Pskov state united historical, architectural and art reserve museum

Pskov Oblast
Pskov, Nekrasova street, 7
Phones: +7 8112 66 33 11
Web site: https://museumpskov.ru/home

The Museum includes pogankiny chamber (XVII century), the building N.F. Fan-der-flit, Writ chamber (XVII century), the Spaso-Preobrazhensky Cathedral of Mirozhsky monastery(XII), memorial museums and architect YP Spegalsky and V. I. Lenin house "Spark", the house Mason. Pskov Museum is the custodian of the unique monumental painting of the Spaso-Preobrazhensky Cathedral (XII century) Mirozhsky monastery, the Church of the Dormition of the virgin in the village Mallove (XV century), chapel of St. Anastasia in Pskov with frescoes of the N. Roerich school.

The picture gallery of the Pskov Museum is located next to the Pogankin Chambers, in a building built in the early twentieth century at the expense of the Pskov philanthropist N. F. Fan-der-Flit. The collection of Russian and Western European paintings of the museum reflects the entire centuries-old history of Russia. The Art Gallery presents the best Russian artists of the XVIII-XX centuries: I. Nikitin, F. Rokotov, V. Borovikovsky, K. Bryullov, V. Tropinin, S. Shchedrin, I. Shishkin, I. Aivazovsky, A. Kuindzhi, N. Ge, V. Makovsky, I. Repin, K. Yuon, A. Vasnetsov, L. Bakst, Z. Serebryakova, N. Roerich, A. Ostroumova-Lebedeva, K. Petrov-Vodkin, A. Vakhrameev, R. Falk, M. Chagall, A. Rylov, B. Grigoriev, P. Fomin, P. Ossovsky and others. The collection of Western European paintings of the Pskov Museum is represented by works of Italian (Andrea del Sarto), French (Bourguignon, Charpentier) and Dutch (Poole, Heemskerk) artists of the XV–XVIII centuries.
Paintings from the collection of the Pskov Museum have been exhibited in the United States, Italy, Finland, France, Holland, Austria, Sweden, and Belgium. In the framework of international cooperation, the Pskov Museum has held exhibitions together with Poland, Belarus, the United States, Germany, Latvia, Great Britain, Estonia, Sweden, and the Netherlands. The Pskov Museum-Reserve is famous for its collection of icons. The collection of icons of the Pskov Museum has more than 1000, of which about 600 icons belong to the XV–XVIII centuries.

Among the masterpieces of the Pskov Art Gallery there is one, quite special- "Bathing a child" (1916) by Marc Chagall (1887-1985).
In the center of the picture, painted in oil on a small rectangle of cardboard - a baby bath with a baby. The cramped little room, with its heaving floor and sagging door, seems to be deformed by the onslaught from outside-the storms of life surrounding the poor home of a happy young family.
As in most of Chagall's works, everything here is autobiographical: the newborn daughter Ida, himself and his beautiful muse Bella are depicted. Their wedding took place in Vitebsk a year earlier – in the summer of 1915.
This, at first glance, modest work of the young Chagall invariably attracts not only visitors, but also the entire museum community: "Bathing a Child" is a record holder in the number of invitations to participate in Russian and foreign exhibitions. Only in recent years, the work was exported, in addition to Russian museums, to Brazil, to Sicily, as well as to the XV International Art Festival "Slavic Bazaar", held in the artist's homeland – in Vitebsk. The reason for this "demand" is not only the worldwide fame of the author, but also the special authenticity of thoughts and feelings expressed in an incomparable figurative language that is unique to him.
The fate of the Pskov works of M. Z. Chagall is as follows: during the Great Patriotic War, they were part of the values stolen by the Germans and only in 1948 were returned and delivered to the Pskov Museum (456 items in nine boxes) from the Berlin Restitution Department.
Due to various circumstances, "Bathing the Child" took pride of place in the exhibition of the Pskov Art Gallery only from the late 1960s through the efforts of the then head of the gallery Elena Ivanovna Skobeltsyna. A member of the party, a participant of the great Patriotic war, a graduate of the Department of art history, Moscow state University, she enjoyed a well-deserved reputation and convinced superiors, and "policy makers" the right of inclusion in the exhibit works of the avant-garde, and besides, even "immigrant", which by force of circumstances was in the Pskov meeting.

