An Unknown Woman: how I discovered a hidden tragedy tied to Russia’s most famous painting

It caused a scandal in imperial Russia, then became a staple of popular art in the USSR. But when I spied a copy of Ivan Kramsky’s portrait in the film Sentimental Value, it opened a door to an untold case of life imitating art Sentimental Value is one of those films you have to watch very closely. In the Norwegian director Joachim Trier’s latest work, which swept the board at the European film awards and is nominated for eight Baftas and nine Oscars, stories are hidden in closeups, half-tones and peripheral objects. Some of these stories are so well hidden, in fact, that they aren’t even apparent to the people who made the film. In one scene, roughly an hour in, the camera glides down a corridor, and suddenly there she is: a woman’s portrait on the wall. Anyone who grew up in the Soviet Union and later Russia between the 1950s and 2000s, like me, would recognise her instantly. She has been endlessly reproduced: as prints, embroideries, portrait medallions, even on boxes of chocolates. In Britain, people may have encountered her on the covers of various editions of Anna Karenina. Continue reading...

By Vladimir Raevsky