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Where there is no law, but every man does what is right in his own eyes, there is the least of real liberty
Henry M. Robert

MYSTERIOUS CANVASES

6 October, 1998 - 00:00

Few know that before World War II the art gallery of the Pedagogical
Institute in Nizhyn, a town not far from Kyiv, matched the Western European
collections in the art museums of capital, Odesa, and Lviv. Its pride were
the 175 canvases collected by Count O. H. Kusheliov-Bezborodko and presented
to Nizhyn's Lyceum in commemoration of its 25th anniversary (the nobleman
was its trustee).

Years passed and new canvases were added to the collection. Scholars
did not pay much attention before or after the Russian Revolution. A mistake,
because there were several pictures dating from the Renaissance, painted
on boards by Italian masters of the Pisan, Bolognese, Venetian, and Roman
schools. Fragmentary information has it that among the authors were Pisanello,
Giovanni Bellini, and Vittorio Carpaccio whose works are proudly on permanent
exhibition in the Louvre and Hermitage. The collection included such giants
of the painting as Anton Raphael Mengs, Annibale Carracci, Giovanni Battista
Tiepolo, and even Pieter Bruegel the Elder. The latter's works surviving
the ravages of time (about 30 in all) are considered gems on display at
the world's most reputed museums (one hangs in the Louvre in Paris and
another in New York's Metropolitan), but there are none in the Hermitage
in St. Petersburg and legend has it that this museum was at one time (before
the Soviets, to be sure) prepared to ship off three Rembrandts to Vienna
in exchange for one Bruegel, as the museum had a dozen Rembrandts. And
to think that all the while there remained a genuine Bruegel on remote
provincial display!

Nizhyn's excellent collection was not destined to see an inheritor.
It was not even properly catalogued. Nothing can be done about this now;
50 of its best canvases vanished into thin air during the war, among them
Rubens's Mother, Carracci's Narcissus by the Spring, and Tiepolo's Hercules
and Omphala.

Were they looted by the Nazis? The Ministry of Culture's restitution
lists make no mention of these canvases and the same is true of the lists
of surviving cultural valuables appropriated by the Nazis in the USSR,
published recently in Germany. Meanwhile, local history experts in Nizhyn
claim that the most precious items on display were hidden in the city,
although no one knows where or what has become of them, simply because
those who could have shed some light on this mystery are all dead. In other
words, it is quite possible that some of the priceless masterpieces belonging
to the Ukrainian nation are now in private Ukrainian, Russian, or maybe
American collections.

Now and then canvases by good, although little-known, nineteenth century
Western artists appear at Kyiv auctions and the sellers remain incognito.
Why? Simply because they are afraid they might lose a couple thousands?
This is peanuts compared to prices on the world market. Moreover, Ukrainian
patrons do not like anonymity, especially when dealing with foreign works.
And nor is it likely that such anonymous sellers part with their last family
treasures to feed their starving families. No one knows how many works
of art salvaged, confiscated, or simply stolen during the war are still
kept by the descendants of all those military or NKVD "victors over fascism."

Restitution is a notion dreaded by almost every art collector, in Ukraine
and elsewhere in the world, hence such a small number of such identified
collectors: Dychenko, Syhalov, Ivakin, Hnatiuk, and several others. The
rest prefer to enjoy their treasures away from the public eye. And the
reason for this "underground status" is not so much the fear of being robbed
as the pictures' dubious background.

Consider this generally known fact. Canvases by such leading Russian
painters as Levitan, Korovin, and Vrubel have more then once appeared at
Ukrainian auctions. A well-known Ukrainian collector told me, strictly
off the record, of course, that there are totally unknown pictures by Serov,
Borisov-Musatov, Malevich, and Vrubel kept in private collections in Kyiv.
Back in the 1950s, a Soviet officer's family in Smila, a town in Cherkasy
oblast, had a Gustave Courbet in its sitting room (my mother was friends
with that officer's daughter and often saw the canvas). In Cherkasy, an
absolutely ignorant "art dealer" showed me a Gustav Klimt. A year later
I learned that he had sold it for $2,000 (at Sotheby's each Klimt would
start with a six-digit figure). In the early 1900s, a teenager offered
me a late fifteenth century icon of the Rostov-Suzdal school for 500 rubles.
I tried to talk him into going to a museum but he would not listen.

And the situation with the national museums leaves many open questions.
Habitually, we adore Velasquez's Infanta in Kyiv and Ribeiro's Saint in
Lutsk, and seem to ignore the Madonna del Impammanta in Cherkasy. Painted
on a large board, it is believed to be a copy of Raphael's well-known canvas,
made by Rubens's school. Its identification is old and questionable, because
copies were more often than not smaller than the original and never made
on boards, only on canvas. In view of this, the picture was on more than
one occasion slated for transportation to Leningrad for expert examination.
For some reason or other this was not done and now it cannot be for want
of funds. Some believe that there is Raphael's self-portrait in Cherkasy.
There is still time to make sure, or is there?

In lieu of an epilogue: I happened to overhear a conversation at the
Mystetstvo art store in Kyiv. A young man, apparently an antique dealer,
asked a salesgirl if they had received something new in the antiquities
section. He was sending a panel truck loaded with antiquities abroad, but
there was still room, and the next one would be leaving in a week.

 

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