The Historical, Architectural and Art Museum-Reserve is one of the oldest museums in Russia. It was opened in 1876 as the Pskov Archaeological Museum by local historians. Even in the difficult years of the revolution and wars, the museum did not close its doors to visitors. The status of the Pskov State United Historical, Architectural and Art Museum-Reserve has existed since 1979.

With the creation of the Pskov Archaeological Society (PAO) in 1880, the museum became the property of the society. This status was maintained until the October Revolution of 1917. At first, the museum occupied two small rooms in the building of the Noble Assembly, and since 1902 — the building of the Pogankin Chambers. The museum enjoyed the full support of the local authorities. The museum's collection was formed at the expense of private donations, as there has always been a great public interest in antiquities in Pskov. The original history of the city contributed to this.
In 1914, the museum included part of the collection of the famous in Russia and abroad Fyodor Mikhailovich Plyushkin. A merchant, a hereditary honorary citizen, an honorary member of the Pskov Archaeological Society, a collector of antiquities, for 42 years created a private museum, which contained more than a million exhibits. In the museum after 1917, there were organizational changes, and in the 1930s in Pskov there were already seven museums: Historical, Art Gallery, Natural Science, Socialist Construction, the Museum-apartment of V. I. Lenin, the House-Museum of V. I. Lenin. Lenin (the house of "Iskra"), an anti-religious museum in the Trinity Cathedral. Before the war, they were united, but the accounting system remained the same, they did not have time to create a single inventory list.
By the beginning of the war, the museum had the richest collections of archeology, numismatics, handwritten and old printed books and documents (ancient storage), iconography, etc. works of church art, Russian and Western European paintings, graphics, small plastic, porcelain, etc., natural science collections. After the invasion of the USSR on June 22, 1941, the Germans occupied Pskov very quickly-on July 9. They didn't have time to evacuate the entire assembly.
In 1941-1944. The Pskov Museum for the Germans was the main base for storing museum valuables not only from the Pskov region, but also from Novgorod, Tikhvin, Pushkin, Pavlovsk, Gatchina, Peterhof.

Part of the collection was taken out by the Germans. Railway trains were discovered in East Prussia, in Königsberg. But part of the collection was still lost.
The work of return and restitution continues to this day.

Despite the numerous losses inflicted on the collection during the Great Patriotic War, the museum has the most complete collection of Pskov iconography. The earliest icon in the collection of the Pskov Museum is "Spas Eleazarovsky" of the first half of the XIV century from the Spaso-Eleazarovsky Monastery near Pskov. This monastery is famous for the fact that it was here that the elder Philotheus formulated the famous theory "Moscow-the third Rome", the essence of which is to express the greatness, independence, unity of the Russian state, based on Orthodoxy.

The collection of silver products of the Pskov Museum-Reserve is one of the largest in the country. It presents the works of silversmiths of the XVI-XX centuries from different cities of Russia, as well as the work of Western European jewelers: a variety of items of church utensils, objects of cult and secular silver.

The museum's exposition includes one of the most ancient metal buckets of Novgorod work (XV century), which belonged to the Novgorod Archbishop Evfimiy, and a Moscow-made award-winning bucket, "granted" in 1689 to the Pskov merchant Sergei Pogankin.

In the Pskov museum there is a military weapon of Prince Dovmont-a sword of the XIII century made by the masters of the German city of Passau. After the death of Dovmont, the Pskov people handed the sword to the princes invited to the Pskov throne. The Pskov shrine was kept in the Trinity Cathedral at the shrine of the Holy Prince Dovmont. At the beginning of the twentieth century, the sword was transferred to the Pskov Museum.

The basis of the collection of the Ancient Repository of the Pskov Museum was made up of manuscripts and the library of the Museum of the Pskov Archaeological Society.

To date, the Ancient Repository of the Pskov Museum contains more than one hundred thousand books and documents in chronological frames from the X to the XX centuries. They make up about a thousand stock collections containing handwritten and old printed books, documents of personal origin, as well as churches, monasteries, educational institutions and various societies, documents of the Soviet period.

The ancient Repository is a unique department, where there are more than 500 handwritten books of the XIV - early XX centuries, more than 100 thousand documents, including autographs of Peter the Great, Alexander Menshikov, Catherine II, Anna Kern, Alexander I, etc.