"I hear the harp..."[1] The Era of Peter the Great and Its Role in the Evolution of Russian Music
The young Tsar Peter’s famed Grand Embassy, when the future Russian Emperor and his delegation toured Europe for 18 months, became a crucial factor in the evolution of Peter’s understanding of technology, politics and culture in general. It also broadened the overall education of his court. During this trip, the young sovereign and his companions were introduced to the kind of European music that was played to entertain the public in palaces and theatres, as well as to the traditions and latest trends for using music as part of palace ceremonies.
The distinguished travellers saw all sorts of musical instruments. Some of these were rare and even exotic, while others were quite familiar yet improved upon in ways that “ennobled” their sound. The harp was one of the most fascinating among them.
Tracing the history of the harp's presence in Russia, we find the earliest mention of this musical instrument in the “Azbukovnik” [a medieval Russian reference book, arranged according to the alphabet (azbuka)], an early reference work of 1596: the Russian spelling “арфа”, “арписта” (from the Italian “arpa”, “arpista”) indicates that the first harps were brought to Muscovite Russia (the Grand Duchy of Moscow) from Italy. Later on, harps were mostly brought from Germany and, consequently, in the 17th century, the Russian spelling changed to “гарфа”, “гарфенист”, with the addition of the initial letter “г” reflecting the German spelling: “harfe”, “harfenist.” In the beginning, the harp became popular among foreigners living in Moscow’s German Quarter.
The harp as a feature of musical entertainment at court is mentioned in two early Russian romance novellas of Peter the Great’s era, “The Story of the Russian Sailor Vasily Kariotsky and the Beautiful Princess Hera- clia of the Florentine Land” and “The Story of Tsarevich Yaropol”: “And the Tsarevich took the harp, and began to play and sing concertos so beautifully, and the beautiful girls started dancing.”[2]
It is likely that foreign harpists served in the home chapel of the Boyar Artamon Matveev, who was the young Peter’s tutor.[3] The harp was among the instruments in the orchestra owned by Prince Alexander Menshikov, Peter’s right-hand man in the 1700s.[4] In the second half of the 18th century, harp music was popular at the imperial court. Its sounds filled both the magnificent halls of the best society salons in St. Petersburg and the manor houses of provincial landowners. It could also be heard in the homes of retired military officers, merchants, and burghers. In the 18th century, the Smolny Monastery (later called the Smolny Institute) Society for the Education of Noble Maidens played a significant role in promoting women’s participation in the performing arts, citing that the harp, “is the only instrument made for the fair sex, for the strength of the male hand always produces sharp, unpleasant, bare strings.”[5] History has also preserved the names of male harpists of that era. Among them, we should mention Gavriil Myagkov (1773-1840s), a professor of military studies at the Moscow University Boarding School, and Nikolai Gusy- atnikov, a merchant (1766 (9) - after 1842). We see the latter in a portrait by Ludwig Guttenbrunn (1801)6 represented as a petit maitre - a young dandy, who “is not really playing music, but is openly posing against the backdrop of a harp.”[7]
The centres for the development of harp playing were the two Russian capitals, Moscow and St. Petersburg. In Moscow, the harp was mainly played in some homes of the intelligentsia, such as those associated with Moscow University (Professor Gavriil Myagkov) and in the serf orchestras of illustrious music lovers among the nobility (some notable examples are Nikolai Sheremetev and Gavriil Bibikov). In St. Petersburg, “the households firmly associated with harp music were those of the Oginskys, Birons, Naryshkins and Stroganovs, as well as state educational institutions, such as the Smolny Monastery Society for the Education of Noble Maidens and the Petersburg Orphanage, where learning to play the harp was part of the curriculum.”[8]
