Joje visitors in solitude will once again be able to meet the works of the famous 17th-century Dutch portraitist Frans Hals – the images of St. Luke and St. Matthew, brought from Ukraine. The “Masterpiece Room,” presented for the first time in 2024, became a true attraction for visitors – the opportunity to meet F. Hals’s masterpieces face to face throughout the exhibition period attracted many viewers.
Right here, at the Radvilos Palace Art Museum, the works exhibited two years ago attracted great visitor interest. An interdisciplinary group of art historians and artists created a special museum visit experience called the “Masterpiece Room,” where visitors are transported into the context of the art masterpiece through audiovisual and multimedia means, allowing them to personally experience the artwork undisturbed by external sounds, images, or other visitors.
The images of the saints intrigue the visitor not only with the artist’s characteristic quick, dynamic brushstroke and unconventional exhibition but also with what is not immediately visible at first glance.
In 2022, when the aggressor Russia began a large-scale invasion of Ukraine, the valuables kept in the country’s museums faced the threat of destruction and looting.
Before the war, LNDM had established connections and plans for joint exhibitions with the Odessa Museum, which prompted the institutions to take security measures and transport valuable works out of the country. After detailed planning and a risky journey requiring diplomatic and logistical efforts, the works reached the LNDM storage and were examined at the LNDM Pranas Gudynas Restoration Center.
“After the unique exhibition ‘Masterpiece Room. Frans Hals’s Evangelists from the Odessa Western and Eastern Art Museum Collection’ at the Radvilos Palace Art Museum, the paintings were transferred to Germany. The majority of the Odessa collection is stored there. After a huge international exhibition of F. Hals’s works at the Berlin Gemäldegalerie, the paintings were handed over to colleagues’ storage. The war continues.
Therefore, the director of the Odessa Museum, Ihor Poronyk, proposed to LNDM to exhibit the masterpieces again in Vilnius. We will exhibit them until May 2027. And beyond that, everything will depend on the war,” says LNDM exhibition curator and project coordinator Skaistis Mikulionis.
The Painter of Smiles
Frans Hals (c. 1582–1666), who lived and worked in Haarlem, is one of the most famous Dutch painters of the “Golden Age,” often called a master of the loose brushstroke due to his painting style. From the very
beginning of his career, F. Hals was known as a talented portraitist and received many commissions. The artist mostly painted portraits of wealthy middle-class townspeople, scholars, and cultural figures, but he was also interested in a broader spectrum of subjects. F. Hals undertook creating emotionally charged portraits of poorer people. He reformed the previously rather static portrait genre by bringing vitality and was the first to paint a laughing person.
Religious works were very rare in F. Hals’s creative biography. Perhaps the only surviving example of such work is the portraits of the four Gospel writers – St. Luke, St. Matthew, St. Mark, and St. John – painted in oil on canvas around 1625. These portrait studies of saints, surrounded by the aura typical of religious art and bearing the usual evangelist symbols in religious iconography tradition, also captivate with the vitality characteristic of F. Hals’s characters.
Details of Detective-like Thefts
Two paintings from the evangelist cycle scattered around the world ended up in the Odessa Western and Eastern Art Museum. The story of their discovery and exhibition is worthy of a detective story. One morning in 1965, while exhibiting the paintings in Moscow, the frame of the St. Luke image was found empty – the canvas had been roughly cut out and stolen. The search for the work lasted six months, and the thief was eventually betrayed by a careless mistake: he tried to sell the painting on the street to a man connected with security forces. The thief was caught, and the work was restored.
“Masterpiece Room. Frans Hals’s Evangelists from the Odessa Western and Eastern Art Museum Collection” will be open until May 9, 2027, in the southern wing of the LNDM Radvilos Palace Art Museum. The exhibition can be seen by reserving a time in advance and purchasing a visitor ticket online on the LNDM website.
The project’s idea author is Dr. Arūnas Gelūnas Coordinator Skaistis Mikulionis Director Paulius Markevičius Playwright Birutė Kapustinskaitė Architect Aleksandras Kavaliauskas.
