Picture: The Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts
A legendary Leiden collection of paintings will be brought to Russia, TASS informs. Works by famous Dutch painters will be displayed in Moscow and St. Petersburg starting March 28. Exposition titled the Epoch of Rembrandt and Vermeer. Masterpieces of the Leiden Collection will be opened in the Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts. According to organizers, despite all exhibitions look similar, they are all interpreted in different contexts by the largest national museums.
Among the exhibited items are 80 fine arts objects, never seen in Russia before. According to organizers, the list of masterpieces contains 12 paintings by Rembrandt Harmensz van Rijn and by Vermeer van Delft, sketches of Rembrandt and Leonardo da Vinci.
They make a part of the Leiden collection owned by a US multi-millionaire Thomas Kaplan and his wife. It is the largest private collection of the Dutch painters’ masterpieces dating back 17th century.
According to the Hermitage Director, Mikhail Piotrovskiy, cooperation with private collectors have become regular practice for national museums not a long time ago. Earlier even a thought of it seemed impossible.
The Head of the Pushkin Museum Marina Loshak has added that no sanctions could prevent the exhibition. Piotrovskiy has commented that nevertheless the inter-museum collaboration between Russia and USA has weakened.
The Leiden collection was called in honor of the native city of Rembrandt. The central place in this collection of paintings is occupied by works of the Leiden artists. The collection was displayed in the Louvre for the first time in 2017 and set on a road tour afterwards.
Russkiy Mir
