Sylvester Shchedrin New Rome Castle of the Holy Angel. New Rome

« New Rome. Castle of the Holy Angel"- series of paintings Sylvester Feodosievich Shchedrin, written in the early Roman period (1821-1825).

The Tiber embankment is depicted near the house where the artist lived.

This series is a turning point in Shchedrin's work. First of all, the plot itself is interpreted in a new way: fishing boats on the water with people, the walls of residential buildings are the foreground, and “old” Rome ( Castle of the Holy Angel And Saint Paul's Cathedral) moves into depth and becomes a kind of background. This series of landscapes is a very successful experiment by Shchedrin - plein air artist, masters of outdoor painting. The color scheme in these landscapes also changes: the gloomy brown tones of Shchedrin’s first works are now replaced by cooler ones - silver, blue and greenish tones.

According to one of his contemporaries, “the artist had to repeat this view eight times... Each time he changed the air and tone of the picture.”

Compositional unity is achieved through the image Tiber. If to the right and in the distance rise the majestic buildings of the Castel Sant'Angelo, the Cathedral of St. Peter and the Vatican Palace, personifying “old Rome”, then on the left the composition is closed by the houses of the urban poor - “New Rome” (quarter Trastevere). By this, Shchedrin emphasizes that in the “Eternal City” there exists side by side the high and the low, the eternal and the temporary. Ordinary Romans on the banks of the Tiber are depicted with special care, giving the picture genuine vitality and authenticity.

Painting “New Rome. Castle of the Holy Angel" had big success, and subsequently the artist often repeated this motif in different lighting. The State Tretyakov Gallery houses three versions of the painting.

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New Rome. Castle Sant'Angelo

"New Rome. Castle of the Holy Angel"- a series of paintings by Sylvester Feodosievich Shchedrin, written in the early Roman period (1821-1825).

This series is a turning point in Shchedrin's work. First of all, the plot itself is interpreted in a new way: fishing boats on the water with people, the walls of residential buildings are the foreground, and “old” Rome (Castle Sant’Angelo and St. Peter’s Cathedral) moves into the depths and becomes a kind of background. This series of landscapes is a very successful experiment by Shchedrin as a plein air painter, a master of outdoor painting. The color scheme in these landscapes also changes: the gloomy brown tones of Shchedrin’s first works are now replaced by cooler ones - silver, blue and greenish tones.

Compositional unity is achieved through the depiction of the Tiber. If to the left and in the distance rise the majestic buildings of the Castel Sant'Angelo, the Cathedral of St. Peter and the Vatican Palace, personifying old Rome, then on the left the composition is closed by the houses of the urban poor - new Rome. By this, Shchedrin emphasizes that in the “Eternal City” there exists side by side the high and the low, the eternal and the temporary. Ordinary Romans on the banks of the Tiber are depicted with special care, giving the picture genuine vitality and authenticity.

Painting “New Rome. Castle of the Holy Angel" was a great success, and subsequently the artist often repeated this motif in different lighting. The State Tretyakov Gallery houses three versions of the painting.

Sources

• State Tretyakov Gallery. Art of the XII - early XX centuries. - M.: ScanRus, 2007. - P. 114. - ISBN 978-5-93221-120-5

Links

• "New Rome. Castle of the Holy Angel" in the Tretyakov Gallery database

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See what "New Rome. Castel Sant'Angelo" is in other dictionaries:

Capital of Italy. The city is located on the river. Tiber, ancient name which Rumo or Rumon served as the basis for the formation of the name Rome (Italian: Roma). It is assumed that the name of the river is associated with the name of one of the ancient Etruscan tribes... ... Geographical encyclopedia

This term has other meanings, see Rome (meanings). City of Rome, Italy. Roma ... Wikipedia

Monument Statue of Giordano Bruno ital. Monumento a Giordano Bruno ... Wikipedia

This term has other meanings, see St. Peter's Basilica (meanings). Catholic Cathedral St. Peter's Cathedral lat. Basilica Sancti Petri Italian. Basilica di San Pietro ... Wikipedia

Wikipedia has articles about other people with this last name, see Shchedrin. Shchedrin Sylvester Feodosievich ... Wikipedia

Sylvester Feodosievich Shchedrin (1791 1830) Russian artist, landscape painter. Contents 1 Biography 2 Creativity 3 Literature 4 Links // ... Wikipedia

Rome in 753 BC e. The history of Rome covers 2800 years of existence of the city, which grew from a small Italian village that appeared in the 9th century BC. e. Today it is... Wikipedia

Urban VI Urbanus PP. VI 202nd ... Wikipedia

The style of this article is non-encyclopedic or violates the norms of the Russian language. The article should be corrected according to the stylistic rules of Wikipedia... Wikipedia

Books

• Masterpieces from A to Z. Issue 6, Astakhov A.Yu.. With the new project of the publishing house 'Gallery of Russian Painting', art lovers will have new - truly unique - opportunities. We offer you the most comprehensive thematic selections...
• Masterpieces of Russian painting. Coloring book, Konyaeva M.. Development of your own artistic abilities you can start with coloring. Especially if in front of you are not just patterns and funny pictures, and professionally drawn contours of the paintings...

Landscape painting arose in Russian art much later than portraiture and historical picture. Only in the last quarter of the 18th century did a group of masters emerge among Russian artists for whom the depiction of nature became their main specialty. In extraordinary short term, not exceeding two or three decades, landscape painting reached a high artistic level in Russia and took its rightful place among other genres of art.

It is remarkable that realistic tendencies manifested themselves with great force already in the first generation of Russian landscape painters. But at the early stage of development of landscape painting, at the end XVIII century, the desire for a truthful recreation of nature was still constrained by a whole system of conventional techniques and rules dating back to general principles art of classicism.

