Lost for centuries artwork discovered in Pushkin Museum

The Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts has presented for the first time the painting “Madonna and Child” by the famous Italian artist Giovanni Francesco Barbieri — Guercino. The artwork will be on display in the museum’s main building until September 14, 2025.

According to “TASS,” the fate of the canvas remained unknown for almost a century. Now it is being exhibited as part of the “New Masterpieces of the Pushkin Museum” project. Museum director Olga Galaktionova stated that this work by Guercino will conclude the project’s first five exhibitions, after which it will be moved to the main exposition.

Historical sources indicate that the painting previously belonged to Emperor Napoleon’s wife, Josephine. She had purchased it from antique dealer Ludovico Varisco. Later, the artwork passed on to her daughter Hortense. In 1820, Emperor Alexander I brought it to Russia for the Hermitage collection.

In 1924, when Western European paintings were transferred from the Hermitage to today’s Pushkin Museum, Guercino’s work was not sent to the museum but instead to the central storage of the State Museum Fund. In the 1980s, the canvas was in the possession of artist Ilya Glazunov, and later it was returned to the museum by his daughter Vera Glazunova.

It is worth noting that recently a British woman agreed to return to an Italian museum the 16th-century painting “Madonna and Child” by Antonio Solario, which she had kept in her possession for more than 50 years.