PANORAMA F.A. RUBO "THE BORODINO FIGHT": HISTORY OF ONE NATIONAL MYTH
In the basis of historical memory of Russians about Patriotic war of 1812 three "whales" lie: "Moscow burned by a fire", L.N. Tolstoy's epic novel "War and peace" and the image of Borodino embodied in the well-known panorama of F.A. Rubo "The Borodino fight". Our appeal to the first experience of an embodiment of this great battle on a monumental picturesque cloth, to J.-Che. Langlois's panorama "Battle at the Moskva River", forced us to assume that Rubo's creation became substantially peculiar "the Russian answer" to the French image of fight near Borodino. We will try to sum up the results: 1. The panorama "The Borodino fight" is a work of art which makes the strongest emotional influence but which isn't able to apply on reliable, proceeding from modern level of knowledge, reproduction of a historical event on the viewer. 2. The panorama "The Borodino fight" was created in the conditions of the Russian-French rapprochement of the beginning of the XX century that found reflection in a final version of work. 3. Rubo's working in Munich and consisting, mainly, of the German artists the creative group, considered necessary considerably "to internationalize" Napoleon's Great army, having represented on a cloth along with the French parts, Saxon, Westphalian and Polish soldiers. Fight Russian and Saxon the cuirassier became the central episode of a panorama. 4. Rubo, his consultants Afanasyev and Kolyubakin, and also a number of the German artists created some kind of "the national Russian myth" the Borodino battle, poorly corresponding to "details" of a historical event, but artificially united well known, "sign" characters and battle episodes. 5. Numerous "restorations" of a panorama, and even creation of almost all picturesque cloth anew, promoted strengthening of its historical and mythological contents, thereby, strengthening emotional impact on the viewer, but at the same time even more taking away it from a scientific and reasonable picture of the past.