The depiction of nature was allowed by classical aesthetics only in the form of “historical” or decorative landscape, and the artist’s task was not so much to reproduce reality as to idealize it. The landscape was not painted from life, but, using preliminary sketches, was “composed” in the studio, arbitrarily grouping a number of visual motifs - mountains, waterfalls, groves, ruins, etc., subordinate decorative task. Based on classical examples, a scheme for constructing a landscape was developed, which basically boiled down to the following: the view itself was usually depicted in depth, in the background, and close-up plans were built like theatrical scenes, as if framing the image; the space was clearly divided into three parallel plans, of which the first was designated brown, the second in green and the third, the farthest, bluish; transitions from one plan to another were planned using linear perspective, reducing objects that became, as it were, milestones in the construction of spatial depth. Living impressions of nature had to obey this scheme, and the realistic aspirations of Russian artists found a way out only in the truthful reproduction of the details and particulars of the landscape with the general convention of the image as a whole.

The first steps towards the liberation of landscape painting from conventional schemes were made at the turn of the 18th century. XIX centuries artists M. Ivanov and F. Alekseev. The completion of their work fell to the lot of the remarkable painter Sylvester Shchedrin, who in the twenties of the 19th century raised Russian landscape painting to unprecedented heights.

Shchedrin went through academic school under the direct supervision of M. Ivanov and in teenage years was strongly influenced by the painting of F. Alekseev. Early creativity Shchedrin, still based generally on the classical tradition, reflected those shifts towards realism that characterize the landscape painting of his predecessors. Already in early time his artistic activity he moved away from “composed” landscapes and turned to the direct reproduction of real nature. But only in the 1820s, after a profound creative turning point, Shchedrin was able to completely overcome the schematism of academic “landscapes” and lead Russian landscape painting onto new paths.

To improve his specialty, Shchedrin was sent to Italy in 1818 as a pensioner of the Academy of Arts.
Rome was considered in those years the world artistic center. Artists, in particular landscape painters, came here from all over Europe. They were attracted by Italy's glorious past, its great art and captivating nature. Here one could meet representatives of all picturesque directions and schools. In motley artistic environment in the Rome of that time there was a climate of international rivalry, intense pictorial quests, and an acute struggle between the new and the old; the reactionary foundations of the classics collided with the advanced trends of romanticism, the emerging realism opposed traditional forms art.

In this complex, full of contradictions creative atmosphere Shchedrin managed to maintain independence and national identity of your creativity.

Shchedrin immediately took a prominent place in the Roman colony of artists. He quickly achieved recognition in the widest circles of the artistic community. Only a few could compete with him in terms of talent and level of skill. He did not find a teacher - in the literal sense of the word - either in the older generation or among his peers. But close contact with new trends in landscape painting was fruitful for Shchedrin. He greedily absorbed abundant and varied artistic impressions, and their exacting critical processing served as a powerful impetus for the development of his creativity. Together with the best landscape painters of his time, he strove for a truthful rendering of nature, for the living spontaneity of its perception, for studying it on location, but to achieve these goals he followed his own, unique path.

Mastering the realistic method of depiction, Shchedrin moved from individual, analytically studied details of the landscape to a new pictorial generalization. He contrasted the decorative conventions of academic landscapes with an impeccably accurate reproduction of the material objectivity of the world. He peered at the Colosseum and the ruins of old Rome, like a portrait painter peers into the face of the person he is depicting. Already this overcoming of decorativeness represented a decisive step forward on the path to realism.
Even more fruitful and significant were the shifts in the very attitude towards reality, in the content and interpretation of the image of nature.

The painting "Old Rome" (1824) was, in essence, last work, written by Shchedrin with an eye to the previous academic style. From ancient memories he turned to living modernity and already in the next year, 1825, he painted the painting “New Rome”, which became, as it were, a program for his further artistic quest. From now on, Shchedrin is no longer attracted by the greatness of the past, not by the harsh beauty of classical ruins, but by the poetry of reality, the charm of nature, which is animated by life and work modern man. The traditional image of Rome as the “eternal city”, homeland famous monuments art and witness former glory great people, gives way to a new image - the image of modern Rome and its ordinary, today's life, with fishing boats on the Tiber and lively groups of townspeople in the foreground of the picture. Having overcome the tradition of the “heroic landscape” and the understanding of nature developed at the Academy of Arts as a reason for historical memories, turning to living, contemporary reality and real nature, Shchedrin at the same time overcame the conventional academic scheme for the artistic solution of the landscape theme. The new content of the image determined a new pictorial form.

"New Rome" marks a turning point in the development of Shchedrin's work. From the mid-1820s, the period of the highest flowering of his talent began. In the last five or six years of his life he works with amazing creative intensity and productivity. All the most valuable things in his legacy were created during these years.
http://sttp.ru/master12.html

Sylvester Shchedrin painted two cities in Italy: Rome and Naples. They embodied Italian life and as the best, the main time own existence the artist and as his own theme in art. Landscapes of Rome are an introduction to history, to high artistic tradition, landscapes of Naples - an introduction to real life, motley, careless and reckless.

"New Rome" is not a picturesque illustration of world history, A modern city beautiful in that it naturally combines the great past and present with all its everyday life. A city that has its own unique life, in which people and their homes, the waters of the Tiber and the boats on the shore, the arcades of the bridge and the bulk of the castle, the clouds in the sky and the dome of the Cathedral of St. Petra is in the distance. In painting, all this is conveyed by the unity of lighting and tonal unity of color.

According to a contemporary, “Rome liked this work so much that many wanted to have it. The artist... had to repeat this look eight times, but loving art and nature, he did not want to be a copyist own work. Each time he changed the air and tone of the picture and thus produced eight paintings, representing the same type, equally original" (V.I. Grigorovich. On the state of the arts in Russia. 1827).

