26 November 2024 – 16 March 2025

The Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts, Moscow

Organised by: 

the Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts

Participants:

"Ostankino and Kuskovo" State Palace and Park Museum and Heritage Site, State Museum of Oriental Arts, Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts, State Museum of the History of Religions, The Moscow Kremlin Museums, Russian Academy of Arts

 

The Moscow Kremlin Museums are participating in a comprehensive exhibition project of the Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts entitled "The Unknown Shchukin. Not Just New Art". The collection of the renowned collector of contemporary European art, Sergei Ivanovich Shchukin, was not limited to works by his contemporaries, but included many artefacts from different cultures and civilizations. These include collections of Egyptian, Chinese, Indian and Arab antiquities, as well as European carved sculptures of the Baroque period, paintings by the Old Masters, and collections of ceramics and porcelain. Thanks to extensive archival research, the exhibition brings together for the first time in a century this unique part of Shchukin's collection, previously unknown to the general public.

For the first time, the Moscow Kremlin Museums are exhibiting two appliqué icons mounted in wooden frames with glass, which once adorned the interior of Sergei Ivanovich Shchukin's estate on Znamensky Lane. In 1926 the "embroidered pictures" – "Mourn not for me, O Mother" and "The Flagellation of Christ", which were then in the Shchukin’s Department of the State Museum of New Western Arts, were transferred to the Armoury Chamber at the request of its director, D.D. Ivanov, who was constantly enriching the Kremlin collection at that time.  

       

The icons, previously included in the Passion cycle of an unknown iconostasis, are made using the technique of appliqué on silk satin, which was widespread in tsarist workshops in the second half of the 17th century. At that time, under the guidance of the Kremlin icon-painters Vasily Poznansky and Ivan Bezmin, similar icons, Shrouds of Christ and banners were made, inspired by the iconography of Western European art, especially the engravings of the Piscator’s Bible.

The most vivid surviving work made by Vasily Poznansky in this technique is the unique iconostasis from 1681-1682 of the Church of the Crucifixion in the Grand Kremlin Palace. The pieces presented in the exhibition are similar to the icons of the palace church in their artistic features and technique, but the names of their creators still remain undiscovered, we can only assume that they belonged to the school of the royal masters.