World culture: “Pieter Brueghel the Younger. ‘The Sermon of John the Baptist.’ Conservation Completed” exhibition to open in St. Petersburg

On 20 March 2019, the exhibition “Pieter Brueghel the Younger. The Sermon of St John the Baptist. Conservation Completed” begins its run in the Menshikov Palace (St. Petersburg, the State Hermitage Museum). The exhibition celebrates the completion of the restoration of this painting that has not been displayed for many years and is timed to mark the tenth anniversary of the death of Nikolai Nikolayevich Nikulin, the long-time Keeper of Netherlandish and German painting in the State Hermitage.

In 1566 the founder of the Brueghel dynasty – Pieter Brueghel the Elder – painted a picture of The Preaching of John the Baptist. A number of scholars have suggested that in depicting a sermon being given secretly in a wood he was reminding his viewers of the Protestant movement that was very active in the Low Countries in the middle of the 16th century. Later, many Netherlandish artists repeated this subject with varying degrees of fidelity to his work.

The Hermitage version was produced by the original artist’s son and is dated 1604. This work differs somewhat from the original. It seems to have been painted from the father’s cartoon drawing that remained in his studio, since the finished picture was already in the possession of those who commissioned it. This may account for the dissimilarity in the colour scheme – many of the details have been coloured differently, although they remain in exactly the same position in the picture. While seeking to imitate his father’s work as closely as possible, Brueghel the Younger was nevertheless freer in his depiction of the faces, painting them in his own distinctive manner.

The exhibition marks the end of the painting’s restoration –always a very serious process preceded by thorough scientific and technical examination. The restoration project now completed has revealed several features that will be of interest to the viewer. 

The State Hermitage has a long-running programme for the systematic restoration of paintings belonging to the Netherlandish school. Restored works by Rogier van der Weyden, Hugo van der Goes and a follower of Hieronymus Bosch have already been presented to the public. To a large degree this has been possible thanks to the enthusiasm of Valery Yuryevich Brovkin, an artist-restorer in the State Hermitage’s Laboratory for the Scientific Restoration of Easel Paintings.

The opening of the exhibition has been timed to mark the 10th anniversary of the death of Nikolai Nikolayevich Nikulin, who was for many years the Keeper of Netherlandish and German painting in the Hermitage. He was a pupil and colleague of outstanding art scholars – Nikolai Punin, Vladimir Levinson-Lessing, Mikhail Dobroklonsky and others – and himself nurtured more than one generation of Hermitage researchers, serving for many years as head of the Department of Foreign Art at the Repin Institute of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture.