Tretyakov Gallery exhibition Vatican list of paintings. An exhibition of paintings from the Vatican Pinacoteca has opened at the Tretyakov Gallery. What did they bring from the Vatican?

An exhibition of masterpieces from the Vatican Pinacoteca has opened at the Tretyakov Gallery on Lavrushinsky Lane.

In Moscow, 42 paintings of the 12th-18th centuries will be shown by such masters as Giovanni Bellini, Fra Beato Angelico, Perugino, Raphael, Caravaggio, Paolo Veronese, Nicolas Poussin, reports “ Interfax".

Entrance to the exhibition is organized in half-hour sessions. Meanwhile, as the museum's press service reported, tickets to the exhibition have already been sold out until the end of the year. The museum noted that a new batch of tickets will arrive in mid-December.

The exhibition is unique in that the Vatican Museums have never previously provided paintings of this level and in such quantity for any event. Let's add that Caravaggio paintings, Rafael Santi, Giovanni Bellini, Guercino, Pietro Perugino and Guido Reni rarely leave the Vatican.

Exhibition of works from the collections of the Vatican Museums "Roma Aeterna. Masterpieces of the Vatican Pinacoteca. Bellini, Raphael, Caravaggio" will be held at the Tretyakov Gallery from November 25 to February 19, mos.ru reports.
The Vatican Museums brought masterpieces from the 12th to 18th centuries to Moscow. The exhibition includes 42 paintings by Giovanni Bellini, Melozzo da Forli, Perugino, Raphael, Caravaggio, Guido Reni, Guercino, Nicolas Poussin.
In 2017, the Tretyakov Gallery will come to the Vatican on a return visit. The Vatican Museums will exhibit paintings by Russian masters based on gospel subjects.

An exhibition of masterpieces from the Vatican Pinacoteca, which have never before left Italy in such numbers, opened on Friday in the Engineering Building of the Tretyakov Gallery in Lavrushinsky Lane. . . . . .
The exhibition reflects all stages of the artistic development of painting. It is opened by a 12th century icon “Christ Blessing” , who had not previously left the Vatican, reports “ Interfax". Next in chronology is Margaritone d'Arezzo's work "Saint Francis of Assisi" from the 13th century, perhaps the earliest depiction of the saint. Frescoes depicting angels by Melozzo da Forlì are also exhibited separately.
The High Renaissance is represented at the exhibition by works by Perugino, Raphael, Correggio and Paolo Veronese. The colossal paintings “Entombment” by Caravaggio and “The Martyrdom of St. Erasmus” by Nicolas Poussin are placed opposite each other. The exhibition continues with works by Caravaggists and artists of the Bolognese school, and the final section is a cycle “Astronomical observations” Donato Creti.
Entrance to the exhibition is organized in half-hour sessions; tickets until the end of the year have already been sold out, the gallery’s press service reported. A new batch of tickets will arrive in mid-December, and from January, in order to combat speculators, tickets to the exhibition will be personalized. There will be no restrictions on time spent at the exhibition. As practice shows, viewers usually only need an hour to view the exhibition. . . . . .

"Roma Aeterna. Masterpieces of the Vatican Pinacoteca"
42 works of art from the heart of Rome
Date: November 25 - February 19
Location: Lavrushinsky lane, 12, Engineering building
Why go: to see a tenth of the entire collection of the Vatican Museums - 42 masterpieces out of 4 . . . . . Never before have so many outstanding works from the permanent exhibition left the walls of the Pinakothek at the same time.
And in 2017, the Vatican will host a reciprocal exhibition, at which the Tretyakov Gallery will show unique works Russian painting on gospel subjects.
What else: electronic tickets for all sessions until January 1 are already sold out. The new batch will appear on the Tretyakov Gallery website on December 1. But this does not mean that it is impossible to get to the exhibition: at the box office of the museum itself, 30 additional tickets are sold every half hour.
Price: 500 rubles.
You can follow news and changes in the exhibition schedule on the Tretyakov Gallery website.

