Scenes from the Life of Joseph the Beautiful

The Perm Art Gallery opens a special project "From restoration to interpretation. Four stories". This is a series of four mono-exhibitions, each of which is dedicated to one work from the gallery’s collection and its comprehensive study: provenance (history of existence), restoration features, research methods.

Project composition:

• 12/13/2024 – 02/02/2025 Story One : “Scenes from the Life of Joseph the Beautiful”. A Painting That Turned into a Spalliera”
• 07.02.2025 – 16.03.2025 Story Two : "The Fall". Who Corrected Martin de Vos?"
• 20.03.2025 – 11.05.2025 Story Three : “Allegory of Science”. Hide and Seek with a Plot”
• 05/15/2025 – 06/22/2025 Story Four : "Nikolay Nevrev ’Big Win’. The Denomination of Luck in the Post-Reform Era"

The works selected for the mono-exhibitions were created in different eras and belong to the Italian, Dutch, Flemish and Russian art schools. Each painting has its own provenance and circumstances of its entry into the museum collection. They are united by their recent restoration at the All-Russian Art Scientific Restoration Center named after Academician I. E. Grabar (VKhNRTS).

During this important work, several discoveries took place that radically changed the attribution of the exhibits and provided a reason to tell viewers about them in detail.

Each of the mono-exhibitions consists of two sections. The first one represents the "restoration kitchen", where they regenerate varnishes and remove old records, apply primers and make tonings. In order to return the work to the viewer, the restorer must understand and resurrect a lot from the artistic practice of past eras. Here is its own professional vocabulary, tools and algorithm of activity.

The second section demonstrates how the restorer’s work can create a new situation for the art historian in understanding the artist’s intention. The work is examined closely from biographical and plot-thematic, stylistic and iconographic angles. The museum visitor will get acquainted with the history of the exhibit and learn how the evidence base is built for changing the attribution and which sources are key in each specific case.

Story One: "SCENES FROM THE LIFE OF JOSEPH THE BEAUTIFUL" A painting that became a spalliera

December 13, 2024 – February 2, 2025

The first mono-exhibition of the project “From restoration to interpretation. Four stories” is dedicated to the work of an unknown Italian artist “Scenes from the life of Joseph the Beautiful” (15th – early 16th centuries, wood, oil, tempera).

"Scenes from the Life of Joseph the Beautiful" has all the features of a painting, but represents another artistic phenomenon of the Renaissance - spalliera (a painted panel for decorating a bedroom in Italian houses of the 14th - 15th centuries). The literary, mythological or religious subjects chosen for them were edifying in nature, and their execution was entrusted to respected painters by customers. This approach is also observed in "Scenes from the Life of Joseph the Beautiful".

The plot of this work is based on the story of Joseph, the son of the biblical forefather Jacob from Rachel. As his father’s favorite son, he was hated by his older brothers, who even wanted to kill him. However, the thirst for profit forced the brothers to sell Joseph to a passing caravan of Ishmaelites for 20 pieces of silver. The brothers told their father that Joseph had died from a predatory beast. As evidence, the brothers presented Joseph’s clothes, stained with the blood of a slaughtered goat.

In one space, the author freely places all the key events: episodes of the shepherd’s life, the killing of a kid, the brothers’ extraction of Joseph from the well and his sale to the caravanners. The artist "embroiders" the entire expressive canvas of events against the background of an expressive landscape panorama.

Viewers can examine the painting and learn details about its history and restoration processes. The provenance of the work is marked by its presence in the collection of the family of Heinrich Brocard, a famous entrepreneur, creator of the Russian perfume industry, researcher, collector and philanthropist. In 1891, Heinrich Brocard bought the upper shopping arcades on Red Square (now GUM), where he placed a large collection of paintings, sculptures and decorative and applied arts in public access. After the revolution of 1917, the collection was nationalized and dispersed. The work "Scenes from the Life of Joseph the Beautiful" ended up in the repositories of the Museum Fund, awaited shipment to foreign auctions in the warehouses of "Antikvariat" and "Gostorg", and ended up in private collections. The wanderings of the exhibit symbolically repeated the path of its biblical prototype, in which it lost its homeland and name.

After many years of work by restorers and museum staff, the work “Scenes from the Life of Joseph the Beautiful” has finally acquired its artistic status and the opportunity to tell art lovers many interesting things not only about the exhibit itself and the provenance that fate has prepared for it, but also about the era in which it appeared.