Yusupov, Nikolai Borisovich. Family of the Yusupov princes, Prince Nikolai Borisovich Yusupov Nikolai Yusupov Director of the Imperial Theaters

Official positions held: chief manager of the Armory and the Expedition of the Kremlin Building, director of the Imperial Theaters (1791-1796), director of the Hermitage (1797), headed the palace glass, porcelain and tapestry factories (since 1792), senator (since 1788), active privy councilor ( 1796), minister of the Department of Appanages (1800-1816), member of the State Council (since 1823).

Biography

The only son of the Moscow mayor Boris Yusupov, a representative of the richest princely family of the Yusupovs, who died on his great-granddaughter Zinaida.

Helping to acquire works of art for Empress Catherine II and her son Paul I, the prince was an intermediary in the execution of imperial orders by European artists. Thus, the Yusupov collection was formed from the same sources as the imperial one, therefore, the Yusupov collection contained works by major landscape painters.

Family traditions and membership in the service of the Collegium of Foreign Affairs had a significant impact on his personality and fate. In its long life, several stages can be distinguished that were of decisive importance for the formation of the collection.

First of all, this is the first educational trip abroad in 1774-1777, staying in Holland and studying at the University of Leiden. Then interest in European culture and art awakened, and a passion for collecting arose. During these years, he made a Grand Tour, visiting England, Portugal, Spain, France, Italy, Austria. It was presented to many European monarchs, was adopted by Diderot and Voltaire.

My books and a few good pictures and drawings are my only entertainment.

N. B. Yusupov

In Leiden, Yusupov acquired rare collectible books, paintings and drawings. Among them is the edition of Cicero, issued by the famous Venetian firm of Aldov (Manutius), with a commemorative inscription about the purchase: “a Leide 1e mardi 7bre de l’annee 1774” (in Leiden on the first Tuesday of September 1774). In Italy, the prince met the German landscape painter J. F. Hackert, who became his adviser and expert. Hackert painted on his order the paired landscapes Morning in the Outskirts of Rome and Evening in the Outskirts of Rome, completed in 1779 (both - the Arkhangelskoye State Museum-Estate). Antiquity and modern art - these two main hobbies of Yusupov will continue to determine the main artistic preferences, consonant with the era of the formation and development of the last great international artistic style in European art - classicism.

The second important stage in the formation of the collection was the 1780s. As a person versed in the arts and well-known at European courts, Yusupov entered the retinue and accompanied the Count and Countess of the North (Grand Duke Pavel Petrovich and Grand Duchess Maria Feodorovna) on a trip to Europe in 1781-1782. Possessing great knowledge, a taste for the fine arts, he carried out the instructions of Pavel Petrovich and significantly expanded his ties with artists and commission agents, for the first time visited the workshops of the most famous artists - A. Kaufman in Venice and P. Batoni, engraver D. Volpato, widely known for reproduction engravings from the works of Raphael in the Vatican and Rome, G. Robert, C. J. Vernet, J.-B. Greuze and J.-A. Houdon in Paris. Then relations with these artists were maintained over the years, contributing to the replenishment of the personal collection of the prince.

1790s - the rapid rise of Yusupov's career. He fully demonstrates his devotion to the Russian throne, both to the aging Empress Catherine II and Emperor Paul I. At the coronation of Paul I, he was appointed supreme coronation marshal. He performed the same role at the coronations of Alexander I and Nicholas I.

From 1791 to 1802, Yusupov held important government posts: director of the imperial theatrical performances in St. Petersburg (since 1791), director of the imperial glass and porcelain factories and tapestry manufactory (since 1792), president of the manufactory board (since 1796) and minister of appanages (since 1800). ).

In 1794, Nikolai Borisovich was elected an honorary amateur of the St. Petersburg Academy of Arts. In 1797, Paul I gave him control of the Hermitage, where the imperial art collection was located. The art gallery was headed by the Pole Franz Labensky, who had previously been the curator of the art gallery of King Stanisław August Poniatowski, whom Yusupov accompanied during his stay in St. Petersburg. A new complete inventory of the Hermitage collection was carried out. The compiled inventory served as the main inventory until the middle of the 19th century.

The government posts held by the prince made it possible to directly influence the development of national art and artistic crafts. He acquired the Arkhangelskoye estate near Moscow, turning it into a model of a palace and park ensemble. Yusupov is the founder of the famous tribal assembly, an outstanding and most striking personality. He collected a large collection of paintings (over 600 canvases), sculptures, works of applied art, books (over 20 thousand), porcelain, most of which he placed in the estate.

In Moscow, Yusupov lived in his own palace in Bolshoy Kharitonievsky Lane. In 1801-1803. in one of the wings on the territory of the palace lived the Pushkin family, including little Alexander Pushkin. The poet also visited Yusupov in Arkhangelsk, and in 1831 Yusupov was invited to a gala dinner in the Arbat apartment of the newlyweds Pushkins.

It has been magnificently extinguished for eighty years, surrounded by marble, painted and living beauty. In his country house, Pushkin, who dedicated him, talked to him, and drew Gonzaga, to whom Yusupov dedicated his theater.

He died during the famous cholera epidemic in Moscow, in his own house in the parish of the Khariton Church in Ogorodniki. He was buried in the village of Spasskoye-Kotovo, Mozhaysky district, Moscow province, in the ancient church of the Savior Not Made by Hands.

Prince Nick. Bor. Yusupov. - The wealth of the Yusupov family. - Prince Grigory Yusupov. - The village of Arkhangelsk. - Prince Golitsyn, nobleman of Catherine's time. - Theatre. - A wealth of greenhouses. - The prudence of the Yusupov princes. - Directorate. - Yusupov's land wealth. - Anecdotes from the life of Yusupov. - T. V. Yusupova. - Prince B. N. Yusupov. - Ancestral home of the princes Yusupov in Moscow. - The working life of Prince B. N. Yusupov. - The Countess de Cheveaux.

One of the last grandees of the brilliant age of Catherine II was also in Moscow, Prince Nikolai Borisovich Yusupov. The prince lived in his old boyar house, given for his service to his great-great-grandfather, Prince Grigory Dmitrievich, by Emperor Peter II.

This house stands in Kharitonievsky Lane and is remarkable as an old architectural monument of the 17th century. Here his grandfather treated the crowned daughter of Peter the Great Empress Elizabeth during her visit to Moscow.

The wealth of the Yusupovs has long been famous for its colossality. The beginning of this wealth comes from the time of Empress Anna Ioannovna, although even before that time the Yusupovs were very rich. Their ancestor, Yusuf, was the sovereign sultan of the Nogai Horde. His sons arrived in Moscow in 1563 and were granted by the tsar rich villages and villages in the Romanovsky district (Romanovsko-Borisoglebsky district of the Yaroslavl province). The Cossacks and Tatars settled there were subordinated to them. Subsequently, one of the sons of Yusuf was given some more palace villages. Tsar Feodor Ivanovich also repeatedly granted Il-Murza lands. False Dmitry and the Tushinsky thief granted Romanovsky Posad (county town of Romanov, Yaroslavl province) to his son Seyush.

Upon accession to the throne, Tsar Mikhail Feodorovich left all these lands behind him. The descendants of Yusuf were Mohammedans even under Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich. Under this sovereign, the great-grandson of Yusuf, Abdul-Murza, was the first to accept Christianity; at baptism he received the name of Dmitry Seyushevich Yusupovo-Knyazhevo.

The newly baptized prince soon fell into the tsar's disgrace on the following occasion: he took it into his head to treat Patriarch Joachim with a goose at his dinner; the day turned out to be fasting, and for this violation of the charters of the church, on behalf of the king, the prince was punished with batogs and all his property was taken away from him; but soon the king forgave the culprit and returned what had been taken away.

There is an anecdote about this case. Once, the great-grandson of Dmitry Seyushevich was the chamber junker on duty during dinner with Catherine the Great. A goose was served on the table.

- Do you know how, prince, to cut a goose? Ekaterina Yusupova asked.

- Oh, the goose must be very memorable of my surname! - answered the prince. - My ancestor ate one on Good Friday and for that he was deprived of several thousand peasants granted to him at the entrance to Russia.

“I would take away all his property from him, because it was given to him on the condition that he does not eat fast on fast days,” the empress remarked jokingly about this story.

Prince Dmitry Yusupov had three sons, and after his death, all wealth was divided into three parts. Actually, the wealth of the Yusupovs was laid by one of the sons of the latter, Prince Grigory Dmitrievich. The descendants of the other two sons did not grow rich, but were divided and fell into decay.

Prince Grigory Dmitrievich Yusupov was one of the military generals of the time of Peter the Great - his mind, fearlessness and courage brought him the favor of the emperor.

In 1717, the prince was appointed, among other persons, to investigate the abuses of Prince Koltsov-Masalsky on salt collection in Bakhmut. In 1719 he was a major general, and in 1722 a senator. Catherine I promoted him to lieutenant general, and Peter II appointed him lieutenant colonel of the Preobrazhensky Regiment and the first member of the Military Collegium. He was also entrusted with the search for Solovyov, who was transferring millions belonging to the prince to foreign banks. Menshikov.

He also carried out an investigation about government things, hidden by the chief chamberlain, Prince I. Dolgoruky. In addition to this, as Karnovich says, he was engaged in the extremely profitable at that time food and quartermaster part, and also built ships. Peter II gave him a spacious house in Moscow in the parish of the Three Hierarchs, and in 1729 he granted him many of the villages of Prince Menshikov deducted to the treasury, as well as the estate with a suburban settlement leased from Prince Prozorovsky, into eternal hereditary possession.

The Spanish ambassador Duc de Liria characterizes Prince Yusupov as follows: “Prince Yusupov of Tatar origin (his brother is still a Mohammedan), a completely well-bred man, who served very well, quite familiar with military affairs, he was all covered with wounds; the prince loved foreigners and was very attached to Peter II - in a word, he belonged to the number of those people who always follow the straight path. One passion overshadowed him - the passion for wine.

He died on September 2, 1730, at the age of 56, in Moscow, at the beginning of the reign of Anna Ioannovna, he was buried in the Epiphany Monastery 67 (in Kitay-Gorod), in the lower church of the Kazan Mother of God. His gravestone inscription begins like this:

“Inspire, whoever passes away, semo, this stone will teach you a lot. The general-in-chief was buried here, etc., etc.

Yusupov left three sons, of whom two soon died, and the only remaining son, Boris Grigoryevich, received all his enormous wealth. Prince Boris was brought up at the behest of Peter the Great in France. He enjoyed Biron's special favor.

Under Empress Elizaveta Petrovna, Yusupov was president of the Commerce Collegium, chief director of the Ladoga Canal, and for nine years he managed the cadet land gentry corps.

During the management of this Corps, he was the first in the capital to start theatrical performances for his own pleasure and for the entertainment of a few dignitaries detained against their will by the affairs of service on the banks of the Neva. The court at that time was in Moscow; cadet actors acted out the best tragedies in the Corps, both Russian, composed at that time by Sumarokov, and French in translation.

The French repertoire consisted mainly of Voltaire's plays, presented in a distorted form. When the court returned from Moscow, the empress wished to see the performance, and in 1750, at the initiative of Yusupov, the first public performance of the Russian tragedy of Sumarokov’s work “Khorev” took place, and in the same year, on September 29, the empress ordered Trediakovsky and Lomonosov to compose based on the tragedy . Lomonosov a month later composed the tragedy "Tamiru and Selim". As for Trediakovsky, he, too, two months later delivered the tragedy "Deidamius", the "catastrophes" of which "was leading the queen to sacrifice to the goddess Diana." The tragedy, however, was not even worthy of publication at the Academy.

But we return again to Boris Yusupov. Empress Elizabeth, satisfied with the management of his gentry corps, granted him an eternal hereditary possession in the Poltava province, in the village of Ryashki, a state-owned cloth factory with all camps, tools and artisans and with a village attached to it, so that he would write Dutch sheep to this estate and led the factory into a better device.

The prince undertook to annually supply to the treasury first 17,000 arshins of cloth of all colors, and then put 20 and 30 thousand arshins.

The son of this prince, Nikolai Borisovich, as we have said above, was one of the most famous nobles who ever lived in Moscow. Under him, his estate near Moscow, the village of Arkhangelsk, was enriched with all kinds of artistic things.

