The author of the research - the minister of the capital government, the head of department of culture of the city of Moscow Alexander Kibovsky - has returned names and ranks of half a thousand officers and the officials represented on Russian portraits of XVIII-XIX centuries
The voluminous book by Alexander Kibovskiy, a professional historian, is devoted to the historical and subject method of attribution. As the author himself explains, "knowing and understanding the complex system of uniforms, orders, medals, symbols of power, fashionable dresses and luxurious dresses shown in the portrait, the researcher can use sources about them to attribute the picture accurately. Using this method, the author identified half a thousand of the depicted characters, mostly officers, who were previously unknown.
For the author, attribution of Russian portraits based on the study of the subtleties of military uniforms and faleristics is a matter of life. This was the subject of the dissertation of Alexander Kibovskiy, he was the editor of the military historical magazine "Tseikhgauz", and in public offices did much to legalize the collection of antique weapons.
His book has a clear structure. Next to each portrait - his former attribution like "portrait of a sitting officer" or "portrait of the military" and a new - with a full name and surname, titles and regalia. Below is a link to publications, mainly in the Materials on Russian Iconography; so there is no interesting reading in this section. On the other hand, it can be found in the "Essay on the Development of the Historical and Object-Method of Attribution", which precedes the list of portraits. And the book could be called, for example, "600 unknown": in his essay Kibovsky tells about dozens of predecessors - experts in military uniforms and orders, whose names are completely unknown to the general public.
Interest in the Russian portrait and its genre features was formed in the last quarter of the XIX century. At that time, huge exhibitions were held, and the lawyer and historian Dmitry Rovinsky published his first "Dictionary of Russian engraved portraits". It is funny that already in those days there is a tangled story with the canvas, still called "Portrait of Abram Petrovich Hannibal" ("Peter the Great's Arab", Alexander Pushkin's grandfather). In the celebrations on the occasion of the 100th anniversary of the birth of the poet remained unnoticed article anthropologist Dmitry Anuchin, who noted that the order in the portrait is not the same as was awarded Hannibal. And although in Sergei Dovlatov's novel "The Reserve" the secret of the portrait has already been revealed (on the canvas Baron Ivan Zakomelsky, no peanut, but just tanned, and the type of face he does not have a blackhead), in popular literature and the Internet, this character is still confidently considered the ancestor of Pushkin.
At the beginning of the twentieth century, efforts to study this genre were made colossal. You can remember at least the multi-volume book "Russian portraits", which was published by Grand Duke Nikolai Mikhailovich, or the beginning of the career of Sergei Diaghilev grandiose "Historical and Artistic Exhibition of Russian portraits", which was shown 2308 works. But a decade later, with a small heroes of most of those sheets or canvases lost their names: nationalization rushed to erase them, the Soviet museums received portraits as images of "unknown".
Living people were also on the sidelines. The author draws the story of Georgy Gabayev, Colonel of the Life Guards, a Soviet museum worker and prisoner of DmythLAG, who was exiled from 101 kilometers away. Deprived of access to archives and libraries, he continued to write articles about the royal uniform and awards. Lev Rakov, Hermitage Secretary of the Hermitage, and Vladislav Glinka, Curator of the History Department of the same museum, and Professor Vladimir Afanasiev (former consultant to Franz Rubo in the Battle of Borodino in 1912) are all of them, like many others, first survived the "fight against material fetishism" of the 1930s, then a sharp turn to the "historical past of the Russian people" - the return of symbols of the imperial army during the Great Patriotic War (a typical example - the restoration of shoulder straps), then, finally, the thaw.
To the second half of the twentieth century belong almost detective stories told by the author with numerous attempts to see in each image of a young soldier with sad eyes of Mikhail Lermontov (despite the editions, edges and silver embroidery, which clearly indicate the military affiliation of the specialist and help to distinguish the Lab-Guardess of the Gusar regiment of Lermontov from other guards' officers). Or mention the whole "serial" with the attribution of the portrait of the hussar Davydov by Orest of Kiprensky, in which they persisted in their desire to see the poet and partisan Denis Davydov (and not his cousin Evgraf, who was the latter). Or to take absolutely phantasmagoric plot with Alexander Gorshman, an amateur historian, who in 1980-1990s held a number of spectacular attributes, until it turned out that he himself wrote in the archive documents missing for his research information.
In the story about his own research works the author is modest, from the difficulties that arose indicates only the lack of opportunity to shoot
To the second half of the twentieth century belong almost detective stories told by the author with numerous attempts to see in each image of a young soldier with sad eyes of Mikhail Lermontov (despite the editions, edges and silver embroidery, which clearly indicate the military affiliation of the specialist and help to distinguish the Lab-Guardess of the Hussar regiment of Lermontov from other guards' officers). Or mention the whole "serial" with the attribution of the portrait of the hussar Davydov by Orest of Kiprensky, in which they persisted in their desire to see the poet and partisan Denis Davydov (and not his cousin Evgraf, who was the latter). Or to take absolutely phantasmagoric plot with Alexander Gorshman, an amateur historian, who in 1980-1990s held a number of spectacular attributes, until it turned out that he himself wrote in the archive documents missing for his research information.
In the story about his own research works the author is modest, from the arising difficulties points only to the lack of opportunity to shoot in the museums of the Soviet times and the 1990s (the book reproduces his touching sketches on the sheets of paper in the cell, with the details of uniforms and orders that had to be done) - and warns young people against unproven judgments.