The exhibition at the Tretyakov Gallery is called “Roma Aeterna. Masterpieces of the Vatican Pinacoteca. Bellini, Raphael, Caravaggio." Its curator Arkady Ippolitov says that main idea The exhibition is reflected in its very name: Roma Aeterna, the “eternal city” Rome, associated with the history of the spiritual quest of Europe from the 12th century to the Enlightenment, the quintessence of the European spirit. The Vatican Museums are famous for their Roman antiquity collections, so continuity is clearly visible European culture from ancient times to the Renaissance.

Benevolent Apostles

In 1480, the artist Melozzo, who came from the small village of Forli, received an important commission - to paint the Basilica of Santi Apostoli in Rome (Temple of the Twelve Apostles). He conceived a large fresco up to 17 meters in diameter, in which the artist tells the story of the Ascension. Melozzo da Forli, as he was later called, was the first to boldly and revolutionaryly use in this painting unexpected angles of the figures of saints, at which the audience should look up. After the discovery of the laws of perspective, problems arose with depicting objects in the correct proportions so that viewers from below could see them in natural forms (this problem was later successfully solved by Raphael). According to the artist’s plan, golden-haired angels-musicians looked down from the azure heavens, the figures of the apostles located along the perimeter looked kindly at the parishioners, and in the middle was the majestic figure of Jesus.

Exhibition curator Arkady Ippolitov explains that the idea of ​​the exhibition is based on the thesis of the unity of humanity

The fresco turned out wonderful, and the artist’s work was paid for by Cardinal Giuliano della Rovere, the future Pope Julius II. Melozzo was also loved by Pope Sixtus IV, but nevertheless did not receive an offer to paint Sistine Chapel. The director of the Vatican Museums, Antonio Paolucci, suggests that Ghirlandaio, Perugino and Botticelli (the most famous and active artists of this era) conspired to prevent Melozzo from working. In addition, Melozzo, who worked in the Eternal City for several years, was considered “too Roman”, and at that time there was a fashion for artists from Tuscany. Today about this outstanding artist reminds me of little. In 1714, the Basilica of Santi Apostoli was rebuilt and Melozzo's frescoes were destroyed. Only fourteen of its fragments were saved. They are divided between the Palazzo del Quirinale (“Christ in Glory”) and the Vatican Pinacoteca (the figures of angels and apostles that the artist loved to paint decorate a separate room of the Pinacoteca).

It was the fragments with images of golden-haired angels playing music, which became symbols of Rome, that were brought to Moscow.

Treasures of the Pinakothek

The Vatican Pinacoteca contains seven centuries of the history of the Papal State. The institution of the papacy, founded by the Apostle Peter in the 1st century, binds European civilization with the ancient world. This is one of the few connections that has survived to this day.

The history of the Vatican Museums dates back to January 14, 1506, when during excavations the ancient sculptural group “Laocoon and His Sons”, known from the descriptions of the Roman historian Pliny the Elder, was found. Pope Julius II, being a patron of the arts, bought this find, and entrusted the work on its restoration to Michelangelo. A month later, the marble composition was put on public display. These were the very first examples of painting by artists Ancient Greece. Pinakes by famous masters were exhibited in rich private collections and were rarely discovered. When the Vatican began to collect a collection of paintings, following the example of Ancient Greece, it was given the name Pinakothek. Its founder was Pope Pius VI, the collection moved to different rooms until a new building was built for it in 1932, where it is now housed.

One world

Arkady Ippolitov, commenting on the exhibition at the Tretyakov Gallery, explains that the idea of ​​the exhibition is based on the thesis of the unity of humanity. Therefore, the exhibition begins with the 12th century Roman icon “Christ Blessing,” which personifies the Universe. But at the same time she speaks of the unity of the Christian idea. This is the starting point in which Christianity was united, in which the closeness of Italian and Russian cultures is obvious. The concept of Rome has been very important for Russian culture for centuries. For six hundred years, Russia has lived with the idea that Moscow is the Third Rome. This idea is also presented in the current exhibition through selected works - 42 works on religious subjects.

