Mysterious portrait of Pushkin: the last lifetime image of a genius or a gross forgery

2024 Author: Richard Flannagan | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-15 23:55

This story has an almost detective character. In 1877, a portrait was brought to the Museum at the Alexander Lyceum, which after restoration turned out to be an unusual image of the great poet. According to the inscription, the painting was made in the last days of Pushkin's life by a little-known artist. For almost one hundred and fifty years, the debate about whether this picture can be considered the last lifetime image of Alexander Sergeevich has not subsided. Opinions about the work vary. Someone is delighted with him, because the portrait depicts the great classic without embellishment and very reliably, and someone considers it simply a bad compilation of other famous images.

The writer and journalist S. Librovich described the story of the "acquisition" of a mysterious portrait in the following way: - wrote the researcher, -

This is how the canvas got into the museum from the artist L. L. Leonidov - darkened, with barely distinguishable features. For a long time, the museum staff did not attach great importance to the gift, and for several years the picture was gathering dust in the storerooms. Then, nevertheless, she got to the restoration. The portrait was cleaned of a layer of dirt and duplicated (the author's canvas was glued to a new base). And it was then that an unusual image of Alexander Sergeevich Pushkin appeared before the museum staff. Lively huge eyes, a frankly long nose, lips that betray origin - the portrait was striking in its truthfulness. It was clear that the artist did not flatter the classics, as other artists did, but this makes the face in the painting look amazingly alive, even though at first glance the canvas gives out the not too experienced brush of the creator. According to Librovich, however, it should be noted that the name of this little-known artist is another of the mysteries of the portrait.

Many liked the portrait. Some art critics of that time and people close to art were delighted with him: (M. Belyaev); (E. Hollerbach). Igor Grabar, on the contrary, gave the picture a sharply negative assessment:. Even then, many noticed the similarity of the mysterious portrait with the posthumous drawing of F. A. Bruni "Pushkin in the grave". For some, this became a fact confirming the reliability of the image, someone, on the contrary, considered that the portrait was simply copied later.

The main mystery of the portrait was its author. Nobody knew the artist named I. Linev, his works were not known. However, approaching the issue from the other side, the researchers remembered two unsolved notes by V. A. Zhukovsky to Pushkin, conditionally dated to the beginning of 1836. In them, Zhukovsky invites Pushkin to his place to pose for an unknown artist:

Finding much later information about retired Colonel Ivan Linev, who was fond of painting and knew Zhukovsky (through mutual acquaintances - the family of Alexander Ivanovich Turgenev), the researchers got a completely logical explanation of how such a portrait could appear. By the way, there is also a note from Pushkin (presumably addressed to Vyazemsky):. Perhaps the poet did not like his overly accurate portrayal? Although the word "ugly" in his correspondence was sometimes found and had just a slightly sarcastic connotation, because Pushkin treated his own appearance very soberly and a little with humor. In May 1836 Pushkin wrote to his wife from Moscow:.

To date, the question of the reliability of the image remains open. A detailed study of the picture really shows its incredible similarity with the sketches in which Pushkin portrayed himself - the same nose, much longer than in the portraits of venerable painters, the same not quite correct facial features. However, there are also questions that remain unanswered. Many experts are sure that the picture was copied from a posthumous drawing, and details from other images of the classic were added to it. Nevertheless, the portrait continues to conquer. If we talk about him as a work of art, then it becomes not so important whether he was drawn from life or, perhaps, a little-known artist was familiar with Pushkin and managed to capture his image after death, but the fact that he is sharply different from "Canonical" images of the poet, very captivating.

The author of the most famous lifetime portrait of Pushkin, Orest Kiprensky, experienced many ups and downs: why the artist was thrown with stones and who saved him.