The Soviet artist Porfiry Nikitich Krylov was one of the members of the “Kukryniksy” artistic group who were classics of Soviet political caricature. As part of the delegation of Soviet artists, he traveled abroad more than once and created a series of landscapes of Italy, France, Bulgaria and other European countries.

In 1956, the Kukryniksy took part in the Venice Biennale, an international art forum for the first time. The artists presented works on the subject of the Great Patriotic War — they received worldwide recognition and participated in this exhibition two more times.

Porfiry Krylov fell in love with Italy. He went there not only for business trips, but also on vacation with his family. The Porfiry Krylov Museum presents a large series of works by the artist dedicated to Italy that were made from the mid-1950s to the mid-1980s. They consist of landscapes of Rome, Venice, Naples and Florence.

The painting “In the Loggia dei Lanzi in Piazza della Signoria” shows one of the most beautiful Italian cities — Florence, the capital of Tuscany and the former center of the Florentine Republic. The city was founded more than 2000 years ago along the banks of the Arno River on the site of a settlement of Roman veterans. Its name translates as “blooming”. Florence is the birthplace of Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo, Machiavelli, Donatello, Dante and Galileo and the entire Renaissance.

The Loggia dei Lanzi is a gallery with an arcade resting on columns. It is located on Piazza della Signoria in Florence. This was where Cosimo I de’ Medici, the Grand Duke of Tuscany, housed his landsknecht mercenaries. Hence the name of the building, as “lancia” in Italian means “spear”, “lance”.

From the Loggia dei Lanzi, representatives of the Medici family could observe everything that was happening in the square and in the city. A magnificent hanging garden was arranged on the roof and a collection of marble sculptures was installed in the loggia itself which was guarded by two stone lions. Both lions were first exhibited at the Villa Medici in Rome but they were later moved to the Loggia dei Lanzi in Florence. Krylov captured one of these lions in his painting. Not far from the Loggia dei Lanzi is the famous Uffizi Gallery, which houses Porfiry Krylov’s “Self-Portrait”.