The organizers of the exhibition "Ferapontovo in Moscow" invite Moscow residents to cast aside reality and make a journey through space and time. A photo exhibition by Yuri Kholdin, recreating the works of the great Old Russian painter Dionysius has opened at the Kolomenskoye Museum Estate.
All the photos were made in the Cathedral of the Nativity of the Most-Holy Mother of God at the Ferapontov Monastery, situated 500 kilometres north of Moscow. This is the only place where the works of the great icon-painter of the 15th century have been preserved. The monastery complex is on the UNESCO World Heritage list, and the Ferapontov Monastery visiting hours and the number of tourists are strictly limited. If the humidity of air is too high, it is closed. However, today you can see the Dionysius frescoes in Moscow too - at the Kolomenskoye Museum Estate. Of course, these are not the authentic works - all these are photos, made by Yuri Kholdin with the use of Xerox technique. All of them are an exact replica of the Dionysius frescoes in both colour and scale. Using the new technology, Yuri Kholdin managed to create a 3-dimesional picture of the architectural space. When you look at all these photos, you feel as if you were inside the cathedral, and there immediately emerges an integral image of both the individual fresco composition and the whole of the cathedral. As distinct from the majority of photo artists, Yuri Kholdin made photos of the Dionysius frescoes in the daytime, not at night with artificial light, and in the cloudy weather, so that no "earthly shadow" would be able to fall on them. 6-metre scaffoldings, remote control and long exposure were needed for a photo session under the cathedral arches. The work on this project took nearly 12 years of the life of Yuri Kholdin - nearly as much as Dionysius needed for the work on his frescoes.
Now the Old Russian painting masterpieces, united in the one exhibition, are accessible to everyone. Historian Valery Zuikov describes the exhibition of Yuri Kholdin's works in the Kolomenskoye Museum Estate, in a building dating from the 17th century:
"It is situated close to two monuments: the Cathedral of the Ascension and the St. George Bell Tower. You can see them through the hall's windows. Creating this exposition, we purposefully decided to leave open the windows through which the so-called "contemporaries" of Dionysius could be seen. Besides, Kolomenskoye is that very place which has preserved the atmosphere of the Middle Ages".
The Dionysius frescoes, recreated by Yuri Kholdin, will stay in Moscow till June of 2010. But probably some of them will become part of the permanent exposition of the Kolomenskoye Museum Estate, Valery Zuikov says.
The more so as Kolomenskoye today is not simply museum estate, on whose territory there is a monument, mentioned on the UNESCO World Heritage list - the Cathedral of the Ascension. A so-called UNESCO "base" is established there for the accumulation of experience in the preservation of cultural heritage. Perhaps, it'll become much easier for new technologies to become part of the museum space, once they are tested in Russia.
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