The Hermitage reported on a sensational discovery in the wall of the Clerical Staircase of the Winter Palace immediately upon its discovery. We promised the readers to give a detailed report on the circumstances of this amazing discovery.

On Monday, 26 April 2010, works of installing an electric board were carried out on the second floor on the landing of the Clerical Staircase. The wall’s brickwork was opened. After having removed the first two bricks electricians Mikhail Smirnov and Alexey Kukurudza suddenly saw an arm. The beam of the light revealed an outline of a statue. Upon entering the opening, they found a sculpture group made of bronze-tinted plaster that represented a man and a boy. When and who immured the sculpture into the wall? Answers to these questions were found straight away. Nearby they found an old calendar and a note:

A sculpture group left at the W. P. by the Revolution Museum and immured into a door opening filled with brickwork from two sides in the Western gallery of the W. Palace, February 1947.

On the calendar’s overleaf workers put their signatures and the date, 22 February 1947.

In 1888 Vladimir Beklemishev (1861 – 1920), a graduate of the Imperial Art Academy, was entitled to go on a mission trip abroad. While staying in Italy he created a few sculptures. Among them are Christian Woman of First Centuries (1891, marble), How Nice and Fresh the Roses Were (1892, marble, bronze) and Fugitive Slave (1891, tinted plaster). Upon his return to homeland in 1892, Beklemishev displayed Italian works at an exhibition at the Art Academy and was subsequently awarded a title of an academician for them. It was a beginning of a productive creative biography of the sculptor who had a significant impact on the history of Russian art and was a mentor of a series of talented artists, including S. Konenkov and A. Golubkina. Beklemishev, a remarkable representative of the Russian academic school of late 19th century whom S. Konenkov called “an embodiment of the old Academy”, was acknowledged at his period and remembered in the 20th century. Beklemishev’s works are stored in the Russian Museum, the Tretiakov Gallery, the State Hermitage and other Russian museums.

2011 will mark the 150th anniversary since the birth of Vladimir Beklemishev. In connection with the sculptor’s anniversary the Russian Museum will host a personal exhibition of the artist. Natalia Logdacheva, an associate of the Russian Museum, is researching his mission work Fugitive Slave.

The history of this work by Beklemishev was clearly traced until 1920s. In 1893 the Fugitive Slave group represented Russian art at the International Columbus Exhibition in Chicago, USA, associated with the 400th anniversary of America’s discovery by Columbus. It is known that the sculpture remained the property of the author for a long time and in 1918 he donated his work to the Art Academy. In 1920s the sculpture was in the Revolution Museum which was then housed in the Winter Palace.

In the catalogue Sculpture and paintings of sculptors of late 19th – early 20th centuries issued by the Tretiakov Gallery in 1977 this group is listed as lost. Despite this fact, Natalia Logdacheva actively continued her research and addressed Lina Tarasova, a guardian of the Department of the history of Russian culture of the State Hermitage. Therefore, when Lina Tarasova saw the sculpture found in the wall she immediately realized what this discovery was about.

It is amazing that this creation, believed to be lost for many years, was miraculously discovered on the threshold of the sculptor’s anniversary. It is still unclear why the Fugitive Slave was immured into the wall of the Winter Palace. The answer to this question is yet to be found.

We will continue to follow up on the further destiny of newly discovered work by Vladimir Beklemished, Professor of the Art Academy.