10 masterpieces from Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts you can download onto your smartphone

At the end of September, the UK-based Smartify art app announced its availability in many world-famous museums, including The Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts. The app gives users the opportunity to learn about particular paintings and artworks on show, either in museums or online. Today, 28 masterpieces from the Pushkin are included in Smartify, so Russia Beyond has chosen 10 of the most awesome from those selected.

1. Portrait of an Old Man (Fayoum portrait, second half of the 1st century)

Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts

Fayum portraits are the earliest discovered examples of ancient portrait painting. This particular painting was purchased in the Egyptian city of Luxor by a Russian collector.

2. Constantinople artist from the 15th century, Christ the Pantocrator

Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts

The artist of this icon painted in the second quarter of the XV century is not known, but it dates back to the time of Constantinople and the Byzantine Empire. It’s believed the artist might be Angelus, who worked in Crete around 1430.

3. Sandro Botticelli, Virgin Mary Annunciation. Archangel Gabriel

Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts

These two images belong to the brush of early Renaissance painter Sandro Botticelli. They are part of a composition showing the Archangel Gabriel visiting the Virgin Mary to proclaim that she will give birth to the son of God. He is holding a white lily, the symbol of purity.

4. Joachim Beuckelaer, At the Market

Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts

Dutch and Flemish artists implemented landscape and genre painting during the 16th century. Joachim Beuckelaer focused on peasants as the subject of this image, showing a domestic scene.

5. Peter Paul Rubens, Bacchanalia

Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts

During the mid-1610s, Rubens started working on Bacchanalia, which he did not finish until the end of his life.  It’s based on the myth of Dionysus and his companions, Baccantes and Satires.

6. Frans Snyders, Still Life with Swan

Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts

The generosity of nature and its eternal renewal is the main theme of this artwork. The abundance of earthly goods seems inexhaustible. A servant brings a bowl of figs, a symbol of fertility. Birds symbolize the air, the fruit – the land, mollusks – the water.

7. Pieter de Hooch, The Morning of a Young Man

Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts

In the painting The Morning of a Young Man, the artist depicts the morning room of a sleeping officer. Perhaps mothers everywhere will relate to this one!

8. Bernardo Strozzi, Allegory of Impermanence (Old Coquete)

Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts

The picture represents a variant of the Northern European theme prevalent in the 17th century called “Vanitas,” an allegory of the impermanence and transience of earthly life, glory, and beauty.

9. Giovanni Antonio Canal, Return of the Bucintoro to the Molo by the Doge's Palace

Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts

This embankment in Venice is depicted on the day of Ascension, the main holiday of the Venetian Republic. The picture was created from 1728-29 by order of the French Ambassador to the Republic.

10. Jacques-Louis David, Andromache Mourning Hector

Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts

The concept of the 1783 painting is taken from Homer's Iliad. The artist depicts Andromache mourning with the son for her husband, Hector, who was killed in a duel with Achilles near the walls of Troy. It's a finished sketch for the painting exhibited in Paris’ Louvre.

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