A copy of the original. To the question of the artistic and historical status of the “secondary” work

The article considers the issue of the artistic and historical status of the “secondary” work on the example of a copy from the original painting by the workshop of the Dutch artist Jan Mostart. On the basis of this picture, the problem of the importance of studying a copy work, which allows us to judge individual moments of the existence of the original, is raised. The complex studies of the painting allowed us to obtain full-fledged data on the technical and technological features and artistic techniques of the copyist who worked in the late XVIII - early XIX centuries, apparently within the framework of the Russian painting tradition. This work deserves attention as a valuable historical artifact that records the state of the original before restoration. On the example of this work, an important theme of the significance of the old copy arises in connection with the history of the existence of the original monument. At the same time, the appearance of such a work in the field of view of an expert allows again to draw attention to the important role of the close interaction of various research methods - art criticism, technological and restoration-analytical. It is necessary to separately emphasize the importance of working with documentary sources, which in this case made it possible to reasonably explain the differences in the image of the copy and the ancient original. Thus, this work once again notes the important role of a multilateral study of a copy as a full-fledged work of art, which is at the same time a document of its time. Considering the unclear history of the existence of the museum painting until 1862, its long stay during the XIXth century in the walls of the temple, where it was used as an icon, a comparative analysis of the pictorial features of the copy and descriptions of multi-temporal renovation interventions recorded during the restoration of the painting in 1926 is of particular interest.