The Vladimir Levinson-Lessing Mmemorial readings

Comunicato Stampa disponibile solo in lingua originale. 

“The Renaissance Era in Northern Europe. Issues, Contacts, Influences”

Published on 2 of November 2021

On 27 and 28 October 2021, the State Hermitage held the latest Readings dedicated to the memory of #vladimirfrantsevich Levinson-Lessing (1893–1972), an outstanding specialist on Western European art and one of the foremost figures in the history of the museum.

This traditional Hermitage conference takes place annually and is chiefly devoted to the attribution of works in the Hermitage collection, their biographies and acquisition by the museum.

Opening the conference, #mikhailborisovichpiotrovsky said that it had been a long time since the subject matter of the Readings had been so closely connected with Vladimir Frantsevich’s activities and personality as it was this year.

Irina Alexeyevna Sokolova, chief researcher in the Department of Western European Fine Art, presented materials from the private archive of Levinson-Lessing’s heirs that have recently been passed over to the Hermitage. The museum’s archives were enriched by over three dozen documents and family photographs. Some of these were on display in the Foyer of the Hermitage Theatre while the conference was running.

The presentation by Sergei Olegovich Androsov, head of the Department of Western European Fine Art, was devoted to Levinson-Lessing’s manuscript about the history of the Hermitage after the revolution. #vladimirfrantsevich is known above all for his writings on the history of the picture gallery in the Imperial Hermitage, and so a composition that contains information about the post-revolutionary life of the museum is a rarity of sorts.

Another important topic for the conference was the proposed new attribution of the Madonna and Child Enthroned, a painting that came from the studio of Verrocchio, one of Florence’s most famous and respected art studios in the 1470s. As the Italian researcher Tomio Luca suggested, the young Leonardo da Vinci may have participated in the creation of the work. Three different papers presented an all-round analysis of the painting: the story of how it came into the Hermitage and has been displayed in the museum, a critique from an art historian’s viewpoint and a technical and technological examination carried out by the Hermitage’s Department for Scientific Restoration and Conservation.

In recent years, the papers presented at the Levinson-Lessing Readings have been grouped around some central theme usually connected with one or other of the major exhibitions that his former department is preparing.

This year the main theme of the conference was the Renaissance era in the countries of Northern Europe. It is connected with the exhibition “Albrecht Dürer. Marking the 550th Anniversary of the Artist’s Birth” due to open in the Hermitage on 7 December this year. Around a dozen of the presentations made introduced new works into scholarly circulation and put forward new attributions for Hermitage exhibits.