A. Ivanov

The posthumous fame of an artist can seem paradoxical. It often happens that a painter who has toiled all his life to polish his mastery, changing his manner, creating works that would become landmarks of the dedicated path of their creator, remains known to the general public for a single painting - one which is often far from his best. Thus, Alexander Ivanov has gone down in the memory of art lovers as the painter of "The Appearance of Christ to the People”, despite the fact that his own feelings on the work were rather mixed.

Looking at the Russian graves in Testacchio, the Roman cemetery for non-Catholics, in the autumn of 2003, my attention was drawn to one particularly well-tended tombstone. My guide Vanda Gasperovich, a lecturer at the University of Rome, explained that the grave belonged to Sergei Ivanov, architect and brother of the outstanding Russian painter. Sergei Ivanov, it seemed, had left a significant sum of money to the German Archaeological Institute of Rome, which now tended his grave. Several days later, I visited the library and archives of the German Archaeological Institute, and was quickly rewarded with a number of valuable, and unexpected, finds. The first was a letter from Pavel Tretyakov to Sergei Ivanov, sent from Moscow in the spring of 1873. Wrongly listed as intended for the Archimandrite Sophony, the letter was to be delivered to “l’Archimandrite Sophony, al’Ambasad Imperiale de Russie Roma pour remettre a Monsinor Serg Iwanoff”

On the history of the collection of books in the
Tretyakov Gallery’s academic library

In agreement with Pavel Tretyakov’s will, after his death in 1898, some of the books from his personal library became the property of the gallery, which had earlier been donated to the city of Moscow. There are several surviving documents that refer to this transfer. The most important is a 19-sheet “Inventory of Pavel Tretyakov’s Library”, rounded off with a handwritten note confirming that “the books and art publications listed herein were delivered by Pavel Tretyakov’s heir and included into the library of the Gallery of brothers Pavel and Sergei Tretyakov on November 1 1899”, signed by Ilya Ostroukhov and Yegor Khruslov¹. This date can be regarded as the founding date of the modern academic library of the Tretyakov Gallery. Over time Tretyakov’s personal collection of books was complemented with a large number of publications acquired later. Today it is kept as a separate memorial fund² - what sort of book collection had it been, and what part of it is deposited in the academic library?