40 paintings by the great masters are presented at the exposition. Vatican museums have never provided so many works of such level to any exhibition before.

      The exhibition "Roma Aeterna. Masterpieces of the Vatican Pinacoteque" has been opened in the Tretyakov Gallery. The museum direсtor, Zelfira Tregulova reported about it at a press conference in Moscow on Tuesday.

      "It is a unique situation, when Vatican Museums provide 40 works for the exhibition in the Tretyakov Gallery, while the Russian curators played a very active role in generating the concept of this exhibition and its content", - she said.

      Materpieces by Caravaggio, Raphaël Santi, Giovanny Bellini, Gverchino, Pietro Perugiino and Guido Rennie leave Vatican extremely rarely, therefore their display in the Tretyakov Gallery will become one of the most significant events in the series of the European exhibitions. In response the Tretyakov Gallery will send  to Vatican paintings by Russian artists of 19th - early 20th century on evangelical and biblical subjects in 2017.