BARYATINSKY FAMILY

Princes Baryatinsky – one of the oldest Russian noble families.

Prince Ivan Sergeyevich (1738–1811) served Empress Elizabeth Petrovna and was aide-de-camp to the Emperor Peter III. Under Catherine II, he made part of the retinue of the Crown Prince Paul and accompanied him and his wife when they travelled in Europe by alias of Count and Countess du Nord. In 1773-1785, he was ambassador at the court of Louis XVI.

Prince Ivan Ivanovich (1772–1825) left military career to serve as a diplomat. He was a secretary of the embassy in London and later an ambassador in Munich, Bavaria. After the death of his father he left service and lived in his estate Ivanovskoye (now in the region of Kursk). He built a new estate here, calling it Maryino after his wife Maria Fyodorovna.

The palace of Maryino hosted all the Baryatinsky collection put together by several generations of the family. Ivan Ivanovich himself collected paintings, sculptures, graphic works and applied art.

Prince Aleksandr Ivanovich (1815–1879), the son of Ivan Ivanovich, was a Russian military leader and a statesman, a General and a Field Marshal. Having inherited his father’s passion for collecting, he acquired material on Russian and Slavic history – books, manuscripts, documents, paintings, prints, historic portraits, weapons.

Prince Vladimir Aleksandrovich (1880–1901) was one of the last owners of the estate. After the Revolution, the Baryatinsky collection was confiscated and sent to Moscow. It was distributed among different museums: Tretyakov Gallery, Rumyantsev Museum, Historical Museum, Museum of Furniture, Museum of Porcelain and others.

In 1918–1923, Rumyantsev Museum received 27 packages of prints from the Baryatinsky collection. According to the inventories, only in 1922 the museum received 14,832 prints of different schools, in 1923 it received 1,249 Russian prints, in 1927 it received 3,679 Western European prints. In total, there were 19,760 prints, mostly European.