The exhibition of Cranach presents samples of the Soviet "captured art"

MOSCOW. The exposition, where the paintings of the German painter of the 16th century are first exhibited together Lucas Cranach from the collection of Friedenstein Castle in Gotha, some of which was withdrawn by the Soviet Union after World War II, works in the Moscow State Museum of Fine Arts. A.S. Pushkin until May 15.

Exhibition “Cranach. Between the Renaissance and Mannerism, it unites 48 paintings and more than 50 graphic works by Lucas Cranach the Elder and his son from various European and Russian museums, as well as private collections. This first major exposition of Cranach’s works in Russia was an important step in overcoming Russian-German tensions around the so-called “trophy art” - part of the German collections captured by the Red Army as compensation for artifacts confiscated and destroyed by the Nazis from collections of museums of the Soviet Union. Some of the paintings of Cranach seized by Soviet troops from Friedenstein Castle were returned back in the 1950s, and some remained on the territory of the USSR.

The official news agency TASS notes that two works by Cranach the Elder depicting the fall of Adam and Eve, one brought from Goth specifically for the exhibition, the second from the collection of the Pushkin Museum, "are symbolically located side by side." “I hope that [the exhibition] will help us all,” said Marina Loshak, director of the Pushkin Museum in an interview with The Art Newspaper. She considers the combination of Cranach’s divided collection to be a good “moral experience.”

Irina Antonova, who managed the Pushkin Museum for more than half a century until 2013 and is currently its president, was a young museum employee when “trophy art” was delivered there. For many decades, these paintings constituted a state secret. Both Loshak and Antonova argue that the current exhibition of Cranach fills an important gap in the Russian understanding of German art. At the opening of the exhibition in March, Martin Eberle, director of the Friedenstein Castle Foundation, said: “For the first time in 70 years, paintings from the Friedenstein Castle collection are shown together. There may be different opinions in the political sphere regarding the division of the collection, but in the cultural sphere we are pleased with such cooperation. ”

Anna Sidorova © Gallerix.ru