He laid out a large garden there with fountains and huge greenhouses, containing more than two thousand orange trees.

One of these trees was bought by him from Razumovsky for 3,000 rubles; there was no one like him in Russia, and only two of these, located in the Versailles greenhouse, were a match for him. According to legend, this tree was already 400 years old.

The village of Arkhangelskoye, Upolozy too, is located on the high bank of the Moskva River. Arkhangelsk was the ancestral patrimony of Prince Dmitry Mikhailovich Golitsyn, one of the educated people of the time of Peter the Great.

Under Empress Anna Ioannovna, the prince was exiled to Shlisselburg, where he died. During the disgrace, the prince lived in this estate; here, according to I. E. Zabelin, he had an elegant library and a museum, which at that time were inferior in their wealth only to the library and museum of Count Bruce. Most of the manuscripts from Arkhangelsk later passed into the collection of Count Tolstoy and then belonged to the Imperial Public Library; but the best ones were plundered during the inventory of the estate - they were used, as Tatishchev says, even the Duke of Courland Biron.

At the time of the Golitsyns, Arkhangelskoye resembled the old village life of the boyars in its unpretentiousness and simplicity. The prince's yard consisted of three small rooms, actually eight-yard huts, connected by a passage. Their interior decoration was simple. In the front corners there are icons, near the wall are benches, stoves made of yellow tiles; in one room there were two windows, in another four, in the third five; in the windows the glass was still in the old style in lead bindings or frames; oak tables, four leather chairs, a spruce bed with a featherbed and a pillow, in mottled and embroidered pillowcases, etc.

There was a bathhouse near the svetlitsy, and in the yard, fenced with a lattice fence, various services - a cookery, a cellar, glaciers, barns, etc. Not far from the house stood a stone church in the name of the Archangel Michael, founded by the father of the prince, boyar Mikhail Andreyevich Golitsyn. But what did not correspond to the unpretentious simple boyar life then here were two greenhouses, very unusual for that time; overseas trees wintered here: laurus, nux malabarica, myrtus, kupresus and others.

Opposite the greenhouses was a garden with a length of 61 sazhens, a width of 52 sazhens, in it were planted: sambucus, chestnuts, mulberries, serengia (2 pcs.), 14 walnuts, God's trees, a small lily, etc.; on the ridges grew: carnation, catheser, chalcedony lychnis, blue and yellow iris (iris), kalufer, isop, etc.

Opposite the choir there was a garden 190 sazhens long and 150 sazhens wide, with prospective roads along which maples and lindens were planted. The last of the Golitsyns who owned Arkhangelsk was Nikolai Alexandrovich, married to M. A. Olsufieva. This Golitsyna sold Arkhangelsk for 100,000 rubles to Prince Yusupov.

After buying the estate, the prince cut down a lot of forest and set about capital construction of the estate. The house was designed in excellent Italian taste, connected by colonnades, with two pavilions, in which, as in the seventeen rooms of the house, 236 paintings were located, consisting of originals: Velazquez, Raphael Mengs, Perugini, David, Ricci, Guido Reni, Tiepolo and others . Of these paintings, Doyan's painting “The Triumph of Metellus” deserved special attention; from the marbles of Arkhangelsk, there is a remarkable group of Canova "Cupid and Psyche" and a chisel of Kozlovsky, a beautiful statue of "Cupid", unfortunately damaged during transportation in 1812. Yusupov collected art gallery for thirty years.

But the best beauty of Arkhangelsk is the home theater, built according to the drawing of the famous Gonzago, for 400 spectators; twelve scenery changes of this theater were painted by the brush of the same Gonzago. Yusupov also had another theater in Moscow, on Bolshaya Nikitskaya Street, which formerly belonged to Pozdnyakov and where French performances were given during the French stay in Moscow in 1812.

Yusupov's library consisted of more than 30,000 volumes, including the rarest Elseviers and the Bible, printed in 1462. There was also a house in the garden called "Caprice". It was said about the construction of this house that when Arkhangelskoe belonged to the Golitsyns, the husband and wife quarreled, the princess did not want to live in the same house with her husband and ordered to build a special house for herself, which she called “Caprice”. The peculiarity of this house was that it stood on a small hill, but there were no porches with steps to enter it, but only a sloping path that sloped down to the very threshold of the doors.

Prince Yusupov was very fond of old bronzes, marbles and all sorts of expensive things; he once collected such a number of them that it was difficult to find another such rich collection of rare antique things in Russia: by his grace, money changers and junk dealers Shukhov, Lukhmanov and Volkov became rich in Moscow. Prince Nikolai Borisovich, in his time, received an excellent education - he was an envoy in Turin during the reign of Catherine. At the university of this city, the prince received his education and was a friend of Alfieri.

Emperor Paul at his coronation granted him the star of St. Andrew the First-Called. Under Alexander I, he was for a long time the minister of appanages, under Emperor Nicholas he was the head of the Kremlin expedition, and under his supervision the Small Nikolaevsky Kremlin Palace was rebuilt.

He had all the Russian orders, a portrait of the sovereign, a diamond cipher, and when there was nothing more to reward him with, he was granted one pearl epaulette.

Prince Yusupov was very rich, loved luxury, knew how to show off when needed, and being very generous, he was sometimes very prudent; Countess Razumovskaya in one letter to her husband describes a holiday in Arkhangelsk near Yusupov, given to Emperor Alexander I and King Frederick William III of Prussia.

“The evening was excellent, but the holiday was the most deplorable. It would be too long to tell everything, but here is one detail for you, by which you can judge the rest. Imagine, after a snack, we went for a ride on terrible roads and damp, ugly places. After a half-hour walk we drive up to the theater. Everyone expects a surprise, and for sure - the surprise was complete, the scenery was changed three times, and the whole performance is ready. Everyone bit their lips, starting with the sovereign. Throughout the evening there was a terrible turmoil. The most august guests did not know for sure what to do and where to go. The king of Prussia will have a good idea about the Moscow nobles. The stinginess in everything was unimaginable.

All the Yusupovs were not distinguished by extravagance and tried to collect more wealth. So, giving out brides from their kind, the Yusupovs did not give much as a dowry.

According to the will, for example, of Princess Anna Nikitichna, who died in 1735, only 300 rubles a year were assigned to her daughter for extradition, from household items: 100 buckets of wine, 9 bulls and 60 rams. When marrying Princess Evdokia Borisovna to the Duke of Courland, Peter Biron, only 15,000 rubles were given as a dowry. with the obligation on the part of the father of the bride to provide the future duchess with a diamond dress and other shells with a price indication for each item. The princess-bride was of dazzling beauty and did not live long in marriage to Biron.

After her death, Biron sent Yusupov her front bed and all the furniture from her bedroom as a keepsake; the furniture was upholstered in blue satin and silver.

Also interesting is the wedding contract between Prince Dmitry Borisovich Yusupov and the devious Aktinfov, who undertook to pay him 4,000 rubles if he did not marry his daughter to the prince by the appointed date. penalties - a very significant amount for half of the XVII century.

The village of Arkhangelsk has been honored more than once by the arrival of the highest persons; Empress Maria Feodorovna stayed for several days, and in the garden there are marble monuments with inscriptions about when and which of the highest persons were there. It is very clear that, accepting royal persons, Yusupov also gave magnificent holidays.

The last of these holidays was given by Yusupov to Emperor Nicholas after his coronation. Almost all foreign ambassadors were here, and everyone was surprised at the luxury of this lordly estate. The holiday came out the most luxurious and magnificent.

On this day in Arkhangelsk there was a dinner, a performance and a ball with illumination of the entire garden and fireworks.

Prince Nikolai Borisovich was a friend of Voltaire and lived with him at Ferney Castle; in his youth, he traveled a lot and was received by all the then rulers of Europe. Yusupov saw in full splendor the court of Louis XVI and his wife Marie Antoinette; Yusupov was more than once in Berlin with the old king Frederick the Great, presented himself in Vienna to Emperor Joseph II and the English and Spanish kings; Yusupov, according to his contemporaries, was the most affable and nice person, without any pomposity or pride; with the ladies he was exquisitely polite. Blagovo says that when in a familiar house he happened to meet some lady on the stairs - whether he knows her or not - he always bows low and steps aside to let her pass. When in his summer in Arkhangelsk he walked in the garden, then everyone who wanted to walk was allowed to go there, and when he met, he would certainly bow to the ladies, and if he met even those known to him by name, he would come up and say a friendly word.

Pushkin sang Yusupov in his charming ode "To the nobleman." Prince Nikolai Borisovich managed the theaters from 1791 to 1799, and, like his father, who laid the foundation for the Russian drama theater in St. Petersburg, he also did a lot for art in this field; the prince had his own Italian buff opera in St. Petersburg, which gave pleasure to the whole court.

According to the biographer Nikolai Borisovich, he loved the theater, scientists, artists, and even in old age brought a tribute of surprise to the fair sex! It cannot be said that even at a young age Yusupov ran away from the fair sex; according to the stories of those who knew him, he was a big "ferlakur", as they called red tape then; in his village house there was one room, where there was a collection of three hundred portraits of all the beauties, whose favor he enjoyed.

In his bedroom hung a picture with a mythological plot, in which he was represented by Apollo, and Venus was a person who was better known at that time under the name of Minerva. Emperor Pavel knew about this picture and, upon his accession to the throne, ordered Yusupov to remove it.

Prince Yusupov, in his old age, took it into his head to go into business and started a mirror factory; at that time, all mirrors were more imported and were at a high price. The prince did not succeed in this enterprise, and he suffered heavy losses.

The last years of his life, Prince Yusupov lived without a break in Moscow and enjoyed great respect and love for his purely aristocratic courtesy with everyone. Only one thing harmed the prince a little, this is an addiction to the female sex.

Prince N. B. Yusupov was married to the niece of Prince Potemkin, Tatyana Vasilievna Engelhardt, who was previously married to her distant relative Potemkin. Yusupov's wife brought colossal wealth.

The Yusupovs did not know the account of either their millions or their estates. When the prince was asked: "What, prince, do you have an estate in such and such a province and district?"

They brought him a commemorative book in which all his estates were recorded by provinces and districts; he coped, and it almost always turned out that he had an estate there.

Prince Yusupov was very young in his old age and liked to tease his old peers. So, once when he blamed Count Arkady Markov about his old age, he answered him that he was the same age as him.

“Have mercy,” continued the prince, “you were already in the service, and I was still at school.

“But why am I to blame,” Markov objected, “that your parents started teaching you to read and write so late.

Prince Yusupov was friendly with the famous Count Saint-Germain and asked him to give him a recipe for longevity. The count did not reveal the whole secret to him, but said that one of the important means is to abstain from drinking not only intoxicating, but also any kind.

Prince Yusupov, despite his gallantry with women, when he was the director of the theater, knew how to be, when necessary, strict with the actresses subordinate to him. One day some Italian opera singer, out of a whim, came down sick; Yusupov ordered, under the guise of participation in her, not to let her out of the house and not to let anyone in except the doctor. This delicate arrest frightened the capricious actress so much that her imaginary illness was taken away from her.

Prince Yusupov, as we said, was married to the widow Potemkina. In the life of this rich woman, as Karnovich mentions, there was one remarkable circumstance: the very odd Duchess of Kingston, Countess Worth, who came to St. Petersburg under Catherine the Great, fell in love with Tatyana Vasilievna Engelhardt, still young at that time, that she wanted to take her with her to England and give her all his immeasurable fortune. The Duchess arrived in Petersburg on her own magnificent yacht, which had a garden and was decorated with paintings and statues; with her, in addition to numerous servants, there was an orchestra of music. Tatyana Vasilievna did not agree to the proposal of the duchess and, having become a widow, married Yusupov in 1795. The couple subsequently did not get along very well and did not live together, although they were not in a quarrel. The prince died before his wife, the latter died after him, ten years later. They had one son. It is remarkable that in this line of the Yusupovs, as in the younger line of the Sheremetevs, only one heir remained constantly alive. Now it seems that this has changed - the Sheremetevs have several, and the Yusupovs have none.

Tatyana Vasilievna Yusupova also did not differ in extravagance and lived very modestly; she managed all her estates herself. And out of some kind of frugality, the princess rarely changed her toilets. She wore the same dress for a long time, almost to the point of complete wear. One day, already in her old age, the following thought came to her mind:

“Yes, if I keep to that order, then my female servants will have a few belongings after my death.”

