Do you know how many masterpieces of world art are kept in storehouses that are almost forever hidden for art lovers. For example, the Tretyakov Gallery in Moscow flaunts no more than 10 percent of the total number of paintings, and the Guggenheim Museum in the United States is even less - 2-3 percent. And this despite the fact that the storerooms do not contain some secondary paintings - masterpieces!
Suffice it to say that the New York Museum of Modern Art displays no more than 24 paintings by Pablo Picasso for visitors to see, while it has 1,221 works by this famous artist.
Painting by Joseph Wright * Colosseum in the moonlight *, which is also in the storerooms.
What are the reasons for this strange behavior in almost all museums in the world? Let's get to know them, so as not to accuse art galleries of any secret intentions. These are these objective reasons:
- no museum in the world has such areas that would allow them to exhibit all of their canvases, even most of the collection. Of course, some steps are being taken, for example, the Hermitage is happy with "open storage", but on the whole this still does not solve the problem: it is simply impossible to grasp the immensity;
- there are purely technical reasons for this: any paintings should "rest" after a long exposure, especially graphics;
- some of the masterpieces of world masters of painting are classified as “unproven authenticity”. Thus, Van Gogh's painting "The Man in the Red Beret" (Gauguin's portrait, see the photo below) was gathering dust in the storerooms of a museum in Amsterdam for almost 30 years, until in 2002 modern means of examination confirmed the authorship of the Dutch master. Even Raphael's famous sketch for "The Holy Family" (see main photo) was considered a copy for a long time, until the authorship of the Renaissance genius was established, again thanks to modern technology. And three paintings by William Turner were recognized as fakes three times, until in 2012 their authenticity was finally proven.
In conclusion of this small note, let us say: the museums of the world keep hundreds of millions of paintings, while within the walls of these temples of art there are thousands of all kinds of mysteries, but in their storehouses there are even more - tens of thousands. The most interesting thing is that some people do not even like the masterpieces of the great masters of the brush, but the secrets that surround the paintings. Well, there is something in this: it is not for nothing that collectors sometimes pay big money not for the painting itself, but for its mysterious history …
Daniil Myslinsky