ENGRAVINGS BASED ON ADOLPH MENZEL’S DRAWINGS IN THE WORKS OF ALEXANDER BENOIS

The relevance of the article’s topic is determined by the fact that the drawings of Adolph Menzel, one of Ale­xander Benois’s favorite artists, reproduced in woodcut engraving in various publications, have never been the object of a special research as artistic sources of the artist’s creativity.

The scientific novelty of this article is in the fact that here for the first time the experience of analyzing the influence of the engravings based on Menzel’s drawings on A. Benois’s work has been undertaken. The author uses a complex method that combines the source analysis of the artist’s memories, the traditional formal analysis of his works, the comparative formal analysis of his works with the works of Menzel, Ando Hiroshige, the drawings of Julius Dietz, the engravings of French masters of the 18th century. The memoirs of Duke de Saint-Simon and Marquis de Dangeau, the novel by Ale­xandre Dumas “Joseph Balsamo” are also considered. This allows to significantly expand and deepen the existing idea of the historical and artistic sources of Benois’ creativity.

It is revealed that the engravings based on Menzel’s dra­wings influenced the image of the old king in the sheets of the graphic cycle of Benois “The Last Walks of Louis XIV” (1896—1898), as well as the pastel “Masquerade under Louis XIV” (1897). It is also established that the composition of Benois’s watercolors “The King’s Walk” (1906) and “The Wedding Walk” (1906) repeat the compositions of the engravings, based on Menzel’s drawings, “Friedrich on the Upper Terrace of Sanssouci” and “King Friedrich II with the Queen in front of the Court” from Kugler’s book “The History of Frederick the Great”.

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