And from that very hour there had been an unexpected and drastic upheaval in her toilet habits. She often ordered and put on new dresses made of expensive materials. All her family and friends marveled at this change, congratulated her on her panache and on the fact that she seemed to have grown younger. She, so to speak, dressed up for death and wanted to replenish and enrich her spiritual testament in favor of her servants. She had only one expensive passion - it was to collect precious stones. The princess bought the famous diamond "Polar Star" for 300,000 rubles, as well as the diadem of the former Queen of Naples Carolina, Murat's wife, and also the famous pearl in Moscow from the Greek Zosima for 200,000 rubles, called "Pelegrina", or "Wanderer", once owned by King Philip II of Spain. Then Yusupova spent a lot of money on her collection of antique carved stones (cameo and intaglio).

The only son of Tatyana Vasilievna, Boris Nikolaevich, is known as a very active and caring person in the performance of his duties. According to the stories of his contemporaries, he died in the service and for the economic affairs of his vast estates, and the day before his death he was engaged in the affairs of the service. In the words of his biographer, "happiness opened up a brilliant field for him."

He was the godson of Emperor Paul and received the Order of Malta as a child, and the hereditary command of the Order of St. John of Jerusalem. After passing the exam at the Testing Committee at the St. Petersburg Pedagogical Institute, he hastened to enter the civil service.

As we have already said, industrious activity was a hallmark of his character. The prince, owning estates in seventeen provinces, surveyed his vast estates every year. Even such terrible things as, for example, cholera, did not keep him from household worries; and at a time when the latter was raging in Little Russia, he was not afraid to come to his village of Rakitnoye, where this epidemic was especially destructive; without fear of infection, the prince walked everywhere in the village.

In domestic life, the prince shunned luxury; his whole morning was devoted to official and economic affairs.

But at lunchtime, he was always glad to meet his friends and acquaintances: he did not analyze and distinguish by rank, and, once invited by him, received access to him forever.

In conversation, the prince was playful and witty, and knew how to deftly notice the oddities of his acquaintances. In the evening, the prince was always at the theater, the love for which he inherited from his father, who had been managing theaters for a long time; the prince, however, only liked to be in Russian performances.

The prince played the violin excellently and had a rare collection of Italian violins. Boris Nikolaevich did not like his Arkhangelsk and never lived there for long; at one time he began to take out a lot from there to his Petersburg house, but the emperor Nikolai Pavlovich, who remembered his Arkhangelsk, ordered to tell the prince that he should not devastate his Arkhangelsk.

The prince never gave festivities on this estate and, when he came to Moscow, he usually stayed in his ancient boyar house, donated, as we said above, to his great-grandfather by Emperor Peter II.

This house in Zemlyanoy Gorod, in Bolshoi Kharitonievsky Lane, was a rare architectural monument of the late 17th century; before it belonged to Alexei Volkov. The stone two-storey chambers of the Yusupovs with annexes to the east side stood in a spacious courtyard; a one-story stone building adjoined their western side, behind a stone pantry, then there was a garden, which until 1812 was much larger, and it had a pond. According to A. A. Martynov, the first chamber has two tiers, with a steep iron roof on four slopes, or epancha, and is distinguished by the thickness of the walls, built of 18-pound bricks with iron ties. Strength and safety were one of the first conditions of the building. At the top, the entrance door has partially retained its former style: it has a broken lintel in the form of a semi-octagon and with a sandrik at the top, in a tympanum, the image of St. Right-Believing Princes Boris and Gleb. This is reminiscent of the cherished pious custom of Russians to pray before entering the house and when leaving it. Here were the boyar living room, dining room and bedroom; to the western side - a chamber with a vault, with one window to the north, apparently, it served as a prayer room. In the lower floor, under the vaults - the same division; below it are cellars, where barrels were kept with prescribed Fryazhsky overseas wines and with Russian set and loose honeys, berry kvass, and so on. Attached to the east, a two-story ward, which used to be one chamber, is now divided into several rooms.

Here, Prince Boris Grigorievich treated the sovereign daughter of Peter the Great, who loved her father's faithful servant. Above the chamber rises a tower with two windows, where, according to legend, there was a church; from it in the wall one can see the same hidden cache as is located in the Faceted Chamber. This house in the Yusupov family is about two hundred years old; in this house on major holidays gathered with bread and salt, according to the ancient established custom, a thousandth crowd of peasants to bring congratulations. The mortal remains of Prince Yusupov were also brought here in the hands of the same peasants for burial in the village of Spasskoye near Moscow. The Yusupov princes are buried in a special stone tent attached to the church; on the tomb of Boris Nikolayevich, the following inscription was carved, written by the deceased himself:

“Here lies the Russian nobleman Prince Boris, Prince Nikolaev, son of Yusupov, born on July 9, 1794, died on October 25, 1849,” his favorite saying is written in French below: “L'honneur avant tout” .

At the base, a golden cross and an anchor are visible; on the first is the inscription "Faith in God", on the second - "Hope in God". Prince Boris Nikolayevich was married twice: his first wife was Princess N.P. Shcherbatova (died October 17, 1820); the second, Zinaida Ivanovna Naryshkina, was born in 1810; in his second marriage to a foreigner, Comte de Chevaux. From his first marriage, the son, Prince Nikolai Borisovich, was born on October 12, 1817. The prince was considered the last in the family: he had no sons - there were only daughters.

Biography

Born into the family of a prince Nikolai Borisovich Yusupov and Tatiana Vasilievna, nieces and heirs of Prince Potemkin. At baptism, the successor (godfather) was Grand Duke Pavel Petrovich. As a child, Borenka, as he was called in the family, received the Order of Malta, and the hereditary command of the Order of St. John of Jerusalem. His younger brother died in infancy (about 1796).

He received his initial upbringing in his parents' house under the supervision of his mother, and then spent several years in a fashionable French boarding house, which was managed in St. Having passed the exam at the St. Petersburg Pedagogical Institute, Prince Yusupov from August 1815 began to serve in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. In 1817 he was granted the court rank of chamberlain.

Service

Countless wealth made Yusupov completely independent; he had no need to resort to hypocrisy; he did not value his service and constantly quarreled with important persons, incurring their displeasure with his sharp witticisms and ridicule. According to Count M.A. Korf, Prince Yusupov had:

Private life

After the death of his father in the summer of 1831 from cholera, Boris Nikolayevich inherited a huge inheritance - 250 thousand acres of land, more than 40 thousand peasants in different provinces of Russia, and at the same time a colossal debt of about 2 million rubles. Prince Yusupov, in his youth, was a reveler, over the years he became a prudent person. He was not as sociable as his father, and considered all his hobbies a waste of money and lordly manners.

Living permanently in St. Petersburg, Yusupov almost never visited Arkhangelsk, beloved by his father. To pay off debts, he farmed out fishing ponds, sold the Moscow University a botanical garden, and began to transport the priceless collection from the estate to his St. did not devastate.

A good business executive, Yusupov gave his freedom to his serfs, and by this act, strange in the opinion of others, he quickly liquidated all his own and father's debts. Moreover, he became a secret usurer and increased his family's fortune tenfold by buying factories and mines in Donbass. The evil-speaking prince P.V. Dolgorukov wrote:

Prince Yusupov owned estates in seventeen provinces, tried to travel around them regularly, and under him they flourished. On his estates, he opened hospitals, supplied them with medicines, kept doctors and pharmacists with them. During the time of cholera in the Kursk province, he was not afraid to come to his village of Rakitnoye, where there was an epidemic; without fear of infection, he walked everywhere in the village. During the terrible crop failure that befell Russia in 1834-1835, when rye was sold at eight times the usual price, Yusupov fed up to 70,000 people on his estates without resorting to government benefits. In a letter to one of the managers, the prince wrote:

Prince Yusupov devoted his morning to official and economic affairs, during the day he received his friends and acquaintances, and in the evenings he always went to the theater. The pragmatic Boris Nikolaevich shunned luxury in his home life, this trait of his was noted by many of his contemporaries. He was often the object of ridicule in society. Prince A. M. Meshchersky called Yusupov an extremely prudent person with a peculiar character.

The magnificent balls that Yusupov gave, the writer V. A. Sollogub found "deprived of a shade of innate panache and nobility", and attributed to the prince himself " legendary stinginess”, which forced him, at the meeting of the Sovereign and Empress, to immediately give economic orders in the way that "They gave two glasses of tea to their Majesties' visiting officer, and one to the coachman" .

He donated 73,300 rubles to the Board of Trustees of public charity institutions in St. Petersburg for city almshouses.

Last years

In 1845, Prince Yusupov was granted the rank of chamberlain. In the summer of 1849 he was appointed chief director of the exhibition of industrial works in St. Petersburg. The term for the opening of the exhibition was short, he had to take care of the preparation of the place for the exhibition at the same time, and all the orders for its placement and opening. Wanting to speed up the work, Boris Nikolaevich spent whole days in the vast halls among the crowd of workers, giving them orders in all parts of the exhibition. His health, already disturbed by the cholera he had suffered, could not bear the dampness and cold this time. Not paying attention to the signs of illness, Yusupov did not cease to dispose of the work until the end of the exhibition, and the victim of his zeal, was subjected to typhoid fever.

Prince Yusupov died on October 25, 1849 in St. Petersburg, his body was transported to the village of Spasskoe-Kotovo near Moscow, where he bequeathed to be buried in the Spasskaya Church next to his father. An inscription written by him during his lifetime was carved on his tomb: “Here lies a Russian nobleman, Prince Boris, Prince Nikolaev, son of Yusupov”, date of birth and death, and under them was written in French his favorite saying: "Honor above all."

Princess I.M. Yusupov. Record of the acquisition on the book of St. Demetrius of Rostov. 1786. GMUA.

Religious and moral education of children in Russia was usually assigned to the mother. Princess Irina Mikhailovna Yusupova was a woman of a modest, gentle, simple disposition, but firm, especially in the affairs of the Faith, character.
Little is known for certain about Princess Irina Mikhailovna and her relationship with her only son. One can only guess how touching they were. The princess bought books for her son, ordered his naive children's portrait in an officer's uniform. Nikolai Borisovich himself - in his old age one of the first Russian nobles - ordered to be buried next to his mother in her small family estate near Moscow, and not at all in a fashionable cemetery, where his surviving enemies could envy his magnificent gravestone ...

Irina Mikhailovna read not only fashionable French novels, which was then supposed to be done by any lady of high society. She spent many evenings reading the Menaion, the Lives of the Saints of Saint Demetrius of Rostov. For several centuries this extensive edition has been considered in Russia a favorite popular reading. Irina Mikhailovna became a great admirer of Saint Demetrius, who in the middle of the 18th century had just been canonized as an Orthodox saint who shone forth in the Russian Land. She dedicated her house church in the St. Petersburg house to the memory of the Rostov Metropolitan. The books of St. Demetrius were carefully kept in his library by Prince Nikolai Borisovich.
In the age of Voltairianism and fashionable mockery of religious feelings, Irina Mikhailovna managed to instill in her son a deep Faith, as evidenced by some documents from the prince's archive. It’s another matter that outwardly showing one’s personal religiosity in those days was supposed to be very restrained - after all, the Yusupovs were not enthusiastic converts that literally pester everyone with their petty religious problems and doubts.

Nikolai Borisovich Yusupov Jr., grandson of the prince, a man of a completely different time, was more open in his religious views. He provided considerable support to Orthodoxy in the difficult years of the approaching unbelief, one of the first to point out to Russian society the future saint, the righteous John of Kronstadt, through whose prayers several miracles happened in the Yusupov family.
In Arkhangelsk, a small bas-relief by the little-known Russian sculptor F. Titov is kept, where Irina Mikhailovna is depicted playing solitaire, a kind of “gymnastics for the mind”. This portrait was in the personal rooms of Nikolai Borisovich. The simplicity and gentleness of the mother's disposition largely passed on to the son, although the position of a great nobleman sometimes forced him to behave with strangers in a closed and emphasized arrogance. The sculptor also sculpted a profile bas-relief portrait of the youngest prince at the age of twelve or thirty, emphasizing some self-confident arrogance, so characteristic of adolescents. Apparently, the portrait adorned the rooms of Irina Mikhailovna in Spas-Kotovo. A small hole for a nail was made in the upper part of both bas-reliefs, so that the image would be more convenient to hang on the wall.

