An exhibition of masterpieces from the Vatican's Pinakothek has opened in the Tretyakov Gallery in Lavrushinsky Lane.

Moscow will show 42 paintings of the XII-XVIII centuries by such masters as Giovanni Bellini, Fra Beato Angelico, Perugino, Raphael, Caravaggio, Paolo Veronese, Nicolas Poussin, reports “ Interfax ".

The entrance to the exhibition is organized in half-hour sessions. Meanwhile, according to the press service of the museum, tickets for the exhibition have already been sold out by the end of the year. The museum noted that a new batch of tickets will arrive in mid-December.

The exhibition is unique in that the Vatican Museums have never previously provided paintings of this level and in such quantity for any event. We add that the paintings of Caravaggio, Raphael Santi, Giovanni Bellini, Guercino, Pietro Perugino and Guido Reni rarely leave the Vatican.

Exhibition of works from the collections of the Vatican Museums "Roma Aeterna. Masterpieces of the Vatican Pinakothek. Bellini, Raphael, Caravaggio" will be held at the Tretyakov Gallery from November 25 to February 19, mos.ru reports.
The Vatican Museums brought masterpieces of the 12th-18th centuries to Moscow. The exhibition includes 42 paintings by Giovanni Bellini, Melozzo da Forli, Perugino, Raphael, Caravaggio, Guido Reni, Guercino, Nicolas Poussin.
In 2017, the Tretyakov Gallery will come to the Vatican with a return visit. The Vatican museums will exhibit paintings by Russian masters on gospel subjects.

An exhibition of masterpieces from the Vatican Pinakothek, which had never left Italy in such numbers, opened on Friday in the Engineering Building of the Tretyakov Gallery in Lavrushinsky Lane. . . . . .
The exhibition reflects all stages of the artistic development of painting. It is opened by an icon of the 12th century “Christ the Blessing” , who has never left the Vatican before, reports “ Interfax "... Next in chronology is the 13th century work of St. Francis of Assisi by Margaritone d "Arezzo", possibly the earliest depiction of the saint, and the frescoes depicting angels by Melozzo da Forli are exhibited separately.
The High Renaissance is represented at the exhibition by works by Perugino, Raphael, Correggio and Paolo Veronese. Opposite each other are the colossal canvases "The Entombment" by Caravaggio and "The Martyrdom of Saint Erasmus" by Nicolas Poussin. The exposition is continued by the works of caravaggists and artists of the Bologna school, and the final section is a cycle “Astronomical observations” Donato Creti.
The entrance to the exhibition is organized in half-hour sessions, tickets have already been sold out by the end of the year, the press service of the gallery said. The new batch of tickets will arrive in mid-December, and from January, in order to fight speculators, tickets to the exhibition will be personalized. There will be no time limits for staying at the exhibition yet. As practice shows, usually an hour is enough for viewers to watch the exposition. . . . . .

"Roma Aeterna. Masterpieces of the Vatican Pinakothek"
42 works of art from the heart of Rome
Date: November 25 - February 19
Location: Lavrushinsky lane, 12, Engineering building
What to go for: to see a tenth of the entire collection of the Vatican Museums - 42 masterpieces out of 4 . . . . . Never before have so many outstanding works from the permanent exhibition left the walls of the Pinakothek at the same time.
And in 2017, the Vatican will host a reciprocal exhibition, at which the Tretyakov Gallery will show unique works of Russian painting based on gospel subjects.
What's more: e-tickets for all sessions until January 1 have already been sold out. The new batch will appear on the Tretyakov Gallery website on December 1. But this does not mean that it is impossible to get to the exhibition: at the box office of the museum itself, 30 additional tickets are sold every half hour.
Price: 500 rubles.
You can follow the news and changes in the exhibition schedule on the Tretyakov Gallery website.

"Christ Blessing", XII century.
Vatican Museums.

The exhibition opens with a 12th century icon painted by an unknown Roman master. "Christ the Blessing" is a unique reminder of the unity of the Christian church, which will help to trace the parallels between European and ancient Russian art. The 12th century Italian Jesus is very similar to the popular image of Russian icons - the Almighty Savior.

The main masterpiece of the exhibition

Michelangelo Merisi, nicknamed Caravaggio. "Entombment". Around 1602-1602. Canvas, oil. Vatican Museums.

At the beginning of the 17th century, this canvas made a small revolution. The non-standard, tragic and at the same time simple composition destroyed the stereotypes that had developed by that time in painting (just as at the beginning of the twentieth century they were trampled by the "Black Square"). Through the efforts of the reformers, Catholicism was going through hard times - many saw the salvation of the church in the return to ancient Christian simplicity and vitality. Caravaggio was one of them.