For six hundred years, Russia has lived with the idea that Moscow is the Third Rome. The current exhibition also presents this idea through selected works.

The Blessing Christ is followed by the work of Margaritone d'Arezzo (13th century) - it is believed that this is the first image of St. Francis of Assisi. It was his name that was chosen by the current pope, who became the first Francis in the history of the Vatican. Brought to Moscow a most interesting picture“Jesus before Pilate” by Pietro Lorenzetti, echoing famous painting Nikolai Ge “What is truth?” from the Tretyakov Gallery (almost all Russian artists of the 18th-19th centuries who graduated with honors from the Academy of Painting received a scholarship to study in Europe after graduation, most often it was Italy). Then follows two images from the life of St. Nicholas the Wonderworker. One of them belongs to the brush of Gentile da Fabriano, the second - Fra Beato Angelico, a Benedictine monk from Florence, who became the greatest artist early Renaissance... Here are two “Lamentations of Christ” by Carlo Crivelli and Giovanni Bellini - very important in the work of these Venetian Renaissance artists.

Rome is like a book

The exhibition includes several works that attract with their incredible visual power and originality. This is the great painting by Caravaggio “Entombment”, and the altarpiece by Nicolas Poussin “The Martyrdom of St. Erasmus”, the artist’s largest work written specifically for St. Peter’s Basilica, and the exhibition ending with “Astronomical Observations” by Donato Creti - eight paintings in one frame, dedicated to the planets known at that time solar system. The canvas was painted to persuade Pope Clement XI to finance the construction of an observatory - a few years later the observatory was built in Bologna. The current exhibition reads like a book - if you are not lazy and try to start reading this book. After all, Rome is a city-book, where antiquity is intertwined with the present. Nikolai Gogol wrote: “I read it, read it... and still can’t get to the end; My reading is endless."

* Pinakothek (translated from Greek - storage of paintings) - among the ancient Greeks, a room in which picturesque images were stored. For the Romans, a “pinacoteca” was a room in a house at the entrance to the atrium, decorated with paintings, as well as statues and other artistic objects that the owner especially treasured. Nowadays this word is often used to mean “art gallery.”

Photo: “Vatican Museums” and photo vatican museums/photo Vatican Museums

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Vatican Museums, Photo © Vatican Museums and Sergei Biryukov

Masterpieces of Raphael, Caravaggio and other great Italians moved to Moscow for three months

The Tretyakov Gallery opened main exhibition of the year - “Roma Aeterna. Masterpieces of the Vatican Pinacoteca. Bellini, Raphael, Caravaggio." The first commandment to visitors: they will not be allowed to approach the papal treasures without identification.

Golden rain fell on our heads. True, you can only collect precious grains of gold on the retina of the eye - or, if you're lucky, on the camera lens. After all, the jewels are paintings sent from the Vatican. The first ever Moscow tour of the treasures of the Papal Pinakothek opens at the Tretyakov Gallery today. However, you need to prepare for the visit seriously and for a long time. Electronic tickets sold out until the end of December, and only 30 tickets for the show arrive at the box office. Such sessions are designed for only half an hour, however, it is promised that we will be able to stay in the halls longer. In fact, 30 minutes for 42 paintings is not enough: even if not all of them are absolute masterpieces, each one deserves attention.

For the general director of the Tretyakov Gallery, Zelfira Tregulova, the exhibition is one of the main projects of the year. Vatican Museums, Photo Vatican Museums and Sergei Biryukov