According to tradition, for the people of the circle of princes Yusupovs, home education was not limited only to classes with tutors. Nikolai Borisovich's father, taking advantage of his official position, as well as the love of the cadets and teachers of the Cadet Corps for him, invited them to study with his son. Among the teachers of the young prince there were many immigrants from Holland. The Dutch, as you know, had a great influence on the formation of the emperor-transformer Peter the Great and on the formation of the new capital of Russia - St. Petersburg. Indeed, the representatives of this people have a lot to learn. Constant communication with foreigners, an example of their "German" punctuality, developed perseverance in the young prince, the ability to work regularly. These skills allowed Nikolai Borisovich, already in his youth, to freely master five foreign languages ​​- both living and dead. Moreover, living languages ​​- not only French - were in constant use. This characterizes Yusupov as a person who constantly strived, at the behest of his own soul, to master new knowledge.

Nikolai Borisovich also had an excellent command of Russian; not so much literary as colloquial. Everyday intonation is constantly present in his written orders, to a certain extent conveying the style of the prince's oral speech with all its whimsical turns of a learned husband, often communicating with ordinary peasants. By the way, Yusupov was taught Russian, as was the custom then, by an ordinary deacon. That is why in the princely orders - and he did not write them with his own hand very often, traces of knowledge of Church Slavonic letters are clearly traced. For the eighteenth century, the phenomenon is quite common among people from high society.
“Those residents of St. Petersburg and Moscow who consider themselves enlightened people make sure that their children know French, surround them with foreigners, give them expensive dance and music teachers, but do not teach them their native language, so this is beautiful and expensive worthwhile education leads to complete ignorance of the motherland, to indifference and even contempt for the country with which our existence is inextricably linked, and to attachment to France. However, it must be admitted that the nobility that lives in the interior provinces is not infected with this unforgivable delusion. .

Count Alexander Romanovich Vorontsov, an older peer of Yusupov, who was related to him on the maternal side through his brother Semyon Romanovich, who was married to one of Zinoviev, - a man who belonged to the same circle with Nikolai Borisovich. Alexander Romanovich was born in 1741 and was ten years older than Yusupov. The sister of the brothers A.R. and S.R. Vorontsov was the famous Princess Ekaterina Romanovna Dashkova, president of two Russian Academies, a lady as educated as she was bilious, who left her much more famous Notes to posterity. A very wise essay by her brother, alas, is known mainly to a narrow circle of specialists in the history of the eighteenth century.

Count Alexander Romanovich Vorontsov, like Yusupov, was immensely rich, had many activities that were pleasant for the soul and mind - he loved the theater, collected paintings and graphics. The most intelligent people of the era became his interlocutors. It seemed that nothing prevented him from living as a free master-sybarite. However, Vorontsov also entered the civil service, occupied many responsible and troublesome positions, reached the highest rank in Russia of the State Chancellor (as the post of Minister of Foreign Affairs was then called) and did a lot of useful things for his country. Despite the fact that Catherine II and Paul I treated him personally, as well as the entire Vorontsov family, without the slightest sympathy - only business qualities were valued, because there were many simply nice people, few workers.
Here is a clear evidence of the quality of home noble education of that time: “Father tried to give us such a good upbringing as was possible in Russia,” recalled A.R. Vorontsov. “My uncle sent a governess for us from Berlin. We quietly learned French, and already from the age of 5 or 6 we showed a decided inclination to read books. I must say that although the education we were given was not distinguished by either the brilliance or the extra expenses used for this subject in our time, it nevertheless had many good sides. Its main advantage was that at that time they did not neglect the study of the Russian language, which in our time is no longer included in the education program. It can be said that Russia is the only country where they neglect the study of their native language and everything that concerns the country in which people were born into the world; It goes without saying that I mean here the modern generation.(8a).

An important role in the education of the young Prince Yusupov was played by books that entered the life of Nikolai Borisovich early. Parents tried to lay the foundation for his future famous library, although they themselves were not great bibliophiles and hardly imagined that their son's library would become one of the largest in Russia and Europe. Books in the house were more like familiar interlocutors. Boris Grigoryevich, a great lover of reading, took the publications of interest to him at the Academy of Sciences for reading, and Irina Mikhailovna bought them.
One of the first books of the young prince was preserved in the Arkhangelsk library. This is the Court Letterbook, published in Amsterdam in 1696. On the flyleaf at the end of the book there is also the first ex-libris of the prince - the signature: “Prince Nicola a’ 9 ans.”. There is also a “self-portrait”, a figurine of a boy - a hand-drawn drawing of the nine-year-old prince Nicola.
Some educational drawings of the young Nikolai Borisovich have been preserved, and even a painting work - “The Cow”. Drawing was included in the circle of obligatory subjects of education for noble youth not only in the middle of the 18th century, but also much later, as evidenced by clearly amateur charade drawings from the Yusupov family album of the middle of the 19th century.
Irina Mikhailovna, one must think, quite often pampered her son with book gifts - another thing is that relatively little special children's or simply good educational literature was produced in the middle of the 18th century. So I had to donate books intended more for adult reading. In 1764, Irina Mikhailovna presented her 13-year-old son with the "History of Friedrich Wilhelm I, King of Prussia", about which a corresponding entry was made on the flyleaf of the book. It is still kept in the library of the Arkhangelskoye Estate Museum.
It was the library that could tell a lot about Prince Yusupov; to tell about what Nikolai Borisovich's contemporaries remained unknown to, and his descendants were not at all interested in. Unfortunately, the scientific catalog of the Arkhangelsky estate library, unique in its preservation, has not yet been introduced into scientific circulation, and a significant part of the Yusupovs' book collection remains inaccessible to researchers outside the museum.
Count A.R. Vorontsov: “My father ordered for us a fairly well compiled library, which contained the best French authors and poets, as well as books of historical content, so that when I was 12 years old, I was already well acquainted with the works of Voltaire, Racine, Corneille, Boileau and others. French writers. Among these books was a collection of almost one hundred volumes of numbers of the journal: The Key to Acquaintance with the Cabinets of European Sovereigns, beginning in 1700. I mention this collection because from it I learned about everything that happened in Russia, the most interesting and most remarkable since 1700. This edition had a great influence on my inclination towards history and politics; it aroused in me a desire to know everything that concerns these subjects, and especially in relation to Russia. .

Nikolai Borisovich Yusupov, no matter how paradoxical it may sound, studied all his life, because he read all his life and strove to acquire new knowledge. By his old age, he had collected a huge library, distinguished not only by bibliographic rarities, but also by great completeness. Many books on the most diverse fields of knowledge - both humanitarian and natural - have retained the prince's own notes, indicating that he was an attentive and interested reader, and not just a collector of books. It is no coincidence that S.A. Sobolevsky - the largest Russian bibliophile, a bilious person and by no means inclined to give out compliments, called Prince Yusupov an outstanding scientist - an expert on culture, not only foreign, but also Russian. The habit of everyday reading is usually laid down in childhood. By the way, Yusupov and Sobolevsky were clubmates and met more than once at the Moscow English Club.

The traditional education of boys and girls in Russia took place in a certain social circle. The children of Prince Yusupov were brought up with peers from familiar aristocratic families.
One of them is the family of the Counts Panins and their nephews, the princes Kurakin brothers. Yusupov was related to the Kurakins through sisters. Alexander and Alexei Kurakins became childhood friends of Nikolai Borisovich. One was a little older than him, the other, like the future Emperor Paul I, was several years younger. In childhood, as you know, even a small difference in age is very noticeable. Therefore, Yusupov cannot be called a childhood friend of the heir Pavel Petrovich. Closer and warmer relations arose only in early youth, and later strengthened when Nikolai Borisovich accompanied the heir to the throne and his wife on a trip abroad. Yusupov remained a close friend of the imperial couple until the death of Paul I and Empress Maria Feodorovna.

In the 18th century, court etiquette, of course, was observed very strictly, but for the children of nobles close to the court of Elizabeth Petrovna, quite understandable concessions were made - children are children. It is no coincidence that one of the Kurakin brothers called the heir to the throne, Pavel Petrovich, in letters simply and familiarly affectionately - Pavlushka. That's who observed the court etiquette to the smallest detail, so it's just the grown-up Paul I, who ascended the imperial throne after the death of his mother, Catherine the Great.
Much more information has been preserved about the first years of the life of the future emperor than about the childhood of the “simple” Prince Yusupov, although the circle of their occupations at that time did not differ much. Here are some extracts from the famous "Notebooks" for 1765 by S.A. Poroshin, who was constantly with the young heir to the throne and made notes immediately after the events.

March 27th. Shoe became, wood lice crawled; he was afraid that they would crush him, and he shouted. March 28th. Before that, he quarreled with the Grand Duke (Paul), forcing him to play music. Very reluctantly vulgar, he defended himself with his right that he was now completely dismissed from teaching; lazy person; after that he played chess with Kurakin; frolic, ate supper, went to bed. 30th of March. When they arrived, they played Kurakin and played chess ... before dinner, I watched the puppet theater. March 31. They played chess, rolled Kurakin and put him on a bottle, in a billbox. We sat down at the table, dined with us Pyotr Ivanovich (Panin), gr. Ivan Grigoryevich, Talyzin, Cruz, Stroganov. We talked about various poisons, then about the French ministry. We got up, again dragged Kurakin. April 5. We went to the kurtag, which was in the gallery. The Empress played picket. The Tsarevich stood like that. Arriving there, he teased Kurakin with his prank, and he did not stay for supper. After that, he became very polite.” .
The April 16 entry is perhaps the most remarkable. It shows how simplicity of morals was present in everyday court life, if even the enlightened educator of the heir, Count Nikita Ivanovich Panin, did not disdain the described "fun". “I played shuttlecocks. I learned very well. Fektoval. In berlan. Had supper. As soon as the undresser conceived, Nikita Ivanovich came and was here until the Sovereign lay down at half past ten. Then Nikita Ivanovich himself led Kurakin into the dark passage to Stroganov and, after a fright, returned. The others took Kurakin to Stroganov. There, Stroganov's servants dressed up in a white shirt and a wig. Kurakin was a cruel coward." The next day, the "frightening" of the tsar's friend Kurakin continued. Meanwhile, Paul, ten years old, already expressed quite sound thoughts; some of them are fixed: “we always want the forbidden, and that this is based on human nature” or “you study well: you always learn something new”.

Already at the age of 11, the future emperor knew firsthand about some of the problems of family life. Once at dinner, he said: “When I get married, I will love my wife very much and I will be jealous. I really don't want to have horns." Pavel very early turned his favorable attention to some court ladies, among whom, according to rumors, was one of the beautiful princesses of the Yusupovs, the sister of Nikolai Borisovich ...

In the reign of Empresses Elizabeth Petrovna and Catherine the Great, the children of all people close to the Court began to go out early, much earlier than Natasha Rostova, by the way, the daughter of the foreman of the Moscow English Club, whose first ball is described by Count L.N. Tolstoy. Here is what Count A.R. recalled about his first trips to high society. Vorontsov.
“Empress Elizabeth, distinguished by benevolence and friendliness to all those around her, was even interested in the children of persons belonging to her court. She largely retained the old Russian customs, which were very similar to the old patriarchal customs. Although we were still children, she allowed us to be at her court on her reception days and sometimes gave, in her inner apartments, balls for both sexes of the children of those persons who were at court. I have a memory of one of these balls, which was attended by 60 to 80 children. We were seated for supper, and the tutors and governesses accompanying us dined at a special table. The empress was very interested in watching us dance and dine, and she herself sat down to dine with our fathers and mothers. Thanks to this habit of seeing the yard, we imperceptibly got used to the great light and society. .

The children formed friendships "in the light" and outside the walls of the royal palace. “There was another custom,” recalled Count A.R. Vorontsov, - who contributed a lot to making us cheeky, namely, that the children of persons who were at court mutually visited each other on holidays and Sundays. Balls were arranged between them, to which they always went accompanied by tutors and governesses. .

“The spectacle is a public fun that corrects human morals,” wrote the famous Russian actor of the 18th century P.A. Melters about theatrical performances. Count A.R. Vorontsov in "Notes" said that, according to tradition, people of his circle attended theatrical performances from childhood. “French comedies were given twice a week at the court theater, and our father took us there with him to the box. I mention this circumstance because it greatly contributed to the fact that from early childhood we received a strong inclination towards reading and literature. .

