Italy's President Carlo Azelio Ciampi visited the show this morning, before its opening ceremony. Accompanying him was a Russian delegation led by Sergei Yastrzhembsky, presidential envoy for Russian contacts with the European Union.
"From Giotto to Malevich: The Harmony of Beauty," runs the exposition motto. It exhibits approximately two hundred precious canvases from top-notch Russian and Italian museums-suffice it to mention the Hermitage Museum, the Tretyakov Gallery the Pushkin Fine Arts Museum, and the best art collections of Rome, Florence and Venice.
"This exposition defies imagination for its unprecedented artistic level. It truly deserves the patronage of our two countries' Presidents," said Alexander Sokolov, Russia's Minister of Culture and Mass Communications, as he was introducing the show to the Italian public.
"An idea of dialogue underlies the exposition, which is structurally arranged in synchronous cross-sections," Mr. Sokolov said in a Novosti interview. "The endeavours of the many painters, made in different countries and different eras, call to one another in an arresting dialogue that strikes a spark-a new look at the very heart of creativity. It impresses not only the pensive viewer well versed in the arts but any onlooker from the public-at-large, overawed by the excellence of the masterpieces on display."
The exposition means to demonstrate a many-century retrospect of links between two magnificent European cultures. In their independent development, they were always open to contact, and their exchanges generously enriched either.
Mediaeval icons from the brush of Andrei Rublev and Dionysius are exhibited side by side with 19th century secular endeavours of Bryullov, Kiprensky, Repin and Levitan. Next to those peaks of the Russian artistic endeavour are displayed Italian Renaissance masters and glorious 20th century painters-Malevich, Chagall, Kandinsky, Modigliani and Chirico.
A unique compendium of priceless canvases, the exposition has been insured at 750 million Euro, an exorbitant sum that truly reflects its value.
To stay in Rome up to January next, the exposition will move to Moscow, to re-open at the Pushkin Fine Arts Museum, February 7.
"The site was not chosen at random," Irina Antonova, museum director, pointed out to Novosti. "Our museum is among those who lead international art exposition partnership. We arranged the unprecedented Moscow-Paris and Moscow-Berlin shows. Their idea belonged to the Pushkin Museum staff, and we are always willing to host similar endeavours."
The Moscow exposition version will be slightly adapted to please the Russian tastes, she added.
