The Pushkin Museum will show in Venice previously lost work Tintoretto

The Pushkin Museum. A.S. Pushkin will present Tintoretto’s picture “The Origin of Love” (1562) from the collection of the famous Venetian antiquarian Pietro Scarpa at the exhibition in Venice “At the end, there is a beginning. The Secret Brotherhood of Tintoretto. "

The painting was lost in the 17th century and was rediscovered by the Scarp family in 1991. Up to this point, the work was in the French collection, which supported the version that the work came to them like a trophy during the Napoleonic intervention. Since the opening of Tintoretto’s work, it has been in the collection of the Antikita gallery Pietro Scarpa, one of the pioneers of the revival of antique works in Venice. She has been featured in Tokyo, Japan, at the Querini Stampalia Foundation in Venice and as part of other Italian projects. The work will be shown in dialogue with other works of the exhibition of contemporary artists - Gary Hill, Irina Nakhova, Dmitry Krymov and Emilio Vedov.

The Origin of Love canvas was commissioned by Tintoretto Federico Contarini, one of the founders of the Stocking Society, and became the emblem of this society. Its participants were responsible for organizing the most important events in Venice, were engaged in charity work and supported art. The library, which hosted the meetings of the Stocking Society and in which the work itself was located at some point, was an important cultural center of Venice of the 16th century and was a repository of knowledge inherited by the Venetian humanists from antiquity. Federico Contarini, ordering the work, probably followed in the footsteps of his relative - the humanist Sperone Speroni.

The iconography of Tintoretto’s painting is based on the Dialogues of Love published by Speroni in the 1540s, which were extremely popular among the Venetians at that time. In content, the Dialogues of Love resemble the Dialogues of Plato and refer to the ancient heritage. In the picture, Apollo, the god of the Sun, holds in his hand a brazier with a human soul, in which the sun ignites love. Apollo is accompanied by the figures of Aphrodite Pandemos and Aphrodite Urania - earthly love and heavenly love. In their hands are the attributes of Abundance, Prudence, Measure, Purity and Wisdom - these qualities are necessary to fuel the flame of love.

During the period when Tintoretto wrote The Origin of Love, he also performed a pictorial cycle for the square atrium of the Doge’s Palace. For a short time, the work served as the central medallion of the composition of this atrium.

The work will become the conceptual center of the exhibition and the first step in the development of cultural exchange between the Scarpa family and the Pushkin Museum. A.S. Pushkin.