I would like to thank Alessandra Tosi, Gitta Hammarberg, Michelle Lamarche Marrese, and other participants in the panel “Russian Women and European Culture in the Early Nineteenth Century” at the National Convention of the American Association for the Advancement of Slavic Studies, Boston, 2004, for providing a stimulating forum in which to test my ideas. My attendance at that conference was funded by the British Academy, to whom I am deeply grateful. I am also indebted to Patrick Blakesley and Mark D. Steinberg for their excellent observations and enthusiastic support. Finally, my sincere thanks to two anonymous readers for their highly thoughtful and constructive critique of earlier versions of this text. Theirs was an example of anonymous reviewing at its very best.

1. Brandon, Taylor, Art for the Nation: Exhibitions and the London Public, 1747-2001 (Manchester, Eng., 1999), xiii.Google Scholar

2. The last twenty years has seen an explosion of scholarly interest in the way museums have contributed to nation building by acknowledging and fostering the growdi of national identity and state power. A useful starting point from which to approach the vast literature that has resulted would include: Donald Preziosi and Claire Farago, eds., Grasping the World: The Idea of the Museum (Aldershot, Eng., 2004); Carbonell, Bettina Messias, ed., Museum Studies: An Anthology of Contexts (Oxford, 2004)Google Scholar; Macdonald, Sharon and Fyfe, Gordon, eds., Theorizing Museums: Respecting Identity and Diversity in a Changing World (Oxford, 1996)Google Scholar; Marstine, Janet, ed., New Museum Theory and Practice: An Introduction (Oxford, 2006)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Anderson, Gail, Reinventing the Museum: Historical and Contemporary Perspectives on the Paradigm Shift (Walnut Creek, Calif., 2004)Google Scholar.

3. The first public art exhibition in the Louvre opened in the Grande Gallerie as early as 1699 and led to further exhibitions that became known as “Salons,” after the Grande Salon in which they were regularly held from 1725. For the tensions and changes in the Salons in the years surrounding the opening of the Louvre Museum, see Patricia Mainardi, The End of the Salon: Art and the State in the Early Third Republic (Cambridge, Eng., 1993), 9-35. For the history of the Louvre, see Andrew McClellan, Inventing the Louvre: Art, Politics, and the Origins of the Modern Museum in Eighteenth-Century Paris (Cambridge, Eng., 1994). For the rise of public art museums in France more generally, see Sherman, Daniel J., Worthy Monuments: Art Museums and the Politics of Culture in Nineteenth-Century France (Cambridge, Mass., 1989).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

4. The National Art Gallery, sited in the Huis ten Bosch, was followed in 1808 by the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam. Housed initially in the Royal Palace on Dam Square, the Rijksmuseum later moved to the Trippenhuis on Kloveniersburgwal before settling in its present home, designed by Pierre Cuypers, in 1885.

5. The National Gallery was founded when the British government purchased the picture collection of John Julius Angerstein for £57,000 and opened it on 10 May 1824 in Angerstein's former London residence at 100 Pall Mall. For a brief account of Angerstein and his paintings in the National Gallery, see Cook, Kate, “Two Gentlemen from St. Petersburg in the National Gallery,” Pinakoteka 18–19, nos. 1–2 (2004): 225-27Google Scholar. For the prehistory of the gallery and the role of the Royal Academy in particular, see Hoock, Holger, “Old Masters and the English School: The Royal Academy of Arts and the Notion of a National Gallery at the Turn of the Nineteenth Century,“ Journal of the History of Collections 16, no. 1 (2004): 1–18 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Hoock, Holger, The King's Artists: The Royal Academy of Arts and the Politics of British Culture, 1760-1840 (Oxford, 2005)Google Scholar. For its wider history, see Jonathan Conlin, “The Origins and History of the National Gallery” (PhD diss., University of Cambridge, 2002) and, for the more general audience, Jonathan Conlin, The Nation's Mantelpiece: A History of the National Gallery (London, 2006). For the effects of new museological debate on the National Gallery from 1850-1880, see Christopher Whitehead, The Public Art Museum in Nineteenth- Century Britain: The Development of the National Gallery (Aldershot, Eng., 2005). The Dulwich Picture Gallery was based on the collection of Noel Joseph Desenfans, the consul-general of Poland in Britain, and housed in a special gallery designed by Sir John Soane from 1811-14. For die contents of the collection, see Richard Beresford, Dulwich Picture Gallery: Complete Illustrated Catalogue (London, 1998).

