On 24 April 2024, the Youth Centre in the General Staff building was the setting for a round table devoted to the exhibition “New Secrets of Leonardo’s Paintings”.
That exhibition-discussion in the Picket Hall acquaints visitors with the latest discoveries made in the study of the creative legacy of one of the greatest artists in the history of the world and raises fresh questions in Leonardo studies.
The round table was opened by Sergei Olegovich Androsov, chief researcher in the Department of Western European Fine Art and one of the authors of the exhibition concept: “This exhibition is risky, but the risk is justified. It presents works of a very high quality and we do have grounds for associating them with Leonardo’s name.”
Speaking of The Virgin of the Rocks from the collection of the Museum of Christian Culture, Sergei Androsov stated that the painting had aroused hardly any interest among researchers right up until its restoration in Saint Petersburg. Yet as far back as the 1980s, documents were found that confirmed that Leonardo and some pupils spent four months making a copy of the first version of The Virgin of the Rocks, which is now in the Louvre. According to the scholarly consultant to the exhibition, Italian art historian Luca Tomio, for the work in Saint Petersburg Leonardo painted the right-hand group (the Archangel Gabriel and Christ-Child), while the Virgin Mary and John the Baptist were the work of pupils, Sergei Androsov stressed.
Nikolai Vladimirovich Malinovsky, an artist-restorer in the Laboratory for the Scientific Restoration of Tempera Painting, used infrared reflectography images to illustrate his account of what is concealed by later layers on the painting The Battle of Anghiari from the collection of the Museum of Christian Culture. We know, for example, that the panel was initially intended for a portrait of a man in an armchair. However, for some reason the portrait was not completed – the artist covered it over with yellow paint, on top of which he made a pencil sketch of the battle scene.
“The hatching goes outside of the horse. This is not just the manner of someone left-handed. It is the manner of the left-handed Leonardo,” Nikolai Malinovsky noted. In the artist-restorer’s words. The composition was painted up by Da Vinci’s pupils, who sometimes sought to make it more “picturesque”. That resulted in certain inaccuracies that Leonardo could not have committed – for example, the unnatural, unstable position of the hoof of the horse ridden by Piero Orsini, the commander for the League of Italian States.
Mikhail Alexandrovich Anikin, a senior researcher in the Department of Western European Fine Art, shared the results of his own study of the legacy of Leonardo, whom he calls one of the most prominent artist-theologians. In particular, Mikhail Anikin has put forward the idea that the famous Mona Lisa is an allegory of the Christian Church. He is convinced that “Leonardo is 15–20% understood and that iceberg still remains to be uncovered.”
Yevgeny Ivanovich Silivontes, the Museum of Christian Culture’s VR and multimedia technology consultant spoke about how the program Metahuman was used to produce a 3D animation of Leonardo that exhibition visitors can see on the walls of the Picket Hall.
Also participating in the round table were Yelena Vladimirovna Maklakova, scholarly consultant of the Museum of Christian Culture, and Kamilla Burkhanovna Kalinina, leading researcher in the State Hermitage’s Laboratory for the Restoration of Oil Paintings.
The Battle of Anghiari and The Virgin of the Rocks, as well as the Angel that came into the Hermitage collection as a work by Leonardo, but suffered badly from its transfer to canvas and is now considered to be the work of followers, can be viewed until 19 May by all holders of tickets to the Main Museum Complex.
