Video: The story of one portrait: Varvara Ikskul - a baroness who worked as a sister of mercy
2024 Author: Richard Flannagan | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-15 23:55
In the Tretyakov Gallery you can see the famous portrait by Ilya Repin, which depicts a young beauty, Baroness Barbara Ikskul von Hildenbandt … In addition to her name, many do not know anything else. But the fate of this extraordinary and selfless woman deserves no less attention than the portrait itself: the baroness devoted her whole life to helping other people, was engaged in charity work, published books for the poor, worked as a nurse at the front, and at the age of 70 she was forced to walk on the ice of the Gulf of Finland. from a country that no longer needed.
At one of the traveling exhibitions, a portrait by Repin appeared, which caused a great resonance. Many did not know who this beauty with a gypsy appearance was. After the exhibition, her name became known to the general public, it increasingly began to appear in the news about philanthropic institutions, charity concerts, women's medical courses, etc. She was spoken of as an intelligent, energetic and strong-willed woman.
Varvara Ivanovna was born in 1852 in the family of General Lutkovsky. From her youth, everyone paid attention to her unusual appearance - they said that she looked like a gypsy. In fact, she was a hereditary Serb. At the age of 16, Varvara married the diplomat N. Glinka, and they left to live in Europe. There, the girl moved in a circle of artists, poets, aristocrats. She was under 30 when she divorced her husband and remarried Baron Ixkul von Hildenbandt, the Russian ambassador to Rome, who was 2 years older than her mother.
When the couple returned to St. Petersburg, the baroness began publishing books for public reading. Together with the publisher I. Sytin, they published 64 books available to low-income readers. Book covers were designed by Repin for free.
Chekhov, Gorky, Korolenko, Repin, Ge, Benois and other prominent people of that time visited the literary and public salon of Baroness Ikskul. Merezhkovsky dedicated 12 poems to her, and Gippius wrote about her: “In this charming society woman some special life force was boiling, active and inquisitive. She possessed exceptional poise and an enormous supply of common sense."
Baroness Ikskul knew how to make the necessary acquaintances. In achieving her goals, she showed enviable determination and even cunning. In those days, many knew about the emperor's close friend, General Cherevin, who drank without restraint, and went to the king with reports during the hours of a rare hangover. It was just such a moment that Varvara waited to instill in him the idea that female medical education can be very useful. The general reported to the king, as a result, the forbidden courses were restored.
Varvara Ivanovna was one of the initiators of the creation of the Women's Medical Institute at the Petropavlovsk hospital, opened a "school of nursing scientists" for training junior medical personnel, and created the MP von Kaufman community of nurses. Her community was distinguished by the strictest discipline and high professionalism among nurses. During the war in the Balkans 1912-1913. The baroness went to the front as a sister of mercy, bandaging the wounded under shelling. She remained on the front lines in the First World War. In 1916 she was awarded the St. George Medal. At that time she was already 64 years old.
After the revolution of 1917, the community was closed, the Baroness was evicted from her house. She was not given permission to leave the country, and then, at the age of 70, she went on foot across the ice of the Gulf of Finland to Finland, and from there she moved to France, where she died in 1928. The Scottish photographer tried to combine the military past and present: photo cycle dedicated to the 100th anniversary of the outbreak of the First World War
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