One of the main reasons the harp was so popular during the Enlightenment was the “noble origin” of the instrument, which was associated with “the Greek lyre and cithara, the Celtic harp, and other ancient and myth ological musical instruments.”[9]
We find the first reliable references to the presence of the harp in 18th-century Moscow and St. Petersburg in newspaper advertisements published during the reign of Empress Elizabeth. We know that, in 1740, Lorenz Engholm, a maker of musical instruments and a harp player himself (Engholm moved to Moscow from Silesia), offered for sale “a double bass of extraordinary size and with a powerful sound, lutes, banduras, violins, guslis, harps, spinets and other instruments.”[10] Jacob von Staehlin (1709-1785) shared some interesting information about Engholm, who was evidently a remarkable person.[11]
In November 1745, it was reported that, “Johann Christoph Hochbrucker, who recently arrived, plays the harp masterfully, and offers his services to all those who want to listen to his music or learn how to play this instrument.”[12] Even small children played the harp: “There is a four-year-old girl in the household of court footman Murmozov who plays 15 different musical pieces on the harp.”[13] In the second half of the 18th century, foreign harp teachers and concert musicians were repeatedly mentioned in the announcements in St. Petersburg’s “Vedomosti” newspaper. Here is an example from 1780: “A musician, who recently arrived [in the city], plays David's harp, offers his services to those who wish to learn to play this enjoyable instrument...”[14]
“David’s harp” - a small stringed musical instrument without pedals - can be seen on an engraving depicting musical instruments in "The Spectacle of Nature and the Arts" (St. Petersburg, 1788. Part 8. Chart #16.) Johann Hochbrucker invented the single-action pedal harp in about 1720, and this instrument remained in use through to the end of the 18th century. However, it was gradually replaced by instruments with more advanced designs, equipped with mechanisms for tuning the strings, which were created by Georges (17341800) and Jacques-Georges Cousineau (1760-1824), Jean Henri Naderman (1734-1799) and Sebastien Erard (1752-1831).
The first time the harp appears in a Russian painting is associated with the names of the remarkable artist Dmitry Levitsky and the famous Smolny Institute graduate Glafira Alymova (1758-1826; Rzhevskaya in her first marriage, Maxle in her second). Alymova graduated in the first class of the Smolny Monastery Society for the Education of Noble Maidens (1776.)15 It was precisely at that time that Levitsky was completing his famous series of seven portraits depicting Smolny’s pupils (17721776), which come to be seen as the pinnacle of 18th century Russian painting. This is how the celebrated poet Alexander Sumarokov expressed his admiration of the young girls’ unaffected charms:
Aren't the nymphs of the goddesses here before us?
Or are they angels descended from Heaven
To the mortals' abode on Earth,
To delight the eyes and hearts of all spectators here.
Like the rays of the sun, so their eyes shine,
Their beauty is equal to the beauty of Heaven,
With their gentle hearts, their innocence is clear,
Indeed, they are a deity themselves.
As the garden is adorned with their presence today,
The whole of Russia will be made more beautiful.[16]
The portrait of Alymova is part of a single composition making up an unusual triptych: Ekaterina Molchanova and Glafira Alymova are painted seated, facing each other on the right and on the left of Natalia Borshchova in the centre, who is standing. Together, they represent an allegory of the union of science, music and theatre.