The most poetic canvas

Paolo Cagliari, nicknamed Paolo Veronese. Saint Helena's vision. Around 1575-1580. Canvas, oil. Vatican Museums.

Hardly anyone will pass by the large-scale painting of the famous Veronese. Before us is Saint Helena, the mother of the first Roman Christian emperor Constantine. An angel appeared to the heroine and called to go to Jerusalem in search of that very cross. Usually the saint was depicted with the cross already found in her hand, but Veronese decided to paint her asleep - directly during the vision. But this is not the only canon violated by the Italian. According to legend, Elena saw the angel already at an old age, and on the canvas we see a young Venetian beauty. Veronese did not think long about who to take in the model, and opted for his own wife. The sleeping saint in the portrait repeats the appearance of the artist's wife, who, by a happy coincidence, was also called Elena.

An exhibit with an unusual history

Donato Creti. "Astronomical observations". 1711 Oil on canvas. Vatican Museums.

The work, for which a whole hall was assigned, is interesting both in its plot and in its history. Before us is a kind of space comic strip of the 18th century: the artist Donato Creti wrote a series "Astronomical Observations", depicting all the planets of the solar system known at that time. In the Age of Enlightenment, scientific stories begin to fully compete with biblical ones. But the most interesting thing is that "Astronomical Observations" was written by order of Count Luigi Ferdinando Marsili and was intended as a gift to Clement XI. So the aristocrat hoped to convince the Pope to give money for the construction of an observatory in Bologna. It's good that the dads took bribes with art - now we have something to see.

A masterpiece that not everyone will notice

Gentile da Fabriano. “Saint Nicholas calms the storm and saves the ship”, circa 1425 Tempera on wood. Vatican Museums.

Gentile da Fabriano is a little lost in the shadow of famous neighbors like Raphael and Caravaggio. Meanwhile, his small canvas with the ponderous title "Saint Nicholas Calms the Storm and Saves the Ship" is very interesting: there was a place on it for the biblical saint who, like Superman, flies in and rescues the unlucky sailors, and the pagan mermaid. What does the fish woman have to do with it? In medieval symbolism, mermaids personify demonic power - and this is what caused the storm, which St. Nicholas "pacifies".

Exhibition “Roma Aeterna. Masterpieces of the Vatican Pinakothek ”.
, Lavrushinsky lane, 12, until February 19, 2017.

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Vatican Museums, Photo © Vatican Museums and Sergei Biryukov

Masterpieces by Raphael, Caravaggio and other great Italians moved to Moscow for three months

The Tretyakov Gallery has opened the main exhibition of the year - “Roma Aeterna. Masterpieces of the Vatican Pinakothek. Bellini, Raphael, Caravaggio. " The first commandment to visitors: they will not be allowed to approach the papal treasures without identification.

Golden rain fell on our heads. True, to collect precious grains of gold only on the retina of the eye - or, if you're lucky, in the camera lens. After all, the jewels are pictures sent from the Vatican. The first ever Moscow tour of the treasures of the papal Pinakothek opens at the Tretyakov Gallery today. However, it is necessary to prepare for a visit seriously and for a long time. Electronic tickets are sold out by the end of December, and only 30 tickets for a session are received at the box office. Such sessions are designed for only half an hour, however, it is promised that we will be able to stay in the halls even longer. Indeed, 30 minutes for 42 pictures is not enough: even if not all of them are absolute masterpieces, each deserves attention.

For the General Director of the Tretyakov Gallery, Zelfira Tregulova, the exhibition is one of the main projects of the year. Vatican Museums, Photo Vatican Museums and Sergei Biryukov

We have long been accustomed to the fact that the queue is more often at the Pushkin Museum. Pushkin to foreign stars like Claude Monet and Salvador Dali, or to the masterpieces of especially famous Western museums. This tradition goes back to the farewell to the Dresden Gallery and the triumph of the Moscow-Paris project. The Tretyakov Gallery, as a museum of national art, seems to have to show its own, dear. But no, within this framework it has long been cramped. You can recall a splendid selection of masterpieces from the cycle "Museums of the World Congratulate the Tretyakov Gallery" for the 150th anniversary of the State Tretyakov Gallery, Whistler's exhibition or the project "In Christ / In Christo" - an experience of inter-museum exchange between Russia and Italy. Then in Moscow, the works of Giotto and his circle were demonstrated, and in the Baptistery in Florence - icons of Rublev and Dionysius. You can go deeper into history, but it is the Moscow-Florentine exchange of "artistic and spiritual masterpieces," as both museums positioned them, that is most interesting in the current context. True, in 2011 there was no serious pilgrimage to Giotto, although the genius of the Proto-Renaissance is one of the most important figures in all art in Europe. But since then, much has changed in Russia: religious and traditional art began to arouse more interest, approaching the worship of holy relics and other miracles. On the contrary, not only the masses, but also the state have cooled to modern creativity. Now painting, closely related to the history of Christianity, albeit in a Western version, has a much higher chance of success. Especially if this is an exhibition from the Vatican museums, and they are among the top ten art treasuries in the world. Despite the fact that the Pinakothek (i.e. the collection of paintings) is relatively small, only about 500 paintings, it occupies a key place among the oldest grand museums. Almost a tenth of this truly great meeting was brought to Moscow! And this is five centuries of the history of Italian painting and, in parallel, the story of how the papal collection was formed. Taking into herself the evolution of the art of the Christian world, she combined it with the masterpieces of previous eras, placing them together in the heart of Rome - the Eternal City. As a result, "Roma Aeterna" was interpreted not only as a citadel of the Holy See, but also as a bridge between civilizations, standing in the limitless circle of history.

