An exhibition with portraits of the daughter of Louis XIV and d’Artagnan opened in Kazan

An exhibition began to work in the museum hall of the Kazan International Institute of Antiques, the opening of which attracted the attention of many art lovers. Interest in the exhibition was caused by its content - twenty portraits, the authors of which were Western European masters of portraiture. They worked in the 17-19 centuries, represented people, many of whom were very famous in life.

Among the artists whose paintings served as the pretext for organizing the exhibition, there are names that are well known - Anthony Van Dyck, Jan Leavens. Several paintings of the exposition represent the work of brush masters from the French provinces, known as the "Art of the primitive." Among Russian artists of the first half of the nineteenth century, there were also masters of painting who painted their paintings in a manner similar to the canvases shown to visitors of the exhibition. The images written on them are naive and direct (“Portrait of a Lady with a Child in a Cap”, “Brother and Sister in the Park”), but breathe the artist’s love and interest in a person.

At the opening of the exhibition, the director of the institute, Mikhail Yao, said that the original idea of the exhibition was to show the public portraits of unknown people painted by unknown artists. All these canvases were in the collection of our institute. However, when working with them, it turned out that many of the personalities in the portraits, our art historians were able to attribute. Now visitors to the exhibition will be able to see on the portrait the personality of the famous prototype of the hero of the novels by Dumas, Count d’Artagnan, the charming English actress Eleanor Gwyn and Maria De Bourbon, daughter of Louis XIV.

Of the twenty paintings exhibited in the hall, four canvases are copies, but a little later they will be replaced by originals. The exhibition can be seen until January 25th.

Ludmila Trautmane