6. For the beginnings of a museum culture in Russia in the eighteenth century, see “Protomuzeinyi period v istorii kul'tury: Vozniknovenie muzeev v Rossii (XVIII v.),” in M. E. Kaulen et al., Muzeinoe delo Rossii (Moscow, 2003), 35-62.

7. Much has been written on Catherine's acquisition of the best of Walpole's paintings. For more recent accounts in English, see Moore, Andrew W., ed., Houghton Hall: The Prime Minister, the Empress and the Heritage (London, 1996)Google Scholar; and Dukelskaya, Larissa and Moore, Andrew, eds., A Capital Collection: Houghton Hall and the Hermitage (New Haven, 2002)Google Scholar.

8. The Hermitage only opened to the public without restrictions after the 1917 revolution. For its gradual transformation from private collection to public museum, see Katia Dianina, “The Museum and the Nation: The Imperial Hermitage in Russian Society,” in Steward, James Christen, ed., The Collections of the Romanovs: European Art from the State Hermitage, St. Petersburg (London, 2003), 37–43 Google Scholar. The most comprehensive history of its picture galleries remains V. F. Levinson-Lessing, Istoriia kartinnoi galerei Ermitazha (1764-1917) (Leningrad, 1985). For a more recent account in English, see Geraldine Norman, The Hermitage: The Biography of a Great Museum (London, 1997).

9. Bazin, Germain, The Museum Age, trans. Cahill, Jane van Nuis (Brussels, 1968), 215 Google Scholar.

10. For the Golitsyn collection, see Rosalind P. Gray, “The Golitsyn and Kushelev- Bezborodko Collections and Their Role in the Evolution of Public Art Galleries in Russia,“ Oxford Slavonic Papers, n.s. 31 (1998): 51-67.

11. Duncan, Carol, Civilizing Rituals: Inside Public Art Museums (London, 1995), 38–40.Google Scholar

12. Some of the earliest proposals were for a national museum that would incorporate natural history and edinographic and historical material as well as literature and art. See Kevin Tyner Thomas, “Collecting the Fatherland: Early Nineteenth-Century Proposals for a Russian National Museum,” in Jane Burbank and David L. Ransel, eds., Imperial Russia: New Histories for the Empire (Bloomington, 1998), 91-107.

13. For Svin'in's collection, which featured works by such artists as Dmitrii Levitskii, Orest Kiprenskii, and Aleksei Venetsianov, see la. V. Bruk, “Iz istorii khudozhestvennogo sobiratel'stva v Peterburge i Moskve v XIX veka,” in Bruk, la. V, ed., Gosudarstvennaia Tret'iakovskaia galereia: Ocherki istorii 1856-1917 (Leningrad, 1981), 17–19 Google Scholar.

14. On Russian salons of the period, see William Mills Todd III, Fiction and Society in the Age of Pushkin: Ideology, Institutions, and Narrative (Cambridge, Mass., 1986), 55-72; Lina Bernstein, “Women on the Verge of a New Language: Russian Salon Hostesses in the First Half of the Nineteenth Century,” in Helena Goscilo and Beth Holmgren, eds., Russia-Women-Culture (Bloomington, 1996), 209-24; M. Aronson and S. Reiser, Literaturnye kruzhki i salony (St. Petersburg, 2001); and I. B. Chizhova, Khoziaiki literaturnykh salonov Peterburga pervoi poloviny XIX v. (St. Petersburg, 1993). For Volkonskaia's salon in Moscow, see Murav'ev, V B., ed., Vtsarstve muz: Moskovskii literaturnyi salon Zinaidy Volkonskoi 1824-1829 gg. (Moscow, 1987)Google Scholar; and Fairweather, Maria, Pilgrim Princess: A Life of Princess Zinaida Volkonsky (London, 1999), 194–215.Google Scholar

