Tagil Madonna: Is it true that the Urals have their own masterpiece by Raphael?
How an alleged original artwork by the Renaissance artist was found in the attic of Nizhny Tagil industrialists.
The Nizhny Tagil Museum of Fine Arts has a curious exhibit – a painting signed ‘The Holy Family’, which is attributed ‘allegedly by Raphael’.
This composition is called ‘Madonna with a Veil’, or ‘Madonna of Loreto’, and it was found in 1924 in the attic of the house of a wealthy industrialist named Anatoly Demidov in Nizhny Tagil.
On the dusty panel was the inscription: “RAPHAEL. URBINAS. PINGEBAT. MDIX” (‘Raphael of Urbino. Painted in 1509’).
Anatoly Demidov had close ties with Italy, was Prince of San Donato, was married to a niece of Napoleon and possessed immense wealth. Therefore, there was every reason to suppose that this might be an original.
In Soviet times, the painting was studied by famous restorer and artist Igor Grabar. He concluded that it was, indeed, a work by Raphael, allegedly painted for the church of Santa Maria del Popolo in Rome. However, he noted that there are dozens of similar paintings and copies of it.
The painting was restored and put on display at the State Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts in Moscow. However, in the 1970s, another identical Madonna was presented to the public in the Condé Museum in France, with the claim that it was the original that had been hidden for safekeeping for many years. And what was shown to the public, according to the owners, were numerous copies made during Raphael's lifetime.
Having learned of this, Soviet art historians withdrew the attribution and returned the ‘Madonna’ to Nizhny Tagil.
“There is almost no doubt that the original is in France,” believes Victoria Markova, a Renaissance specialist at the Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts. At the same time, in her opinion, the ‘Tagil Madonna’ is an old 16th-century copy and, therefore, is of great interest in its own right. “There are several such copies in the world”, notes the expert.
However, art history knows many cases when, with the development of research technologies, experts and art historians change their opinion and the attribution of works of art. So, the ‘Tagil Madonna’ may still have a chance.