K. LARINA: Ksenia Larina is at the microphone. Ksenia Basilashvili is next to me. Good afternoon, Ksyusha, hello.

K. BASILASHVILI: Good afternoon.

K. LARINA: And Svetlana Usacheva, our guest, senior researcher at the Tretyakov Gallery. Good afternoon, Svetlana, hello.

S. USACHEVA: Hello.

K. LARINA: Our hero today is Sylvester Shchedrin, a wonderful picture - “New Rome. Castle of the Holy Angel. It’s a very beautiful, fresh feeling, I really want to go there. I looked at this picture and it was very nice. Today we will talk about this artist. He, I don’t know how popular he is in general mass consciousness?

S. USACHEVA: You know, I think among landscape painters he is one of the most popular, if we mean landscape painters of the old school, classical period.

K. BASILASHVILI: But in the mass consciousness, probably not, somehow it turned out that the fame is quite modest.

S. USACHEVA: In the mass consciousness, we have, first of all, landscape painters of the second half of the century - this is Shishkin, this is Savrasov. Ours are less known, of course.

K. LARINA: Young. He died quite a young man.

S. USACHEVA: He died at 39 years old.

K. LARINA: Yes, it’s just somehow completely sad. And such a beautiful combination of first and last name. Well, let's get started. To begin with, we probably need to describe everything. Still, not bears, as we noticed, in the forest, right?

S. USACHEVA: You said that the picture made a very fresh impression on you, right? Sylvester Shchedrin is generally one of those artists who gives the impression of joy, some kind of amazing harmony, a feeling of purity and beauty of the world. He was also an unusually bright person, and this work of his enchants precisely because of the freshness of perception. What is most remarkable is that the view that the artist depicts was by that time depicted by almost all of his contemporaries and predecessors, that is, the view from the so-called, now we would call, postcards, very popular, tourist, that is, this is the point of view that...

K. BASILASHVILI: What is still being photographed is on the banks of the Tiber.

S. USACHEVA: Absolutely right. Something that is still being photographed. And Shchedrin was far from the first to turn to this species. Usually they filmed this view while standing on the shore, or on a bridge over the Tiber, so that they had the most important architectural attractions that fell into this view. So, on the right is this Castle of the Holy Angel, which in ancient times was an ancient tomb, the mausoleum of Emperor Hadrian, and next to it a bridge. The bridge appeared already more than late times, and through this bridge in the depths of the view we can see the complex of Vatican buildings and the most famous cathedral in world history, in the Catholic one first of all, St. Peter's Basilica, Roman. But the view does not end there. And this is exactly the innovation that appeared in Shchedrin’s film. There are a lot of these types, they are all practically in Russian museums, there are eight of them in total, and apparently Shchedrin once wrote so many. He wrote so many versions because they were extremely popular. In general, we can say that it was this view that made him famous. The artist is believed to have executed the first version in 1823, and then over the course of two years he painted only 8, and according to one certificate 10. There is information from that time that these types were acquired not only by Russian lovers of fine arts, but were also acquired in England, France, even America. Whether this is so - I don’t know, since after all, 8 types are in our museums: in particular, in the Tretyakov Gallery there are three of them, one is in the Russian Museum, another is in Minsk, now abroad, in Alma-Ata , in Baku and Yerevan. Here are eight paintings - eight types. Moreover, it would seem that the species is the same, but they are all different, all different.

K. BASILASHVILI: What option are we now? Are we the first to look?

S. USACHEVA: We are looking at the version that is on display at the Tretyakov Gallery, that is, the version that all viewers will be able to see when they come to our museum.

K. LARINA: Why is this particular version hanging in the Tretyakov Gallery? Who chose?

S. USACHEVA: Scientists choose, this is a tradition.

K. LARINA: What is this based on?

S. USACHEVA: Guided primarily by maximum effectiveness, maximum attractiveness for the viewer in terms of presentation of the look.

K. LARINA: Are they all called the same?

S. USACHEVA: They all have the same exact name.

K. LARINA: For a person who is not very oriented in this space, how can one still distinguish one from the other?

S. USACHEVA: Actually, the appearance is almost no different. The look differs a little, and the content of the paintings themselves differs a little. Let's go back to the one on display. This is a work from 1825, that is, already such a peak, a limit, an option that followed some third, fourth, maybe fifth. And if you look at this whole series, you can clearly see how the content, the approach to the form that was already usual for Shchedrin and usual for his contemporaries, is changing. The fact is that Shchedrin is a representative of the school of classical landscape, and until the beginning of the 19th century, I would even say until the 20s, classic landscape was divided strictly into two types: this is an architectural type and a natural type. And, perhaps, Shchedrin was the first Russian artist to combine these two types in one form.

K. BASILASHVILI: That is, before him, basically, if you came to Rome, and drew ancient ruins?

S. USACHEVA: Absolutely right. They went to Rome to study and sketch, to depict antiquities, as they said. Actually, Shchedrin went there for the same thing. Rome is an open-air museum city. And it is no coincidence that almost all types, exactly the same, written from this point of view, of his predecessors - they represent architectural compositions, where the artist pays the main attention to these most remarkable monuments of antiquity and the Middle Ages, which are the Castle of St. Angel and St. Peter's Cathedral. In the first version, which is in the Russian Museum, despite the integrity of Shchedrin’s approach to depicting this view, it is still noticeable that it is also very important for him to depict these same architectural monuments in all accuracy and clarity (that was the term at that time) . The further he goes, the more interested he becomes in the atmosphere. You probably know this common expression, there is it, especially common in relation to landscapes: “Light and air,” right? They come up and say, in this form, in this picture there is a lot of light and air.

K. BASILASHVILI: But here they say that he rewrote, achieved special light just in the background, right?

S. USACHEVA: It is believed that since he is an artist, by the way, he was one of the first to work a lot on location, and not only made sketches, but painted in oils, then supposedly he also caught the difference in lighting here. That is, somewhere there is morning Rome, somewhere there is Rome at noon, somewhere there is evening Rome. Naturally, everything...

