The result of a collaborative research and conservation should be an exhibition of the pieces, among which
there are works by such renowned Renaissance masters as Donatello, Nicola and Giovanni Pisano, Mino da
Fiesole, and Andrea del Verrocchio. Most of the pieces were badly damaged during a massive fire in Berlin's
Friedrichshain bunker in the last days of the war.
A larger part of the collection taken to Russia after the war was stored in the USSR Ministry of Culture's
Archive of Art Treasures in Zagorsk. The pieces were moved to the Pushkin State Museum in 2003.
The Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts together with The Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation and The
Collection of Sculptures from the State Museums of Berlin have launched a project on research and
conservation of sculptures from the collection of Transferred art pieces. The pieces originally belonged
to the museum of Kaiser Friedrich in Berlin, whose legal successor is currently the Bode Museum, and were
brought to Moscow in 1946.
The result of a collaborative research and conservation should be an exhibition of the pieces, among
which there are works by such renowned Renaissance masters as Donatello, Nicola and Giovanni Pisano, Mino
da Fiesole, and Andrea del Verrocchio. Most of the pieces were badly damaged during a massive fire in
Berlin's Friedrichshain bunker in the last days of the war.
A larger part of the collection taken to Russia after the war was stored in the USSR Ministry of
Culture's Archive of Art Treasures in Zagorsk. The pieces were moved to the Pushkin State Museum in 2003.
The museum conservators started working on the collection long before this project even started. In 2005
the museum held an exhibition called "Archaeology of War: Return from Non-Existance" featuring more than
600 conserved ancient pieces of art. In a dire state, often almost completely destroyed, with many losses
and covered in soot, they were prepared to be exhibited again by the museum's leading experts.
The 2014-2015 exhibition "Art of Ancient Cyprus" featured many objects from the Transferred Arts
Foundation: painted vases, sculptures and 3000 BC terracotta figures, among which were rare images of gods
and prayers. The Ceramics and Stone Conservation Workshops specialists had worked on more than 350 pieces
for 4 years.
The Object Conservation Workshop specialists performed treatments on two bronze busts from the Bode
museum collection: Francesco del Nero by Giulio Mazzoni and Voltaire by Jean Antoine Houdon.
The Renaissance collection that is the subject of the Russian and German project includes pieces of art
made of different materials: metal, ceramics, stone, and terracotta.
All of them bear damages of different degrees: stone sculptures have various losses, they are often in a
fragmented condition, sometimes the case is that one part of a sculpture is held in the Pushkin State
Museum in Moscow, and the other one – in the Bode museum in Berlin or in the State Hermitage in
Saint-Petersburg. A marble panel by Michelangelo was broken into pieces, contaminated during the fire, and
some of its fragments were lost.
Metal sculptures are covered in layers of soot; molecular structure of the metal itself was damaged.
Ceramic pieces have layers of molten glass and soot on them, the structure of the clay they were made of
was also damaged.
Such various and heavy damages require a comprehensive approach and thorough research by experts in
various fields of conservation, and that is the main challenge of the project.
