The painting “In the Dungeons of the Tower of Nevyansk” was created by Oleg Edgardovich Bernhard (1909–1999), a famous Ural artist, member of the Union of Artists of the USSR. His works are part of museum and private collections around the world.
The artist illustrated the legend of the flooding of the dungeons under the Nevyansk Tower. According to legend, Akinfiy Demidov (an entrepreneur from the Demidov dynasty, founder of the mining industry in the Urals and in Siberia) had his own mint in the basement of the Nevyansk Tower, where day and night, in damp, cold and stuffy conditions, by the light of a forge, craftsmen secretly minted counterfeit silver rubles. When the empress found out about this, she was angry and sent a formidable prince-inspector. However, Demidov had his trusted people in both capitals; they learned about the upcoming audit and hastily rushed to warn Demidov. They got ahead of the inspector’s carriage, arrived at the Nevyansk plant earlier and warned the owner about the uninvited guest. Then Demidov appointed sentinels on the upper tiers of the tower to keep a watchful eye on the roads leading to Nevyansk. The inspector’s carriage was noticed several miles away and the owner was informed about it. To hide the traces of his crime against the royal treasury, Demidov committed an even more terrible crime: he ordered to open secret floodgates. Water poured into the dungeons, filling them, hiding the smelting furnaces, the equipment for minting coins and all the artisans who were chained to the walls of the tower.
The painting features a gloomy, deserted room, brickwork, a tightly closed door, prisoners bound in chains. From the locks opened by Akinfiy Demidov, a terrible stream of water is gushing out, and the basements are rapidly going under water. The artist managed to show the sheer horror of the suffering people who are trying to escape death, their eyes filled with fear and understanding of their approaching death.
To date, not a single confirmation of this legend has been found: the cellars under the tower have not been discovered, not a single silver coin has been discovered, and the Demidov underground mint continues to exist only in legends.
The artist’s work “In the Dungeons of the Tower of Nevyansk” entered the collection of the Nevyansk State Historical and Architectural Museum in 1988. The artist painted it one more time at the request of the museum: the first version, that was created in 1977, was damaged during a fire in the museum.
