is one of the most touching and lyrical images of Madonnas in the world. In Leonardo's painting, traditional Christian symbolism is inextricably linked with the manifestation of high human feelings - love, tenderness and care. The painting was purchased in 1864 from Count Litta, owner of a family art gallery in Milan, and is a true gem of the Hermitage.

"Penitent Mary Magdalene", Titian

There are four versions of this famous painting. One of them is kept in the Hermitage, the rest - in the Museum of Capodimonte (Naples), in the collection of Colnaghi (London) and Candiani (Busto Arsizio). The Hermitage version is considered the most perfect. Contrary to church canons, the great artist depicted on it not an exalted sinner in religious ecstasy, but a suffering earthly woman, exhausted by mental anguish.

The Apostles Peter and Paul, El Greco

Domenico Theotokopuli (El Greco) is one of the most enigmatic artists of the Late Renaissance. The painting "Apostles Peter and Paul" was written in 1592, but for many years it was forgotten and became known to art lovers only 300 years later. Not only art historians, but also theologians still argue about the meaning and symbols hidden in it. It is only known that the image of the Apostle Paul is a slightly modified self-portrait of El Greco himself. Pavel's face is painted in a special technique, so thin that the image is not fixed on the x-ray.

"Young man with a lute", Caravaggio (Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio)

Carvaggio's painting "Young Man with a Lute" was exhibited for a long time in the Hermitage under the name "Lute Player" - experts were convinced that a girl was depicted on the canvas. But the artist's biographer Peter Robb claimed that the painting depicted the artist's friend Mario Minniti. This is one of the first paintings by Caravaggio, which uses the directional lighting that glorified the master. To achieve the desired effect, the painter placed his models in a dark basement with a single window and seated under an incident beam of light.

Danae, Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn

It is known that Rembrandt wrote Danae not for sale, but for himself, and the painting left his house only when all the artist's property was sold for debts. This work baffled art historians for many years: its style strongly did not correspond to the date of writing, the plot sinned with inexplicable oddities. Only in the middle of the twentieth century, after the invention of radiography, the riddle was resolved. It turned out that at first the canvas depicted Rembrandt's wife, Saskia, next to a laughing angel and golden rain falling from the sky. But after the death of his beloved wife, the artist rewrote the picture. The golden rain disappeared, the angel became sad, and Danae's face took on the features of Gertier Dirks, the master's new girlfriend.

The Return of the Prodigal Son by Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn

The Return of the Prodigal Son is one of the last, most expressive paintings by Rembrandt. Its plot is quite consistent with the evangelical canons, but art historians are still trying to figure out what exactly is encrypted in the figures drowning in the darkness in the background. According to one version, the picture simultaneously depicts two time layers at once - the prodigal son before his departure from home and he after his return.

The Lady in Blue by Thomas Gainsborough

The Lady in Blue is the only painting by the outstanding English artist Thomas Gainsborough presented in Russia. It is generally accepted that it depicts the Duchess Elisabeth de Beaufort, daughter of Admiral Boscawen. Interestingly, although the Duchess de Beaufort is considered the epitome of femininity and aristocratic grace, her mother Frances Boscowen was one of the most zealous supporters of the blue stocking movement that originated in those years in Great Britain.

"Portrait of the Actress Jeanne Samary" by Pierre-Auguste Renoir

The portrait of the actress of the Comedy Francaise theater Jeanne Samary is filled with unique play of bright, sunny colors. Its history is dramatic - it was almost destroyed immediately after it was written. When the painting was ready, the artist decided to send it to the exhibition. The colors on the canvas were still quite fresh, and Renoir did not varnish it. But the employee who transported the painting decided that the artist had done so due to lack of funds, and put a layer of varnish on the portrait himself. As a result, the paint flowed, and Renoir had to urgently rewrite the portrait again.

"Dance", Henri Matisse

The painting "Dance" was painted with only three colors - blue, green and orange. It was created in 1910 to order for the Moscow collector Sergei Shchukin as a decorative panel designed to decorate the front staircase of the mansion. After the October Revolution, Shchukin's collection of paintings was confiscated, and the "Dance" ended up in the Hermitage. The Hermitage canvas is the second and more famous version of the painting "Dance". The first was painted in 1909 and is currently on display at the Museum of Modern Art in New York.