K. BASILASHVILI: This is an almost impressionistic beginning.

S. USACHEVA: Well, that’s kind of the beginning.

K. BASILASHVILI: Is it true that someone advised St. Peter to be covered with such a haze?

S. USACHEVA: I don’t know if anyone advised him to do this.

K. BASILASHVILI: So that it looks as if through such a haze... in the distance.

S. USACHEVA: But the fact is that apparently the very direction of time - she advised him this. This was what was important now for landscape painters.

K. BASILASHVILI: Ksyusha, maybe we’ll listen to the section when the picture got into Tretyakov Gallery?

K. LARINA: Yes, I kept trying to find the most the best option.

K. BASILASHVILI: But this is just one of the other options that do not correspond to what we are looking at. There are differences.

K. LARINA: Okay. Let's listen to the “Way to the Gallery” section and then continue.

WAY TO THE GALLERY

“Painting “New Rome. The Castle of the Holy Angel by Sylvester Shchedrin is kept in the Tretyakov Gallery in three original versions. The first version is from 1824, signed, dated, and comes from the collection of Fyodor Ivanovich Pryanishnikov, a famous Russian collector. member of the Moscow Society for the Rescue of Artists, a famous collector of paintings by Russian artists, founder of the gallery, which later became known as “Pryanishnikovskaya”. Until 1867, this version was kept in the Pryanishnikov collection, then it entered the Moscow Rumyantsev Museum, from where in 1925 it moved to the State Tretyakov Gallery. This artist's original version was presented at numerous exhibitions back in the second half of the 19th century. For example, in 1861, at an exhibition in St. Petersburg entitled “The Tiber and a view of the Church of St. Peter in Rome.” At the July 1967 exhibition, also in St. Petersburg, called “The Neighborhood of Rome.” And also this version of the 24th year was used at numerous exhibitions last decade how in Russian cities, for example in Moscow, in State Museum fine arts named after Pushkin, in Samara, Petrozavodsk, and also at foreign exhibitions in Antwerp, Karsava, Genoa. In addition to this version, in our Tretyakov Gallery collection there are two more author’s repetitions of this composition by Shchedrin, dated 1925. One of them is also signed, comes from the collection of Lvov, and finally, the third version of the painting, also from the year 25, comes from the collection of Pavel Mikhailovich Tretyakov. In addition to the composition “New Rome. The Castle of the Holy Angel" was acquired by the Tretyakov Gallery by Pavel Mikhailovich Tretyakov whole line, a whole block of Shchedrin's things. Among them is the famous self-portrait of the artist from 1817, “View of the cascade under the monastery of St. Benedict in Subiaco", "Old Rome", "Views of Sorrento", "Terraces in Sorrento", "Small Harbor in Sorrento", views of the island of Capri, for example, "Grotto Matromanio on the island of Capri", two "Views of the large harbor on the island of Capri ", and finally, the paintings "Veranda entwined with grapes" and " Moonlight night in Naples."

K. LARINA: Well, let's continue the conversation. Svetlana, let's first tell about the person.

S. USACHEVA: Let's do it. I just want to follow up a little from Natalya Grigorievna by saying that we have 35 indisputable works by Shchedrin in our collection, which is a very large number.

K. LARINA: I thought there were 35 versions of this picture (laughs).

S. USACHEVA: No, no, no. My point is that this artist is rare now. And it’s really a great merit to Pavel Mikhailovich that he started collecting them. That is, he already understood what a wonderful painter and landscape painter he was. And returning to New Rome, and yet this is why these options differ from each other, we can say that there is not only a slight difference in point of view: the artist either rises a little, then sinks a little above the water, so to speak. .

K. BASILASHVILI: Above the dried water.

S. USACHEVA: It shifts the architectural dominants a little to the left, but in the same atmosphere, in the same light and air that Shchedrin’s predecessors practically leveled out. That’s why there was such a feeling of museum-like, airless space. Monuments under open air, each of which is shown from the most advantageous point of view. Because artists paid attention primarily to this. For Sylvester Shchedrin, a holistic image is very important; he wants to show the city as it is. And the city has light, air, and old buildings. and new houses, people live there. And all this together creates a feeling of airiness, the flow of space. And the very flow of space... Here is Shchedrin wonderful master composition, he forces us to look around him little by little, in a semicircle like this. He builds it in the form of a hemisphere and begins to move his eyes on the right side of the Castel Sant'Angelo, going deeper there, into the airy depths, where the dome of St. Peter is visible, blue, we return on the left side and see that here are very old, dilapidated, not at all spectacular and seemingly not historical Buildings, which have now been ordered to live a long time, they have not been there for a long time. At that time, during the time of the artist, there was a quarter of the urban poor, vegetable traders and fishermen lived here, and we see these same fishermen in the foreground, that is, we complete this mental and visual detour, the circle closes with the scene in the foreground, and again It must be said that for Shchedrin, staffage in landscape is no longer staffage.

K. LARINA: Staffage is figurines of people, right?

S. USACHEVA: Yes, figures of people who should revive it and show the scale of architecture and buildings. Here are living citizens who are busy with their daily activities and work. If they come back again: morning Rome - they are getting ready, laying down some nets...

K. LARINA: This feeling of life, some kind of cohesion, this is very important.

S. USACHEVA: Absolutely right: the course of life. Even if we compare these options, how he writes the river: in the first version it froze like glass, so, Ksenia noticed, such a motionless guy...

