25.02.2005
Romilly Eveleigh, The Moscow Times

As pairings of nations thousands of kilometers apart go, Russia and Italy might not seem like the most obvious match-up when it comes to comparing their respective cultural and artistic legacies. But a new big-budget exhibition currently on display at the Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts, featuring scores of loaned artworks plucked from both countries' top public collections, has set out to do just that.

Titled "Italy – Russia. Russia – Italy. Through the Ages. From Giotto to Malevich" (Italiya – Rossia. Rossia – Italiya. Skvoz Veka. Ot Dzhotto do Malevicha), the exhibition uses some 200 pieces, ranging from gilded Byzantine altarpieces and classical architectural models to avant-garde canvases and sculptures, to illustrate the mutual influences and historical relationship between the two nations from the 14th century to the first decades of the 20th.

When this exhibition was first shown last year at Rome's converted papal stables, the Scuderie del Quirinale, Russian modernism was cited as the main draw. In Moscow, the converse is true – the grandest spaces have been allocated to works from the early Italian period.

And, judging by the meandering lines of pensioners, children and tourists braving the wind and snow outside the Pushkin Museum's gates ever since the exhibition's Feb. 7 opening, the venture's present incarnation appears to have earned a reputation among the Moscow public as this year's must-see blockbuster event.

Indeed, the museum's curators – acting in cooperation with the Italian foreign affairs ministry – have used the opportunity to secure some serious loans. Key works have been gathered from institutions including Florence's Uffizi Gallery, the State Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg and the Gallerie dell'Accademia in Venice. The featured artists include the likes of Michelangelo, Raphael, Titian and Piero della Francesca – a roll call of names well-positioned to attract those visitors with a fondness for art history.

As one walks past the stairway into the first spacious hall, one sees a number of pieces whose prominent placing seems to reflect the curators' pride in obtaining them. For instance, one can find a small panel by the 15th-century Florentine painter Sandro Botticelli, his mysterious, allegory-inspired "Calumny of Apelles"; the rarely seen "Head of a Woman" by Leonardo da Vinci, from the Galleria Nazionale in Parma; and one of two versions of "The Fortune Teller" by the influential 16th-century dramatic realist Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio – his famous scene of a palm reader slipping a ring from the finger of a Neapolitan gentleman.

To give credit to the home-grown contingent, the Italians don't always steal the show quite so single-handedly. A mini-retrospective of key works attributed to the legendary 14th-century icon painter Andrei Rublyov bears this out. Two massive figures of saints garbed in jewels form a diptych that towers above its southern Renaissance contemporaries.

The Symbolist painter Mikhail Vrubel is another figure holding the torch for Russia's achievements. Here he is represented by a lone picture, borrowed from the nearby Tretyakov Gallery. The dark, brooding figure in his "Demon Seated" – inspired by poet Mikhail Lermonotov's 1839 text "The Demon" – helped usher in the new expressionist style at the end of the 19th century.

Some of the claims about mutual influence do occasionally add to the exhibition's content. For example, we learn early on that, in the 1520s, the Naples-born architect Aristotele Fioravanti designed and helped construct the main Assumption Cathedral in the Moscow Kremlin. And, perhaps most convincingly of all, the exhibition's final room sets up a dialogue between the Russian and Italian varieties of the dynamic, experimental movement of Futurism.

Eventually, however, as many commentators have been quick to point out, "From Giotto to Malevich" begins to feel like a thinly veiled pretext for garnering as many reciprocal masterpiece loans as possible. The exhibition makes it seems like Russian artists were largely preoccupied by the traditional trade of icon-making right up until the 1800s – which left little room for following Italian examples. By that time, Italy's schools of painting and architecture had already fractured out into a myriad of individual styles, barely all of which could be squeezed into the exhibition's venue.

This may turn out to be something a disappointment if you are looking for a radical re-evaluation of Russian art anytime soon. But, with travel to overseas collections beyond the reach of the average Muscovite, that won't deter dedicated fans of Italian art. The chance to inspect a Michelangelo or Leonardo is, for many, well worth the wait. Come wind or snow.

"Italy – Russia. Russia – Italy. Through the Ages. From Giotto to Malevich" (Italiya – Rossia. Rossia – Italiya. Skvoz Veka. Ot Dzhotto do Malevicha) runs to May 20 at the Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts, located at 12 Volkhonka. Metro Kropotkinskaya. Tel. 203-7998/ 9578.

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