Society and Culture: "Antoine Peng. Portrait of Peter the Great from "Pavlovsk" State National Park and Museum" exhibition in Hermitage

The "Antoine Peng. Portrait of Peter the Great from the "Pavlovsk" State National Park and Museum" exhibition opened in the Apollo Hall of the State Hermitage Museum (St. Petersburg). To the end of its restoration." The exhibition marks the 71st anniversary of the liberation of the Nazi occupation of Pavlovsk.

During the reign of Paul I, the portrait was placed in the small room of the palace, where it was about 140 years before the beginning of the Great Patriotic War. The painting has not been evacuated and was discovered only when Pavlovsk got relieved in 1944 with the serious damages: the canvas cut off the frame and through in several places, the paint layer was crumbled. In the 60-ies years of last century the portrait of Peter I was returned to historical place after restoration to its presentation appearance, performed by the restorers of Pavlovsk Palace Museum in a short time. Half a century later the state of art-piece was found in a state of emergency, and in late 2011 the portrait was sent to the Laboratory for Scientific Restoration of Easel Painting of the State Hermitage Museum.

Restoration work consisted of three phases: conservation, the disclosure of the original painting from old multilayer layers from the different periods and an artistic restoration, implying a replenishing of the losses.

Stages of the complex restoration and physic-chemical studies, conducted in a scientific laboratory of the State Hermitage Museum, showed that today Pavlovsk Palace Museum has a completely unique lifetime portrait of Peter I, the work of famous European master of the first half of the XVIII century Antoine Peng.