The Russian curator of the exhibition, Arkady Ippolitov, talks about the largest exhibit, Caravaggio's Placing in the Coffin. Vatican Museums, Photo Vatican Museums and Sergei Biryukov

However, the Tretyakov Gallery was taken hostage by its very recently introduced fashion for blockbuster exhibitions. Of course, queues have been there before - now to Vasnetsov, now to Levitan. However, the organizers themselves clearly did not expect such a stir, which arose a year ago around Serov's exhibition, despite a powerful PR campaign. Half a million people came to join his work despite the frost. However, the record was broken by Aivazovsky, who bypassed Serov by one hundred thousand tickets. To break through to his marinas was a kind of sporting achievement. Spectators specially came from other cities and proudly reported on social networks. I have no doubt that such feats are possible only if there is a strong interest in the artist. But I wonder if he will be even stronger in relation to those three dozen not very "promoted" authors in Russia who are gathered at the Vatican fest? Using this word, I do not mean a festival, but rather a holiday. An excellent result of the first meeting in many years of the heads of two churches - the Roman Catholic and the Russian Orthodox, when, in fact, our primates agreed to exchange expositions: in response to Rome's gesture, a collection of Russian masterpieces of the 19th century will be sent to the Vatican. Pope Francis personally participated in the discussion of the composition of the exposition in Moscow - and an icon of his heavenly patron Francis of Assisi was brought to us as a landmark work. This is perhaps the earliest depiction of the legendary saint: Margaritone d'Arezzo painted it shortly after the canonization of the great Assisi native in 1228.

The Pope sent Cardinal Giuseppe Bertello to open the exhibition - in a scarlet cap and black cassock with scarlet tassels, he also seemed to be a character in one of the paintings. Most of the works left the Vatican for the first time, and the security measures at the exhibition are harsh - from dim light (Raphael's grisailles generally drown in semi-darkness) to protective steps and barriers that protect exhibits. Some things are very massive and complex in configuration, like "Lamentation" by Carlo Crivelli - the arched lunette, crowning the large altar, does not easily endure transportation. A special niche has been built for it, and the entire architecture of the exhibition is intricate and associated with the famous buildings of the Vatican, including the oval courtyard of the Cathedral of St. Peter.

Donato Creti's Astronomical Observations series reflects the mood of the Age of Enlightenment. Vatican Museums, Photo Vatican Museums and Sergei Biryukov

The viewer enters the austere, oak-paneled space that gives off the mysticism of the Middle Ages, in its center - the small hall - the only icon of the 12th century, rare and the oldest in the exhibition, is hung, with the darkened stern face of Christ the Blessing. Romanesque asceticism recedes as the viewer moves towards the Early and then High Renaissance, bypassing such masterpieces as the almost sculptural Lamentation of Christ by the Venetian by Giovanni Bellini and The Miracles of St. Vincenzo Ferrera »Ercole de Roberti is a frieze with many scenes of life, painted with the subtlety of a miniaturist. Two small icons hanging next to each other, enclosed in heat and moisture-resistant capsules due to their fragility, allow us to trace how the iconography of one plot - "Christmas" changed, as in different ways, but always with the warmth of real life, the Florentine Mariotto di Nardi and the Sienese Giovanni di Paolo painted figures Mary and the Child, the sleeping Joseph and the shepherds who heard the Good News, who are not inferior in reverence to the gospel ox and donkey standing at the manger ... And the angels gaze at the miracle of Christmas with joy at the miracle of Christmas on the frescoes of Melozzo da Forli, which have preserved the holes for fastening gilded halos. One of the angels became the "face" of the exhibition, having flown to its poster.

The largest room, where dim lighting creates a dramatic baroque atmosphere, is also inhabited by saints, but overshadowed by other miracles. Among the paintings of Veronese, Guercino, Gentileschi, Crespi, Guido Reni reigns the gigantic "Entombment" by Caravaggio, which opened a new, XVII century. Although this manifesto of the Counter-Reformation is already familiar to Moscow viewers (it was at an exhibition at the Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts 5 years ago), one cannot but relive the tragedy of the scene together with its participants (the rebel artist openly relied on "types from the people", angering the dean of the Roman public). He is echoed by the same major, written for the Cathedral of St. Peter Poussin's painting The Martyrdom of St. Erasmus ": the curator of the project, Arkady Ippolitov, deliberately hung it in front of Caravaggio's masterpiece, emphasizing the differences in the manner of the French Roman, a harbinger of the classicism style.

So, before our very eyes, a museum-show turns into a museum-temple. Actually, in Russia, the art storage has always been treated as a holy place, certainly "prayed for". However, in Russian history, museums began as collections predominantly secular, including the Tretyakov Gallery, which grew with icons already at a late stage of Pavel Tretyakov's collecting activity, at the expense of the family collection. Today, no one is surprised by the expositions of ancient Russian and Byzantine art - sacredness and origin, it is closely related to what was brought from Rome. It would be all the more interesting to remind viewers getting acquainted with the treasures of the Vatican that nearby, in the main building of the State Tretyakov Gallery, there are works of comparable significance from the Russian Orthodox tradition.

Deputy Director of the Vatican Museums Barbara Yatta leads a tour of the opening day. Vatican Museums, Photo Vatican Museums and Sergei Biryukov

Such a comparison will make it possible to see both common features that connect the countries of Europe - the lands of Christianity, and serious differences. Italian painting, presented at the exhibition in the logic of development from Gothic to Renaissance, Baroque and Classicism, absorbed both the golden backgrounds of the Byzantine icons and the statuary of the poses of antique sculpture. By the way, it was with the collection of antiques found in Tuscany that the current Vatican museums began with their grandiose collection of Greco-Roman plastics. Apollo Belvedere owes the world famous name to Ville Belvedere, where Pope Julius II, one of the founders of the Vatican Museums, kept this statue ...

The ambassadors of the first Rome will be visiting Rome the third until February 19. If you are going to salute them, be vigilant: we are walking on a sinful earth, and the Tretyakov Gallery was tortured by speculators who arose in the ever-memorable “queue-for-serov”. In order to protect itself, the gallery introduces the sale of personalized tickets on the Internet and asks visitors not to forget their passport at home: they will have to present it along with the ticket.

Exhibition name: Roma Aeterna. Masterpieces of the Vatican Pinakothek. Bellini, Raphael, Caravaggio

Where: Tretyakov Gallery in Lavrushinsky Lane, Corps of Engineers

Number of exhibits: 42 paintings from the permanent exhibition of the Vatican Pinakothek

An exhibition of masterpieces from the permanent exhibition of the Vatican Museum, which rarely leave their native walls, will be open at the Tretyakov Gallery on November 25, 2016. The head of the gallery, Zemfira Tregulova, previously reported that the implementation of this project is being carried out on the initiative of Pope Francis and Russian President Vladimir Putin.

The name of the exhibition contains the famous Latin phrase about the eternal city - Roma Aeterna, which means "Eternal Rome" in Latin. The influence of the fine arts of Italy on the cultures of other countries is undeniable. This exhibition will be continued by a subsequent return display of works by Russian artists from museums in Russia.

The halls of the Tretyakov Gallery will display masterpieces of the 12th – 18th centuries, including works by Giovanni Bellini, Melozzo da Forli, Perugino, Raphael, Caravaggio, Guido Reni, Guercino, Nicolas Poussin.

The curator of the exhibition, Hermitage specialist Arkady Ippolitov notes: “These are things that almost never leave Rome, and Zelfira Tregulova and I, when we managed to get them, were absolutely happy. Of course, not everything was given according to the preliminary list, but I was counting on that: the Tretyakov Gallery, and with it Moscow and Russia, received the most important things. "

The exhibition will feature three angels playing musical instruments, Melozzo da Forli- these are frescoes removed from the wall of the Church of the Holy Apostles in Rome back in the 18th century. These frescoes were preserved despite the fact that the order of Pope Clement XI in the 18th century was to remove all paintings in order to rewrite the walls in a modern style. From the grandiose ensemble of Melozzo, there are pieces of frescoes depicting his angels, which are now carefully preserved. But even what is left is truly beautiful. ”The removed frescoes are not easy to transport, they are rarely provided by the Pinakothek for exhibiting to other museums, but we will have as many as three angels,” noted Arkady Ippolitov.

If you did not have time to go to the Vatican Museums, then this exhibition is a chance to see masterpieces in originals. Tickets have already gone on sale on the Tretyakov Gallery website. Visits to the exhibition will be organized in 30 minute sessions each. The visit price is 500 rubles.

An article about Raphael's paintings at the Vatican Pinakothek masterpieces exhibition is located