15. Pogodin, M., “Vospominanie o S. P. Shevyreve,” quoted in N. Belozerskaia, “KniaginiaZinaidaAleksandrovna Volkonskaia,” Istoricheskii vestnik 68 (April 1897): 138 Google Scholar. Shevyrev was a critic and minor poet who was appointed professor of Russian literature at Moscow University in 1834. He was also a founding member and inspector of the Moscow School of Painting, Sculpture, and Architecture, established in 1843, perhaps inspired by his involvement in Volkonskaia's visual arts project over a decade before.

16. For an early appreciation of the Villa Volkonsky, which later became the official residence of the British ambassador in Rome, see O. I. Buslaev, “Rimskaia villa kn. Z. A. Volkonskoi,” VestnikEvropy 1 (January 1896): 5-32.

17. Letter from S. I. Gal'berg to his brothers, 30 May 1821: in Gal'berg, S. I., “Skul'ptor Samuil Ivanovich Gal'berg v ego zagranichnykh pis'makh i zapiskakh, 1818-28,” Vestnik iziashchnykh iskusstv 2, no. 5 (1884): 124-25.Google Scholar

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19. Examples include Bruni's portrait of c. 1826 (Houghton Library, Harvard University) in which Volkonskaia appears in the tide role of the opera Giovanna d'Arco, for which she had written the libretto and music in 1821; and Briullov's watercolor of c. 1830 (State Tret'iakov Gallery, Moscow), in which Volkonskaia, Bertel Thorvaldsen, Bruni, and the artist himself watch a theatrical performance in the Gagarin residence in Rome. See Atsarkina, E., KarlPavlovich Briullov: Zhizri i tvorchestvo (Moscow, 1963), 318.Google Scholar

20. For other women artists and patrons in late eighteenth- and early nineteenthcentury Russia, see Iovleva, L. I., ed., Iskusstvo zhenskogo roda: Zhenshchiny-khudozhnitsy v Rossii XV-XX vekov (Moscow, 2002), 54–85 Google Scholar; and R. P. Blakesley, “A Century of Women Painters, Sculptors, and Patrons from the Time of Catherine the Great,” in Jordana Pomeroy, Rosalind P. Blakesley, et al., eds., An Imperial Collection: Women Artists from the State Hermitage Museum (London, 2003), 51-75. On Maria Fedorovna, see Rosalind P. Blakesley, “Sculpting in Tiaras: Grand Duchess Maria Fedorovna as a Producer and Consumer of the Arts,” in Batchelor, Jennie and Kaplan, Cora, eds., Women and Material Culture (London, 2007), 71–85.Google Scholar

21. S. M. Volkonskii, Vospominanie o Dekabristakh po semeinim vospominaniam (Moscow, 1994), quoted in Fairweather, Pilgrim Princess, 230.

22. Volkonskaia, Z. A., “Proekt Esteticheskogo muzeia pri imperatorskom Moskovskom universiteta,” Teleskop 3 (1831): 385-86Google Scholar. While these were Volkonskaia's prime reasons for founding a museum, she also hoped that it would be used to good purpose by those teaching at Moscow University, provide stage and costume designers with suitable models, and inspire the artists of the theatrical world in tiieir quest for style and “grace” (386).

23. See, for example, Duncan, Civilizing Rituals, 14, in which the author argues that “the rise of the art museum is a corollary to the philosophical invention of the aesthetic and moral power of art objects.“

24. Duncan, Carol and Wallach, Alan, “The Universal Survey Museum,” Art History 3, no. 4 (December 1980): 448-69.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

25. Bazin, Museum Age, 6.

26. Specifically, these first sections were to contain Egyptian and Etruscan art; works illustrating the transition from Egyptian to Greek sculpture; statues of classical gods, goddesses, and heroes (a section Volkonskaia termed “Olympus“); group statues focusing on human emotion; and portrait statues and busts.