Absinthe drinker, Pablo Picasso

The painting "The Absinthe Drinker" refers to the "blue" period of Pablo Picasso's work, filled with an acute sense of homelessness and loneliness. This expressive, touching work was brought to Russia by Moscow collector Sergei Shchukin. By 1914, there were 51 works by Picasso in the Shchukin collection - the largest collection of paintings by this artist in the world, which is in private possession. Critics of those years called Shchukin “crazy”, but it was to him that the Hermitage owes the fact that his collection included the best paintings by Picasso.

"Waterloo Bridge. Fog Effect, Claude Monet's London Cycle

Painting by Claude Monet “Waterloo Bridge. Fog effect" has an unusual optical effect. If you come close to the picture, it is impossible to distinguish anything except almost identical in tone chaotic strokes. But as the details of the picture are removed, they gradually begin to show through, and from a distance of about two meters, a clear composition appears in front of the viewer, in which objects are sharply separated from the background and even the movement of water in the river is felt. Experts call this picture "magical".

"Black Square", K. S. Malevich

"Black Square" by Kazimir Malevich is one of the most famous works of Russian avant-garde painting. This is a vivid embodiment of the ideas of Suprematism - an art direction that uses simple geometric shapes to describe the surrounding forms, space and movement. Despite the external simplicity of the image, this is a deep philosophical concept, which in our time has become widespread in the organization of the space of residential and public buildings, design, and decorating art.

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Room 213 contains two small paintings by Botticelli and two canvases by Pietro Perugino. This Umbrian painter took part in the work on the frescoes of the Sistine Chapel and is better known as Raphael's teacher. Some works by Filippino Lippi also hang there.
The high ceiling with caissons and the ornamental decoration of room 214 serve as an exquisite backdrop for two canvases by Leonardo da Vinci. These are the only works of the great Italian painter in Russia. The earlier one shows Mary holding Jesus on her lap. The painting is called "Madonna Benois" - by the name of the family that sold this painting to Nicholas II in 1914.

Benois Madonna by Leonardo da Vinci from the Hermitage Collection

Another painting is "Madonna Litta". This is a more skillful picture, made by the master in his mature years. It depicts the Mother of God breastfeeding Jesus. The next room is dedicated to Leonardo's immediate successors. The portrait of a woman known as Flora is by Francesco Melzi, Leonardo's most faithful disciple, in whose arms he died.

"Madonnas" stood perpendicular to the huge windows looking at the Neva and the Peter and Paul Fortress. Stopping at each, you found yourself as if in a small compartment, in a half-open box. A little separated from everyone. He tuned in to a dialogue: the tempted one - with the secrets of maddening skill, the neophyte - with the name of a genius. The transition from one "Madonna" to another looked like turning over a book page.

"Madonna Benois" ("Madonna with a Flower") was the first in the course of the spectator stream and therefore involuntarily seemed to be the beginning, a "pen test", an attempt. "Madonna Litta" completed the story - the culmination, "the last word."

Now they hang in the back of the hall, in the middle of it, a little away from the dim carpet (in fact, of course, they stand in high-tech and well-protecting capsules, but the verb "hang" is always the way for paintings). They are close - and this is a revolution. in their show.

Yes, the flow goes on the same way, and the eye meets first with the Benois Madonna, and then with the Litta Madonna, but it is impossible not to stop before them. And when you stop, by the cultural inertia of book and computer reading, you look from left to right. First to Madonna Litta, then to Madonna Benois. And she, with this stunning blue-brown tone, with a flower in the hands of a baby, a combination of petals denoting a cross, with a mysterious bird in her left hand (about which one wants to guess everything, not read), with an imperfect forehead with shaved eyebrows outperforms the utterly quoted and emblematic for the Hermitage "Madonna Litta". In which, according to some non-museum experts, there is also a student's hand.

Splashing in the general crowd in front of the great paintings, you feel pleasure, as with someone's successful marriage - the right, smart, beautiful, fair and right choice of the bride or groom.

And it certainly could not have done without Mikhail Borisovich Piotrovsky. A person with world-renowned taste about the "Madonna Litta" could respond: "Stop putting it on all the book covers. Get out, put Melzi's "Flora" instead."