“In terms of its psychological depth, the portrait of Glafira Alymova is the most sophisticated of them. Of the three young women, Alymova is the most poised and self-confident; the appraising mockery in her cold bright eyes is in stark contrast to the childish awkwardness of the slightly disconcerted Molchanova and the contagious happiness of young Borshchova. Alymova is the only one who does not come across as a humble pupil, but as a beautiful noblewoman at court, who condescends to sit for a portrait with her harp.”[17] Her spectacular polonaise dress is extraordinarily luxuriant. Her head is adorned with a chignon with artificial flowers and light gauze with white dots. The artist took special care painting the finer details of the harp, and the viewer can distinguish the alternation of the red strings and single-action pedals; the golden column is decorated with elegant carvings and floral painting. Alymova’s harp was used quite extensively for music lessons at the Smolny Institute from the second half of the 1770s and throughout the 19th century. It is noteworthy that, in the 1890s, the young Smolny graduate who would go on to become the famous Russian and Soviet harpist Ksenia Erdeli (1878-1971) used Alymova’s harp to learn how to play, and along with Erdeli, Alymova’s great-granddaughter Elena Alymova also played this historical instru- ment.[18] Today Alymova’s harp, along with another historical harp from the Smol- ny Institute which dates back to the 18th century, is housed in the Russian Cultural History Department of the Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg.[19]
Perhaps there is no other musical instrument that was depicted in the works of Russian portraiture of the late 18th and first quarter of the 19th centuries as often as the harp. At the time, its popularity in Russian society was second only to that of the guitar.[20] The few instances when claviers and bowed string instruments were depicted in portraits and portrait miniatures of that time remain, so to speak, in the shadow of those numerous portraits of harp lovers, often women and occasionally men, captured at their instruments. These portraits form a unique “Russian harp gallery”, a treasure trove of both musical and personal iconography.
The 1790s were the golden age of sentimentalism in Russian literature. We can find an image typical of that era: a young man in love playing the harp during a date with his beloved - in “Edalvina”[21], a novella published in the third part of the “Hippocrene” almanac in 1799.
The new taste for sentimentalism prevailed in the visual arts as well, with a strong desire for an intimate and highly personal tone. The image of a young woman playing the harp becomes one of the most common subjects in miniature painting and small-scale portraiture at the turn of the 19th century. For example, at the very end of 1792, “stipend recipients and students of the 5th grade” were given the assignment to “paint a woman playing the harp or clavichord” for their miniature painting class at the Academy of Fine Arts.[22]
Playing various instruments - the harp, the violin, and keyboard instruments - was one of the favourite activities in the family of Paul I. Indeed, the Emperor himself was quite a decent musician. An extant miniature by Hornong depicting a young woman with a harp (1790, private collection, Moscow) is presumably a portrait of Paul’s wife, Empress Maria Feodorovna (1759-1828), a skilled harpist and harpsichordist, who inspired such composers as Giovanni Paisiello, Giuseppe Sarti, Domenico Cimarosa, Dmitry Bortnyansky, and Osip Kozlovsky to dedicate their music to her. Gerhard von Kugelgen's famous portrait of Emperor Paul I with his family, including Grand Duchess Maria Pavlovna (1800, Pavlovsk State Museum-Reserve), depicts them in the Pavlovsk Park, a wonderful haven of “muses and graces”, with an elegant, gold-trimmed harp. An instrument of similar design by Jean-Henri Naderman (1789) is housed in the collection of the St. Petersburg State Museum of Theatre and Musical Arts.23 Other members of the Imperial family who played the harp were Grand Duchess (and future Empress) Elizaveta Alekseevna (1779-1826), who was also a talented singer[24], and Elena Pavlovna (1784-1803), whose repertoire included musical pieces by their teacher, the famous harpist and composer of the day, Jean-Baptiste Cardonne (17601803). In her memoirs, Countess Varvara Golovina (1766-1821) recalled playing music with Elizaveta Alekseevna - the future Empress played the Spanish “La Folia” on the harp and Golovina accompanied her on the piano.[25]
The celebrated singer and actress Praskovya Kovaleva-Zhemchugova was another of Cardon's students, and her harp, made in the 1770s by the Parisian master craftsman Pierre Krupp, has survived to this day and is now in the permanent collection of the Ostankino Estate Museum in Moscow.[26] Like Alymova’s harp, this French single-action pedal harp with 36 strings is richly decorated with wood carving, gilding, polychrome and lacquer painting.[27]
There are a number of iconographic documents that testify to the widespread use of instruments of this design in Russia in the last quarter of the 18th century. Among them, we should note Peter Eduard Stroehling's miniature portrait of Princess Elizaveta Shakhovskaya (1773-1796) (1790s, Russian Museum), whose dramatic life, like Zhemchugova’s life, was cut short at a young age.[28] The list of famous Russian harp players of the late 18th century would not be complete without the mention of Princess Natalia Kurakina (1766-1831, nee Golovina). Brought up in an artistic and literary environment, she was known in St. Petersburg society as an unusually well-educated woman with an exceptional gift for music. The French actress Louise Fuzil[29] called Kurakina “an excellent musician” and the poet Ivan Dmitriev wrote the following address in the princess’s album (1810):
What can we sing in front of Erato's rival?