We have long been accustomed to the fact that there is often a queue at the Pushkin Museum. Pushkin to foreign stars like Claude Monet and Salvador Dali, or to the masterpieces of especially famous Western museums. This tradition goes back to the farewell to the Dresden Gallery and the triumph of the Moscow-Paris project. Tretyakov Gallery as a museum national art, it seems that it should show its own, dear. But no, she has long been cramped within these frameworks. You can recall the luxurious selection of masterpieces from the series “Museums of the World Congratulate the Tretyakov Gallery” for the 150th anniversary of the Tretyakov Gallery, the Whistler exhibition or the project “In Christ / In Christo” - an experience of inter-museum exchange between Russia and Italy. At that time, works by Giotto and his circle were demonstrated in Moscow, and icons by Rublev and Dionysius were shown in the Baptistery in Florence. You can go even further into history, but it is the Moscow-Florence exchange of “artistic and spiritual masterpieces,” as both museums positioned them, that is most interesting in the current context. True, in 2011 there was no serious pilgrimage to Giotto, although the genius of the Proto-Renaissance is one of the most important figures in all European art. But since then a lot has changed in Russia: religious and traditional art began to arouse more interest, moving closer to the veneration of holy relics and other miracles. On the contrary, not only the masses, but also the state have cooled towards modern creativity. Now painting, closely connected with the history of Christianity, albeit in a Western version, has a much higher chance of success. Especially if this is an exhibition from the Vatican Museums, and they are among the top ten art treasures in the world. Despite the fact that the Pinakothek (i.e., the collection of paintings) is relatively small, with only about 500 paintings, it occupies a key place among the oldest grand museums. Almost a tenth of this truly great collection was brought to Moscow! And this is five centuries of the history of painting in Italy and, in parallel, a story about how the papal collection took shape. Absorbing the evolution of the art of Christendom, she combined it with the masterpieces of previous eras, placing them together in the heart of Rome - the Eternal City. As a result, “Roma Aeterna” was conceptualized not only as a citadel of the Holy See, but also as a bridge between civilizations, standing in the limitless circle of history.

Russian curator of the exhibition Arkady Ippolitov talks about the largest exhibit - Caravaggio’s “Entombment”. Vatican Museums, Photo Vatican Museums and Sergei Biryukov

However, the Tretyakov Gallery was taken hostage by its very recently introduced fashion for blockbuster exhibitions. Of course, there have been queues there before - either to Vasnetsov or to Levitan. However, the organizers themselves clearly did not expect the kind of excitement that arose a year ago around Serov’s exhibition, despite a powerful PR campaign. Half a million people came to join his work despite the frost. However, the record was broken by Aivazovsky, who beat Serov by one hundred thousand tickets. Breaking through to his marinas became something of a sporting achievement. Spectators specially came from other cities and proudly reported on social networks. I have no doubt that such feats are possible only if there is a strong interest in the artist. But I wonder whether it will be even stronger in relation to those three dozen not very “promoted” authors in Russia who are gathered at the Vatican fest? When I use this word, I do not mean a festival, but rather a celebration. A magnificent consequence of the first for many years meeting of the heads of two churches - the Roman Catholic and the Russian Orthodox, when, in fact, our primates agreed on the exchange of exhibits: in response to Rome’s gesture, a collection of Russians will be sent to the Vatican masterpieces of the 19th century century. Pope Francis personally participated in the discussion of the composition of the exhibition in Moscow - and the icon of his heavenly patron Francis of Assisi was brought to us as a significant work. This may be the earliest depiction of the legendary saint: Margaritone d'Arezzo painted it shortly after the canonization of the great Assisi native in 1228.

The Pope sent Cardinal Giuseppe Bertello to open the exhibition - in a scarlet cap and black cassock with scarlet tassels, he also seemed like a character in one of the paintings. Most of the works are leaving the Vatican for the first time, and security measures at the exhibition are strict, from dim lighting (Raphael's grisailles are generally drowned in semi-darkness) to protective steps and barriers protecting the exhibits. Some things are very massive and complex in configuration, like Carlo Crivelli’s “Lamentation” - the arched lunette that crowned the large altar, is not easy to transport. A special niche has been built for it, and the entire architecture of the exhibition is intricate and associated with famous Vatican buildings, including the oval courtyard of St. Petra.

