ODESA, Ukraine ¨C The Odesa Fine Arts Museum, a colonnaded early-19th-century palace, stands almost empty. Early in Russia¡¯s war on Ukraine, its staff removed more than 12,000 works for safe keeping. One large portrait remained, depicting Catherine the Great, the Russian empress and founder of Odesa, as a just and victorious goddess.
Seen from below in Dmitry Levitzky¡¯s painting, the empress is a towering figure in a pale gown with a golden train. The ships behind her symbolize Russia¡¯s victory over the Ottoman Turks in 1792. ¡°She¡¯s textbook Russian imperial propaganda,¡± said Gera Grudev, a curator. ¡°The painting¡¯s too large to move, and besides, leaving it shows the Russian occupiers we don¡¯t care.¡±
The decision to let Catherine¡¯s portrait hang in isolation in the first room of the shuttered museum reflects a sly Odesan bravura: an empress left to contemplate how the brutality of Vladimir Putin, the Russian president who likens himself to a latter-day czar, has alienated the largely Russian-speaking population of this Black Sea port, established by her in 1794 as Moscow¡¯s long-coveted conduit from the steppe to the Mediterranean.
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