FEDOR ANDREEVICH BRONNIKOV | HYMN OF THE PYTHAGOREANS TO THE RISING SUN

Collection of Guccio Gucci, Rome

Thence by descent

Acquired from the Gucci family by the previous owner

Exhibition catalogue Exposition universelle internationale de 1878 à Paris, Paris: Imprimerie nationale, 1878, p.239, no.21 listed as Les disciples de Pythagore

Probably Paris, Exposition Universelle, 1878, no.21

The present lot is one of several versions Bronnikov made of his famous composition Hymn of the Pythagoreans to the Rising Sun. This scene from antiquity depicting the religious rites of the Pythagoreans, who are believed to have worshipped the rising sun accompanied by sacred music, was initially commissioned by Pavel Tretyakov after he saw a sketch of the subject in the artist’s studio in Rome in 1868. This initial composition was widely admired by other collectors and proved to be a commercial success for the artist, resulting in a number of subsequent repetitions. Besides the original 1869 version, now at the State Tretyakov Gallery (fig.1), the artist executed at least six others, three of which belong to museums in Russia (the Ostrogozhsk House-Museum of Ivan Kramskoi and Ryazan State Regional Art Museum) and in Kazakhstan (A.Kasteyev State Museum of Arts of the Republic of Kazakhstan).

The present version dates from 1877 and is most likely that which Bronnikov exhibited at the Exposition Universelle of 1878 in Paris under the title The Disciples of Pythagoras. In the artist’s correspondence with Tretyakov, he writes of his intention to send the ‘Pythagoreans’ to Paris ‘the ones that have just been painted’. The painting was sold by lottery at the end of the exhibition and remained in the same prestigious private Italian collection for most of the last century.