Donato Creti's Astronomical Observations series reflects the mood of the Age of Enlightenment. Vatican Museums, Photo Vatican Museums and Sergei Biryukov

The viewer enters a strict space trimmed with oak panels, reeking of the mysticism of the Middle Ages; in its center - a small hall - is hung the only icon of the 12th century, rare and the oldest in the exhibition, with the darkened, stern face of Christ the Blessing. Romanesque asceticism recedes as the viewer moves towards the Early and then High Renaissance, passing such masterpieces as the almost sculptural Lamentation of Christ by the Venetian Giovanni Bellini and The Miracles of St. Vincenzo Ferrera" by Ercole de Roberti - a frieze with many hagiographic scenes, painted with the subtlety of a miniaturist. Two small icons hanging next to each other, enclosed in heat- and moisture-resistant capsules due to their fragility, allow us to trace how the iconography of one subject - “Christmas” - has changed, in different ways, but always with warmth real life the Florentine Mariotto di Nardi and the Sienese Giovanni di Paolo painted the figures of Mary and the Child, the sleeping Joseph and the shepherds who heard the Good News, to whom the gospel ox and donkey standing at the manger are not inferior in reverence... And with the joy of the celestials the angels on the frescoes of Melozzo da Forli look at the miracle of the Nativity , retaining holes for attaching gilded halos. One of the angels became the “face” of the exhibition, flying to its poster.

The largest hall, where dim lighting creates a dramatic Baroque atmosphere, is also inhabited by saints, but overshadowed by other miracles. Among the paintings of Veronese, Guercino, Gentileschi, Crespi, Guido Reni, Caravaggio’s gigantic “Entombment” reigns, which opened a new, 17th century. Although this manifesto of the Counter-Reformation is already familiar to Moscow viewers (it was at an exhibition at the Pushkin Museum 5 years ago), one cannot help but relive the tragedy of the scene together with its participants (the rebel artist openly relied on “types of the people,” outraged by the dean of the Roman public). He is echoed by the same large one, written for the Cathedral of St. Peter's painting by Poussin "The Martyrdom of St. Erasmus”: project curator Arkady Ippolitov deliberately hung it opposite Caravaggio’s masterpiece, emphasizing the differences in the manner of the French Roman, a harbinger of the classicism style.

So, before our eyes, the museum-spectacle turns into a museum-temple. Actually, in Russia the repository of art has always been treated as a holy place, certainly a place of prayer. However, in Russian history, museums began as primarily secular collections, including the Tretyakov Gallery, which acquired icons already at the late stage of Pavel Tretyakov’s collecting activity, at the expense of the family collection. Today, no one will be surprised by the exhibitions of ancient Russian and Byzantine art - its sacredness and origin are closely connected with what was brought from Rome. It would be all the more interesting to remind viewers getting acquainted with the treasures of the Vatican that nearby, in the main building of the State Tretyakov Gallery, there are works of comparable significance from the Russian Orthodox tradition.

Deputy Director of the Vatican Museums Barbara Yatta gives a tour of the vernissage. Vatican Museums, Photo Vatican Museums and Sergei Biryukov

Such a comparison will allow us to see common features, connecting the countries of Europe - the lands of Christianity, and serious differences. Italian painting, presented at the exhibition in the logic of development from Gothic to Renaissance, Baroque and Classicism, absorbed both the golden backgrounds of Byzantine icons and the statuesque poses antique sculpture. By the way, it was with the collection of antiques found in Tuscany that the current Vatican Museums began with their grandiose collection of Greco-Roman sculptures. Apollo Belvedere owes its world-famous name to Villa Belvedere, where Pope Julius II, one of the founders of the Vatican Museums, kept this statue...

The envoys of the first Rome will stay in the third Rome until February 19. When planning to honor them, be vigilant: we are walking on sinful earth, and the Tretyakov Gallery has been tormented by speculators who arose back in the ever-memorable “queue-on-Serov.” In order to protect itself, the gallery is introducing the sale of personalized tickets on the Internet and asks visitors not to forget their passport at home: it will have to be presented along with the ticket.