Sberbank funds show of Botticelli masterpiece in Russia

By Andrei Skvarsky.

As a project funded by Russia’s biggest lender Sberbank, an Italian Renaissance painting that is one of the gems of the Uffizi gallery in Florence will be shown in Russia for the first time, spending more than five months in the country.

Madonna della Loggia by Sandro Botticelli will be on show in two Russian cities, Vladivostok and St Petersburg, from September to February.

On September 3-5, the 15th-century masterpiece, which is also known as Madonna and Child and still not unanimously attributed to Botticelli, will be displayed at the Sberbank branch on the campus of the Far Eastern Federal University campus, Sberbank said in a statement.

The campus will be the venue of the annual Eastern Economic Forum (EEF), a three-day international conference opening on September 4. The EEF has been held since 2015, and this year’s forum will be the first one to be officially attended by an Italian delegation.

Madonna della Loggia will then be moved to Vladivostok’s main art gallery and stay there until November. Then it will travel on to St Petersburg, where it will remain at the Hermitage museum until mid-February.

Moscow is not on the itinerary of the painting Loggia, which will cover about 17,500 kilometres (nearly 11,000 miles) during its travels to and within Russia and back to Florence.

Sberbank has had a tactile copy of the painting made for blind and sight-impaired exhibition visitors.

Sberbank which is a regular sponsor of art exhibitions in Russia, wil be among the EEF’s participants.

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