Tuesday Morning Art Story – Lenin and the Tsar!

For today’s art story we have a tale from Russia! Long live the Tsar and such!

Portrait of Czar Nicholas II Discovered Beneath Portrait of Lenin

On the eve of the centennial of the 1917 October Revolution, restoration experts at the Stieglitz Art and Industry Academy in St. Petersburg have uncovered a “double portrait” reflecting Russia’s diametrical history under both Imperialism and Communism: A full-size portrait of Vladimir Lenin from 1924 painted on the back side of a 1896 Imperial portrait of Czar Nicholas II. The portraits will be displayed, on opposite sides of the same canvas, beginning Nov. 29 on a stand in the Stieglitz academy’s entrance hall.

The portrait of Nicholas II was found after the headmasters at Primary School No. 206 in St. Petersburg asked the academy in 2013 to restore their 9-by-6-foot canvas of Lenin, painted by the Soviet artist Vladislav Izmailovich, which had been ripped at the bottom. (The landmark building, Primary School No. 206, was formerly under the patronage of the Imperial family, and the school’s grand hall displayed portraits of Czar Paul I and Czar Peter I until they were destroyed by the Soviets.)

The Lenin portrait was painted during an “absolutely unique moment in history,” said Alexander Konstantinovich Zlobin, the director of the department of painting and art restoration at Stieglitz academy.

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History may not look favorably on either Lenin or the Tsar Nicholas… but that doesn’t mean their portraits should be allowed to be destroyed does it… it’s nice to know somebody somewhere understood that.