Study of Antiveduto Gramatika’s painting "Christ and the Sinner" from the collection of the Vladimir-Suzdal Museum-Reserve

The State Museum of Fine Arts named after A. S. Pushkin begins to study a work from the collection of the Vladimir-Suzdal Museum-Reserve “Christ and the Sinner,” whose authorship is attributed to Antiveduto Gramatica (1570/71–1626). The analysis of the painting will be carried out by a group of specialists from the Pushkin Museum. A.S. Pushkin, which included technologists, restorers and art historians.

The painting “Christ and the Sinner” was in the art collection of a representative of an ancient noble family, a retired colonel of the Life Guards Hussar Regiment, Vladimir Semenovich Khrapovitsky. The work entered the collection of the Vladimir-Suzdal Museum-Reserve as a painting by “an unknown artist of the Late Renaissance.”

For the first time, the assumption that the creator of the painting belonged to Italian masters was put forward in 1924 by the director of the Vladimir Provincial Museum, Alexey Ivanov, proposing the name of Luca Giordano. In 1996–1997, the painting was restored by the famous Vladimir restorer Alexander Nekrasov (1927–2007). The version about the authorship of Luca Giordano was also expressed by the author and compiler of the catalog of the exhibition dedicated to the 50th anniversary of the Vladimir art and restoration workshops, Alexander Skvortsov.

In 2021, a researcher from Nizhny Novgorod Sergei Akimov, based on a very convincing comparative stylistic analysis of this work, put forward arguments confirming the authorship of the Italian master Antiveduto Gramatica. In 2023, the painting was subjected to research by specialists from the Laboratory for the Study of Cultural Heritage of ITMO (St. Petersburg), the results of which made it possible to establish not the copy, but the original nature of the painting.

Comprehensive technical and technological studies of the painting by specialists from the Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts. A.S. Pushkin will include a detailed study of the paint layer and the chemical composition of the pigments, as well as the canvas on which the work is painted. This analysis, together with art historical research, will allow not only to better understand the features of the artist’s painting technique, but also to clarify the attribution of the painting.