Mr Rodionov, director-general of the gallery, and Ms Seleznyova, the chief curator of the gallery, guided Mr Putin around the halls, a store-room and the restoration workshops of the gallery.
At the workshops, they told the President about the process of restoring paintings and showed him “View of the Fort of Pico on Madeira Island” by Karl Bryullov, which the gallery bought with the money allocated from the President’s reserve fund.
The President signed the visitors’ book and wrote: “There is nothing more valuable than the nation’s spiritual origin. I bow down to those who are preserving it.”