LEMMLEIN, GEORGY GLEBOVICH (1901–1962). LENINGRAD

The Lemmlein collection of prints was one of the major acquisitions of the Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts in the 1960s, both from the point of view of its composition and quality of printing.

Georgy Glebovich Lemmlein, a prominent Soviet crystallographer, was born in 1901. He spent his childhood and youth in Georgia. In 1924, he came to Leningrad and entered the Geological and Mineralogical Department of the Faculty of Physics and Mathematics of the University of Leningrad. Being a student, Georgy became interested in crystallography and in collecting. Being a crystallographer, he started to collect different rocks, especially engraved ones.

After Lemmlein’s death, in 1962, his collection of 268 engraved gems became a part of the State Hermitage Museum. It included unique Ancient Egyptian scarabs and Greek glass-paste cameos, Ancient Eastern, Hellenistic, Byzantine and Sassanid engraved gems, Ancient Egyptian seals, Muslim seals and amulets, bronze rings, Mexican, Indian and European engraved stones.

Lemmlein also collected prints. It had nothing to do with his profession but he seems to have inherited the interest for prints from his father, collector like himself. The collection bequeathed to the State Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts was in perfect state of conservation, was absolutely systemized and well arranged in different files. The systemizing principle and the design of the collection showed that the owner understood peculiarities of graphic techniques very well, had a thorough knowledge of the history of old master prints and the greatest artists of the past, and could see a difference between their works and the ones of imitators and copyists, that he knew the reference books often inaccessible to amateurs.