Court of the Sanhedrin. "Guilty of death"

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The painting was painted for the 20th Traveling Art Exhibition of 1892, but was forbidden to be exhibited by the Grand Duke Vladimir Alexandrovich , President of the Imperial Academy of Arts. Probably, the letter of Pobedonostsev to Alexander III (“Christ is written in the most disgusting form ...”) had a noticeable influence on this decision.

His Christ is frail, small in stature, ugly. In particular, Alexander III said: "Well, what kind of Christ is this, this sick Miklouho-Maclay ."

- Tatyana Karpova, head of the painting department of the second half of the XIX - early XX centuries of the State Tretyakov Gallery
The second life of the “Court of the Sanhedrin” // NTV , from an interview with the Today program 12/19/2008

After the ban was imposed, Ge put up a picture for friends in the conference hall of the Academy of Sciences, and then took the picture to his estate on the Ivanovsky farm in the Chernigov province, where he continued to work on it; in letters to L.N. Tolstoy, Ge mentioned that he repeatedly rewrote the figure and face of Christ.

After Gye's death

After the artist’s death in 1894, the painting was inherited by his eldest son N. N. Ge, Jr., who forwarded it (along with The Crucifixion, 1892) to L. N. Tolstoy in Yasnaya Polyana. For transportation, the canvas was removed from the stretcher, wrapped in fresh newspapers and rolled up. When the daughter of the writer Tatyana Lvovna , who was engaged in painting, unrolled the roll, it turned out that fragments of newspapers were stuck in the paint layer. Despite attempts to carefully separate them, in some places a newspaper font was imprinted on the picture.

In 1897, the painting was offered as a gift to Tretyakov . After a year of reflection, he agreed to accept this and several more paintings by Ge, and in 1898 these paintings were not exhibited for long. However, in the same year after the death of Tretyakov, by the decision of the Museum Council, the paintings were removed from the exposition, and the “Court of the Sanhedrin” ended up in storerooms for many years.

In the XX century, the picture was hardly exhibited due to poor preservation: a very dark color, swelling of the paint layer, bubbles flowed, and burst at any touch. The last time before restoration the painting was exhibited in 1981 at the monographic exhibition Ge.

Restoration

Modern technology has allowed for detailed chemical and fluoroscopic studies, and then the restoration of the painting, which was completed in 2008 .

As a result of the research, the “diagnosis”, the most terrible for the picture, was not confirmed - “asphalt disease” (caused by the use of black paint based on bitumen ), which cannot be stopped by modern means.

The canvas of the picture was not very high quality - radiographs showed that it was probably already painting on it, which had been cleaned. The darkening of the paint layer was caused by the fact that the artist used rancid oil as a binder. In addition, rewriting the picture, he superimposed the upper layers before the lower ones had completely dried out. Experts explain all this by the fact that Ge in the last years of his life experienced material difficulties; in addition, he was in a hurry, afraid of not having time to put his ideas into practice.

Restorers reinforced the surface of the paint layer and soil. After removing the old varnish, dirt and restoration tinting, not only the color of the painting was restored, but also new details became visible. The canvas was duplicated for restoration; the canvas was pulled onto a new tablet subframe and the frame was restored.

From December 23, 2008 to January 18, 2009, the presentation of the painting “The Court of the Sanhedrin” was held; a separate section was devoted to the history of its restoration. The painting has been presented to the general public again since 2011 , when the name hall of Nikolai Ge opened in the Tretyakov Gallery .

• The history of the painting on the website of the Tretyakov Gallery
• Nikolai Ge painting “The Court of the Sanhedrin” - return after restoration // “Echo of Moscow” , program “The Tretyakov Collection”, December 28, 2008
• The second life of the “Court of the Sanhedrin” (video, text) // NTV , program “Today” December 19, 2008