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Video: How the beauty from the picture conquered Paris, having made a grandiose scandal: Varvara Rimskaya-Korsakova
2024 Author: Richard Flannagan | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-15 23:55
Franz Xaver Winterhalter was a German painter known for his flattering portraits of the royal family and upper class society in the mid-19th century. The name of the master was associated with a fashionable court portrait. Among the most famous works is the portrait of a scandalous beauty - "Portrait of Rimskaya-Korsakova". This lady from Winterhalter's painting managed to conquer Paris. But why is it called scandalous?
About the artist
Franz Xaver Winterhalter is undoubtedly a master of his craft. He became rich and famous thanks to the patronage of the royal family. But some art historians believe that his work was pretentious and superficial due to a desire for popularity and wealth. Winterhalter was an extremely prolific artist and Queen Victoria's favorite. The Queen hired Charles Burton Barber to paint her dogs, horses and children, and Winterhalter to paint her portrait. He has written over 120 works for the Queen and her family!
How did he earn such popularity among members of the royal family? And why are so many of Winterhalter's works exhibited in museums around the world, with very few preserved by the descendants of the ancestors of the royal family? The answer is: Winterhalter created the images that his models wanted to see.
He was not only skillful in creating the perfect composition with his models, but was also a virtuoso in the art of transferring textures of fabrics, fur and jewelry, to which he paid no less attention than his face. Winterhalter painted very quickly, often and very fluently, creating most of his compositions directly on canvas without preliminary sketches. His portraits are graceful, exquisite, realistic and highly idealized. This is why he was popular with the royals - they were often not very pretty or even lovely. And Winterhalter could paint them in such a way that they became magnificently beautiful and adorable!
Winterhalter created stories to tell the story of the heroes, often showing the models' merits, achievements or interests through props (and this is another reason why the artist was popular and in demand). This is probably why his paintings hang in museums, and not in private mansions. The royal representatives were not even very opposed to their portraits (in which they are depicted as they wanted to be, and not as they really were) beheld by the maximum number of people.
Portrait of a beautiful lady
One of Winterhalter's finest works was Portrait of Barbara Rimskaya-Korsakova (1864). A proud young lady, an incredibly charming person, wrapped in a translucent cape, looks at the crowds of curious visitors from the Orsay Museum in Paris. This is a portrait of the Russian aristocrat Varvara Dmitrievna Rimskaya-Korsakova (nee Mergassova). Franz Winterhalter wrote the damsel twice. The second portrait is in the Penza Regional Picture Gallery named after K. A. Savitsky.
Let's pay attention to the absence of unnecessary decorations and decorations in the first portrait. Varvara Dmitrievna rightly believed that jewelry and ornaments were useless for her natural beauty. In the portrait of Rimskaya-Korsakova, she is not just beautiful, she is dazzlingly beautiful. Korsakova herself dearly loved this portrait, which adorned the cover of her diary. The epigraph of her book is very curious: "The hardships and sorrows showed me God, and happiness made me know Him." And one can only guess what is the meaning of this secret message.
Varvara Rimskaya-Korsakova
Varvara Dmitrievna came from a wealthy and noble family. At the age of 16, she became the wife of a Russian aristocrat - Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov, in whose family there were many military leaders, politicians and statesmen. The wedding of Nikolai and Varvara took place on May 20, 1850. The firstborn of the newlyweds, according to the existing documents, was born three months after the wedding, in August of the same year. Nikolai was then 20 years old, and Varvara was 16. In 1853, the couple had a second child - a son Nikolai, two years later - Dmitry. Interestingly, at the request of Leo Tolstoy, Barbara and Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov, under the name of Korsunsky, were included in the famous novel "Anna Karenina". In marriage, Varvara Dmitrievna bloomed with a delicate flower, enjoying her beauty. She sewed herself spectacular outfits - velvet, silk, jewelry. Even the presence of three children did not change her appearance, but, on the contrary, added charm to her. Lev Tolstoy describes his characters in the novel as follows: “Who are we not familiar with? My wife and I are like white wolves, everyone knows us,”Yegorushka Korsunsky said to Anna Karenina, inviting her to a waltz. Tolstoy describes him not without irony - "the best cavalier, the main cavalier in the ball hierarchy, the famous conductor of balls, master of ceremonies, a married, handsome and stately man." And he adds: "There was an impossibly naked beauty Lidi, the wife of Korsunsky …". And this description is painfully true and even prophetic. The marriage of Nikolai and Varvara did not last long. After the divorce, Rimskaya-Korsakova moved to Paris, where she quickly settled down as a socialite and where they began to call her "Venus from Tartarus."
Great scandal
Possessing luxurious natural beauty, Varvara Dmitrievna did not hesitate to actively demonstrate it, which once led to a loud scandal. Varvara Dmitrievna was invited to a winter ball in Paris in 1863, where she decided to come in a provocative outfit. She wore a dress made of only chiffon fabric. It was a very transparent outfit in the style of the priestess of Tanit (the heroine of the novel Salammbo by Gustave Flaubert, which was extremely popular in 1862).
Naturally, the magnificent harmonious silhouette of Rimskaya-Korsakova was frank, the guests were shocked. Empress Eugene (who, by the way, had the fame of a trendsetter) was so outraged by the outfit of Varvara Dmitrievna that she ordered her to be taken out of the hall. The scandal was huge. The nudity of the aristocrat literally ridiculed the sophisticated fashion and pretentious manners of that time, which Empress Eugenia herself claimed with her luxurious outfits.
Subsequently, Rimskaya-Korsakova spoke about what happened: “I am free and independent. My mistakes are my mistakes. My success is my success. I believe in myself. I do everything myself and never make a tragedy out of it. Whatever the background of writing the portrait and the biography of the heroine, we agree with the life credo of Rimskaya-Korsakova or not, but many will agree that this portrait by Winterhalter with skillfully used elements of Chiaroscuro (light and shadow technique) is magnificent and excellent!
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