The cultural TV channel Russia-K has broadcast the latest programme in the authorial series by Hermitage Director Mikhail Piotrovsky – “Saint Raphael’s Day”.
This year the Hermitage’s main celebratory occasion – 7 December, the Orthodox Saint Catherine’s Day – was dominated by Raphael, who might have seemed to have taken the greatest Russian museum’s heavenly patron’s feast day away from her. Raffaello Santi, his many pupils and followers, all those who experienced the influence of the great painter’s art on their own creative work over the five centuries since, from Giulio Romano to Picasso, are today all over the Hermitage.
The museum was literally in the grip of a “Raphael virus”. The power of Raphael’s DNA changed its gravitational field, turning the grand Neva Enfilade of the Winter Place into an enchanted world living by its own laws, populated by marvellous spectres, among whom, upon looking closer, one begins to make out familiar faces: in the beautiful Fornarina, whose lover gave her the gift of immortality, the quarrelsome gods of Olympus, and even the sulky little angels flitting like hummingbirds around this strange Eden.
The programme editor was Alexei Chachba; the director was Natalia Chernyshova.
You can watch a recording of the programme (in Russian) by following this link.
