Belutin Collection

The collection has not been scientifically researched, all information about it is based only on the stories of the owners.

As Moleva writes in her book, the assembly began in the 1870s. Grandfather Belyutina, artist of the Moscow office of the imperial theaters Ivan Egorovich Grinev , a performer of sets at the Bolshoi and Maly theaters , received a lot of money and went to Western Europe for auctions, where he was engaged in acquisitions. He was guided by the advice of the artists with whom he worked - Konstantin Korovin , Alexander Golovin ^[1] . Like the merchant Sergei Schukin , he was going to create a private museum. To this end, in 1904 he even built a house-museum with seven halls for his collection in 2nd Krasnoselsky Lane ^{[2] [3]} (which was later demolished).

However, in connection with the October Revolution of 1917, Grinev did not have time to implement his plans. To preserve values, in 1919 he hid the collection in the attic. “They invited Alexei Rybnikov , yesterday’s student, who was just starting his career as a restorer, and all the paintings were wound on shafts. Frames, sculptures were removed, and all this is hidden in the attic of the house. They covered them with matting and poured debris on top ” ^[3] . In 1919, Grinev died of typhus, bequeathing to his wife a collection to save if there is no extreme need ^[2] . The collection lay untouched in the attic until 1949. The widow lived her whole life without selling a single thing, and died at the age of 98 ^[2] .

After Grinev, the widow, nee Princess Maria Kurbatova , who was almost forty years younger than him, remained. Grinev married Maria, the former "old maid", in 1905, 73-year-old.

Their only daughter Lidia Ivanovna Grineva in 1921 married the Italian Michele, the son of opera conductor Paolo Stefano Bellucci, a native of Belluno , the director of the theater in the Privislenie region ^[4] , married to the daughter of the patron-builder of the theater in Krakow. Later, Italian family members began to replenish the collection. The newly-made father-in-law presented the newlyweds with a gift “Madonna and Child with John the Baptist”. Michele Bellucci, assimilated, received the name Mikhail Pavlovich Beliutin . He began to work as a writer, adjoined the literary community "Pass", began to earn money, as well as to replenish the collection at auctions for the sale of confiscated from the royal palaces. So he bought Veronese and Titian . However, in 1927, Michele was executed ^[2] .

Eli Belyutin , named at the request of the Italian grandfather in honor of Saint Eligius , turned out to be the next heir to the collection. He married Nina Moleva. The 5-room apartment of her parents on Arbat , furnished with European furniture of the 16th – 18th centuries, assembled by Nina’s grandfather, the tsar’s general, became the location of the collection ^[2] . (Nina Moleva’s father was a Kuban Cossack from the village of Arkhangelskaya, later became a power engineer. Mother Tatyana is the daughter of Tsar’s General Ivan Gavrilovich Matveev ^[5] (actually Colonel of the General Staff) ^[6] and Sofya Stepanovna Lavrova - great-great-great-granddaughter of Ivan Sergeyevich Turgenev ) ^{[ 7]} .

In 1949, the collection was taken from the attic. “I took it out and put it in order again, the professor, doctor of sciences Aleksey Rybnikov was already pulling on the subframes” ^[3] . By that time the house was populated. Belyutin was able to get into the attic because “the woman who worked as a servant in their family got a room in this museum house. And through it Belyutin dragged his inheritance home to his wife ” ^[3] .

In the post-war years, the meeting, which was already not so hidden, was managed to be kept intact thanks to the close friendly relations of the family with famous people, for example, Tamm and Kapitsa . The Belutins also donated some of the things to Soviet museums. “Kuskovo” presented the atmosphere of the whole room, “Ostankino” - a portrait of Bortnyansky brush Bryullov, Tretyakov - 14 paintings ^[2] .

It is known that after the war, the collection of Beliutin and Moleva was replenished with a number of unique paintings and other values, the sources of which, however, remain a mystery. According to Kommersant, there is evidence of Belyutin’s service in counterintelligence, where in the post-war years he allegedly dealt with displaced values. From here, some experts believe, the works of Rembrandt and Titian, which the secret reserves of the Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts would envy, were in his collection. However, this version has no evidence of how impossible it is to confirm the legitimacy of “moving” these values ​​to the artist’s private collection ^{[8] [9]} .

Kira Sapgir, wife of the poet Heinrich Sapgir recalls : “Sapgir and I were in this house. For Moscow at that time, it was a little strange to hear open bragging about the collection: here is Tintoretto, and here is Titian, here we have Rubens and so on. Their paintings hung everywhere, even on the ceiling. Then they lived somewhere near Mayakovka in a strange big gray apartment building in a semi-basement apartment. Nina Moleva at that time worked as a cultural instructor in the Central Committee of the CPSU. Everyone asked themselves the origin of the collection, but no one dared say it out loud. Everyone knew that any answer would be a lie. As soon as someone started talking about politics, the owners immediately stopped them. Spouses Belyutin and Moleva gave the impression of professionals who want to look like lovers. The impression was created of their high level on the secret floors of power ” ^[10] .

In the early 1990s, the owners thought about creating a private museum and decided to value their treasures. They invited experts from the French auction house Hotel Drouot. The authorship of all values ​​has been confirmed. The cost of the meeting was also named - at the starting auction prices, it amounted to $ 400 million ^[2] .

