Exhibition “For the Love of Art”

About exhibition

The exhibition features 20 graphic sheets created by 17 well-known engravers from the Netherlands, France, Germany and Italy. The selection includes both original compositions and interpretations of masterpieces by great painters such as Raphael, the Carracci, Van Dyck, Dürer, Berchem and others. European engravings of the 16th–18th centuries from A. S. Petrovsky’s collection will be on display for only five months at the merchant I. S. Repin Mansion. Residents of Kirov and visitors to the city will be able to see etchings and woodcuts in genres such as landscape, portrait and animal art, as well as biblical and mythological subjects. Equally interesting is the personality of the collector who donated more than 50 works to the museum in 1928, 1929 and 1935. In the early 20th century Alexey Sergeyevich Petrovsky moved in Moscow’s literary and philosophical circles. From 1907 he worked at the library of the Rumyantsev Museum and undertook internships in European libraries; it was possibly there that he began collecting, studying and cataloguing engravings. His personal collection numbered over 2,000 graphic sheets, including valuable examples from the 15th–20th centuries that are important for any museum in the country. The connection between the Moscow librarian and the Vyatka museum remains unknown to this day; only hypotheses exist, which visitors can learn about at the exhibition. The exhibition “For the Love of Art” is a token of gratitude to the enthusiastic collector, scholar and modest devotee of library and museum work Alexey Petrovsky.