27. Volkonskaia, “Proekt Esteticheskogo muzeia,” 387-96.

28. Ibid., 389.

29. See Potts, Alex, Flesh and the Ideal: Winckelmann and the Origins of Art History (New Haven, 1994), 11–46 Google Scholar. For the Grand Tour, see Andrew Wilton and Ilaria Bignamini, Grand Tour: The Lure of Italy in the Eighteenth Century (London, 1996); and Jeremy Black, Italy and the Grand Tour (New Haven, 2003).

30. Volkonskaia, “Proekt Esteticheskogo muzeia,” 385-87.

31. Ibid., 388.

32. Ibid., 387.

33. According to a contemporary, Volkonskaia “decorated her house with originals and copies of the most famous works of painting and sculpture. She painted the walls of her house, a real museum, with frescoes in the style of various periods.” Murav'ev, ed., V tsarstve muz, 11. For details of Volkonskaia's collection, see Polunina, N. and Frolov, A., Kollektsionery staroi Moskvy: Illiustrirovannyi biograficheskii slovar’ (Moscow, 1997), 108-9Google Scholar. The fortunes and eventual dispersal of Volkonskaia's collection after her death are discussed on p. 110.

34. Volkonskaia, Z., letter published in Galateia 5 (1829): 21–31 Google Scholar, quoted in Belozerskaia, “Kniaginia Zinaida Aleksandrovna Volkonskaia,” 139.

35. Thorvaldsen carried out commissions for members of the Russian aristocracy, including busts of Alexander I and Grand Duchess Elena Pavlovna. For his involvement with the Russian artistic community in Rome, see R. Giuliani, “Thorvaldsen e la colonia romana degli artisti russi,” in Kragelund, P. and Nykjaer, M., eds., Thorvaldsen: L'ambiente, I'influsso, ilmito (Rome, 1991), 131-43.Google Scholar

36. For the text of Chaadaev's letter, see Chaadaev, P. la., Stat'i i pis'ma (Moscow, 1989), 38–56 Google Scholar. The full text in English is available in Marc Raeff, ed., Russian Intellectual History: An Anthology (New York, 1966; reprint, Atlantic Highlands, N.J., 1978), 160-73. For a commentary on the invective it contained, see Andrzej Walicki, A History of Russian Thought from the Enlightenment to Marxism, trans. Hilda Andrews-Rusiecka (Oxford, 1980), 81-91.

37. According to some sources, Volkonskaia first came to Russia as late as 1805. See Polunina, N. M., Kto est’ kto v hollektsionirovanii staroi Rossii: Novyi biograficheskii slovar’ (Moscow, 2003), 99.Google Scholar

38. See Alessandra Tosi, “The Russian Reception of European Literature in the Early Nineteenth Century: Zinaida Volkonskaia's ‘Laure’ as a Literary Bridge between Russia and the West” (paper presented at the annual conference of the Study Group on Eighteenth-Century Russia, Hoddesdon, 6-8January 2003); and Alessandra Tosi, Waiting for Pushkin: Russian Fiction in the Reign of Alexander I (1801-1825) (Amsterdam, 2006).

39. Volkonskaia outlined these aims in a letter to the Society of Russian History and Antiquities on 28 April 1827. See Belozerskaia, “Kniaginia Zinaida Aleksandrovna Volkonskaia,“ 133.

40. On Volkonskaia's conversion to Catholicism, see Gorodetzky, Nadejda, “Zinaida Volkonsky as a Catholic,” Slavonic and East European Review 39 (December 1960): 31–43 Google Scholar; and A. Mazon, “Zénéide Volkonskaja la Catholique,” in W. Steinitz, P. N. Berkov, B. Suchodolski, and J. Dolanský, eds., Ost und West in der Geschichte des Denkens und der kulturellen Beziehungen: Festschrift für Eduard Winter zum 70 Geburtstag (Berlin, 1966), 579-90. On the rapprochement, see Bayara Aroutunova, Lives in Letters: Princess Zinaida Volkonskaya and Her Correspondence (Columbus, Ohio, 1994), 32.

