History and Culture: The exhibition "Astrakhan collection of the brothers Sapozhnikovs" in Moscow

The exhibition "The Astrakhan collection of the brothers Sapozhnikovs" is opening in the All-Russian Art Research and Restoration Center named after academician I. E. Grabar (Moscow).

The exhibition in the Grabar Center presents paintings and prints of the XVIII-XIX centuries from the family collection of Astrakhan merchants-millionaires, fishermen, and major patrons of the pre-revolutionary time of the Sapozhnikov brothers. Since 1919 part of the collection is located in the P. M. Dogadin Astrakhan Art Gallery. The exhibition presents six picturesque portraits of members of the Sapozhnikov family and four prints depicting the main battles of the Northern War, which were restored in the Grabar Center in 2016-2017. 

At the beginning of the XIX century the founder of the dynasty and the family business, the Volga merchant-old-believer Peter Semenovich Sapozhnikov started collecting art (1762-1828). Over the course of a century, his descendants continued to replenish the family collection. From the surviving documents it is known that in 1827 the collection already had 25 paintings by the Flemish school painters, 17 Italian, 30 German, including works by Barocci, Titian, Poussin, Lebrun, Rubens, Van Dyck, Ostade and other prominent European Masters. The pearl of the collection was Leonardo da Vinci's Madonna with a Flower, known as the Madonna of Benoit, bought from the heirs of the general from artillery, Senator Aleksei Ivanovich Korsakov, in 1914 it was sold to the Imperial Hermitage by Maria Alexandrovna Benoit, nee Sapozhnikova, the wife of the court architect Leonty Nikolaevich Benois. A picturesque collection, along with sculpture and tapestries, adorned the St. Sapozhnikovs' house on the Promenade des Anglais, as well as the Astrakhan manor. At different times, the Sapozhnikovs were stopped by writers Ivan Aksakov, Alexander Dumas (father), natural scientist Karl Baer. 

The exhibition at the Grabar Center is a rare opportunity to see a small part of the famous meeting in Moscow.