Rumyantsev Museum
The Rumyantsev Museum was the first public museum in Moscow . It arose from the art collection of Count Nikolai Petrovich Rumjanzew , which was transferred from St. Petersburg to Moscow in 1861 and donated to the Russian people. His donation mainly consisted of books and manuscripts as well as an extensive numismatic and an ethnographic collection. These holdings, along with around 200 paintings and more than 20,000 engravings that had been singled out by the Hermitage in St. Petersburg, were housed in the so-called Pashkov House , a palace built between 1784 and 1787 near the Kremlin . At the opening of the museum, Tsar Alexander II donated the painting “Christ Appears to the People” by Alexander Andrejewitsch Ivanov .
The citizens of Moscow, who were deeply impressed by the count's selfless donation, named the new museum after the founder and had the inscription “From the State Chancellor Count Rumyantsev for the purpose of good enlightenment” affixed to the gable . In the years that followed, the museum's collection grew through numerous other foundations and monetary donations, so that the museum soon housed an important collection of Western European paintings, an extensive collection of antiquities and a large collection of icons . As a result, the premises of the Pashkov House were soon no longer sufficient. Shortly after the turn of the century, another building was built next to the museum in order to cope with the oppressive confinement, which was to house the painting collection.
As a result of the October Revolution , the stocks grew so tremendously that the space problem soon became urgent again. There were also acute financial problems, as most of the funds flowed into the Pushkin Museum , which had only been completed a few years earlier and which had long since taken over from the Rumyantsev Museum. Therefore, in 1925, it was decided to close the Rumyantsev Museum and distribute the collections to various other museums and institutions in the country. Parts of the holdings, in particular Western European art and antiquity, also ended up in the Pushkin Museum.
literature
- Irina Antonowa: The picture gallery of the Pushkin Museum in Moscow. Seemann, Leipzig 1977.
- Irina Antonova: The State Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts. Iskusstwo, Moscow 1986.
Coordinates: 55 ° 44 ′ 59.1 ″ N , 37 ° 36 ′ 30.5 ″ E