Flowers, fruits and musical instruments in Italian Baroque painting

Participants of the exhibition: Pushkin Museum im. A. S. Pushkin, State Hermitage, State Museum-Reserve "Peterhof", State Museum-Reserve "Gatchina", State Museum-Reserve "Pavlovsk", State Palace and Park Museum-Reserve "Ostankino and Kuskovo", Perm State Art Gallery, Morshansky Historical and Art Museum named after P. P. Ivanov, Smolensk State Museum-Reserve, Kursk State Art Gallery named after A. A. Deineka, State Museum of the History of Russian Literature named after V. I. Dahl, private collections.

Pushkin Museum im. A. S. Pushkina presents the project “Flowers, fruits, musical instruments in Italian Baroque painting” - the first exhibition of Italian still life in Russia. The exhibition project will reveal new names to visitors and tell about updated attributions. The exhibition will show over 70 works from the largest Russian collections: the Pushkin Museum. A. S. Pushkin, the State Hermitage, the State Peterhof Museum-Reserve, the Perm State Art Gallery and others. The sponsor of the exhibition is PJSC Transneft.

In the minds of not only the general public, but also art historians, the genre of still life is associated primarily with Holland, where it largely determined the face of the national school of painting, and over time it became a kind of standard of the genre. Italian still life attracted the attention of researchers only in the 1920s and became one of the discoveries of the 20th century. This important facet of the history of art remains little known in Russia not only to the general public, but also to specialists, and yet it significantly complements the understanding of the Baroque style and the art of Italy in the 17th – 18th centuries. It is impossible to imagine Italian Baroque painting without still lifes, which not only served to decorate city palazzos and country villas, but also reflected the spirit and worldview of that era.

Addressing the topic of Italian still life seems very relevant because Russian collections contain a large number of works of high artistic level, which began to come to Russia under Peter I and Catherine the Great. Until now, they have practically not become the subject of scientific analysis, and a significant part of the works has retained long-outdated definitions of authorship. Being unpublished, these works remain outside the world scientific circulation. From the above, the main objective of the exhibition follows - to show works collected together from different museums and private collections. The viewer has never seen many of them, since their permanent place of residence is in storerooms.

Another extremely important aspect of the exhibition is the determination of the authorship of works, which corresponds to the current state of science. This task is not easy, since Italian painters rarely put signatures on their works, not to mention dates. Many attributions were clarified and corrected by the curator of the exhibition, Doctor of Art History Victoria Markova, who throughout her scientific career did not let this topic out of her field of attention. Thus, the discovery was made of paintings by the Neapolitan artist Giuseppe Recco, one of the greatest masters of the 17th century. It was believed that there was not a single work of his on the territory of Russia, but Victoria Emmanuilovna established that two still lifes from Russian collections belonged to his brush. During the process of restoration of the work, which is in the collection of the State Hermitage, a monogram was discovered confirming the authorship of Giuseppe Recco.

The exhibition “Flowers, Fruits, Musical Instruments in Italian Baroque Painting” is an opening exhibition. This is also the discovery of the very fact that in Italy, the country of classical culture, still life was in demand and was widespread, and the forms and compositions that arose here received pan-European recognition. Today, thanks to ongoing research, we understand that the Italian school of the 17th century has a significant place in the development of this genre. It was Italy that largely determined the typology of European still life and had a significant influence on the work of artists from other countries. An unexpected discovery for viewers will be the very nature of Italian still life, which is unlike how this genre was understood by the masters of northern Europe.

In the variety of still life compositions, Italian art noticeably surpasses all other national schools. In Italy, local art centers played an important role, each of which had its own unique personality. In Naples, painters specialized in floral still lifes and “fish catches”, in Bergamo - in the depiction of musical instruments, and in Rome, decorative canvases with flowers and fruits against the backdrop of parks, which were often complemented by sculptural images or figures of playing putti, were in fashion.

The names presented at the exhibition are new to the Russian viewer: these are the Neapolitans Giuseppe Recco, Giuseppe Ruoppolo, Paolo Porpora, the Romans Michelangelo del Campidoglio, Francesco Noletti, nicknamed Maltese, Michelangelo Cerquozzi, the Florentine Jacopo da Empoli, as well as artists who worked in northern Italy, in Genoa, Venice, the cities of Lombardy and Emilia-Romagna.

The exhibition opens with a painting by Giuseppe Arcimboldo from a private collection, presented in the center of the White Hall. His work is of great interest, especially his anthropomorphic metamorphosis portraits, composed of fruits, fruits, and objects. In a certain sense, Arcimboldo anticipated the emergence of still life as an independent genre, but he was not alone. Jacopo Ligozzi, the author of a painting on the theme of vanitas from the Pushkin Museum collection and four excellent drawings depicting fish from the Hermitage collection, which are being exhibited at the exhibition for the first time, worked in Florence.

As part of the exhibition project, a catalogue, educational and inclusive programs have also been prepared. Currently, Victoria Markova is preparing to release the book “From Caravaggio to Morandi. Origins and development of Italian still life." As an appendix, the publication will publish a complete catalog of Italian still lifes in collections in Russia and the former republics of the Soviet Union, on which the author worked for many years.

The sponsor of the exhibition is Transneft.