It is clear that Nikolai Borisovich also visited the theater at the Cadet Corps, using his father's official box, he also visited court performances in the Winter Palace.
Theater, books, painting - all this occupied far from the last place throughout the life of Nikolai Borisovich Yusupov. He joined everything beautiful in childhood, which passed under the scrutiny of his father. The death of Prince Boris Grigoryevich was the first great loss of life for his eight-year-old son.

Meanwhile, as long as the young prince's home studies continued, his military career took shape by itself. In 1761, Nikolai Borisovich was promoted from cornet to second lieutenant of the same Life Guards Cavalry Regiment. According to the art critic Adrian Viktorovich Prakhov, at the age of 16, Yusupov entered active military service. However, this information may turn out to be erroneous - one of the first biographers of Prince Nikolai Borisovich introduced many unique documents of the Yusupov archive into scientific circulation, but in his dating of events and facts, confusion happened all the time, so that at the age of 16 Yusupov could "serve", as well as before, at home.

In 1771, Nikolai Borisovich was promoted to lieutenant, and the military service of the prince ended there. Was there some kind of "story" that caused the collapse of Yusupov's military career, which is a dull mention in the two-volume book "On the family of the Yusupov princes"? Most probably not. It’s just that Nikolai Borisovich, according to the turn of his mind and character, was not intended to carry out commands and walk in formation, as well as prancing on a horse. The following year, he received his resignation and the title of chamberlain of the Imperial Court.
In the presence of "history", obtaining a court rank would be a difficult matter, even with great connections. Maybe the young prince lost a little at cards or got carried away by a married lady? Then such “sins of youth” were considered in the order of things and you can’t make a special “story” out of this with all your desire. In addition, Nikolai Borisovich, like his ancestors, always remained a person not only well-intentioned, but also very cautious.

It should be noted that Russian nobles, as well as nobles in all countries, from time immemorial have been divided into two very uneven categories. One, invariably large, was only listed in the service, while all matters were decided by ordinary secretaries and head clerks. The other - traditionally not numerous, was engaged in state affairs in the most serious way. Prince Yusupov belonged to the second. It would seem that he had very broad interests, backed up by huge material opportunities for their implementation, but instead of living for his own pleasure as a “great Russian master”, Prince Nikolai Borisovich devoted a lot of effort, attention and time to the performance of state duties, to which he regularly attracted all Russian emperors and empresses, from Catherine the Great to Nicholas I inclusive. At the same time, it must be remembered that the state salary-salary of a Russian official at all times remained quite modest - it goes without saying that the “sovereign man” would simply pronounce the cherished formula - “you have to wait”, and the rest depends on sleight of hand ... A study of Nikolai's half-century official activity Borisovich allows us to attribute him to a rare type of "not taking" officials. On the contrary, Prince Yusupov did his best to do good to his subordinates, including financially, giving them part of his salary, begging for them "at the top" awards and pensions.

Lubov Savinskaya

Scientific whim

Collection of Prince Nikolai Borisovich Yusupov

My books and a few good pictures and drawings are my only entertainment.

N.B.Yusupov

In the second half of the 18th century, Russia experienced the first flowering of what today we call private art collecting. Along with the collections of the imperial family, which constituted the treasures of the Hermitage, significant art collections of statesmen and diplomats appeared: I.I. Shuvalov, P.B. and N.P. Sheremetev, I.G. Chernyshev, A.M. Golitsyn, K.G. Razumovsky, G.G. Orlova, G.N. Teplova, D.M. Golitsyna, A.A. Bezborodko, A.M. Beloselsky-Belozersky, A.S. Stroganov and many others. Moreover, the acquisition of art treasures abroad under Catherine II became an important part of the overall cultural ties between Russia and Europe.

Among the collectors of this time, Prince Nikolai Borisovich Yusupov (1751–1831), the founder of the famous family assembly, was an outstanding and most striking personality. For almost 60 years (from the beginning of the 1770s to the end of the 1820s), the prince collected an extensive library, the richest collections of sculpture, bronze, porcelain, and other works of decorative and applied art, and an interesting collection of Western European painting - the largest private pictorial collection in Russia, numbering over 550 works.

The personality of Yusupov the collector was formed under the influence of philosophical, aesthetic ideas and artistic tastes of his time. For him, collecting was a kind of creativity. Being close to artists, creators of works, he became not only their customer and patron, but also an interpreter of their creations. The prince skillfully divided his life between public service and a passion for art. As A. Prakhov noted: “By his type, he belonged to that blessed category of people in whom faith in culture was invested from birth” 1 .

It is possible to present the real scale of the collection of N.B. Yusupov only by making a historically reliable reconstruction of it. Such a reconstruction is objectively difficult - after all, there are no diaries of N.B. Yusupov and only a few of his letters are known. Therefore, recreating the history of the formation of the collection, one has to rely on the memoirs of contemporaries, their epistolary heritage, financial and economic documents of the extensive archive of the Yusupov princes (RGADA. F. 1290). Documents of this kind are sometimes incomplete and subjective, but the surviving inventories and catalogs of the collection are invaluable for reconstruction.

The first documentary description of the history of the creation of the collection and its composition was made at the beginning of the 20th century by A. Prakhov and S. Ernst 2 . The modern version of the reconstruction of a significant part of the collection of N.B. Yusupov was reflected in the catalog of the exhibition "Scientific whim" 3 . Although the catalog does not cover the entire collection, for the first time in it the Yusupov collection appears as a collection characteristic of its era. The collection is universal, since not only works of high academic art, but also everything that was produced by art manufactories, created a special environment for the life of a wealthy aristocrat.

Nikolai Borisovich belonged to an ancient and noble family 4 close to the Russian court. Family traditions and membership in the service of the Collegium of Foreign Affairs had a significant impact on his personality and fate. In its long life, several stages can be distinguished that were of decisive importance for the formation of the collection.

First of all, this is the first educational trip abroad in 1774-1777. Then interest in European culture and art awakened, and a passion for collecting arose. In addition to staying in Holland and studying at Leiden University, Yusupov made Grand Tour, visiting England, Portugal, Spain, France, Italy, Austria. It was presented to many European monarchs, was adopted by Diderot and Voltaire.

The figure of a young man traveling in search of truth from one learned man to another is familiar from numerous novels: from Telemachus by Fenelon and New Cyrus - Instruction by Ramsey to Journey of the Young Anacharsis by Barthelemy and Letters from a Russian Traveler by Karamzin. The image of a young Scythian is easily superimposed on Yusupov's biography. As Lotman noted: “Later Pushkin would pick up this image, creating in the poem “To the Grandee” a generalized image of a Russian traveler in Europe of the 18th century” 5 .

AT Leiden Yusupov acquired rare collectible books, paintings and drawings. Among them is an edition of Cicero, issued by the famous Venetian firm of Aldov (Manutius) 6 , with a commemorative inscription about the purchase: “a Leide 1e mardi 7bre de l’annee 1774” (in Leiden on the first Tuesday of September 1774). In Italy, the prince met the German landscape painter J.F. Hackert, who became his adviser and expert. Hackert painted on his order the paired landscapes “Morning in the Outskirts of Rome” and “Evening in the Outskirts of Rome” completed in 1779 (both - the Arkhangelskoye State Museum-Estate, hereinafter - GMUA). Antiquity and contemporary art - these two main hobbies of Yusupov will continue to determine the main artistic preferences, consonant with the era of the formation and development of the last great international artistic style in European art - neoclassicism.

Yusupovthe collection, brought to St. Petersburg and housed in a house on Millionnaya Street, immediately attracted attention and became a landmark of the capital. The German astronomer and traveler Johann Bernoulli, who visited Yusupov in 1778, left the first description of this collection. The scientist was interested in books, marble sculpture, carved stones and paintings. In the “treasury of gems and cameos”, Bernoulli noted “those that even monarchs cannot boast of possessing” 8 . Among them cameos "August, Livia and young Nero" on white with brown agate-onyx (Rome, middle of the 1st century; GE), "Portrait of Commodus" (late 17th-first half of the 18th century; GE), "The Abduction of Europe" on chalcedony (end of the 16th century, Germany; GE), "Jupiter-Serapis with a cornucopia" (XVII century (?), Italy or France; GE). In the art gallery, Bernoulli noted the works of Venix, Rembrandt, Velasquez, good copies from the paintings of Titian and Domenichino.

The second important stage in the formation of the collection was the 1780s. As a person versed in the arts and well-known at European courts, Yusupov entered the retinue and accompanied the Count and Countess of the North (Grand Duke Pavel Petrovich and Grand Duchess Maria Feodorovna) on a trip to Europe in 1781-1782. Possessing great knowledge, a taste for fine arts, he carried out the instructions of Pavel Petrovich and significantly expanded his ties with artists and commission agents, for the first time visited the workshops of the most famous artists - A. Kaufman in Venice and P. Batoni, engraver D. Volpato, widely known reproductive engravings from the works of Raphael in the Vatican, in Rome, G. Robert, C. J. Vernet, J. B. Grez and J. A. Houdon in Paris. Then relations with these artists were maintained over the years, contributing to the replenishment of the personal collection of the prince.

Following the Grand Ducal couple, who made significant purchases of silk fabrics, furniture, bronze, porcelain for interiors Kamennoostrovsky and Pavlovsk Palaces, Nikolai Borisovich visited the best European manufactories of Lyon, Paris, Vienna. It can be assumed that the high quality level of the works of arts and crafts in the Yusupov collection is largely based on the knowledge and acquisitions made during this trip. Later, samples of European silk fabrics and porcelain selected by him will be used as standards at the prince's own production facilities: at the silk-weaving factory in Kupavna and the porcelain factory in Arkhangelsk.

After a short (about a year) stay in St. Petersburg, Yusupov, appointed Ambassador Extraordinary to the Sardinian court in Turin, with special missions in Rome, Naples and Venice, returns to Italy again.

In October 1783, he arrives in Paris and fulfills an order from Grand Duke Pavel Petrovich regarding the commission of paintings by Vernet and Robert. Despite the fact that the Grand Duke's plan to create an ensemble of halls decorated with landscapes by Hackert, Robert and Vernet was never realized 9, Yusupov corresponded with the artists for a long time, through them he turned to O. Fragonard and E. Vigée-Lebrun, learned about the possibility of commissioning paintings by young, but already well-known painters A. Vincent and J. L. David. Small landscapes were then painted for his collection: Vernet - "Shipwreck" (1784, GMUA) and Robert - "Fire" (1787, GE). The very idea of ​​a decorative ensemble of classic paintings by famous landscape painters of the 18th century was not forgotten by Yusupov. Its implementation can be traced in the 2nd Hall of Hubert Robert, created later in Arkhangelsk, where the landscapes of Robert and Hackert formed a single ensemble.

Nikolai Borisovich arrived in Italy in December 1783 and stayed there until 1789. He traveled a lot. As a real connoisseur, he visited ancient ancient cities, replenished the collection with antiques and copies from ancient Roman sculptures made in the best workshops of Rome. He developed a close relationship with Thomas Jenkins, an antiquary and banker who became famous for excavating with Gavin Hamilton at the Villa of Hadrian in Rome, selling antiques, and collaborating with the sculptor Bartolomeo Cavaceppi and his student Carlo Albacini. As a secular traveler and connoisseur of antiquities, Yusupov is depicted in a portrait painted at that time by I.B. Lampi and J.F. Hackert (GE).

In Rome, the prince renewed his acquaintance and became close to I.F. von Reifenstein, an adviser to the Russian and Saxon courts, a well-known antiquary and Cicerone of the European nobility. Reifenstein belonged to a circle of people who played an important role in establishing the ideals of neoclassicism in the art of Rome and spreading the new artistic taste among art lovers. He undoubtedly had a significant influence on Yusupov's artistic tastes.

Yusupov followed the work of contemporary artists with great attention. In the mid-1780s, he significantly expanded his collection with the works of the most famous painters, especially those who worked in Italy. K.J. Vernet, A. Kaufman, P. Batoni, A. Maron, J.F. Hackert, Francisco Ramos i Albertos, Augustin Bernard, Domenico Corvi.

He was involved in many events of artistic life; his activities in Italy and France allow us to consider Yusupov as the most significant Russian collector, one of the key figures in European culture of the second half of the 18th century.