Her voice alone is enough to open hearts.
I will put my lyre down at K<urakina>'s feet
And listen to her in silent awe.[30]
A singer, composer, harpsichordist and harpist - few women of that era could hope to compete with this multi-talented musician31. Many portraits of Natalia Kurakina survive to this day. Among those artists who painted her were Vladimir Borovikovsky (1795), Marie-Elisabeth-Louise Vigee-Lebrun (1797), and Anselme Francois Lagrenee (1822). We would like to single out two miniature portraits of Kurakina (original and the artist's copy of 1792, 1790s) by Augustin Ritt, one of the best miniaturists of the 18th century. The young princess (painted in the 1790s, this portrait is now in a private collection in Moscow) is depicted, “in a striped dress with a white, almost transparent scarf around her neck. Curly powdered hair frames a pretty face with unexpectedly lively dark eyes.”32 In both of these portraits, the artist emphasizes the harpist’s graceful, elegant bearing. For a long time, the location of Ritt’s 1792 miniature portrait of Kurakina was unknown and only in 2014 was this portrait put up for auction at Christie’s in Paris and acquired by a private collector. The portrait of the Russian ballerina and dramatic actress Evgenia Kolosova (1780-1869, nee Neyolova), painted by Alexei Yegorov at the turn of the 19th century, presented another unforgettable image of the “Russian Euterpe” playing the harp.[33]
The portrait of Princess Cleopatra Lobanova-Ros- tovskaya (1791-1840) by Vladimir Borovikovsky, painted in the 1800s (Kyiv Picture Gallery), is remarkably psychologically nuanced. We see a true high-society beauty: her eyelids are slightly lowered, her gaze is languid, her left hand is playfully touching her cheek, while her right elbow rests on a handwritten musical score. In the background, there is a golden-brown harp with well-defined strings, a column and metal tuning pins on the top of the frame. Musical props help the artist reveal the character of the sitter more deeply, emphasizing not only her penchant for the fine arts, but also a particular knowledge of music. The true character of the princess seems to be concealed under a transitory mask of high-society conventions. Only during the rare moments of playing her favourite instrument can her face transform, expressing her genuine, sincere, heartfelt feelings through the music.
As for other skilled harpists, we should note Daria Dyakova (1767-1842), the second wife of the poet Gavriil Derzhavin34, her niece Praskovya Lvova (1793-1839), and the poet’s relative by marriage Pelageya Bakunina (1761-1820). Derzhavin’s own talent for music and his keen understanding of the musical arts are well known35. It is not surprising, therefore, that he mentioned quite a variety of musical instruments in his poetry and wrote colorful descriptions of people playing music, many of which were undoubtedly inspired by the daily musical life of his own household.[36] Derzhavin actually wrote a poem entirely devoted to the instrument we are talking about - here is his ode to the harp (1798):
On a hot summer day, is it a cool breeze
That blows into my chest, in the lightest of dreams?
Or is it a clear brook murmuring among the grasses?
Or my beloved's kiss in the shadow of the trees?
No! It is the harp I hear: its enchanting sound,
A soft, harmonious stream, it dozes on the roses,
Like an echo, from afar it gently flows into my ears,
Or rouses me from sleep, a windy storm nearby.
[...]
Sing, oh harp! Sing of Kazan for me!
SIng how blessed Paul appeared there!
