In the Irkutsk Art Museum, the restoration of the portrait of Empress Alexandra Fedorovna

In the Irkutsk Regional Art Museum, the restoration of the portrait of the wife of Nicholas I - Alexandra Fedorovna (1798–1860) was completed. The portrait was painted in Irkutsk in 1846 by the artist Karl Reichel, commissioned by the Maiden Institute of Eastern Siberia. Until 1920, the portrait was in the building of this institute. The institution itself, conceived as a small copy of the Smolny Institute in St. Petersburg, was solemnly opened on July 1, 1845 - on the birthday of Alexandra Fedorovna. For six years, the institute was located in a wooden building, and in 1861 it moved to a new three-story stone building on the banks of the Angara - today it is the physics department of ISU. In the large hall of the second floor there was a portrait of the empress. “During the restoration, local strengthening of the paint layer, regeneration of the old varnish film and coating with a new varnish was carried out,” says Svetlana Tyutikova, head of the restoration workshop of the museum, “it should be noted that the restoration processes have a certain sequence, all work cannot be carried out at the same time, including and therefore it took more than a year to restore the portrait. ”

The appearance of the portrait in the museum at the beginning of the school year is not accidental. Indeed, among the pupils of the Institute of the Maidens there was a belief: if you pray in front of the portrait and Alexandra Fedorovna nods her head, then she will be successful in her studies. If not, you will have to rely only on your own strengths. It will be possible to see the portrait on September 1 - that evening in the main building of the museum there will be an excursion “What the young ladies taught”, and the image of Alexandra Fedorovna will be in the spotlight.