The history of a picture

Every artistic masterpiece is a world with a history and a life of its own, its own inner essence, which cannot always be comprehended at first glance – far from it. Every artist puts a small part of his soul into his creation; it is the fruit of thought, of a search for ideas and for the means to realise them, of his emotional state. In order to understand what it is that the artist wanted to say, one must enter into a personal dialogue with the picture; one must attempt to discern – behind and beyond the picture’s subject, its composition and its colours – the message left by the master for us who come after him.

What can help the visitor to a museum to get to know a work of art more closely? Obviously, the visitor needs additional information, in accessible language, about how the artist’s conception of the work arose and by what means it was realised.

Every picture in an exhibition is provided with a label bearing its title; this, already, is the start of a dialogue and a clue to understanding. But, sadly, today’s museum visitor is often unacquainted with the historical, artistic and literary sources on which the artist based his work, with the circumstances of the artist’s life which led to its creation, and with canons of artistic composition. Thus a brief view of the picture’s label will be insufficient. Sometimes, in addition to the label, museums will provide the visitor with textual annotation – a short account of the work’s history, subject and sources; or – still better – it may be possible to make use of an “audio guide” with a recorded voice, giving the visitor a more detailed commentary. This is a useful aid; the visitor’s task is to attend to the information and to correlate it with what he sees before him.

Multi-media programmes are a way of providing the visitor with much broader and more varied additional information: they can employ illustrations, supporting text, audio accompaniment, and various animated effects. Such an arsenal allows the history, subject and composition of a picture to be presented much more fully, and, moreover, in a manner much more accessible, popular and comprehensible to the ordinary visitor. It might include, for example, a multi-media film with elements of animation, or an interactive programme which allows the viewer to receive information as he chooses, in various different forms. Of course the production of a multi-media museum should be based on serious scholarly investigation of historical sources, detailed analysis of works, and careful choosing of archival materials. Those involved in constructing the programme have the task of visualising the materials in the most expressive manner possible, adapting expert knowledge to a more popular level, and presenting the programme in a way that will be in harmony with the work itself; the task of constructing an interesting programme which will make full use of contemporary means of expression.

Below we present examples of programmes telling about some of the greatest artistic masterpieces. These programmes originally accompanied temporary exhibitions at the Hermitage. Unfortunately, after the exhibitions closed, they became inaccessible to visitors; nevertheless, they were excellent examples of work by the museum’s specialists, and we hereby invite you to acquaint yourself with them.