"No one will go anywhere"

Restorers of the Tretyakov Gallery challenged the president’s political will and receive threats from the Russian Orthodox Church in response

The rigidity of the decisions of the authorities in Russia is compensated by the optionality of their implementation - it is noticed by classics. It seems that the museum community has found a way to protect the Rublevsky “Trinity” or, at least, delay the execution of the sentence against it. And the Russian Orthodox Church, which announced the transfer of the shrine to her, seemed to agree to tolerate a little. At the same time, the official website of the President of the Russian Federation, the decision of which was referred by the Moscow Patriarchate, keeps silence on this issue. We still cannot find out about the legal motives for the transfer of masterpieces to churchmen (the “new” said that the laws of the Russian Federation prohibit such “restitution”).

On May 23, on the eve of the name day of Patriarch Kirill, a protocol of the expanded restoration council of the Tretyakov Gallery appeared on the Internet. The protocol itself is dated May 15 - it was on this day that a brief message appeared on the website of the Moscow Patriarchate about the “President’s decision” in response to “numerous requests of believers” (also not published anywhere). Now it becomes clear that this publication is due to what was happening at the restoration council, and could be an attempt to influence the museum community with a reference to the “highest” will.

The Restoration Council clearly made it clear: in the fate of the "Trinity", in addition to the President of the Russian Federation and the Patriarch of the Russian Orthodox Church, the third subject is involved, and his position is at least equally significant. “The“ Holy Trinity ”icon Andrei Rublev is not subject to issuing the Tretyakov Gallery outside the Trinity on June 4 of this year due to a complex and unstable state, as well as the unpredictable of the continuing process of negative changes. At the moment, the icon is in a restoration workshop in the process of emergency restoration, ”Interfax quotes the Council decision.

Judging by the reaction of the Russian Orthodox Church, those experts were right who suggested that the Patriarchate needed not so much a masterpiece itself as a symbolic signal sent by Putin Cyril, as it were, in gratitude for his “decisive” position on “Svo”. First, the head of the legal department of the Patriarchate of the Igumen Ksenia (Chernoga) streamlinedly stated that the Russian Orthodox Church was not ready to take full responsibility for the preservation of the shrine, and on May 23, the head of the expert council of the Moscow Patriarchate for Church Art, Archpriest Leonid Kalinin, directly the leading dialogue with the Tretyakov Unit about the fate of the shrine. O. Leonid admitted the consent of the Patriarch to “exhibit” in the Cathedral of Christ the Savior, where it was planned to “move the“ Trinity ”, one of its miraculous lists for a year.

True, he made a reservation that when a special kyot-capsule would be restored and prepared for her, the Russian Orthodox Church will take it “for centuries and forever, so that there [in the Trinity-Sergius Lavra] she gained her native harbor, for which he was written.”

Archpriest personally attended a meeting of the restoration council, and his questions were resembled by the prosecutors: “Our conversation has a political character ... Where is the icon survey protocol? If necessary, we will request it. ”

The icon has already visited the “native harbor” on the day of the memory of St. Sergius, on July 17–18 last year, after which 61 new damage ( photo of the damage ) was discovered on the monument - an emergency restoration was required. Now the shrine is in the workshops of the Tretyakov Gallery.

According to the head of the restoration workshop of the ancient Russian painting of the gallery Mikhail Shitov, when the icon in the Trinity Cathedral of Lavra was found, it was impossible to observe the temperature and humidity regime, the humidity level reached 62%. In addition to a completely predictable exfoliation of a colorful layer, a crack between the central board of the icon and the board with the image of the right angel has increased, which is fraught with the decay of the masterpiece into parts. As Tatyana Gorodkova, the chief keeper of the Tretyakovka, noted, “it turned out that

On the "Trinity" we put a certain experiment. We warned of risks, we said that the “Trinity” needed absolute peace. We warned and, to our great regret, were right. ”

After hearing the arguments of museum workers, about. Leonid, as befits a commissar in a cassock (by the way, he was one of the developers of the project “The Main Temple of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation” in the Patriot Park), summed up: “If a political decision is made by the leadership, you will make, as they say, under the visor and take out. And no one will go anywhere ... The church earlier, perhaps, was perceived as some kind of dark, backward and terrible power that wants to destroy everything ... Now all this is different: we have the same education as you have, maybe sometimes somewhere more. ” Having reminded the Chekhov story, the Archpriest reproached the restorers for artificial delaying his work, due to which they feed, and called for the “lively contact” of believers with any icon, which will interest them.

In general, the position of the representative of the Russian Orthodox Church is striking in infantile irresponsibility: we will use the masterpieces as we want, but the museum workers will still be responsible for their safety!

However, in fact, from a church, theological-liturgical point of view, there is no urgent need to move the original “Trinity” to Lavra. Now in the iconostasis of the Trinity Cathedral, to the right of the royal gates, there is an exact copy of the Rublevo masterpiece, written in 1926 by the brilliant restorer Grigory Chirikov, repressed by the Stalinist regime. The copy was created for the international exhibition - even the Bolshevik government understood the impossibility of the export of the Rublevsky masterpiece from the museum. Of course, the technical condition of the copy is much better, and it is not so susceptible to temperature and humidity drops, as a monument of 600 years ago. And to subject the icon to art history analysis right during prayer is unlikely to come to mind an adequate believer.

Therefore, the apologists of Patriarch Kirill are by no means religious and not even art history arguments.

“The return of the icon is necessary to win in his, for Holy Russia is the Great, Malaya and White - one, as the Holy Trinity,” says Kirill Frolov, head of the “Association of Orthodox Experts” by the Russian Orthodox Church. - The mobilization of the Russian people will cause the return of such a great shrine. The President and Patriarch make a historical decision on such a return, but here the liberal part of the museum community begins to return this return. In the event of a breakdown, grandiose apathy and the demotivation of the Orthodox Russian majority will occur. ”

... The 35-year process of the “Orthodox Renaissance” in Soviet-Soviet Russia has already reached the stage when the approach of the next church holiday is alarming for the fate of national culture. Could we imagine this back in 1988, when it all began with a magnificent celebration of the 1000th anniversary of the baptism of Rus'? 10 days before the festival of the Trinity with difficulty (and for a long time?) It was possible to defend the “Trinity”, and after all, not along the mountains of the Vladimir Icon of the Mother of God - another largest masterpiece of the Tretyakovka.

To any Old Russian Ect from the Museum Fund of Russia, you can choose a holiday or a date from the church-patriotic calendar. How not to recall the prophecy of Isaiah, which is read in the Orthodox churches at the beginning of Great Lent: “ Your holidays hate my soul: they are burden for me ... When you extend your hands, I close my eyes; And when you multiply your prayers, I do not hear: your hands are full of blood ”(Isa., 1: 14–15). It is not without reason that now the transmission of the shrines of the Russian Orthodox Church is directly associated with “Svo” - such a bizarre symbiosis ...

The Russian Academy of Sciences supported the museum community, expressing concern to the fate of the masterpiece in the case of transferring it to the Russian Orthodox Church. The presidential administration replied that they would consult with some experts.