Artistic sensation - "Girl" by Philipp Malyavin hid another painting!

A loud discovery was made in the National Art Museum! The sensation waited a year to be made public. "Girl" by Philipp Malyavin hid another painting. This is a rarity on a global scale. The flower still life was being saved for a year. And then the presentation took place this week. Has the author been identified? Why can its value reach millions?

"Russian women" series was made by Malyavin at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries. There was a queue for the peasant women to buy. Minsk based National Art Museum was rebuilt after the war, and in August 1945 it bought 7 Malyavin portraits from the collector Treskin.

And the viewers in the fourth hall were looking at "Girl" by Philip Malyavin for a very long time. No restoration was required. And here is the year 2023. A routine scheduled inspection. This is where the detective story begins.

Alla Vasilevskaya, leading researcher of the department of the National Art Museum of Belarus:

"The author's canvas - Malyavin's canvas - was duplicated on another canvas. And the back was painted over with a fairly thick layer of brown paint. All this was recorded in the accounting documentation, in the description of the state of preservation of the work. And it was no secret, but we found out only this year what was hidden under the thick layer of brown paint."

The discovery was made by Yulia Misyuchenko, who noticed how blue flowers "grow" from under the brown paint. And they are painted on silk. X-ray confirmed it. Silk, as a rule, was not used to strengthen paintings. And painting on it is rareas well.

Yulia Misyuchenko, restorer of the department of the National Art Museum of Belarus:

"The fabric for painting was prepared at the highest technical level. This is used extremely rarely. As a result, we received a unique preservation. Flowers in all their glory. And dividing the canvases in this case was a huge challenge. For the reason that there is painting on both sides, which must be preserved as naturally as possible, without damage, without losses."

The canvases were divided. And after 79 years, they finally live separately. "The Girl" will not return to the permanent exhibition for the time being.

Anna Kononova, General Director of the National Art Museum of Belarus:

"In the near future, we really want to create an exhibition of one painting. And tell the story at this stage, how restorers revealed this miracle. Here the question is more of a research nature: how to bring this note of information to a logical conclusion. We will definitely show it to the viewer".

Not only in the history of the museum – in the world history - such events are magical, they happen extremely rarely, and maybe they happened more often in past centuries.

Is it accurate, but the time frame for the creation of the still life has been established. From 1927 to 1945. Why did they strengthen Malyavin's canvas with flowers in the wild 40s? Was the silk basket hidden? Experts are still guessing. The attribution stage with the search for the author of the work is chapter two in the art detective.