Education and Art in Soviet Russia/Document 22

DOCUMENT No. 22

Paintings at the Former Kremlin

The Collegium in charge of museums and preservation of art objects and relics of the past attached to the People's Commissariat of People's Education has entrusted to a special committee the examination of the picture gallery at the former Kremlin which heretofore has been hardly accessible.

The picture arrangements on the Gallery's walls does not meet the most elementary museum requirements. Without any system the paintings have been permanently set into the walls and are separated from each other by only a narrow framework, which arrangement makes an intelligent examination of the Gallery impossible. Besides, many pictures, owing to differences in atmospheric conditions, have suffered considerably: they have shown cracks and in many places paints have deteriorated—all this threatening to ruin the pictures. The system of cataloguing the artists was arbitrary; for instance, paintings of the Netherlands school were ascribed to Italian masters; first-class works were left unclassified, while second-rate things were ascribed to first-class masters.

The Collegium has decided to remove from the Palace's Gallery paintings interesting from the point of view of scientific examination, and transfer them to the gallery of the Rumiantzev Museum where the paintings, after restoration and investigation, might be exhibited for popular examination.

Special mention is made of a few pictures of the Rembrandt School, two Netherlands primitives, one Florentine portrait of the 16th century, a sketch by Rubens, and finally a number of paintings by Italian masters of the 17th century.