Their current new arrangement is more fashionable, interesting and fair. Photo: S. Ragin (c) State Hermitage Museum

So this can also be assessed as a museum experiment in "change of taste", in its complication. If Petersburg educates Rossi and Quarenghi, then the Hermitage educates Leonardo and Rembrandt. It seemed to me that the public lingering near the "Madonna Litta" is different from the public, looking at the "Madonna Benois" for a longer time. Model-looking girls stop at "Madonna Litta", careful to their individuality and more intelligent - at "... Benois". It is possible that the question "Which of the Madonnas do you like best?" will become as familiar to our cultural audience as the question: "Who do you love more, Tolstoy or Dostoevsky?"

Emblems must change. There should be no symbolic slip. We must live with them - with our Leonardo Madonnas - love, guess, forget, be surprised. Something to look for and find. We are here as in a kind of cultural marriage: we are called to the labor of subtle feeling and understanding.

In a situation where the country is closed by sanctions, and we are forced to prop the door on the other side, the question of our competitiveness becomes acute. Cultural including. And not only the Hermitage, whose competitiveness no one will dispute for a long time to come, but also us, its viewers.

The fashionable internal museum magazine Hermitage not so long ago published on its pages essays from another time - a non-professional art critic, journalist of the once very famous and influential Literaturnaya Gazeta Evgeny Bogat. Having caught in himself a feeling of anxiety from the fact that "the peacefully resting Madonna ... will quietly raise her eyelids and not recognize me", and realizing that art criticism does not give an answer to this anxiety, he undertook a deep spectator study on the topic "Man in front of a great painting ". Today, this cultural tradition of not strictly scientific, love art history is continued by the brilliant poet Olga Sedakova, for example, in her Letters on Rembrandt.

We must join him.

Happy eyes.

Lines in untrusted diaries and ... in public blogs.

There is only one way worthy of a person to adapt to a rapidly changing reality: triumph over the most rapidly changing in it.

I will allow myself now to call the Hermitage... a university of adaptation to a rapidly changing world. In this university, mastering the wealth of the achieved development will help a person to return to himself (Marx's formula) and enter the future without losing anything, in the concentration of forces, like a warrior who understands the morning after the first day of the great battle that, despite the pain from wounds and loss beloved comrades, he has only become stronger and will win today.

In this university, those who are not too lazy to feel and think open up a special spiritual time-space.

Eugene Rich. Letters from the Hermitage

Direct speech

Mikhail Piotrovsky, Director of the Hermitage

I agreed, insisted, sought, scandalized, met a lot of red tape, but we outweighed these pictures.

Although it is believed that the exposition in the Hermitage changes all the time, there is nothing more difficult than changing the exposition in the Hermitage. So this decision, on the one hand, is not mine, but jointly born, but on the other hand, of course, mine.

Such changes are very important for today's museum. A thing in a museum does not exist by itself, but always in a museum context. The same Leonardo da Vinci is one in one context, another in another.

Now "Madonna Benois" and "Madonna Litta" have turned around, the light falls on them in a completely different way, they are read differently and play with the audience. This is an important step towards a newer display, but also a concentration of all that is actually happening in the museum. The change is connected with the flow of people. Crowds of people all the time stood in front of these two icon cases. And now they are passing by, and we are reducing one of the main troubles of the museum - pandemonium.

The paintings have completely new showcases, not just with climate, but with special climate monitoring and two degrees of climate protection. We have already made new films on the windows, because one thing is the light from the left and the other is the light in the face. And he also happens to be morning, afternoon, evening. In general, all the museum's actualities were concentrated in this rebalancing of the paintings - the thing itself, its aesthetics, the flow of people, technologies, protection from light, the reading and understanding of the painting by the visitor - and therefore it was not decided in a second. And of course, the director's decision was important.

I think that the "Madonna Benois" is really better read now, because when they followed each other, the "Madonna Benois" was read as the beginning of Leonardo, and the "Madonna Litta" - as his peak. "Madonna Litta" for many years was the symbol and the most beloved painting of the Hermitage. And "Madonna Benois" just now played in a completely different way. This is a wonderful picture, and so it is better for her.

And the Hermitage knows how to impress with exhibitions of contemporary art. We are sorry that our last exhibition of contemporary art "Arte Povera" did not sound loud. There were articles about it in special magazines, but it is worth more, because very strong things were presented on it, this is such a manifesto. But exhibitions of contemporary art - if there is no scandal - do not sound loud.