K. BASILASHVILI: And here it dries up...

S. USACHEVA: Then it appears... No, then this feeling of small waves appears, like ripples on the water, also like a breeze, right? This is the feeling of airiness, and it is no coincidence that his contemporaries compared him with Claude Laurens. That is, they again remembered the classical landscape tradition: Claude Laurent is, as you know, an outstanding French landscape artist of the 17th century, and he was valued primarily for his ability to create an atmosphere.

K. BASILASHVILI: I think that it’s time for us, Svetlana, to return to the very beginning of Sylvester Shchedrin’s life, because everything here is no coincidence in his biography, and about him we can just say that he found himself in the artistic environment from his birth , everything was predetermined. Is that so?

S. USACHEVA: Absolutely right. He comes from a professorial background. Shchedrin is a representative of the second generation of Russian artists who were educated at the Academy of Arts and are very often the children of professors. His relatives, practically all of them, are connected with the Academy from birth to death. His father, Feodos Fedorovich Shchedrin, is a professor of sculpture class, rector of the Academy, i.e. holding a very high administrative position. His uncle, a very famous landscape painter in the 18th century, Semyon Fedorovich Shchedrin, the creator, as they said then, of poetic views of the suburbs of St. Petersburg, Pavlovsk, Gatchina, Tsarskoe Selo. And finally him younger brother Apollo, with whom he is very friendly, with whom he corresponds all his life, he becomes a teacher of an architecture class, although for the most part a theorist, and he also worked at the Academy all his life.

K. BASILASHVILI: I think a few words need to be said about my father, because everyone who has been to St. Petersburg, they have seen one hundred percent the work of Shchedrin’s father, Feodos Fedorovich.

S. USACHEVA: Well, those who looked at the Admiralty, the bas-reliefs, all of this was his work.

K. BASILASHVILI: Decoration of the Zakharov Admiralty building.

S. USACHEVA: That's right. But I would say about him as a father. The fact is that all the professorial families had so-called government apartments, and the Shchedrin family also lived at the Academy, although they also had their own a private house, and even the area where it was located has been preserved. And this upbringing within the academic walls, the fact that for you these are native walls, that for you this is a natural constant life, and at the same time a huge responsibility, because... You know, this is how it is... Now we have a slightly modern attitude towards this. Well, you can use a rude word, blat, right?.. That is, everything is arranged for you, everything is predetermined, because there are parents, there is guardianship, there is an opportunity not to strain.

K. LARINA: The Academy has its own hand there.

S. USACHEVA: Yes, my own hand. Back then they treated this much more scrupulously. This placed a huge responsibility on the children who had to live up to it.

K. LARINA: So it was impossible to do anything automatically?

S. USACHEVA: Nothing, nothing. Undoubtedly. On the contrary, there should be even greater demands and even greater responsibility. Shchedrin met his father's expectations in all respects, because he received a big gold medal in the class.

K. LARINA: And since childhood, he was probably taught some basic drawing? Where to go from this?

S. USACHEVA: Naturally, naturally. But at the beginning of the 19th century, children of five or six years old were no longer accepted into the Academy, and Shchedrin, too, had already entered there as a boy of nine or ten years old, and had already received some rudiments of education, so he immediately began to study to become an artist, but in his letters... And this artist, thank him very much, corresponded a lot with his relatives when he left for Italy, and we know a lot about him, about his life from his letters.

K. LARINA: Let's stop for now, Svetlana, because now it's news time. Then we will continue and be sure to, I understand from your facial expression that you are ready to even quote him?

S. USACHEVA: Tell me about him and his fate.

K. LARINA: Okay. Let's.

NEWS

K. LARINA: Today we present to you the artist Sylvester Shchedrin, looking at his painting “New Rome. Castle of the Holy Angel,” and Svetlana Usacheva tells us about Sylvester Shchedrin.

S. USACHEVA: Let's go back to Sylvester Shchedrin. If we touch on his education, of course, his uncle, Semyon Fedorovich, played a decisive role in it. And just in his letters, Sylvester writes that his uncle took his little one to the Hermitage, and there he allegedly skipped all the paintings and looked only at the paintings of Antonio Canolette, the famous Venetian vedutist. And it was from this moment that, apparently, a craving arose, a desire to also devote myself to this particular art. But another teacher played a very important role in his biography. important role, Mikhail Matveevich Ivanov. Shchedrin studied in his class, and it was to him that he sent greetings, the most tender greetings, all the time from Rome, from Naples, and said that he owed a lot to this man in his life. He constantly bows to him; he considers him his teacher. What I want to say with all this is that the old school, represented by old teachers, representatives of the arts of the 18th century, of course, played a decisive role in his development as an artist.

K. BASILASHVILI: When he left for Italy - was that his only departure and he never returned?

S. USACHEVA: Yes, unfortunately, he never returned to Russia. He left for Italy in 1818, graduated from the Academy in 1811, that is, there was another six-year break due to a very difficult political situation; pensioners were not allowed to go abroad for a long time.

K. LARINA: What was there?

S. USACHEVA: In connection with revolutionary events and wars, as you know. And finally, in the year 18, Alenin came, new president, who developed vigorous activity in this regard, and three pensioners were finally sent to Rome. And when Sylvester gets there, he, like all Russian artists, is fascinated by Italy, fascinated by the ancient city, but all the time he complains that because of his meager pension he cannot travel outside the city. And there it depicts...

K. LARINA: She’s complaining again. He sits in Italy and complains.

S. USACHEVA: (laughs). And he complains why: there is always little money. The main complaint. Nature is beautiful, there seem to be a lot of possibilities, but it’s impossible to realize them all. But here he was a little lucky: because he came to Italy Grand Duke Mikhail Pavlovich. He sees some of his work and places an order. He asks him to use water paints, that is, watercolors, to depict views of Naples. Shchedrin, who could not get to Naples with his own money, was very happy about this circumstance, because at public expense he could see this city. And so when he arrives in Naples, he writes a letter beginning with the words in Latin: “See Naples and die.” That is, this is the city that captivated him forever. There he spends a year and a half, then, again in connection with the revolutionary events in the Kingdom of Naples, he returns to Rome. Here he is already demonstrating his first Neapolitan works to amateurs, connoisseurs of art, they enjoy great success, and connoisseurs say that it best depicts air and water, pay attention.

