A THESIS FOR THE MANY FAMOUS RUSSIANS IN SORRENTO

About ten years ago, Rosalia Maresca wrote a thesis which merits great attention as it bears witness to how ancient and profound are the relations which link Sorrento and the Russians. Among the many occasions worthy of interest, one that stands out is that which offers a vision of Scedrin, not only as a celebrated artist, but also as the author of a very particular epistolary.

View of Vico, between Castellammare and Sorrento by Scedrin
Images included in the exhibition catologue
 

About ten years ago – during the academic year 1996 – 1997 – the Sorrentinian Rosalia Maresca gave a brilliant discussion of her degree thesis on Russian literature “FROM THE 1900s TO THE PRESENT DAY... РОССИЯ, ‘TORNA A SURRIENTO’”.
Her work, apart from being of a particular cultural value, with the passage of time has shown itself to be a forerunner of the times. And today, during the exhibition entitled “Luce d’ Italia” at “Villa Fazzoletti” in Sorrento (exhibition of paintings by Silvestr Scedrin and his Russian contemporaries), it acquires new interest, and merits particular attention.

The work of the young Sorrentinian concentrates in fact, on all the artistic expressions that have characterised the work of these Russians in Sorrento.
Apart from the artists whose works are on exhibition in Sorrento, Rosalia Maresca also concentrated on writers and cultured people of Batjuškov fame; Orlov; Vladimir Jakovlev; Jakovlev; Dmitrij Merežkovskij; Lev Tolstoj; and cultured people like Maxim Gor’kij; Vladimir Lidin; Vladislav Chodasevič; Anastasija Cvetaeva and Isaak Babel’.

Reference to holidays taken by certain members of the Zar’s family are also included.
And as proof of the depth of her research, Rosalia Maresca “discovered” an aspect surely particular to Scedrin: that which saw him as the protagonist of a very interesting epistolary that he disclosed.
This notable work of Rosalia Maresca, offers a unique view of the reasons for the Russians’ interest in Italy and in particular towards Sorrento.
 

It is actually thanks to this study, that we have been able to gather important information about the artistic and literary productions of the artists who stayed – for quite a long time – in Sorrento. Thanks to the actuality acquired from the exhibition housed in “Villa Fiorentino”, this work so scrupulously carried out demonstrates its worthiness of becoming popular even as a published work and not limited to incidental matters, that it may witness in a tangible way, the “antiquity” and the depth of the Italo-Russian rapport or, even more so that between Russia and Sorrento. With the author’s permission, we propose to include a minimal part of her work: that relative to the studies carried out on topics entitled ”From Ščedrin to Ivanov, with their stay in Sorrento” and “Russian paintings in Sorrento in the second half of the 1900s”.
	Portrait of the artist S. F. Scedrin Images included in the Sorrento exhibition catalogue
In relation to these topics, Rosalia Maresca wrote: “After 1806 Sorrento was invested, as was the entire coast, by the great reformist activity of the decade and when the Bourbons returned for the third time in they found it, together with the other centres, more prosperous than it had been for centuries and on its way to conquering that tourist fame that it still preserves today. Amidst such reality a growing interest matures for the beauty of its localities, so much so that paintings of Sorrentinian landscapes are not only to be attributed, naturally in the Russian field, to Ščedrin, but also to others. During the years in which the artist worked in Italy, a school for landscape artists was established in Petersburg, directed by Fedor Vorob’ev, leading figure of academic romanticism. Not only Vorob’ev but also his pupils, Grigorij and Nikanor Černecov, and at a later date, Ivan Ajvazovskij, did not miss out on the Italian experience and made their contribution to ’ “Russian Italy”. But they only came to Italy as voyagers so they were not a part of the ščedriniana tradition. Among their canvasses, an attentive onlooker found the link between their stylistic choices and the traditions of Italian landscape painting. In the 1840s, reproaches sounded in the ears of the “pensioners” such as: “lazy till death, under the hot sun, in the artistic atmosphere of Italy”. The attempts of Ajvazovskij or Aleksej Bogoliubov for example, to paint the Italian landscape according to the points of view established by Sil’vestr Ščedrin, were revealed as being fruitless in completing the presence of the Russian artistic colony, in the first half of the century (of whom in Naples and Sorrento there remains no trace, with the exception of Ščedrin. We remember M. I. Lèbedev, who also died in Sorrento, on 19 June 1837, aged 25 years.

