Anthropology in the Service of Art History: Anna Golubkina and Nathan Altman

As part of the compilation by the Anna Golubkina Museum (a department of the State Tretyakov Gallery) of a complete catalogue of the outstanding Russian sculptor, a search for the prototype of one of A.S. Golubkina’s non-personified works, “Man’s Head” (tinted plaster. 28 × 15.5 × 18.5. Inventory No. MG SK-108 MG KP-108), was conducted. One of the assumptions about who could have been the model for Golubkina’s small work was the name of the painter and sculptor N.I. Altman, a contemporary and colleague of A.S. Golubkina. A scrupulous analysis of the biographies of both masters revealed the possibility of their meeting in 1913 in St. Petersburg at the exhibition “The World of Art”, where their works were on display. The article considers other candidates for the model of the sketch “Man’s Head”. The authors conclude that despite the difference in age, the meeting could have taken place, and Altman’s expressive appearance could have interested Golubkina and served as a prototype for the sculpture. To resolve the issue, the museum staff appealed to the Laboratory of Anthropological Reconstruction of the Centre of Physical Anthropology of the Institute of Ethnology and Anthropology of the Russian Academy of Sciences (IEA RAS) with a request to carry out an identification expertise on the comparison of images, taking into account the experience of scientists in the field of forensic work for the purposes of identification.

The Laboratory of Anthropological Reconstruction of IEA RAS conducted a study on the comparison of the sculpture “Manʼs Head” with the photographic images of N.I. Altman. The method of M.M. Gerasimov “Face reconstruction from the skull” was used, taking into account the subsequent developments of his followers in the field of anthropological reconstruction and forensics. According to the results of anthropological identification expertise concluded that there is a high degree of probability that it was N.I. Altman served as a model for the sculptor A.S. Golubkina when creating the sketch “Manʼs Head”.

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