The Tretyakov Gallery
Ivanov’s The Appearance of Christ Before the People in its own hall; Surikov’s Boyarynya Morozova and Morning of the Streltsy Execution; Repin’s Ivan the Terrible and His Son; Serov’s Girl with Peaches; Vasnetsov’s Bogatyrs; the icon halls. Rublev’s Trinity is no longer here: it was handed to the Church in 2023.
Two and a half hours.
- 30 minuteshalls 1–7, old Russian icons; if you know early Italian painting, notice how little here is about depth and how much about the surface.
- 40 minuteshalls 8–15, the eighteenth century and the first half of the nineteenth, up to Ivanov’s The Appearance of Christ Before the People in hall 10, with its studies around it.
- 50 minuteshalls 16–31, the Peredvizhniki: Boyarynya Morozova and Morning of the Streltsy Execution by Surikov, Repin’s Ivan the Terrible, Vasnetsov’s Bogatyrs.
- 20 minuteshalls 32–48, the turn of the century: Serov, Vrubel, Borisov-Musatov. If you have another half hour, the church of St Nicholas in Tolmachi adjoins the gallery and holds the Vladimir icon.
Reference
Alexandre Benois, “The Russian School of Painting” — the book that shows how the canon Tretyakov assembled came to be.
| Mon | closed |
| Tue–Sun today | 10:00–21:00 |
Getting there — partly. Tretyakovskaya has no lift. A bus to the “Tretyakov Gallery” stop or a taxi to Lavrushinsky is easier. Moscow metro stations almost never have lifts to the platform, except on the Big Circle line and the MCC. A wheelchair user is better served by the surface buses, which are low-floor across the centre.
More than 150 sheets that almost never leave the store: pastel sheds under light and movement and is rarely shown. Halls 49–54.
If Vrubel and Borisov-Musatov are what stopped you at Lavrushinsky, the sequel hangs on Krymsky Val: Russian art carried on to the edge beyond which it stops being recognisable.
If you stayed longer than you meant to in the icon halls, a private collection on Taganka shows the icon not as art but as an object people prayed to.