We welcome all good news of our land:
In our native home, a burning smell still pleases.[37]
The harp that Derzhavin’s wife Daria played (a 41-string instrument of unusual design) and her watercolour portrait, both miraculously preserved to this day, are now in Kazan, in the collection of the Tatarstan National Museum. Derzhavin’s poetic lines: “Sing, sweet Euterpe! / Pluck the strings of your harp...” (1789) were inspired by Maria Naryshkina (1767 - after 1812), a famous singer and harpist of her time.
In family portraits, the harp often served as a symbol of happy married life and the comforts of the home, representing family unity and emphasizing the musical talents of the family members. An elegant black lacquered harp with 22 strings is depicted in a miniature by an unknown artist painted at the turn of the 19th century: “Portrait of I.I. Kusov with his wife playing the harp” (early 1800s, Hermitage Museum). Ilya Kusov (1777-1803), a merchant and the eldest son of the famous Russian merchant Ivan Kusov (1750-1819), was pictured here with his wife, Ekaterina (nee Mashmeiter), who was evidently a gifted harpist. The colour scheme of the miniature is remarkably well balanced: the golden and black hues of the instrument echo the colours of the couple’s clothes and the interior of the room. This artful composition is filled with a special meaning: its upper points - the harp and the figure of Kusov himself - appear to be on the same line, making the musical instrument (and, more broadly, the love of music) one of the most important, unshakable foundations of this young family.
So, what kind of music did these lovely women play? According to Pokrovskaya, “the harp repertoire that had emerged in Russia by the beginning of the 19th century was mixed. Muscovites preferred, almost exclusively, adaptations of folk songs and variations on them. The citizens of St. Petersburg chose larger-scale works such as sonatas, with citations from folk themes and, to a lesser extent, variations.”[38]
As the years went by, the harp lost ground to other, less exalted instruments, primarily the piano and the guitar, as the most popular musical instrument to be played at home. So, it is only occasionally that the harp appears in the works of Russian visual artists in the mid 19th century. Fortunately, the “golden age” of harp music in Russia has not been forgotten. It is alive in the beautiful portraits by Levitsky and Borovikovsky, in the charming miniatures by Ritt, Stroehling and Hor- nong, and in the works of their numerous contemporaries, who preserved the images of both this inimitable musical instrument and its devotees.
- Quote from: G.R. Derzhavin, “The Harp”, in G.R. Derzhavin, Poems. Leningrad, 1957. Pp. 275-276.
- 18th Century Russian Literature. Leningrad, 1970. Pp. 57-58. V.V. Sipovsky, Russian Novellas of the 17th - 18th Centuries. St. Petersburg, 1905. P. 186.
- N.N. Pokrovskaya, History of the Harp. Novosibirsk, 1994. Pp. 175-176.
- Quote from: I.V. Severkina, Y.N. Semyonov, “Alexander Danilovich Menshikov”, in Music in St. Petersburg. Encyclopaedia/ dictionary. V. 2. St. Petersburg, 1998. P. 205.
- P.N. Stolpyansky, Music and Music Playing in Old St. Petersburg. Leningrad, 1989. P. 152.
- L. Guttenbrunn. “Portrait of the merchant N.M. Gusyatnikov.” 1801. Oil on wood. 36.5 * 24.0 cm. State Historical Museum.
- Y.I. Chezhina, “Musical instruments in portraits in the 18th amd first half of the 19th centuries”, in Khudozhestvenny Vestnik, #2, 2009. Pp. 10-12.
- N.N. Pokrovskaya, Ibid. Pp. 177-178.
- L.V. Kirillina, Classical Style in Music of the 18th and Early 19th Centuries. Part III: Poetics and Stylistics. Moscow, 2007. Pp. 276-277.
- P.N. Stolpyansky, Ibid. P. 148.
