Writing this monumental patriotic work took the artist for six years. This canvas is considered the largest in Russia, it depicts more than a hundred different characters.
After Ilya Repin wrote the painting “The Cossacks write a letter to the Turkish Sultan”, which was accepted by the audience with great enthusiasm, Makovsky decided to write a canvas on a patriotic theme that has a great and grateful response in the hearts of the Russian people.
With great responsibility, the artist approached the historical authenticity of such a large-scale work. He went to Nizhny Novgorod, where he spent a lot of time studying the archives. From there, he learned that the action he wanted to capture on canvas took place on a market day, not far from the church of Nikola. It was there that Kozma Minin addressed the citizens of Nizhny Novgorod with his appeal.
For writing faces of many characters, Konstantin Makovsky made sketches of people directly from the street from the window of his hotel room on the street. Rozhdestvennaya, studying the behavior and habits of representatives of different classes. The artist was very reliably able to convey the character and even the mood of each person depicted on the canvas.
In Nizhny Novgorod, Makovsky makes acquaintance with Andrei Osipovich Karelin – a famous Nizhny Novgorod photographer, artist and collector of antiquity, who helps the artist in restoring the appearance of various people of that time, chests and chests in the picture are drawn from real objects.
The artist depicted an early autumn morning, Zemstvo warden Kozma Minin from an improvised podium urges bazaar people gathered at the auction to help in the struggle for the liberation of Moscow State from foreign invaders. Completely different people carry their savings and belongings and put them near Minin.
Naturally, after writing, the first picture saw Nizhny Novgorod in 1896. A huge, more than 6 square meters, patriotic canvas created a real sensation, caused a lot of controversy and gossip, not dying to this day.
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