K. LARINA: Mmm, how lovely.

K. BASILASHVILI: That is, even Italians who were brought up by examples high renaissance, they accepted it.

S. USACHEVA: Not that they accepted it. Shchedrin is generally considered one of the best landscape painters of this time and in Italy.

K. LARINA: So I wanted to ask you, a clarifying question. Still, is this a European artist or a Russian artist? And what allows us to consider him a Russian artist, except, of course, his actual origin?

S. USACHEVA: Russian school. Russian education. Russian mentality. I believe that he is present...

K. LARINA: All this can be felt in his Italian works, right?

S. USACHEVA: You know, they talk about a special kind of sincerity in Russian art. It seems to me that these are not empty words. This is the poetry, and at the same time simplicity - this is what is new that appears in his landscapes. Let these be the most popular and have been for a long time existing points view of certain species. Actually, this is what is new. Here it is very interesting point: the fact is that the painting “New Rome. Castel Sant'Angelo was never called New Rome before. It was called in various inventories of old catalogues, until about the beginning of the 20th century, simply “Castle Sant’Angelo”, or “View of the Tiber and Castel Sant’Angelo”. And then this phrase “New Rome” appears.

K. LARINA: Where from?

S. USACHEVA: You know, I think by analogy with the painting, which is also in the collection of the Tretyakov Gallery. It's called "Old Rome". Where the name “Old Rome” came from is unknown. Pavel Mikhailovich also bought it, and it has already arrived, so it just came with this name “Old Rome”. I think the name "Old Rome" was given to it because of the content.

K. LARINA: Old town, right?

S. USACHEVA: The old city, absolutely right. Shchedrin depicts there, you can see a little of the Colosseum, you can see the Capitol, you can see a little of the Forum, that is, really old historical buildings, because of which they go to Rome. But a figurative context also appeared: “Old Rome” is a picture that was created according to the rules adopted by the Academy. Shchedrin naturally follows them, he is a very good student, very talented. And in fact, with all his subsequent creativity, he not only embodies these rules, but he overcomes them. “Old Rome” is still a collection of these old rules, most skillfully embodied. In “New Rome” there is a completely different look, a different atmosphere, everything that allows us to talk about some new word in landscape painting in general.

K. BASILASHVILI: There is another plot, which is probably more connected with the spiritual mood of Sylvester Shchedrin, and this, in turn, influenced creativity, I think. He converts to Catholicism.

S. USACHEVA: These are all legends

K. BASILASHVILI: No?

S. USACHEVA: Completely unfounded...

K. BASILASHVILI: No, is this a legend? And everywhere it is written that Sylvester Shchedrin converted to Catholicism. In some books, studies.

S. USACHEVA: Which ones?

K. LARINA: Sacred.

S. USACHEVA: You know, in the sacred books, maybe, but the fact is that the work of Sylvester Shchedrin, as far as art historians are concerned, was studied by very respectable people, I certainly trust them - this is Fyodor Davydov, this is E.N. Atsarkina, none of them said a word about this.

K. LARINA: No fact.

S. USACHEVA: And there is no such fact.

K. LARINA: Okay. About something else. Still about life. The man lives in Italy. What is his inner circle like? Who does he communicate with? What is the Russian environment like? Who does he even spend his life with? From whom does it feed?

S. USACHEVA: First of all, friends.

K. LARINA: And Gogol was there at the same time, no?

S. USACHEVA: No, Gogol is a little later, this is the 40s. We are now talking to you about the first half of the 20s, well, even until the 29th year, when he worked fruitfully, until his illness completely crushed him. First of all, this is his closest friend Samuil Ivanovich Galdberg, he is a pensioner like Shchedrin, he is a sculptor, Shchedrin shares bread with him at first, and a room, and even a bed, because they had nowhere to fit, everything was very meager . Then, when Shchedrin leaves for Naples for the first time, then after the tremendous success of his “New Rome” in 25, he goes to Naples a second time and never returns; he and Guldberg are in constant correspondence. They are very close friends and share literally everything. Then they became relatives. Because Galdberg, when he returned to St. Petersburg, he married the niece of Sylvester Feodosevich. Then, this is the circle of Russian pensioners who, as you know, loved to gather in the Greco cafe and in the Lepre restaurant, as Russian pensioners called it “Zaitsev’s Restaurant,” and there they exchanged all kinds of news, including political ones. Then this is the guardian and mentors, the head of this Russian colony is Prince Tallinn, also Orest Kiprensky for some time and, finally, Fyodor Mikhailovich Matveev, who, again, as the most famous representative of the Russian landscape school of the 18th century, helps Shchedrin in many ways, and even , you know, in some kind of material, everyday problems. In particular, when Shchedrin leaves for Naples, in this city, despite all its luxury and splendor, he cannot get items artistic craft: There are no brushes, no paints, no canvases. And he always asks Matveev in his letters to send this and that, to solve some of his financial problems.

K. BASILASHVILI: And also Konstantin Batyushkov.

S. USACHEVA: Of course.

K. BASILASHVILI: ...Meets Shchedrin in Naples, puts him up with him, almost in the same room, helps him, shows him places to paint, picturesque places and orders paintings from him.

S. USACHEVA: Yes, the order was connected precisely with the order of Mikhail Pavlovich, which I mentioned. Shchedrin eventually abandons these water paints and turns to his usual oil painting, but it is with Batyushkov that they are looking for what views to depict. And in connection with this, they travel around the surrounding area: to the island of Isca, Capri. That’s when Shchedrin discovered all these little places that until that moment had been of absolutely no interest to painters. He even writes in one of his letters: I work and look where no landscaper has gone before.