For his ever-increasing collection in St. Petersburg, Giacomo Quarenghi, the most fashionable and best master invited to Russia by the Empress, rebuilds the palace on the Fontanka embankment in the early 1790s. For more than fifteen years, the Yusupov collection was located in this palace, the most important period in the history of the collection is associated with it.

1790s - the rapid rise of Yusupov's career. He fully demonstrates his devotion to the Russian throne, both to the aging Empress Catherine II and Emperor Paul I. At the coronation of Paul I, he was appointed supreme coronation marshal. He performed the same role at the coronations of Alexander I and Nicholas I.

From 1791 to 1802, Yusupov held important government posts: director of the imperial theatrical performances in St. Petersburg (since 1791), director of the imperial glass and porcelain factories and tapestry manufactory (since 1792), president of the manufactory board (since 1796) and minister of appanages (since 1800) .

In 1794, Nikolai Borisovich was elected an honorary amateur of the St. Petersburg Academy of Arts. In 1797, Paul I gave him control of the Hermitage, which housed the imperial art collection. The art gallery was headed by the Pole Franz Labensky, who had previously been the curator of the art gallery of Stanisław August Poniatowski, whom Yusupov accompanied during his stay in St. Petersburg. A new complete inventory of the Hermitage collection was carried out. The compiled inventory served as the main inventory until the middle of the 19th century.

The government posts held by the prince made it possible to directly influence the development of national art and artistic crafts. A.V. Prakhov very accurately noted: “If he still had the Academy of Arts in his charge, Prince Nikolai Borisovich would have become the Minister of Arts and the Art Industry in Russia” 10 .

While in St. Petersburg, Yusupov closely followed the artistic life of Europe and the Russian antique market. Being an admirer of the talent of the sculptor Antonio Canova, he corresponded with him and commissioned statues for his collection in the 1790s. In 1794-1796, Canova completed for Yusupov the famous sculptural group "Cupid and Psyche" (GE), for which the prince paid a considerable amount - 2000 sequins. Then, in 1793-1797, a statue of the Winged Cupid (GE) was made for him.

In 1800, the imperial court rejected a batch of paintings brought to St. Petersburg by commissioner Pietro Concolo, and Yusupov acquired a significant part of them - 12 paintings, among which was Correggio's "Portrait of a Woman" (GE), landscapes by Claude Lorrain, paintings by Guercino, Guido Reni, and also an ensemble of canvases for decorating the hall, consisting of a plafond and 6 paintings, among which are the monumental canvases by G. B. Tiepolo "Meeting of Anthony and Cleopatra" and "Cleopatra's Feast" (both - GMUA) 11 .

During this period, the Yusupov collection becomes one of the best among the famous St. Petersburg collections, competing with the galleries of A.A. Bezborodko and A.S. Stroganov. It attracted attention with masterpieces of old masters and a wide range of works by contemporary artists. The German traveler Heinrich von Reimers, who visited the Fontanka Palace in late 1802 or early 1803, left a detailed description of it. Of the interiors of the palace, we note the hall with 12 paintings by J.F. Hackert (12 original sketches, as Reimers calls them), depicting episodes of the battle of the Russian fleet at Chesma in 1770. (The large canvases of this series, commissioned by Catherine II, are in the Throne Room of the palace in Peterhof near St. Petersburg.) A special place in the enfilade was occupied by an extended gallery, “where, in addition to three paintings by Titian, Gandolfi and Furini, there are two large wall paintings and four others , tall and narrow, between the windows, all of them, like the beautiful ceiling, belong to Tiepolo. This is the first description of a room specially designed to display an ensemble of paintings acquired in 1800, where the paintings were placed taking into account the characteristics of the architectural space and the format of the canvases. Such an ensemble has become a unique phenomenon for Russia - a country where Tiepolo never worked. The two already mentioned monumental canvases by G. B. Tiepolo “The Meeting of Anthony and Cleopatra” and “The Feast of Cleopatra” complemented the four vertical narrow ones located between the windows (lost). The ceiling of the hall was decorated with a plafond with a composition depicting the gods of Olympus (now the Catherine Palace-Museum of Pushkin), the author of which is currently considered to be the Venetian painter Giovanni Skyario 13 .

Paintings of the Italian school at that time constituted a significant part of the collection, representing the masters of the "great style" - Titian, Correggio, Furini, Domenichino, Fr. Albani, A. Caracci, B. Skidone, S. Ricci. From other schools, Reimers singled out the works of Dutch artists: "two beautiful and very famous portraits" by Rembrandt ("Portrait of a man in a tall hat with gloves" and "Portrait of a woman with an ostrich fan in her hand", circa 1658-1660, USA, Washington National Gallery) 14, works by students of Rembrandt, Jan Victors (“Simeon with the Christ Child”) and F. Bol (“Susanna and the Elders”), as well as landscapes by P. Potter, C. Dujardin, F. Wauwermann. From the Flemish school - the works of P.P. Rubens, A. van Dyck, J. Jordaens, from the French - N. Poussin, Claude Lorrain, S. Bourdon, C. Lebrun, Valentin de Boulogne, Laurent de La Ira.

Only Yusupov in St. Petersburg could see a real collection of works by famous contemporary painters of different schools. “In the Billiard Room, or rather, in the Gallery of Modern Masters” (Reimers) there were paintings by P. Batoni, R. Mengs, A. Kaufman, J.F. Hackert, C. J. Vernet, G. Robert, J. L. Demarn , E. Vigée-Lebrun , L. L. Boilly , V.L. Borovikovsky.

Two small cabinets with a collection of engravings adjoined the gallery. Several rooms were occupied by the library, noted by I.G.Georgi among the largest private book depositories of St. Petersburg, along with the libraries of E.R. Dashkova, A.A. Stroganov, A.I. Musina-Pushkin, A.P. Shuvalova 15 .

The fourth period, the most striking in the history of the formation of the collection, is connected with the last trip of Nikolai Borisovich to France during the period of a brief Russian-French rapprochement, when Russians went there extremely rarely. (After the death of Paul I, Yusupov retired in 1802 with the rank of real privy councilor, senator, holder of many orders.) The exact date of his departure has not been established, he probably left after 1806. From the prince's notebook preserved in the archive, it is known that he spent 1808-early 1810 in Paris and returned to Russia in early August 1810 16 .

During the trip, Nikolai Borisovich was still sensitive to new trends in art and changing tastes. He fulfilled his long-standing desire - he ordered paintings from Jacques Louis David, the first painter of Emperor Napoleon, and his students, P. N. Geren, A. Gro. Visiting the workshops, Yusupov acquired a number of works by famous artists: A. Tonet, J. L. Demarn, J. Resta, L. L. Boilly, O. Vernet. The painting by Horace Vernet "The Turk and the Cossack" (1809, GMUA) was the first work of the artist imported into Russia. Its acquisition was probably a kind of gesture of gratitude to the whole family, which the prince knew already in the third generation and whose works were presented in his collection. In 1810, on the eve of his departure, Yusupov ordered paintings by P.P. Prudhon and his student K. Mayer.

He generously paid for acquisitions, transferring money through the banking house of Perrigo, Laffitte and Co. By order of the prince, money was paid to artists in Paris for several years, including 1811. The paintings were prepared for shipment to Russia in David's studio. The artist knew many of the works acquired by Yusupov, and they were highly appreciated by him. “I know how beautiful they are,” David wrote to the prince in a letter dated October 1, 1811, “and therefore I do not dare to take fully into my own account all the commendable words that you deign to speak to me,<...>ascribe them, prince, to the joy that I and others who work for Your Excellency feel at the thought that their work will be appreciated by such an enlightened prince, a passionate admirer and connoisseur of art, who knows how to enter into all the contradictions and difficulties that an artist experiences, wanting to do the best job.”

In Paris, Yusupov the collector had worthy rivals - the Duke d'Artois 18 and the Italian Count J.B. Sommariva. The tastes of the latter were extremely close to him: he ordered paintings from the same masters, Guerin, Prudhon, David, and Thorvaldsen repeated for him A. Canova's sculptural group "Cupid and Psyche" 19 .

The ambitious desire to be the first, so important for collectors of contemporary art, led Yusupov to masters who had already gained popularity in France, but were not yet known in Russia. In the choice of works, a certain evolution of taste was manifested - on a par with the works of later neoclassicists acquired the works of the early romantics. However, preference was still given to chamber, lyrical paintings, full of charm and grace.

Fascinated by the modern artistic life of Paris, the prince paid no less attention to the antique market. In his archive there are receipts of famous antiquarians and experts: J.A. acquisitions - "The Abduction of Europe" by F. Lemoine, "St. Casimir" (the old name is "St. Louis of Bavaria") Carlo Dolci (both - the Pushkin Museum). In the market, the prince selected only paintings of the French and Italian schools. The Flemings and the Dutch, so revered by the collectors of the 1760s and 1770s, remained outside his interests. During the last trip abroad, the French part of the collection was significantly strengthened; for the first time, original works by French artists of the early 19th century were imported into Russia. In no other Russian congregation have they been represented so fully.

Upon returning from abroad, the palace on the Fontanka in St. Petersburg was sold, and in 1810 Yusupov acquired the Arkhangelskoye estate near Moscow. The old ancestral palace in Moscow, near Kharitoniy in Ogorodniki, was being improved. The Arkhangelskoye estate was built by the former owner Nikolai Alekseevich Golitsyn (1751-1809) on a large scale, its architecture contains the features of solemn representativeness, characteristic of mature classicism and so desired in the front residence.

The last, fifth period in the history of the collection of N.B. Yusupov, the longest, is connected with Arkhangelsk. For more than 20 years, the collection was housed in a manor, specially equipped to display extensive collections.

The palace, the estate, by the will of the owner, were turned into an ideal artistic environment, worthy of the personality of the Enlightenment. The three most noble arts, "the architect's compass, palette and chisel / Obeyed your learned whim / And the inspired competed in magic" (A.S. Pushkin).

Yusupov, taking advantage of the position commander-in-chief Expeditions of the Kremlin building and the workshop of the Armory, which he occupied since 1814, invited the best Moscow architects to work in Arkhangelsk: O.I. Bove, E.D. Tyurin, S.P. Melnikov, V.G. Dregalov. The estate is spread over a vast territory on the high bank of the Moskva River. The regular park was decorated with marble sculpture, which constituted a separate collection. Contemporaries noted that the estate "exceeds all private castles with marbles, not only in number, but also in dignity" 20 . Until now, this is the largest collection of decorative marble park sculpture in Russia, most of it was made by Italian sculptors S.K. Penno, P. and A. Campioni, S.P. Triscorni, who had workshops in St. Petersburg and Moscow.

In 1817-1818, the estate ensemble was supplemented by a theater built according to the project of Pietro Gonzaga - a rare monument of the architectural creativity of the Italian decorator. The curtain and four sets of original scenery, painted by an outstanding master and a great friend of the prince, have been preserved in the theater building to this day.

In Arkhangelsk, Yusupov seemed to strive to unite all history, all nature, all the arts. The estate became both a place of solitude, and a pleasure residence, and an economic enterprise, but most importantly, it became the main repository of Yusupov's collections.

Yusupov's wastefulness made it possible to realize in Russian culture one of the most sophisticated and impressive utopias that the Age of Enlightenment was rich in. The era of antiquity was presented as an alluring ideal and standard of life. The palace and park ensemble created by Yusupov in the vicinity of Moscow, with a park full of marble "ancient" statues and stylized temples, with a palace that housed a rich library and unique works of art, with a theater and a menagerie, is the most striking example of an attempt to embody such a utopia. According to a contemporary, when you come to Arkhangelskoye, you find yourself "in a heavenly abode, which the ancients imagined so well, as if after death you came to life again for endless pleasures and blissful immortality" 21 . Nature and the arts became a luxurious setting for the last years of the life of the famous nobleman.

Yusupov the collector was now largely connected to the Moscow antiques market. Acquisitions of this period expanded and supplemented the already existing collection. At the sale of paintings in the Moscow gallery of the Golitsyn hospital in 1817–1818, Nikolai Borisovich acquired a number of paintings, including: “Departure for the hunt” by F. Vauwerman (GMII), “Apollo and Daphne” by F. Lemoine, “Rest on the flight to Egypt” , attributed to P. Veronese, from the collection of the Russian ambassador in Vienna D. M. Golitsyn and "Bacchus and Ariadne" (now - "Zephyr and Flora") J. Amigoni from the collection of Vice-Chancellor A. M. Golitsyn (all - GMUA) 22.

