Mikhail Vrubel1856–1910Бегство в Египет
Can I see it?
Unknown
Where is “Бегство в Египет” now? Collection: Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow. Unknown.
Moscow, Russia
The owner is known; whether it is on view today is not.
- In this state since
- Source
- The museum
About the work
Museum text in Russian
«Бегство в Египет» – канонический религиозный сюжет, имеющий древнюю историю и сложившуюся иконографию. Рисунок Врубеля выглядит вполне в русле устоявшейся традиции. На переднем плане влево движется процессия – Богоматерь на ослике, нежно прижимающая к себе спеленутого младенца Христа, следом, пешком – бородатый старик Иосиф. Ночь, на небе огромная луна, путеводная Вифлеемская звезда освещает путь. На заднем плане видна египетская пирамида, позади – оставленный за спиной портик иерусалимского храма. Однако художественный язык рисунка – предельно упрощенный, обобщенный и лаконичный – для искусства рубежа веков совершенно невероятен. Это рисунок художника ХХ столетия, имеющего в творческом багаже опыт самых разнообразных «измов». Повергнутый в пучину безумия художник обрел небывалую свободу самовыражения.
Read on
Доктор Поморцов целенаправленно собирал и пропагандировал сделанные в больнице рисунки Врубеля. Показанная в 1911 году на выставке «Московский салон» часть его коллекции произвела огромное впечатление. Художественное значение этих не имеющих аналогов произведений было высоко оценено современниками – мастерами зарождающегося русского авангарда.
Tretyakov Gallery
Details
- Accession number
- 9890
In the catalog
Sources
- Tretyakov Gallery
- Image: Tretyakov Gallery — © State Tretyakov Gallery
In the life of Mikhail Vrubel
The whole lifesummer 1900
A gold medal at the Paris World’s Fair
In midsummer the Vrubels learned that he had won a gold medal at the Exposition Universelle for the fireplace “Volga Svyatoslavich and Mikula Selyaninovich”; his ceramics and majolica were shown in the Handicrafts Pavilion. Serov won the Grand Prix that year, and Korovin and Malyavin gold medals.
1 September 1901
Birth of his son Savva
Nadezhda Zabela-Vrubel gave birth to a son, Savva — a sturdy baby with a cleft lip; for his sake she left the stage for a time, and the family’s keep fell entirely on Vrubel. In the thick of his work on the “Demon” the artist painted a large watercolour portrait of his six-month-old son in a pram.
1902
Bekhterev’s diagnosis
In St Petersburg Vrubel went on repainting the “Demon” without pause, ruining it in his friends’ view, and his family took him to the psychiatrist Vladimir Bekhterev, who diagnosed “incurable progressive paralysis” — tertiary syphilis; the artist himself was told nothing. In Moscow, although the collector Vladimir von Meck bought the painting for 3,000 roubles, he grew worse still: he drank and squandered money, and his wife and son tried to take refuge from him with relatives in Ryazan.
2 February 1902
“The Demon Downcast” fails in Moscow
The painting went on show in Moscow a day before the “Group of 36” exhibition closed; Vrubel hoped it would be bought for the Tretyakov Gallery. The failure coincided with news of the suicide of Alexander Rizzoni after unfair criticism in the journal Mir iskusstva.
April 1902
First hospitalisation
In early April, with symptoms of acute mental disorder, Vrubel was admitted to F. A. Savey-Mogilevich’s private clinic; until August his condition was so grave that even his wife and sister were not allowed to see him. In September he was moved to Vladimir Serbsky’s clinic at Moscow University, and Serbsky confirmed the diagnosis, establishing that the infection dated back to 1892.
3 May 1903
Death of his son Savva
Vrubel had been discharged from the clinic in February, and von Meck invited the family to spend the summer on his estate in Kiev province, but on the eve of departure two-year-old Savva fell ill, and in Kiev the child died. Vrubel at once shook off his apathy, busied himself with the funeral and supported his wife, who would not say a word; their son was buried on Baikove Hill.