K. BASILASHVILI: So we can say that, including with the help of Batyushkov, that it was open?

S. USACHEVA: Of course.

K. BASILASHVILI: This is very interesting.

S. USACHEVA: In addition, Shchedrin was a very secular person. He knew languages ​​perfectly, he was very handsome. Here is a portrait of him, painted by Pyotr Basin, also a Russian pensioner, where Shchedrin is 30 years old, and another of his classmates Fyodor Jordan, later a famous engraver, writes that Shchedrin was a handsome man in every sense this word. He was tall...

K. LARINA: For some time, in general.

S. USACHEVA: Why?

K. LARINA: And a good education, from an elite family, right? Handsome (laughs)

S. USACHEVA: (laughs) He writes about himself, you know how? I have a straight nose, a platform, and curly hair.

K. LARINA: What a beauty.

S. USACHEVA: You can see in the portrait: he is really very graceful, elegant, certainly with good manners. Therefore, he is a welcome guest in various secular salons, among the high society people who stay there, but most importantly, they certainly appreciate him for his talented brush.

K. LARINA: But all this time, while he is in Italy, the local public greets him with such enthusiasm, as I understand it. Do they even remember him in Russia?

S. USACHEVA: They never forgot about him. First of all, the family remembers. He constantly keeps in touch with his family, he writes to her, and at some point the question arises that it is time to return. It arises, naturally, with the end of the pensioner period, this is 1825. But as you understand, Shchedrin doesn’t want to go back. I don’t want to for all the same reasons that I have already mentioned: the sky of Italy, the sun of Italy, the landscapes in which he sees his destiny and in which he finally overcomes that museum quality, those rules, the collection of rules with which he comes from the Academy . He writes that I finally left the brownish warm tones, finally light and air appeared, finally he felt, those motifs appeared (this is mainly in the vicinity of Naples) that he wants to depict and which enjoy enormous commercial success.

K. BASILASHVILI: In my opinion, in 27, in St. Petersburg on Nevsky Prospekt, there was an exhibition of Russian pensioners, Italians, and including Sylvester Shchedrin, who also exhibited him there.

S. USACHEVA: His paintings already enjoyed great success in Russia during his lifetime. Firstly, he sends there the so-called reporting work “View of the Colosseum”, but after a few years he himself speaks of it as archaic, that it is all outdated, he has already outgrown all this, he already has completely different views on painting. And in Russia, attention to it is growing more and more, there are more and more customers, primarily, again, from the high society environment. And so you mentioned Delvig, a review of his work was published in “Northern Flowers”, and in particular it was written about “New Rome”, that a cute brush, which could so skillfully imitate nature, produced an extraordinary impressed everyone, and everyone wanted to have this look, why there were so many options, so many orders.

K. BASILASHVILI: I think that we don’t have much time left, and there is still one stop on Shchedrin’s Italian journey, at which you simply cannot help but get off. And this stop is called a village, or Big city Sorrento.

K. LARINA: So, as I understand it, he died there, right?

S. USACHEVA: Yes, unfortunately, this is a city...

K. BASILASHVILI: He died, but he ascended there, one might say.

S. USACHEVA: This city is his last years of life. When he comes to Naples for the second time, he mostly works not in the city itself, but in those surroundings where no landscaper has ever set foot, and most often prefers Sorrento. There are a lot of views called “Great Harbor of Sorrento” and “Little Harbor of Sorrento”, these are two views that have changed dramatically since then (you, of course, won’t recognize them when you get to Sorrento: everything is built up), they also enjoy a huge success among fans. And at this time Shchedrin very often complains that he has time to complete them: there is such an influx of orders. And besides, he does not spare himself. He works all the time; in general, he was an extremely hardworking artist.

K. BASILASHVILI: And he mostly wrote outside of the studio?

S. USACHEVA: Yes.

K. BASILASHVILI: This was also an innovation.

S. USACHEVA: For him it was fundamentally important, why he didn’t have paintings, huge canvases, but all small pictures. Pictures, that's what he calls them. It was important for him to start and, perhaps, complete them in the free air. That is, he is really considered, and I think rightly, the founder of plein air painting in Russian art. And so he spends every summer in Sorrento; he returns here in 1829, completely broken and sick. They tried to treat him several times. Last trip with two ladies from big world also, for health purposes, carries out Northern Italy, Switzerland. He had liver disease, a liver disease, which was apparently aggravated by this hot climate. And from the beginning, judging by the letters, Shchedrin does not pay any attention to her: young, everything seemed fine, health, all this is nonsense, trifles. And besides, he is an unusually cheerful person; he apparently doesn’t want to stop there. But over the years it becomes more and more aggravated and by the age of 30 it practically eats him up. And when he returns to Naples, he goes to Sorrento in the hope of being treated there. He is sent to Vico, this is also a place nearby, but he rushes from one doctor to another, he is looking for salvation, some kind of panacea, he falls into the hands of a charlatan, and he literally takes him to the grave. And Shchedrin dies unconscious in Sorrento, he is carried in his arms to the Tassa Hotel. There is a house there that is believed to be the house where the great one lived Italian poet, and there he dies. He was buried there...

K. BASILASHVILI: And, in my opinion, almost the whole city comes out to bury him.

S. USACHEVA: Yes. He was buried in the monastery of St. Vincent. There were legends about him as a very kind, warm-hearted, sympathetic person.

K. BASILASHVILI: Almost a saint, right?

S. USACHEVA: Yes. That supposedly even Italian women brought their children to his grave, because Don Silvestro was something like that for them. Not only a new Raphael, but almost a saint.

