Portrait of M.I.Lopukhina
Borovikovskiy, Vladimir Lukich, 1797 oil on canvas 72 x 53.5
In the portrait of Maria Ivanovna Lopukhina (1779–1803), née Countess Tolstaya, we see an embodiment of the aesthetic ideal of Sentimentalism. The artist was especially attracted to the nuances in human condition and the life of the soul. An elegiac dreaminess and languorous tenderness permeates the entire artistic fabric of the work. The vague, blurry contours, complex gradations of cool colours with iridescent blue, lilac, greenish, silver notes, join the figure with the landscape into a single harmonious and musical image. The bright blue of the cornflowers flowering amidst the rye reflects the intense tone of the model’s belt. The golden ears repeat the colour of the chain decorating Lopukhina’s arm. The rose and lilac scarf matches up with the drooping roses. Cornflowers, ears of rye and the branches bending down all embody a country landscape corresponding to the delicately simple clothing of the model and the mild, thoughtful expression on her face. Man in the age of Sentimentalism strived to blend in with natural beauty and to feel that he was part of living nature.
St Paul the Apostle. From the Deisus Chin (Row) («Zvenigorodsky»)
Andrey Rublev ,Early 15th century (1410s), Wood, tempera,160 x 109
The so-called Zvenigorodsky Chin is one of the most beautiful icon ensembles of Old Russian painting. The chin (row) consists of three ‘poyasnye’ icons – the Saviour, the Archangel Michael and St Paul. The chin could form part of the iconostasis of either the princely Church of the Assumption or the neighboring Church of the Savvino-Storozhevsky Monastery whose ktitor (Gr.-founder) was the prince of Zvenigorod. The painting of the Zvenigorodsky Chin is noted for the special purity of colour, nobility of tonal transitions and light colour scheme. The golden backgrounds are illuminated radiantly and there is a tender blend of bright faces, pure nuances of ochre, blue, rose and green tones of the clothing. The icons come from Zvenigorod, near Moscow, and were once part of the Deisus and its 7 figures. The remaining three icons were discovered by the art restorer G.O. Chirikov in 1918 in a woodshed near the Church of the Assumption at Gorodok during exploration by an expedition of the Central State Restoration Workshops into the ancient princely temple of Yuri of Zvenigorod, the second son of Dmitry Donskoy.
Fantasia on a theme of Versailles
Benoit Alexander, 1906, paper on cardboard, gouache, black ink, pen 49.6 x 67.7 Versailles (Versailles), a town in the suburbs of Paris, in XVII-XVIII centuries, there emerged a majestic palace and park ensemble - the main residence of French kings. Versailles - the perfect embodiment of a favorite era Benoit, he became the main theme of the artist. On the first visit of Versailles Benoit struck "black cones and cubes clipped tui, mirror pool reflecting the gray overhanging clouds and dark, smooth bronze deity, which rest on the white marble bordering these mirrors." If the viewer enters the enchanted world of giants and midgets. The true masters of Versailles, carrying on their shoulders the burden of centuries of weather-beaten, seem to be marble colossus, standing in the alley of philosophers of the palace park. Like the bastions, rise clipped arborvitae. Next to them in court camisoles and wigs look outlandish toys, tousled by the wind. For regular Benoit Versailles park, a subordinate of strict geometry, the embodiment of the triumph of art over the transience of time.
Cock (Radiant study)
Larionov, Mikhail Fedorovich, 1912,oil on canvas, 68,8 х 65
The most radical avant-garde painting method in the work of M.F. Larionov is luchism. This movement's typical manner of painting using radiant brushstrokes was to a large extent the result of rethinking the expressive devices of Italian futurists. In his theoretical research in respect to the "radiant method", Larionov treats the idea of objectless image more consistently than in painting practices: "The doctrine of radiance. Radiation of reflected light. The form that takes shape when rays from different objects cross and that is singled out by the will of an artist… Conveyance of the sensation of the infinite, the supertemporal. Colourful constructs according to the laws of painting (texture, colour)… It is not the objects themselves that we see, but the beams of rays that emanate from them, which are shown in the picture with colour lines." The subject of image in the radiants' work is reduced to a sign, but with shapes in painting preserved. The picture features the cock's image simultaneously, i.e., in different phases of movement.