In the early 1820s, some paintings from the Razumovsky collection, acquired by its founder Kirill Grigorievich Razumovsky, passed to Yusupov, field marshal general, President of the St. Petersburg Academy of Sciences, including the most famous, milestone painting by P. Batoni "Hercules at the Crossroads between Virtue and Vice" (GE) 23 .

In the 1820s, important acquisitions were made to expand the French collection. From the collection of M.P. Golitsyn, the painting “Hercules and Omphala” by F. Boucher (GMII) passed to the collector, and Yusupov became the only owner in Russia of eight paintings by this artist. From another well-known collection of A.S. Vlasov, the “Madonna and Child” by Boucher's teacher F. Lemoine (GE) passed to him. The best "Bush" in Russia come from the Yusupov collection. At that moment, when the prince bought his paintings, the fashion for them in France had already passed. In Russia, Boucher's paintings were then presented only in the imperial collection, where they ended up in the 1760s-1770s, that is, somewhat earlier than Yusupov began to acquire them. In the preference and selection of Boucher's paintings, undoubtedly, the personal taste of the prince was reflected.

In the 1800s-1810s, Nikolai Borisovich continued to replenish his oriental collection. Products made by Chinese and Japanese craftsmen of the 16th-early 19th centuries made of porcelain, bronze, tortoiseshell, ivory, furniture, and lacquers decorated the interiors of palaces in Moscow and Arkhangelskoye 24. Was it just a manifestation of interest in exotic things or the desire to create a collection, now, by virtue of underexplored material, it is difficult to judge, but nevertheless, the prince had works similar to those in the royal collection.

In January 1820, a fire broke out in the palace in Arkhangelsk, but the palace was quickly restored, and the 1820s became the “golden” decade in the history of the estate. The French biologist and publisher of the Moscow magazine Bulletin du Nord, Coint de Lavoe, who visited Arkhangelskoye, wrote in 1828: “How rich Arkhangelskoye is in the beauties of nature, it is just as remarkable in the selection of works of art. All its halls are so filled with them that you might think that you are in a museum.<...>listing all the paintings is possible only by making a complete catalog" 25 . And such a catalog was compiled in 1827-1829. He summed up many years of collecting and showed the collection in its entirety. Five albums (all - GMUA) contain sketches of works that were in the Moscow house and in Arkhangelsk. Three volumes are devoted to the art gallery, two - to the sculpture collection. The catalog presents a collection of reproductions, traditional for the 18th century, made not in the technique of engraving, but in drawing (ink, pen, brush), which makes it unique. The number of drawings (848 of them) is also unique, far exceeding the well-known reproduction albums of the early 19th century. Such a catalog was created primarily "for himself" and was always kept in the gallery owner's library. Albums of 1827-1829 - the first and still the only most complete catalog of the collection of N.B. Yusupov 26 . However, this is far from all that the prince owned, since paintings and sculptures adorned his palaces in many estates and continued to replenish the collection after the catalog was created.

Yusupovskayathe collection was divided into two parts: one - in Moscow, the other - in Arkhangelsk, which became a kind of personal museum. In the Arkhangelsk halls of the palace, park pavilions were purposefully adapted to accommodate paintings and sculptures. “In the halls of this magnificent castle, as well as in the gallery<…>placed in strict order and symmetry an extraordinary number of paintings by the largest masters<…>Suffice it to say that you rarely see here a single picture of any of the<…>artists, whether they be Italians, Flemings or masters of other schools - there are dozens of their paintings here” 27 . This impression from what he saw was only a slight exaggeration.

In the northwestern part of the manor palace, the Tiepolo Hall, the 1st and 2nd Robert Halls, the Antique Hall were created. The Russians bought Hubert Robert's paintings almost with more zeal than the French. They were especially valued as interior decoration. Halls were usually adapted or specially selected for them, taking into account the format and compositional features of the works. In the 1770s-1790s, during the heyday of manor construction in Russia, Robert's landscapes were actively imported into Russia. Yusupov's collection included 12 works by Robert. Two decorative ensembles (four canvases each) adorned the octagonal halls in Arkhangelsk.

In the context of the estate's artistic space, Robert's painting "Apollo's Pavilion and the Obelisk", which is part of the ensemble of the 2nd hall by Hubert Robert, acquires a special meaning. The palace was the compositional and semantic core of the ensemble. By the will of the owner, it was turned into a real "museum". In Greek antiquity, this word meant “abode, dwelling of the Muses; the place where the scientists gathered. The image of the temple of knowledge and arts, the temple dedicated to the god of sunlight, art and artistic inspiration - Apollo Musaget, was one of the most popular symbols of the Enlightenment. The temple of Apollo is placed on Robert's canvas in the elements of nature, in front of him are columns defeated by time, in which artists are located, and an obelisk, on the pedestal of which Robert, emphasizing the connection of times, placed a dedication written in Latin to friends of the arts: “Hubertus Robertus Hunc Artibus Artium que amicis picat atque consecrat anno 1801” (“Hubert Robert creates and dedicates this obelisk to the arts and friends of the arts in 1801”). Robert's landscape unfolds "an all-encompassing allusive series" Light - Nature - Knowledge - Art - Man" 28 . The compositional solution and the content of the painting find support in the special artistic space of the estate, where the arts exist in harmony with nature and man.

Between the halls of Robert was the Antique Hall - the "gallery of antiquities". It housed a small but diverse collection of antiques - Roman copies from Greek originals of the 5th-2nd centuries BC: four figures of youths, three male busts, an urn, four figures of cupids and putti, including "Boy with a bird" (I in ., GE) and "Cupid" (1st century, GMUA), made under the influence of the works of the Greek master Boef.

The Gallery was organically combined with the halls of the palace, which housed more than 120 works, among them huge canvases by G.F. Doyen and A. Monges. The main place in it was occupied by the work of the Italian and French schools. Among the French masters, J.B. Grez, represented in his collection by 8 paintings, enjoyed a special disposition of the prince. Grez was loved by many Russian collectors, but of all his Russian customers and buyers, the artist especially distinguished the prince. The Gallery presented a newly found dove, or voluptuousness, written especially for the prince. In one of the letters to Yusupov, Grez emphasized: “In order to fulfill the head<…>I spoke to your heart and the properties of your soul” 29 . The picture is still the most popular and replicated by many copyists.

Among Italian paintings, the main tendency of the taste of the collector, oriented towards classicism, was emphasized by the superiority of the paintings of the Bologna school - Guido Reni, Guercino, Domenichino, F. Albani, Caracci brothers. The Venetian school of the 18th century was represented in various ways. The Gallery contained one of Sebastiano Ricci's masterpieces, The Childhood of Romulus and Remus (GE). A significant group consisted of paintings by the famous Venetian Giovanni Battista Tiepolo (then 11 paintings were attributed to him) and his son Giovanni Domenico. In addition to those mentioned above, the prince owned The Death of Dido by Tiepolo the father and Mary with the Sleeping Baby by Tiepolo the son.

No less interesting ensembles were located in the southern enfilade. In Amurova, or the Salon of Psyche, the best works brought by Yusupov from his last trip to Paris, paintings by David, Guerin, Prudhon, Mayer, Boilly, Demarne, van Gorp, were exhibited. The center of the hall was occupied by Canova's group Cupid and Psyche. The artistic integrity of the ensemble was complemented by thematic unity. The central works - “Sappho and Phaon" by David (GE) and paired paintings "Irida and Morpheus" (GE), "Aurora and Mullet" (The Pushkin Museum) by Gerin - made up a kind of Yusupov triptych dedicated to love and ancient beauty.

The painting by L.L. Boilly “Billiards” (GE), which was also located there, was acquired by Yusupov after he saw the painting in the Salon of 1808. Then included in the number of "small" masters, Boilly, as a reformer of genre painting, is ranked by modern researchers among the leading artists of the French school. In the collection of the prince there were four more first-class works of the master: "The Old Priest", "Sorrowful Separation", "Faint", "Workshop of the Artist" (all - the Pushkin Museum).

In the same hall, four unique sculptures made of carved ivory were demonstrated: "The Chariot of Bacchus", the figures of Venus and Mercury and the composition "Cupid and Psyche" (all - GE). According to the richness of its collection history, this is one of the "pearls" of the collection. With the exception of the "Chariot of Bacchus" by Simon Troger, works of small plastic come from the workshop of P.P. Rubens. After the death of the famous Fleming, they passed to Queen Christina of Sweden and later to Duke Don Livio Odescalchi. After the death of the duke, they went to the collections of France, Spain and Italy. Perhaps, at the beginning of the 19th century, they were acquired by Prince Yusupov. In general, the choice of works for Amurova was undoubtedly purposeful, reflecting the taste of the owner and the meaning that the collector himself and his contemporaries put into the lifestyle in the bosom of nature in a country estate.

Next to Amurova was the Cabinet - a typical collection of the 18th century, as if emphasizing the continuity and difference between old and new art. In the Cabinet there were 43 paintings by the masters of the Italian school, which was considered the leading one in the academic hierarchy. It was here that one of the masterpieces of the collection - "Portrait of a Woman" by Correggio (GE) was kept. Yusupov also had several copies from the famous compositions of Correggio from the Dresden Gallery, especially loved in the 18th century - “Holy Night” (“Adoration of the Shepherds”) and “Day” (“Madonna with St. George”. For the Cabinet, the paintings were specially selected according to size , 22 works were paired for symmetrical hanging, among them: "Alexander and Diogenes" (GE) and "The Return of the Prodigal Son" (GMII) by Domenico Tiepolo; "The Centurion before Christ" (GMII) and "Christ and the Sinner" (Prague , National Gallery) Sebastiano Ricci; "Landscape with a waterfall" (Sumy, Art Museum) and "Ruins and fishermen" (location unknown) Andrea Locatelli; "Girl's head" (GE) and "Boy's head" (GMII) Pierre Subleir.

From the mass of works of applied art offered by the art market, Yusupov was able to choose genuine masterpieces to decorate his palaces, which we have the right to consider as a collection. They emphasize the prince's interest in the art of France in general. He purchased porcelain from well-known Parisian manufactories - Lefebvre, Dagotti, Nast, Dil, Guerard; artistic bronze according to the models of the largest masters of sculptural plasticity - K.M. Clodion, L.S. Boiseau, P.F. Tomir, J.L. Prier.

Made around 1720 in the workshop of André-Charles Boulle, two unique clock cases with figures of Day and Night, copying the famous sculptures by Michelangelo from the Medici Chapel in the Church of San Lorenzo in Florence, adorned the Great Study of the Moscow House and the rooms on the second floor of the palace in Arkhangelskoye. In the album "Marbles" (1828), along with the sculpture, lighting fixtures and clocks are depicted: candelabra based on the models of E.M. Falcone and K.M. Clodion; clock with figures of the "Philosopher" and "Reading" sculptor of the Sevres manufactory L.S. Boiseau (all - GMUA). On one of the prince's favorite plots - "The Oath of Cupid" - the watch case of the workshop of P.F.Tomir was made according to the model of F.L.Roland (GE).

Among the park pavilions, “Caprice” stood out with the wealth of pictorial decoration, where there were paired pastoral portraits by D. Teniers the Younger “Shepherd” and “Shepherdess”, which have no analogies in the work of the master, paintings by P. Rotari (30 portraits, all - GMUA), O .Fragonard , M. Gerard , M. D. Viyer , L. Demarna , M. Drolling , F. Svebach , J. Reynolds , B. West, J. F. Hackert , A. Kaufman. A significant part were the works of the contemporaries of the prince, women artists, from Angelica Kaufman - one of the founders of the Royal Academy in London, to popular French women - E. Vigée-Lebrun, M. Gerard, M. D. Viyer.

The annex to Caprice housed a "picturesque establishment" that painted porcelain 30 . Many paintings from here served as models for copying on porcelain. Plates and cups with picturesque miniatures were presented to friends, guests and members of the royal family. Miniatures on porcelain were replicated and popularized by the works of the Yusupov gallery. Over time, their value has increased, a number of paintings are now known only from reproductions on porcelain.

