Exhibition: Portrait Gallery

About exhibition

The Portrait Gallery is one of the most valuable national collections of portrait painting and a genuine rarity of 18th-century Russian culture. The spread of such galleries was a consequence of the nobility's particular interest in national and world history and in the deeds of their ancestors. The Kuskovo Portrait Gallery occupies a special place among them. Founded in the second half of the 18th century by Count Pyotr Borisovich Sheremetev, it is a unique collection of portrait art. It is, in the full sense, a collection rather than an assemblage of family portraits, which were practically separated and existed independently. Only four portraits — those of the owner's parents and of his spouse (the Sheremetev and Cherkassky couples) — were presented in the gallery on the basis of family ties. Mostly, however, the gallery consisted of portraits of Russian and European distinguished figures, arranged according to the system and the number chosen by the count.