- “I remember one of the old German harpists from Silesia, a Mr Lorenz, whom I met in Moscow in 1742, the year of Empress Elizabeth’s coronation, and who had practised his art there for 40 years before that. He gave harp lessons in many houses and also played his old minuets and polonaises at dancing parties when he was hired somewhere for the evening. He was also the only one who played drinking songs on his harp, with his grandfather’s German songs thrown in for fun - he sang them himself and accompanied on his harp, with tunes like ‘The cuckoo fell to death from a tall oak’, etc., ‘God almighty, get those bugs away from me!’, etc., ‘What am I, poor girl, to do - mother wouldn’t let me marry,’ etc., ‘Listen, Christians, what happened at that bad time,’ etc., ‘I am the doctor, I am the man, Doctor Theriac, who can cure all diseases that can be named’, etc. I remembered this old bard for another reason as well - in Moscow, in the aforementioned year, the Chief Marshal of the Court [Count Mikhail Bestuzhev- Ryumin] several times had him join the court musicians when the then Persian envoy, a strange and revolting man (due to his oriental pride or bad taste, he did not seem to like the music usually played at court during dinner, or thought it too good) was received separately at court, along with his noble retinues.” (J. Staehlin. Reports of music in Russia / From the records of Jacob Staehlin. Vol. II. Jacob Staehlin. Notes and correspondence on theatre, music and ballet in Russia. St. Petersburg, 2015. Pp. 260-261.)
- St. Petersburg Vedomosti, November 1 1745. No. 87. P. 698. Johann Christoph Hochbrucker - Christian Hochbrucker Jr (1733 - about 1800), great-nephew of the inventor of the pedal harp, Jacob Hochbrucker (about 1673-1763.)
- Music in St. Petersburg. Encyclopaedia/Dictionary. Vol. 1. 18th century. Book 7. St. Petersburg, 2004. P. 130.
- Ibid. P. 305.
- Other graduates of the Smolny Institute were also excellent harpists, including Simishina, Borschova, Rubanovskaya, Smirnaya (married name Dolgorukaya), and especially Nelidova, for whom Bortnyansky wrote the harp part in his opera “Le fils rival”. These harpists were taught by Maria Levesque and, presumably, by J. Luini (Music in St. Petersburg. Encyclopaedia/ Dictionary. V. 1. 18th century. Book 2. St. Petersburg, 2000. P. 131.)
- [A.P. Sumarokov] “Poems dedicated to noble maidens of the youngest age educated in the Novodevichy Convent, on their presence for the first time in the garden of H. I. H.’s summer residence, this year 1773, May 20”, in St. Petersburg Vedomosti, 1773, June 4. No. 45. Addition.
- N.M. Moleva, Levitsky. Moscow, 1980. P. 151.
- Quote from: D. K. Samin, A Hundred Great Musicians. Moscow, 2003. P. 238.
- Music of the Kunstkamera. 100th Anniversary of the St. Petersburg Museum of Musical Instruments. Proceedings of the 1st Academic and Research Conference on the History of Musical Instruments “Music of the Kunstkamera” (St. Petersburg, June 26-27, 2002). St. Petersburg, 2002. P. 203, 205-206.
- P.N. Stolpyansky, Music and Music Playing in Old St. Petersburg, Leningrad, 1989. P. 153-154.
- “In the stillness of the night, surrendering to the innermost reflections of the purest calmness, she heard a sad tune creeping towards her; with the breath of the night the sound was coming out of a moss-covered hut, separated from the garden by a ditch. The pleasant quiet melody, accompanied by the sounds of the harp, reached Edalvina’s ears [...] Burning with impatience, she would not admit it, but came up to the window of the pavilion to see the singer. In the moonlight, Hanning’s golden locks quickly caught her eye. The quivering light brushed the singing strings of his harp with silver.” (T.N. Livanova, Russian musical culture of the 18th century and its connections to literature, theatre and everyday life, Vol. I. Moscow, 1952-1953. P. 217.)
- T.N. Livanova, Russian musical culture of the 18th century and its connections to literature, theatre and everyday life, Vol. I. Moscow, 1952-1953. P. 335.