There are also the marinas of Ajvazovskij; he worked on the shores of the bay of Naples during the summer of 1841, enchanted by Ščedrin’s work he decided to draw the Bay of Naples and the sorrentine peninsula according to the spirit of his great predecessor, but it wasn’t a very happy experience for the artist. Unlike Ščedrin, whose personal rule was never to complete a canvas in the studio, Ajvazovskij never drew from life. He studied his chosen site for a painting at length, during his roaming “en plein air” and made a few sketches with a pencil. Only later on, sometimes after a lengthy period, he began painting in his studio, almost always based on impressions and not worrying about the photographic exactness. And so, even though his works are extraordinarily beautiful, they do not correspond realistically to the nature of the localities that he painted. Though he knew how to capture the gradations of colour in the sea, the sky, the mountains, the discrete morning sunlight, that of the dazzling midday sun or the fiery sunset.
The artist soon decided to change his method and follow the example of the “Sorrentine master”; so he moved from his studio to the sea shore ... but when he returned home he destroyed all the works that he had executed in Italy, even those of Sorrento, because of the reproaches of the Petersburg critics. Those critics, who had previously reproached the fact that his representations of particular landscape views were not realistic, now found that he had simply exaggerated “in his use of completely bizarre colours because they were too vivid”.

In our exploration of Russian paintings amongst Sorrentinian ones in the 1900s, we can still find some paintings which carry the signature of Anton Ivanovič Ivanov (1818-1864).This painter of urban landscapes, was under the influence of the Černecov brothers and was among the representatives of the rising realistic tradition in Russian art. In 1845 he received the title of artist from the Academy of Fine Arts in Petersburg. In 1846 he left for Italy with the Černecovs and, notwithstanding an order from the Czar in 1848 insisting on his return, he remained until his death.
His painting “Sorrento” realised in 1856, was part of the exhibition mounted by the Academy of Fine Arts two years later.
It is a magnificent painting; in the foreground women carrying out the work of times past, the dog, the hen and the cockerel, witness the peace of a domestic vegetable garden where the green of the lush Sorrentine countryside stands out against a background of chromatic gradation.

In the paintings of artists who came to Sorrento, with their different motifs whether picturesque, architectural, or of landscapes, their intent observation of all those characteristics which constitute the charm of Italy in the eyes of the northern Europeans is alive, with radiant nature or people dressed in pale festive clothing, which is unusual for the Russians.
Along with the names of the Russian painters mentioned above, we must also mention the fame of Aleksandr Ivanov. In emphasising the Alpatov in Aleksandr Ivanov, he was able to gather nature’s smile from the warm atmosphere and brilliant colours of the bay of Naples.
Sil’vestr Ščedrin and Aleksandr Ivanov are the two most characteristic figures from the first half of the XIX century; the former for his vast setting of the Italian landscape and the latter for his devotion to his second homeland.
In the middle of the XIX century, contacts on behalf of the Russian artists with Italy were not depleted. The Institute for “pensions” for study holidays, maintained by the Art Academy, was preserved and actually extended thanks to the active collaboration of the “Society for encouraging the Arts”.
Alongside great figures like Ščedrin or Ivanov, we must also place Nikolaj Nikolaevič Ge (of French origin, Gay; 1831-1894).
 
Italy had given him the following impression: it was a live country and not a museum! He had understood this when in Naples and Sorrento he dedicated himself to landscapes, reproducing the colourful particulars which in a certain sense could bring the landscapes of the romantic Ščedrin to the minds of his contemporaries .
His “landscape period” did not last long, but from his sketches of Naples and Sorrento and of the fisherman, the rocks, the azure waters, Ge belongs to a new generation, that, arriving in this country, relied on conformist impressions of the time.
Every time that there was a different interpretation in the art of the Russian painters, it was such that it enriched the palette and the range of themes and subjects.
The period ranging from 1885 to 1905 is characterised by the influx into the Land of the Sirens by members of the Russian colonies existing in Florence and Rome at the time. After having had experience of painting in Crimea, two painters of Italian origin arrived, Lev Feliksovič Lagorio e A. Rizzoni.
Lagorio was one of the most important masters of Russian realistic landscape and was the son of a Neapolitan consul to Feodosija. After having attained the “great gold medal”, he stayed in Italy from 1854 to 1860, also working in Sorrento.

Important artists arrived in Sorrento and Capri during the same period and, even if they were some of the best representatives of the intellectual and artistic Russian classes, they were not able to create that which is called a “colony”, in the true sense of the word; they came, they stayed here for some weeks, or even months, and then went elsewhere. So it would be useless or almost impossible, to try and trace them. But we can surely find a trace, a profound testimony in the Russian art and literature of the corresponding period.
In this way, for example, in many private Russian art collections, as in the largest public picture galleries in St. Petersburg and Moscow, you can find a large number of paintings dedicated to natural beauty, to daily life or to the picturesque traditions of the local population. In a way, an idea of such patrimony, now in Russia, we had here in Sorrento when the Council offered the townspeople The Italian landscape in the Russian paintings of the 19th century held for four months at the Correale Museum, as far back as 1993”.
Rosalia Maresca’s thesis was discussed with her supervisor, Professor Gianernesto Dall’ Aglio, and with the co-examiner Professor Nicoletta Misler.


Fabrizio Guastafierro