"Seditious Canvases" by Anatoly Varshavsky, summary Automatic translate

This book is a historical account of the great masters of the brush, whose canvases boldly challenged despotism, hypocrisy, and social injustice. The work was created in 1963. The book simultaneously describes famous paintings and the brutal political conflicts of the corresponding historical eras.

Michelangelo and the Vatican frescoes

Michelangelo Buonarroti devoted years of toil to painting the Sistine Chapel. From 1508 to 1512, the master worked on wooden scaffolding directly beneath the ceiling. He steadfastly endured intense physical pain, the treacherous machinations of the architect Bramante, and the wrath of Pope Julius II. Decades later, the aging artist suffered greatly from the collapse of the Florentine Republic. He hid from the vengeful ruler Alessandro de’ Medici in the high bell tower of the old church. Pope Clement VII and then Paul III forced the rebellious artist to return to Rome.

The artist was forced to submit to the authority of Pope Paul III and begin work on the fresco "The Last Judgment." The artist embodied the entire tragedy of his time on a massive wall. Later, Pope Paul IV rudely demanded that the nude figures in the fresco be "dressed." The artist responded with sharp irony: "Let him make the world look decent, and with paintings that can be done quickly."

Francisco Goya and the Spanish Reaction

In 1814, after the expulsion of Napoleon’s troops, Ferdinand VII returned to power in Spain. The monarch quickly abolished the liberal constitution and unleashed a reign of terror against his own people. The Inquisition harshly reasserted its authority. The leaders of the partisan movement were immediately sent to the scaffold. Francisco Goya watched with bitterness as the blood of honest patriots was shed in vain.

The artist captured brutal scenes of violence, poverty, and popular despair on cartoons. Policemen roughly lead arrested women. An old miser greedily covets his gold. Hideous ghosts cling to their accustomed privileges. Goya openly despised the court nobility. His brush truthfully revealed the gulf between the suffering of the poor and the well-fed tranquility of the royal court.

Perov and the trial of the clergy

Vasily Grigorievich Perov constantly encountered censorship at the Academy of Arts. In 1861, he created the daring canvases "Sermon in a Village" and "Rural Religious Procession on Easter." The latter sketch depicted a drunken priest and peasants staggering in puddles. The authorities hastily removed the painting from exhibition and strictly forbade its reproduction. Officials threatened the artist with a long exile to the Solovetsky Monastery.

Years later, Perov painted "Monastic Meal." In it, he openly depicted the wealth of the clergy against a backdrop of popular poverty. In the painting, corpulent monks feast heartily beneath the church inscription, "Judge not, lest ye be judged." Official Russia sincerely hated the artist for helping the oppressed. The Imperial Hermitage never purchased a single one of his works. Only after the Revolution did these paintings take pride of place in the galleries.

Gustave Courbet against the bourgeoisie

The French painter Gustave Courbet was regularly subjected to newspaper harassment. In 1863, his new works were again rejected at a Paris exhibition. Journalists viciously called the artist "the monster from Ornani." Emperor Napoleon III once angrily struck his painting "Bathers" with his cane. He ordered the canvas immediately removed from the exhibition. The bourgeois public was enraged by the master’s paintings.

The reason for the authorities’ wrath lay in the choice of protagonists. Courbet boldly made ordinary peasants the center of his paintings. In "Burial at Ornans," he showed the hard life of these people without embellishment. The artist was proud of his peasant origins. He drew inspiration from his native village of Flagey and always remained true to the harsh truth of life.

The tragedy of unequal marriages

Russian artists reacted sharply to the lack of women’s rights in noble society. Nikolai Nevrev’s painting "The Pupil" reliably told the sad story of an orphan girl. A powerful landowner decides to marry her off to an old official. This is a quick way to cover up a scandal involving her own nephew. The girl is condemned to prolonged tears for the sake of maintaining the decorum of someone else’s home.

Vasily Pukirev addressed a similar social issue in his painting "Unequal Marriage." A young and defenseless bride is given against her will to a wealthy old man. Such real-life scenes mercilessly exposed the moral decay of the upper classes. The artists sincerely defended the disenfranchised. Their brushstrokes on canvas served as heavy blows to social vices.

Repin and the life of the people

Ilya Efimovich Repin returned to his hometown of Chuguev. He wanted to gather living material for new sketches. The town of his childhood had changed little: the local wealthy built large brick houses, while the poor, fire victims, humbly begged for alms. Observing this vast chasm, the artist labored for years on the painting "Religious Procession in Kursk Province." This complex and painstaking work took five long years.

Repin sought to depict all strata of Russian society. People are united by a single, long march, yet bitterly divided by social inequality. Later, the artist painted "They Didn’t Expect Him" and "Refusal of Confession." In these scenes, the master depicted courageous revolutionaries. They are boldly prepared to die for the freedom of the common people, yet they maintain remarkable inner strength before their execution.

Surikov and the rebellious boyar

Vasily Ivanovich Surikov created a remarkable historical painting, "Boyarynya Morozova." The canvas depicts a woman, heavily shackled but utterly unbroken. She raises her thin hand high, making the sign of the cross with two fingers, as she rides in a wide sleigh down a Moscow street. The crowd around her is seething with emotion: from malicious jeers to the sincere tears of a holy fool.

In the historical image of Morozova, the artist saw clear traits of the revolutionaries of her time. In March 1881, brave members of the Narodnaya Volya (People’s Will) mortally wounded Tsar Alexander II. Soon after, Sofia Perovskaya and her comrades were carried through snowy St. Petersburg to their execution. The artist interrogated the old walls to convey with utmost precision the unbreakable connection between the distant past and the harsh present.