In March 2023, information was spreading that the leadership of the famous museum was going to remove Van Eyka from the halls on a rather courier occasion. We checked how much this news is true.

On March 30, Russian-language resources reported that the London National Gallery will remove the famous canvas “Portrait of the Arnolfini couple” Jan Van Eyka due to the similarity of the character depicted on it with Russian President Vladimir Putin. Some sources clarified that one of the Ukrainian workers allegedly spent the parallel, after which the threats fell to the museum to desecrate the picture. Many publications were accompanied by a 52-second video with the logo of the Belgian news site 7sur7, which was about this case in French.

Information has distributed resources such as RIA Fan, "Mriya","Ukraine.ru" Rodina.news, Fishki.net and a number of other sites. She spread widely into Telegram - on the channels "Russia now"(316,000 views at the time of writing of the material)"Putin in Telegram"(298 000),"Scott Ritter in Telegram"(183,000) and"Zlaya Prof"(138 000). The news also caused great excitement in English - in particular, in Twitter.

“Portrait of the Arnolfini couple” (1434) is one of the most famous paintings by the Dutch artist Jan van Eyka, a representative of the Northern Renaissance. Today it is considered the first famous paired portrait in European painting. At the same time, disputes about who is depicted on it is still underway, and the symbolism of small details gives rise to many interpretations of the author’s plan. Traditionally countsthat the canvas is captured by the merchant Giovanni di Nikolao Arnolfini and his wife in his house in Bruges. Since 1843, the picture can be seen in the London National Gallery on Trafalgar Square.

At the same time, over the past two decades, almost the most famous fact about the picture among the broad masses has become the similarity of a man depicted on it with Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Vladimir Putin and a fragment of “Portrait of the Arnolfini couple”.
Collage: https://ilovekefir.livejournal.com/

The townsfolk drew attention to the proximity of the features of the faces of two people almost immediately after Putin's exit to the arena of Russian big policy. In January 2000, when the current head of the Russian Federation was still in the rank and. O. president, in Novaya Gazeta came out article Under the heading “Lee Van Aik predicted the results of the elections in Russia”, which said the incessant speculation on this topic. In 2005, the guide of the National Gallery informed the correspondent "Komsomolskaya Pravda"That visitors ask her the corresponding question 20 times a day. Not bypassed memes And another author’s portrait, which, is also believed, is depicted by Giovanni Arnolfini. Last Exhibited In the Berlin Picture Gallery. Since then, the popularity of the theme of Putin - Arnolfini, although it has decreased, but alternately received new bursts.

The dynamics of the popularity of Putin Arnolfini Portrait in Google Trends

Therefore, a reasonable question arises: is it possible in our time to surprise (or even annoy) a large group of people with the similarity of a person from the picture of Van Eyka with the President of Russia? And even if so, will the leadership of a large museum go about the masses in such a strange situation? For answers, “verified” turned to the press service of the London National Gallery. Her representative of Esmi Wright informed us that “Portrait of Giovanni Arnolfini and his wife” (1434) Yana Van Eike was currently exhibited in the hall No. 28 and it is not planned to remove this picture from the exposition. Wright also noted that no complaints about her were received by the museum.

It remains to find out the origin of incorrect information. The first suspect was the 7SUR7 resource already mentioned above, the link to which is present at the distributed screenshot and the logo of which can be seen in the video. This Belgian site was Founded In 2005, Francophone journalists work in it by the Flemish media group. It was the Flemish part of Belgium - the birthplace of Van Eik, so here the news related to the local native could be paid to special attention. However, c section There is no such video with video shows on the site. It is also striking that in genuine video materials of the site of its logo is translucent, while in the dispersed video - completely white. In response to a request “verified” the 7SUR7 representative confirmed that a popular video is a fake that has nothing to do with their site: “The author of this video took our logo and sparked the style of our video. Images and texts on the video are not taken from us. ”

Finally, another logo present in a spread screenshot belongs to the Irish resource Irish Examinerwho, judging by the design, had to post a video on his Instagram with reference to 7Sur7. However, we did not find traces of such a video in any of the current social networks of this media, as on its official website, in list Those related to Van Aick. Here, too, a roller cover is not chased for Irish Examiner, and in general, the publication of a French -speaking video on the English -speaking resource looks strange. It should also be noted that the spread of this news in both languages began after it managed to disperse in Russian. The earliest mention of the “scandal” (and immediately - along with the screenshot and video) we recorded on the channel “Before everyone else. Well, almost. Special operation»March 30 at 11:04 pm Moscow time. This channel was previously repeatedly noticed in the fact that he was the first to begin to disseminate false information on the network. In particular, “verified” talked about cases with false graffiti And magazine covers with the image of the President of Ukraine Zelensky, as well as about fake video Madonna, spinning the Ukrainian flag. All these cases combine the theme of “Ukraine through the eyes of the West” and work with computer graphics. Perhaps this coincidence is not accidental.

Thus, the leadership of the London National Gallery is not going to remove from the exhibition a picture of Yana Van Eye “Portrait of the Arnolfini couple”, and the first news about this, accompanied by false video and photographic materials, appeared in Russian.

Photo on the cover: Wikimedia Commons