41. Dun can, Civilizing Rituals, 8—9.

42. Volkonskaia, “Proekt Esteticheskogo muzeia,” 385.

43. Duncan, Civilizing Rituals, 38.

44. For recent thinking on Russian artistic patronage, see Boele, Vincent, Phillips, Catherine, and Rudge, John, eds., Collectors in St. Petersburg (Aldershot, Eng., 2007 Google Scholar).

45. For this shift of emphasis in Russian artistic journalism, see Gray, Rosalind P., Russian Genre Painting in the Nineteenth Century (Oxford, 2000), 45–68.Google Scholar

46. Batiushkov, Konstantin, “Progulka v Akademiiu khudozhestv: Pis'mo starogo moskovskogo zhitelia k priiateliu v derevniu ego N.,” in K. N. Batiushkov: Sochineniia (Moscow, 1955), 330.Google Scholar Translation courtesy of Carol Adlam, “The Russian Visual Art Project“ at http://www.hrionline.ac.uk/rva/texts/batiushkov/bat01/bat01.html (last consulted 29 August 2008).

47. For the copying of works in the Hermitage, see Mikats, O. V., Kopirovanie v Ermitazhe kak shkola masterstva russkikh khudozhnikov XWII-XfX w. (St. Petersburg, 1996).Google Scholar

48. Sir Reynolds, Joshua, Discourses on Art, ed. Wark, R. R. (New Haven, 1988), 15.Google Scholar

49. Hoock, “Old Masters and the English School,” 1.

50. Pomeroy, Jordana, “Creating a National Collection: The National Gallery's Origins in the British Institution,” Apollo, n.s. 148, no. 437 (August 1998): 48–49.Google Scholar

51. Jordanova, Liudmilla, “Objects of Knowledge: A Historical Perspective on Museums,“ in Vergo, Peter, ed., The New Museology (London, 2006), 27 and 29.Google Scholar

52. See Benjamin, Walter, “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction,“ in Harrison, Charles and Wood, Paul, eds., Art in Theory 1900-1990: An Anthology ofChangingldeas (Oxford, 1992), 512-20.Google Scholar

53. For consideration of similar issues with reference to France, see Paul Duro, “The Lure of Rome: The Academic Copy and the Académie de France'in the Nineteenth Century,“ in Rafael Cardoso Denis and Colin Trodd, eds., Art and the Academy in the Nineteenth Century (Manchester, Eng., 2000), 133-49.

54. See Carol Adlam, “Realist Aesthetics in Nineteenth-Century Russian Art Writing,“ Slavonic and East European Review 83, no. 4 (October 2005): 638-63. This paragraph of my text is indebted to Carol Adlam's research.

55. D. Golitsyn, “O pol'ze, slave i pr. khudozhestv,” in V. P. Shestakov, ed., htoriia estetiki: Pamiatniki mirovoi esteticheskoi mysli, vol. 2, Esteticheskie ucheniia XVII-XVIII vekov (Moscow, 1964), 767, quoted in Adlam, “Realist Aesthetics,” 647. For further discussion of Golitsyn's writing on art, see Mozgovaia, E. B., “Sochineniia D. A. Golitsyna po voprosam izobrazitel'nogo iskusstva,” in Kuteinikova, N. S., ed., Znatochestvo, kollektsionirovanie, metsenatstvo (St. Petersburg, 1992), 11–19.Google Scholar

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57. Kukol'nik, N., “Zamechaniia na stat'iu g. Struiiskago, pomeshchennuiu v nn. 7 i 8 literaturnykh pribavlenii k Russkomu Invalidu na 1837 god,” Khudozhestvennaia gazeta (1837): 76, quoted in Adlam, “Realist Aesthetics,” 653.Google Scholar

58. For Russians’ more general alienation from their own cultural monuments in the eighteenth century, see Hughes, Lindsey, “Monuments and Identity,” in Franklin, Simon and Widdis, Emma, eds., National Identity in Russian Culture (Cambridge, Eng., 2004), 176.Google Scholar

59. The National Gallery in London admitted the general public from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. from Monday to Thursday and was open by special arrangement to art students on Fridays and Saturdays. See Pomeroy, “Creating a National Collection,” 47.

