Franz Roubaud’s panoramic painting The Siege of Sevastopol has been “virtually destroyed” in a Ukrainian drone strike, said Mikhail Razvozhaev, the Russian-appointed governor of Sevastopol.
The attack came in the early hours of June 10. Razvozhaev reported at around 4 a.m. Moscow time that the museum’s roof was on fire. Hours later, he said the blaze had been declared a level four, with more than 80 people working at the scene.
“The situation is extremely dire: it is already clear that Franz Roubaud’s great masterpiece has been almost completely destroyed,” Razvozhaev wrote.
He claimed the Ukrainian Armed Forces had deliberately targeted the museum. Ukraine did not comment on the attack.
The panorama The Siege of Sevastopol was unveiled in 1905, marking the 50th anniversary of the first defense of the city during the Crimean War. It was created by Franz Roubaud, widely regarded as the founder of Russia’s school of battle and panoramic painting.
Roubaud spent four years on the work, choosing as his subject the repulse of the assault on Malakhov Kurgan on June 6 (18), 1855. The building housing the painting was designed by military engineer Friedrich Oskar Enberg.
In June 1942, a German air raid and artillery bombardment set the panorama building ablaze. To save the painting, workers cut it into sections, but only two-thirds of it — 86 fragments — could be preserved. Those pieces were evacuated to Novorossiysk and then transported to Moscow.
The painting now on display in Sevastopol is the work of a collective of Soviet artists who restored it using the surviving fragments of the original. Both the canvas and the panorama building were reconstructed to mark the 100th anniversary of the “first defense,” and the museum was reopened.
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