In some sources, we can read that on January 2, 1959, after coming to power in Cuba Fidel Castro, one of the works of a prominent Russian artist was removed from the exposition to avoid troubles. We checked whether this really happened.

Here's what the newspaper Mirror of the Week reported in issue of January 4, 2002: “The case is known when the day after the revolution in Cuba, the employees of the Russian Museum in Leningrad removed the picture of the artist Pavel Fedotov in 1844 into the storerooms only because it was called the“ death of Fidelka ”. Obviously, the picture was not connected with the events of the second half of the 20th century, but only portrayed the woman’s grief about the death of her beloved dog. ”

Similar information can be read in publications "Case", "Our newspaper" And on resources Donschool, Prikol.ru, ushistory.ru, LiveInternet, Livejournal, Facebook. Olga Derkach and Vladislav Bykov included history in a collection of entertaining facts “The book of the century. 1901 - 2000 " (2000), and the famous expert on Boris Burda is in his book “The origin of the Tutelka. Small Encyclopedia Funny " (2010). On October 14, 2001, the question written on the basis of this fact was raised in the television final final "Your own game", and on October 29, 2004 the answer to the same question He brought victory to the experts In the autumn series of games "What? Where? When?".

Pavel Fedotov’s work “The Death of Fidelka” (you can also find the names “The Connera of Fidelka” and “Fidelka's Disease”) is known to the wide masses less than his “fresh gentleman”, “Master’s matchmaking” or “aristocrat breakfast”. It is not for nothing that we did not use the word “picture”, because ... this is not a picture. And do not look for it in the Russian Museum in St. Petersburg-it is not there. But you can read about work on website of the Tretyakov Gallery In Moscow, where it is stored: “In 1844–1846, Fedotov performed an individual of eight genre compositions. The artist himself called them sketches, suggesting to write picturesque canvases. One picture, the "fresh gentleman", plotly repeating Sepia, was carried out. In 1850, she and the seven Sepi were exhibited at an exhibition in Moscow. Then, in the magazine "Moskvityan", descriptions of these works compiled by the artist himself were published.

"In the morning, during tea, it turned out that one of the dozen dogs of the hostess got caught up. Tea from the table was away, he was replaced by a pillow on which the patient was put a fidel; putting her leeches and bandaging, the mistress straightens the whole house. She threatens the maid, already broken down with a shoe in her hands, is already put on a nan. With a teaching notebook, from which he cuts off the horses and from the revenge, there is enough dog running past to impose a piece of paper on her tail, which is already hanging on a thread in his mouth, leaving her doll, which she played on the table with tea, and with the earlier ears, she resorts to the patronage of her father, which himself is saved from Sodom, not forget Consolation is a dog; a little dog came across him: he pushed her a home with a home -made Cossack.

The story of the Fidelka seemed to the artist funny and instructive, and he fulfilled the continuation - Sepia "The Condition of the Clead of Fidelka", also located in the collection of the Tretyakov Gallery. "

So, Sepia (a type of graphic technique using shades of brown), not a picture. State Tretyakov Gallery, not the Russian Museum. In addition to everything, one more work with the seditious name (“The consequence of the death of Fidelka”), which is not reported in history. Are there too many inconsistencies? One thing is only true: the “death of Fidelka” at least in our days is really stored in the museum storerooms, from where periodically falls In exhibition halls on the occasion of the next thematic exposition.

At the end of November 2016, after death leader of the Cuban Revolution Fidel Castro, the bike about the case in the museum has gained new popularity. And already on November 30, in the newspaper Komsomolskaya Pravda - Novosibirsk, it turned out interview the author of the earliest mention of this story (in the form question For the local intellectual game) - expert, doctor of biological sciences, professor Dmitry Zharkov. Let us give a word to himself: “It was the beginning of the 1990s-the year 1991 or 1992, now I don’t even remember exactly. I was then a student at the Faculty of Natural Sciences at Novosibirsk State University. Once, for some reason, I picked up a “big Soviet encyclopedia” and saw the reproduction of the very drawing of Pavel Fedotov ...

I, a young man, hooked a "unspoken" name. Of course, it was stupid to blame the painter: I perfectly understood where he was and where Castro ... But I decided that this work of art could not be used, that is, to pronounce its name aloud, in the midst of our friendship with Cuba. Therefore, it seemed to me logical that the picture since 1959 is stored in storerooms and is not put up for a general display. ”

Although Zharkov did not find confirmation of his idea, the question written by him on this topic was raised at Novosibirsk competitions, and after his publication on the Internet, history got into “The book of the century. 1901 - 2000 "Thanks to which she gained wide fame, this time becoming the basis for television reviews. Meanwhile, journalists contacted the press service of the Tretyakov Gallery and found out how things really were. It turned out that Sepia Fedotov was never in a constant exposition. “Sepia is afraid of light, because we put them extremely rarely, so they are almost all the time in the storerooms,” the museum’s employees answered, adding that the story of the “death of Fidelka” is the fruit of the fantasy of the countryman of journalists.

Thus, the case of Pavel Fedotov, although funny, is still a fake.