- See photograph in the catalogue: The Emperor playing music, St. Petersburg, 2006. P. 47.
- Music in St. Petersburg. Encyclopaedia/dictionary, Vol. 1. 18th century, Book 1, St. Petersburg, 2000. Pp. 328329. Boucher, David and Henry- Noel Lepin also dedicated their music for the harp to Elizaveta Alekseevna. In 1821-1825, Northern Harp (Le harpe du Nord), a sheet music magazine for singing, piano, harp and guitar, was published in St. Petersburg, and contained a dedication to Elizaveta Alekseevna.
- Music in St. Petersburg. Encyclopaedia/Dictionary, Vol. 1. 18th century, Book 1, St. Petersburg, 2000. P. 328.
- N.A. Yelizarova, The Sheremetev theatres, Moscow, 1944. P. 345.
- The sound and the image. Music in Russian Art in the 11th-20th centuries, Moscow, 2002. P. 110.
- There are also portraits of Elizaveta Shakhovskaya by Augustin Ritt (Hermitage Museum, 1794; other versions in the Louvre and the Hermitage) and Jean-Laurent Mosnier (1806, Hermitage).
- “Louise Fuzil’s Memoirs of Russia from 1806 to 1812” in Pantheon and the Russian Stage Repertoire, Vol. 1, January, St. Petersburg, 1850. P. 4.
- “For the album of Princess N.I. K<urakina>” (1810), in I.I. Dmitriev, Complete collection of poems, Leningrad, 1967. P. 361.
- Natalia Kurakina wrote more than 50 short pieces of vocal music (Russian songs, French romances, Italian arias and canzonettas with harp or clavier accompaniment) with text from poems by Russian, French and Italian poets, which were popular throughout the 19th century. New discoveries regarding Natalia Kurakina's musical compositions may be found in the following article: M.G. Dolgushina, “The first women composers in Russia”, in Music from the Past, 2016, #2 (72.) P. 2.
- G.N. Komelova, Augustin Ritt, a Russian miniaturist. 1765-1799. Life and work, St. Petersburg, 2004. P. 91.
- E.A. Yegorov. “Portrait of Evgenia Kolosova.” Before 1802. Oil on canvas, 80 * 63.5 cm. Tsarskoye Selo State Museum-Reserve.
- Y.K. Grot, The life of Derzhavin, Moscow, 1997. P. 564.
- T.N. Livanova, Russian musical culture of the 18th century and its connections to literature, theatre and everyday life. Vol. I. Moscow, 1952-1953. Pp. 150-188. See also: Music in St. Petersburg. Encyclopaedia/ Dictionary. Vol. 1, 18th century Book 1, St. Petersburg, 2000. Pp. 297-306.
- E.L. Kukushkina, "Notes of Praskovia Nikolaevna Lvova”, in 18th century, Collection 18, St. Petersburg, 1993. P. 276.
- G.R. Derzhavin, Poems, Leningrad, 1957. Pp. 275-276.
- N.N. Pokrovskaya, Ibid. P. 234.
Oil on wood. 36.5 × 24 cm
© State Historical Museum, Moscow
Oil on canvas. 183 × 142.5 cm
© Russian Museum, St. Petersburg
Bone, watercolour, gouache. Diameter 11.5 cm
Private collection, Moscow
Private collection, Europe
Oil on canvas. 146 × 215 cm
© Pavlovsk State Museum-Reserve, St. Petersburg, Pavlovsk
Bone, watercolour, gouache
© Russian Museum, St. Petersburg
Oil on canvas. 71.5 × 57.5 cm
© National Museum “Kyiv PictureGallery”, Ukraine
Oil on canvas. 80 × 63.5 cm
© Tsarskoye Selo State Museum-Reserve, St. Petersburg, Pushkin
© National Museum of the Republic of Tatarstan, Kazan
Photograph by Askold Smirnov
Bone, watercolour, gouache. 9.3 × 9.3 cm
Hermitage, St. Petersburg