The album of the gallery of the Moscow Palace makes it even clearer how much the Yusupov collection lost due to the fact that it was divided into two parts: the estate and the city. There were quite a few interesting works in the Moscow house, but there was not that strict system in placing them in the halls, as in Arkhangelsk. Here, works of art served primarily as an interior decoration - an expensive and luxurious decoration. A significant part of the paintings was placed in the Upper Large Study, in the Living Room, in the Small and Large Dining Rooms.

The large office was decorated with a series of four paintings by G.P. Panini, depicting the interiors of the largest Roman basilicas: the Cathedral of St. Peter, the churches of Santa Maria Maggiore (both GE), the churches of San Paolo Fuori and Mura and San Giovanni in Laterano (both - the Pushkin Museum). The series of the Roman master, who had a great influence on the formation of Hubert Robert, logically completed the Yusupov collection of great landscape painters of the 18th century. In the office there was a copy of one of the most beloved paintings of Raphael in the 18th century - “Madonna in an Armchair” from the Uffizi Gallery in Florence (GE). According to the inventory of the gallery, this is “a copy from Raphael, painted by Mengs”, German painter Anton Raphael Mengs, who worked in Italy and was with his compatriot I.I. Vinkelman founder of the new classical style in painting. Copies of this level were highly valued on a par with the originals. Nikolai Borisovich, among other influential collectors in court circles (S.R. Vorontsov, A.A. Bezborodko), sought to influence Catherine II so that she even more actively ordered the copying of masterpieces of Italian painting for the Hermitage and, above all, the Vatican frescoes of Raphael 31 .

In the Living Room of the Moscow House were the masterpieces of the Yusupov collection - "The Abduction of Europe" and "The Battle on the Bridge" by Claude Lorrain (both - the Pushkin Museum). Lorrain's compositions were copied a lot during the artist's lifetime. The prince had seven works attributed to Lorrain. The level of execution of two copies of his paintings ("Morning" and "Evening", both - the Pushkin Museum) is so high that they were considered author's repetitions (until 1970).

Of the 21 paintings of the Great Dining Room, the monumental painting by the Dutchman Gerbrandt van den Eckhout, which has the artist's signature and the date - 1658, attracts attention. In the 19th century it was known as "Jacob stands before King Haman, who is sitting with his daughter Rachel", in 1924 In 1994, its plot was defined by N.I. Romanov as “Invitation for the overnight stay by a resident of the city of Giva Levita and his concubine” (GMII). The same year as Eckhout's painting, the "Allegory of Painting" located in the same place, representing a self-portrait of the Italian artist Elisabeth Sirani (GMII), is dated.

In the album of the Gallery of the Moscow House (1827), next to drawings from paintings and sculptures, there are drawings of seven Sevres vases, which emphasizes their collection value. Five of them, dated 1760–1770, have been preserved in the Hermitage collection. These are the rare "sea-green" paired "pot-pourri myrte" aromatics (aromatics with myrtle) with picturesque port scenes by J.L. Morena. He also painted bivouac scenes in reserves on a pair of vases with lids, called "marmit" (Main warmer). The picturesque reserve is the main decoration of the ovoid vase with the ruban decoration on the arched neck. The graceful forms of the last three vases are emphasized by the noble turquoise color of their background.

The catalog albums do not contain drawings from family portraits, and the descriptions do not contain the portrait gallery so typical of the 18th century. Nevertheless, portrait galleries were invariably present in noble estates and palaces. They immortalized the kind of owners and testified to their origin. Yusupov's collection traditionally occupied a sufficient place as well as imperial portraits, they were mainly placed in the upper rooms of the palace in Arkhangelsk. Among the paintings of Petits Appartements in the catalog album there are portraits of Peter I (copy from J.M. Nattier, GMUA), Elizabeth Petrovna by I.Kh. Groot (1743) and I.P. Argunov (1760), Catherine II (Lumpy type -Rokotov, GE), Paul I (copy from V. Eriksen and repetition of the famous work of S.S. Shchukin, both - GMUA), Alexander I (copies from portraits of F. Gerard, A. Vigi, N. de Courteille - location unknown ). As monuments of history, the portraits in the catalog are placed in a series of works of art from different eras and schools. Some of them, the portraits of Groot and Argunov, are brilliant examples of rocaille portraits of the 18th century.

A peculiar and representative sculptural gallery of portraits of Russian royalty was located in the Imperial Hall of the palace in Arkhangelsk: busts of Peter I and Catherine II by C. Albachini; Paul I Zh.D. Rashetta, Alexander I A. Triscornia, Maria Feodorovna and Elizabeth Alekseevna L. Guichard, Nicholas I P. Normanov, Alexandra Feodorovna H. Rauh.

The attitude towards family portraits was more intimate. However, the surviving portraits of the Yusupovs testify that they were painted by the most famous and fashionable artists who worked at the Russian court. So, portraits of the wife of Prince Tatyana Vasilievna, nee Engelhardt, were performed by three prominent French portrait painters: E.L. Vigée-Lebrun (private collection, 1988 - Roberto Polo auction, Paris), J.L. Monier, who taught in the portrait class of the St. Petersburg Academy of Arts (GMUA), and J.L. Voile (GE).

The collection of N.B. Yusupov was a brilliant expression of the aesthetic taste of the era and the personal predilections of the collector, a unique monument of Russian artistic culture. It stands out for its scale, the quality of the selection and the variety of works on display. A distinctive feature of the Yusupov collection was the French section, in which the personal taste of the collector was most clearly manifested. It demonstrates a complete picture of the development of French art from the 17th to the 19th century and, the only one in Russia, introduces the works of French artists of the first quarter of the 19th century, from David and his school to the "small masters". In terms of the level of the French collection, the Yusupov collection could only be compared with the Imperial Hermitage.

This is no wonder. After all, Nikolai Borisovich not only acquired works, lovingly distributing them to different rooms of the palace, but also carefully systematized, indicating the location of a particular work. Such an attitude testifies to the truly high culture of Yusupov the collector, which favorably distinguished him from most Russian collectors, for he turned his passion for art into a way of life. Reasonable egoism, the whims of the Russian master, combined with an amazing ability to surround himself with perfect works and simply beautiful things, made it possible to create an atmosphere of a “happy life” in his palaces.

Along with paintings and sculptures, the collection included drawings, artistic bronzes, small ivory sculptures, porcelain items, works by Chinese and Japanese craftsmen, carved stones (gems), snuff boxes, tapestries, furniture and walking sticks. Several generations of the Yusupov princes continued to add to the family collection. Each of them had their own hobbies in collecting, and also carefully preserved the artistic heritage of their wonderful ancestors.

1 Prakhov A.V. Materials for the description of the art collections of the Yusupov princes // Art Treasures of Russia. 1906. No. 8-10. P.170.

2 Prakhov A.V. Decree. op. // Art treasures of Russia. 1906. No. 8-10; 1907. No. 1-10; Ernst S. State Museum Fund. Yusupov Gallery. French school. L., 1924.

3 "Scientific whim". Collection of Prince Nikolai Borisovich Yusupov. Exhibition catalogue. In 2 vol. M., 2001.

4 Sakharov I.V. From the history of the Yusupov family // "Scientific whim". Collection of Prince Nikolai Borisovich Yusupov. M., 2001. P. 15-29.

5 Lotman YU. M. Karamzin. M ., 2000. P. 66.

6 Ciceron M.T. Epistolae ad atticum, ad brutum et ad Q. Fratrem. Hanoviae: Typis Wechelianis, apud Claudium Marnium et heredes Ioan. Aubrii, 1609. 2pripl. Commentarius Pauli Manutii in epistolas Ciceronis ad attcum. Venetiis: Aldus, 1561. GMUA.

7 Not to be confused with the mathematician Johann Bernoulli(1667–1748) - an honorary member of the St. Petersburg Academy of Sciences.

8 Bernoulli J. Johann Bernoulli's Reisen durch Brandenbourg, Pommern, Prussen, Curland, Russland und Pohlen 1777 and 1778.Leipzig, 1780. bd. 5. S. 85.

9 For details see: Deryabina E.V. Paintings by Hubert Robert in the Museums of the USSR // The State Hermitage Museum. Russia - France. Age of Enlightenment. Sat. scient. works. SPb., 1992. S.77-78.

10 Prakhov A.V. Decree. op. P.180.

11 Petersburg antiquity. 1800 // Russian antiquity. 1887. V.56. No. 10. S.204; Savinskaya L.Yu. Paintings by G. B. Tiepolo in Arkhangelsk // Art. 1980. No. 5. pp.64-69.

12 Reimers H. (von). St. Petersburg am Ende seines ersten Jahrhunderts. St. Petersburg, 1805. Teil 2. S. 374.

13 Pavanello G. Appunti da un viaggio in Russia Astratto da Arte in Fruili.Arte a Trieste. 1995. R. 413-414.

14 Paired portraits of Rembrandt were taken out of Russia in 1919 by F.F. Yusupov. Cm.: Prince Felix Yusupov. Memoirs in 2 books. M., 1998. S.232, 280-281, 305, etc.

15 Georgi I.G. Description of the Russian-imperial capital city of St. Petersburg and sights in its vicinity. SPb., 1794. P. 418.

16 For more information on travel, see: Savinskaya L.Yu. N.B. Yusupov as a type of collector of the early 19th century // Monuments of Culture. New Discoveries: Yearbook. 1993. M., 1994. S.200-218.

17 cit. on: Ernst S. UK.op. pp.268-269. (Translated from French); Berezina V.N. French painting of the first half and middle of the 19th century in the Hermitage. Scientific catalog. L., 1983. P. 110.

18 Babin A.A. French artists - contemporaries of N.B. Yusupov // "Scientific whim". Catalog Exhibitions . M ., 2001. Part 1. pp. 86-105.

19 Haskell Fr. An Italian Patron of French Neo-Classic Art // Past and Present in Art and Taste. Selected Essays. Yale Univ. Press, New Haven and London, 1987. R. 46-64.

20 Svinin P. Farewell dinner in the Arkhangelsk Village // Otechestvennye zapiski. 1827. No. 92. December. C .382.

21 Dominicis Chev. Relation historique, politique et familier en form de lettre sur divers usages, arts, s with iences, institution, et monuments publics des Russes, recueillies dans ses differens voyages et resumies par chev. De Dominicis. St. Petersbourg, 1824. Vol. I.R. 141. Here and further - lane. N . T . Unanyants.

22 Catalogue des tableaux, status, vases et autres objets, appartenant à l'Hôpital de Galitzin.Moscow: de l'imprimerie N.S. Vsevolojsky, 1817. P. 5, 13, 16; Catalog of paintings belonging to the Moscow Golitsyn Hospital with the highest permission assigned to the lottery. M., 1818.

23 Savinskaya L.Yu. From the history of Italian paintings in Russia // Tiepolo and Italian painting XVIII century in the context of European culture. Abstracts of reports. SPb.: GE, 1996. S.16-18.

24 Menshikova M.L., Berezhnaya N.L.. Eastern collection // "Scientific whim". H.one. pp.249-251.

25 Archangelsky // Bulletin du Nord. Journal scientifique et litteraire publié à Moscou par G. Le Cointe De Laveau. 1828. Vol.1. Cahier III. Mars. R. 284.

26 For more information about the catalog albums of the collection of N.B. Yusupov, see: Savinskaya L.Yu. Illustrated catalogs of private art galleries of the second half of the 18th - the first third of the 19th century // Actual problems of domestic art. Interuniversity collection of scientific papers. MGPU them. V.I. Lenin. M., 1990. S.49-65.

27 Dominicis Chev. op. cit. R. 137.

28 Osmolinskaya N. Under the Shadow of the Temple of Apollo: Collecting as a World View // Pinakothek. 2000. No. 12. P.55.

29 Letter from J.B. Grez to N.B. Yusupov dated July 29, 1789, Paris // Prakhov A. Decree. op. P.188.

30 Berezhnaya N.L."Porcelain catalog" of the gallery N.B. Yusupov // "Scientific whim". Part 1. M., 2001. S.114-123.

31 About the family of princes Yusupov. Part 2. SPb., 1867. S. 248; Kobeko D.F. Portrait painter Gutenbrun // Bulletin of Fine Arts. 1884. V.2. S.299; Levinson-Lessing V.F. History of the Art Gallery of the Hermitage (1764-1917). 2nd ed. L., 1986. S.274.