![]()
![]()
Why did I tell you about the
hole in the painting and that
the museum was upset?
Sometimes there are such mysterious stories that even I get the creeps. Behind one painting there could be another, equally valuable image.
A few years ago a curious thing happened in the assembly hall of school 206 in St Petersburg: during a holiday, an over-active pupil literally rammed his head into a huge portrait of Lenin standing on the stage. The canvas tore. It wasn't even that it tore: a whole piece of it fell out of the portrait.
The school director sent the portrait fragment to an acquaintance of the restorer from the Russian Museum. And then a surprising discovery happened: on the reverse side of the portrait of the leader of the world revolution under a layer of paint was a mysterious image of a boot.
It was assumed that the still unknown painting was supposed to depict one of the emperors. At first, they thought it might have been Alexander II, who founded the Petrovsky Commercial School in 1880 - the predecessor of the 206th School. But when old photographs were found, everything fell into place: the assembly hall was decorated, as it should have been, with a portrait of Emperor Nicholas II.
What did the artist do then?
The artist Vladislav Izmailovich, who remained a teacher at the school. Understanding the value of the portrait, he painted over it with grey paint to match the colour of the original canvas in order to preserve the relic. Seven years later, he received an order from his superiors for a full-length portrait of Lenin. His modesty at the time did not allow him to purchase the necessary size canvas and frame, so he decided to use a portrait of the emperor painted by himself.
The image of Nicholas II is thus concealed under a layer of special paint. It remains an absolute secret to everyone for many years. It's like two sides of the same coin, with two key historical figures on the same canvas, creating time and changing it.