In 1993, an attempt was made to robbery. The owners should have already flown to Italy, “but there was a delay with passports, and they sat at home and drank tea. And suddenly there was a terrible roar, the ceiling began to burst. “I rushed upstairs, there was a communal apartment, called (the bell didn’t work) and hit the door with all my swing. Door opened. There are no partitions in the apartment, the whole floor is raised, five beams are cut in the floor, there is an electric elevator with cables and hooks near this hole, several people in camouflage are nearby, and on the windowsill there is a catalog of our collection published in Italy. It got scary. " She rushed to call the neighboring apartments. Then she dialed the number of the Krasnopresnensky regional council, which Krasnov was then in charge of. He arrived in 15 minutes, brought with him the chief of the police department and the district prosecutor. There were no more people in the upper apartment - who would dare to detain them? ” ^[2]

Existence in the apartment became emergency due to the fact that the upper collapsed apartment remained unrepaired. In subsequent years, the Moscow government, according to Moleva, put pressure on her and her husband, “blackmailing” them with repairs, property rights and transferring the collection to the Moscow government ^[2] .

On February 27, 2012, Eli Belyutin passed away. In August, a childless widow entered into inheritance rights.

Transfer to Poland

It was announced that the artist bequeathed part of his collection to the Polish state. She said later in an interview: “About two months after my husband’s death, they called me from the Polish Embassy and offered to bury his ashes in this country. I was very surprised, because I had never thought of such an opportunity. (...) There was a letter from the mayor of Warsaw - he offered a place for my husband on the Walk of Fame. Persuasion began: they say, Eli Mikhailovich has suffered so much from Russia that it would be better for you to move to live in Poland. With all his property, of course. ” According to the story of a Polish journalist, on the contrary, “at first, the woman received me and our diplomats very cordially. And she spoke about the desire to transport the paintings to Poland. (..) But ... At one far from perfect moment, Ms. Moleva stated that she didn’t want to do anything with me or with the diplomats. Why, I can only build versions. According to my information, Belyutin and Moleva tried to establish relations with the Polish side since the mid-90s. Rumor has it that Belyutin himself even expressed his intention to transfer the collection to Poland in his will, although no one saw this paper. If we talk about the facts, one thing is certain: the remains of Beliutin are still not interred. According to my hypothesis, Nina Moleva wanted her husband to be buried in Warsaw, on the Walk of Fame - only the most famous Poles rest there. Of course, no one gave her such permission. This was the reason for the gap. As far as I know, our Foreign Ministry has decided to no longer conduct negotiations with Mrs. Moleva ” ^[11] .

“The signing of the gift from the widow to the Polish side was to be held in October, but the meeting was canceled for some reason. There is a version that Poland decided to take a timeout in order to reduce the degree of scandal by the time of the official transfer of the Russian collection and prepare a more favorable information background. (...) At the same time, a third party, the Lithuanian one, began to claim the collection. These applicants did not begin to cunning and seek out traces of Lithuanian blood from the ancestors of Belyutin and Moleva, but acted directly. According to media reports, Algirdas Brazauskas , the then president of Lithuania, personally came to the apartment of collectors and handed them two fresh Lithuanian passports. In exchange for the collection, Brazauskas offered Beliutin and Prayer citizenship and an apartment in Vilnius ” ^[8] . It was announced that Warsaw would have expected difficulty: according to Russian laws, a 30 percent tax is levied on such gifts. If the appraisers confirm the value of the collection in the range of $ 1.5-2 billion, then the Poles would have to pay $ 450 to 600 million to the Russian budget ^[8] .

Transfer of Russia

In early February 2013, it was announced that Moleva transferred the collection to Russia (from April 1, 2013). A few weeks earlier, senior Kremlin officials had visited the apartment and informed Moleva that her desire to “hand over the collection to the state represented by her president” was satisfied. The order was signed by Putin. Condition - keep the collection intact. The Federal Property Management Agency is looking for various options for placing the collection in an adapted freestanding room. At the entrance to the house where Nina Moleva lives, the police are now on duty around the clock ^[1] .

Expert Score

• In the early 1990s, Eric Turken, the largest independent expert in the field of old painting, visited Moscow at the request of one auctioneer and saw the collection: in his opinion, there are a dozen more or less interesting paintings in it ^[10] .
• The Pushkin Museum. A.S. Pushkin refused to accept the collection from Nina Moleva. According to the curator of the collection of Italian painting, a leading employee of the department of old masters of the museum, Doctor of Art History Victoria Markova (who first saw the catalog of Beliutin’s collection in Italy in 1974, where it was published), “practically none of the big names declared by the owners of the collection , and many works in general do not correspond to the museum level and do not represent any historical and museum value ” ^[10] .

Since the collection was inaccessible for scientific research throughout the 20th century, the claimed attributions require additional confirmation.

The collection has about 1 thousand items, of which about 200 canvases ^[11] .

• Michelangelo , “The Head of the Faun”
• Rubens , Bacchanalia (sketch for the canvas at the Pushkin Museum), Susanna and the Elders
• Leonardo da Vinci and Bernardino dei Conti , “Madonna and Book”
• Titian , "Penitent Mary Magdalene"
• Donatello , bust of a member of the Medici clan
• El Greco
• Poussin
• Jordaens , Bacchus
• Murillo
• Van Dyck , “Portrait of Susanna Fourman,” the sister of Rubens’s wife
• Veronese
• Rembrandt , "Sale of the Birthright"
• Velazquez , “Portrait of a Man”
• Dosso Dossi , "Resting Venus"
• Furniture: from Versailles, table of Savva Timofeevich Morozov

• N. Prayer. “In the garden of time. 150 years of the family collection of Eliya Belyutin. "
• "Centrnauchfilm", the documentary "The History of a Collection", 1993
• Il giardino del tempo. Capalavori della collezione di Ely e Nina Bielutin. Pittura e sculptura dell Europa occidentale dal XV al XVII secolo. Collection catalog, published in Italy (until 1993). The creation of which was attended by art historians of Milan (Brera Museum), Venice, Belluno, Paris experts E. Turken and A. Gross.
• Documentary, fr. lang
• Leben mit Leonardo - die fabelhafte Welt der Bielutins. Documentary