K. LARINA: And how did Italy in general, preserve the memory of him until today?

K. BASILASHVILI: This is the very important point. We didn’t have time to talk about school.

S. USACHEVA: You know, this is a unique case when a Russian artist. Let's get back to the topic, shall we?

K. LARINA: Yes.

S. USACHEVA: Russian and Italy. That's how Italian he is. The Russian artist influenced the Italian painters of his time, and was somewhere two or three steps ahead of them. The fact is that at this time in Italy there was the so-called Posillipo school, a school of landscape artists, which was engaged in the description of places that were in demand among tourists. And for the most part these are craft works, rather. No one, may the Italians forgive me (laughs), was able to create such a soulful, spiritual and at the same time very genuine, real image of this area, land, its beauty.

K. LARINA: So this is Montmartre?

S. USACHEVA: Yes, Montmartre exists, and Shchedrin is the master there.

K. BASILASHVILI: But he came there to study first.

S. USACHEVA: Yes and...

K. BASILASHVILI: New methods.

S. USACHEVA: The thing is, when he arrived, he said in his own letter that he could not take a single European school as a model. All the contemporary artists around him, none of them became his teacher. He brought everything he had earned with him, and thanks to his talent, an amazing gift, he developed it so much that he became an artist of both the old classical school and an artist of the new era. This is truly a milestone for us in the development of landscape painting. Do you know what I would like to end with?

K. LARINA: Wait, we are not finishing yet.

S. USACHEVA: Well then, don’t finish, but say one thing. Repin has very interesting statement, though on a completely different point, that there are two types of geniuses: there are geniuses who complete their era, because they express it in its entirety, this is the maximum expression of time, and there are geniuses who open a new time, and therefore these are geniuses of the second type. Here Sylvester Shchedrin, in my opinion, is neither the first nor the second, he is a genius in general, he embodied everything: he completed the old time, because he remained in classical school, within its limits, and at the same time opened new era.

K. LARINA: Are there many of his paintings in Italy? And where are they exhibited?

S. USACHEVA: The fact is that they have been preserved there, they exist in some museums, but these are very few things. I think that the majority, if any, are in private collections.

K. LARINA: That is, there is no such Shchedrin hall anywhere there?

S. USACHEVA: Of course. When he died, his inheritance was taken care of very actively. And I once worked in the Archive foreign policy Russian Empire, where documents are preserved that tell of correspondence in connection with his legacy. Almost all of it was taken to St. Petersburg, it was owned by his brother, and he most donated paintings and sold them to the Academy of Arts, where Shchedrin began his creative life. Therefore, already in the early 30s, students of the Academy had the opportunity to copy his work and learn from them.

K. LARINA: And naturally, he didn’t manage to leave any offspring, right? Not married?

S. USACHEVA: No, he was never married. Very, with such good humor, he writes about this in one of last letters. He still hoped to return, to reunite with his family one day, and asks his daughter-in-law to find him good bride.

K. LARINA: A girl.

S. USACHEVA: Yes.

K. LARINA: That is, such bright ones romantic stories didn't have time to happen in his life?

S. USACHEVA: No, none. One job. You know: work, work. Another thing, in his letters he always complains about the rainy weather, it feels like it rains all the time in Italy. Do you know why? Because in good weather it works. And this is for him...

K. BASILASHVILI: The letters have been published, right? You can buy them.

S. USACHEVA: Yes, these letters exist.

K. LARINA: Letters from Italy, right?

S. USACHEVA: The letters have been published, the letters of Sylvester Shchedrin, along with the monograph by Atsarkina, about whom I spoke, the researcher, they came out, though quite a long time ago.

K. BASILASHVILI: I would also like to say that in Sorrento, thank God, a monument to his grave from the monastery of St. Vincent has been preserved. It was moved to the city cemetery, and this monument was made by Samuil Ivanovich Galdberg, his closest friend, as a memory of his relative, the person with whom he was connected throughout his life, whom he loved very much. And I think that everyone who comes to Sorrento, Russian people, especially people who know about art, they definitely come there to worship it.

K. LARINA: Thank you very much, Svetlana, for introducing me to such an amazing, young, beautiful, bright man Sylvester Shchedrin. It was he who was the hero of today’s program “The Tretyakov Collection,” Svetlana Usacheva, senior researcher, told us about him. Thank you, Sveta.

S. USACHEVA: Thank you.

K. BASILASHVILI: Comfortable shoes and no heels - advice to exhibition hunters. There are so many of them and so many interesting ones, and you need to catch the most important thing.

But first - to the Tretyakov Gallery, to its modern part on Krymsky Val. And there is probably already a queue: the project, which unites about 50 museums in Europe, attracts many spectators.

Firstly, it is interesting to get acquainted with the different meetings under one roof European museums;

Secondly, the exhibition contains absolute masterpieces: paintings by Titian, Picasso, Turner, Cranech.

The gallery will open a new exhibition in its old building, on Lavrushinsky Lane. She will introduce you to the history of collecting graphics by Muscovites. And here there are traditions that were supported by the Botkins, Morozovs, Ryabushinskys and other famous collectors.

The exhibition “Among Collectors”, “Graphics in Moscow Private Collections” at the end of the 19th - beginning of the 20th century will open on May 31 in Lavrushinsky Lane.

Catch a scattering of jewels! In the Kremlin we look at jewelry works from the House of Cortier, in the Historical Kremlin - Gold from the museum's storeroom.

From May 29, the number of jewelry will increase - an international salon of fine arts will open in the Central Manege, where jewelry will be presented.

And in the painting department of the gallery they prepared a tempting offer in the form of The Young Bacchus by Rubens, the impressionistic painting by Picasso “In a Cafe”, works

Petrov-Vodkin, works of the Russian avant-garde.

In addition, the salon traditionally demonstrates furniture from the Louis style to the most modern. Central Manege, International Salon of Fine Arts from May 29.