60. Volkonskaia, “Proekt Esteticheskogo muzeia,” 397.

61. Ibid., 397.

62. I. Tsvetaev, “Pamiati kniagini Z. A. Volkonskoi,” Moskovskie vedomosti 84 (1898): 4.

63. Ibid., 4.

64. For the celebrated collections of the Russian diplomat Anatolii Nikolaevich Demidov at his villa of San Donato near Florence, see Francis Haskell and Robert Wenley, Analole Demidoff, Prince of San Donato (1812-70) (London, 1994). It is unclear whether this was the Anatolii Demidov whom Volkonskaia approached.

65. Quoted in Belozerskaia, “Kniaginia Zinaida Aleksandrovna Volkonskaia,” 144.

66. Quoted ibid., 144-45.

67. Tsvetaev, “Pamiati kniagini Z. A. Volkonskoi,” 4.

68. Quoted in Belozerskaia, “Kniaginia Zinaida Aleksandrovna Volkonskaia,” 143.

69. Quoted in Tsvetaev, “Pamiati kniagini Z. A. Volkonskoi,” 4.

70. For early accounts of the Rumiantsev Museum and its move from St. Petersburg to Moscow, see Lisovskii, N. M., “Opisanie Rumiantsevskogo muzeia,” Rossiiskaia bibliografiia 86 (1881)Google Scholar; and Stasov, V V., “Rumiantsevskii muzei: Istoriia ego perevoda iz Peterburga v Moskvu,” Russkaia starina 37 (1883): 87–116 Google Scholar. For the rise of public galleries in Russia in general, see Gray, Russian Genre Painting, 24-41.

71. Tsvetaev believed the first practical outcome of Volkonskaia's project was the sculpture department at Moscow University, which was established when Professor P. M. Leont'ev bought various busts and plaster casts for the university in the mid-1850s. The Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts, however, was the fullest realization of Volkonskaia's idea. See Tsvetaev, “Pamiati kniagini Z. A. Volkonskoi,” 4.

72. For the development of Tret'iakov's collection of Russian paindng, which he began in 1856 and donated to the city of Moscow in 1892, see S. N. Gol'dshtein, “P. M. Tret'iakov i ego sobiratel'skaia deiatel'nost',” in Bruk, ed., Gosudarstvennaia Tret'iakovskaia galereia, 57-122; Griaznov, A., Pochetnyi grazhdanin Moskvy: Stranitsy zhizni Pavla Mikhaibvicha Tret'iakova (Moscow, 1982)Google Scholar; Nenarokomova, I. S., Pavel Tret'iakov i ego galereia (Moscow, 1994)Google Scholar; Botldna, A. P., Pavel Mikhailovich Tret'iakov v zhizni iiskusstve (Moscow, 1995)Google Scholar; John O. Norman, “Pavel Tredakov (1832-98): Merchant Patronage and the Russian Realists” (PhD diss., Indiana University, 1989); and John O. Norman, “Pavel Tredakov and Merchant Art Patronage, 1850-1900,” in Edith Clowes, W., Kassow, Samuel D., and West, James L., eds., Between Tsar and People: Educated Society and the Quest for Public Identity in Late Imperial Russia (Princeton, 1991), 93–107.Google Scholar

73. John Eisner and Roger Cardinal, eds., The Cultures of Collecting (London, 1994), 2.

74. Duncan and Wallach, “The Universal Survey Museum,” 64.

75. Dianina, “The Museum and the Nation,” 42.

76. See Vazquez, Oscar E., Inventing the Art Collection: Patrons, Markets, and the State in Nineteenth-Century Spain (University Park, 2001), 6.Google Scholar

77. Here I am indebted to Peter Vergo's observations in The New Museology, in which he writes: “Museums make certain choices determined by judgements as to value, significance or monetary worth, judgements which may derive in part from the system of values peculiar to the institution itself, but which in a more profound sense are also rooted in our education, our upbringing, our prejudices… . Every acquisition …, every juxtaposition or arrangement of an object or work of art… means placing a certain construction upon history.” See Vergo, “Introduction,” in Vergo, ed., The New Museology, 2-3.