page_title: Igor Grabar
section_title: Grabar's History
hierarchical_section_title: Igor Grabar / Biography / Grabar's History
caption_attribution_description: Русский: Храм архангела Гавриила (Меншикова башня) в Москве English: Сhurch of Archangel Gabriel in Moscow, aka Menshikov Tower
context_page_description: Igor Emmanuilovich Grabar was a Russian post-impressionist painter, publisher, restorer and historian of art. Grabar, descendant of a wealthy Rusyn family, was trained as a painter by Ilya Repin in Saint Petersburg and by Anton Ažbe in Munich. He reached his peak in painting in 1903–1907 and was notable for a peculiar divisionist painting technique bordering on pointillism and his rendition of snow.
  By the end of 1890s Grabar had established himself as an art critic. In 1902 he joined Mir Iskusstva, although his relations with its leaders Sergei Diaghilev and Mstislav Dobuzhinsky were far from friendly. In 1910–1915 Grabar edited and published his opus magnum, the History of Russian Art. The History employed the finest artists and critics of the period; Grabar personally wrote the issues on architecture that set an unsurpassed standard of understanding and presenting the subject. Concurrently he wrote and published a series of books on contemporary and historic Russian painters. In 1913 he was appointed executive director of the Tretyakov Gallery and launched an ambitious reform program that continued until 1926.
context_section_description: In the same 1908, Grabar abandoned painting in favor of writing; he became chief editor and writer for Joseph Knebel's series of books on Russian artists and Russian towns. He quickly amassed a wealth of historic evidence and settled on publishing a comprehensive History of Russian Art. Grabar initially concentrated on project management alone, leaving principal writing to Alexander Benois, but when the latter stepped aside in May, Grabar was compelled to pick up the writing task. He now concentrated on architecture; only then did he realize that Russian architecture of the 18th century and earlier periods had never been properly studied. Grabar locked himself in the archives to study the subject for a year; in July 1909 he took a short leave from writing and designed the Palladian Zakharyin Hospital in present-day Khimki, which was completed by the onset of World War I and operates to date.
  The first issue of History was printed in 1910; publication ceased with the 23rd issue in the beginning of 1915 when Knebel's printshop and Grabar's archive stored there were burnt in an anti-German pogrom. Of 2,630 pages in History, 650—the issues on architecture—were written by Grabar. History amalgamated works by the leading architects, artists and critics of the period. Ivan Bilibin, who contributed photography of vernacular architecture, used to say that "we started appreciating old architecture only after Grabar's book." Grabar's own memoirs, however, focus on the failures of his co-authors: of all contributors only Fyodor Gornostayev was commended for doing his part.
  Grabar's predecessors did not elaborate how art, and especially architecture fitted "into the grand historical scheme"; his History became the first comprehensive work that attempted to solve the task. Grabar, accepting now-standard periodization of Russian history, applied the same scheme to history of architecture and emphasized the role of individual monarchs in it. His view of the transition from Naryshkin Baroque, the summit of Muscovite architecture, into loaned European Petrine Baroque as an organic process, however, was contentious from the start, and, according to James Cracraft, could not account for an abrupt demise of national architecture under Peter I and his successors. His own concept of "Moscow Baroque", probably influenced by Heinrich Wölfflin, is "not entirely consistent or clear". Soviet historians retained Grabar's overall scheme, sealing the "persistent lack of a clear and consistent, architecturally configured periodization of Russian architectural history.". Grabar's concept of Moscow Baroque was challenged, his Ukrainian Baroque was trashed, yet Belarusian Baroque became "a fixture of Soviet scholarship."
  Grabar's understanding of lesser phenomena has been, at times, erroneous and his attributions were later dismissed. For example, he based the description of the 1591 Ambassadors' Prikaz building on a "fanciful and grossly distorted" sketch by a Swede who visited Moscow after the building was torn down and replaced with a new one. His attribution and periodization of Menshikov Tower is also challenged. Nevertheless, James Cracraft ranked Grabar the first "in the whole field of Russian art history", Dmitry Shvidkovsky wrote that Grabar's History in whole "remains unsurpassed", and William Craft Brumfield noted its "immense importance" for the preservation of medieval heritage.
caption: Grabar's periodization of the Menshikov Tower, Moscow's tallest Petrine Baroque building, has been since contested and revised.[48]
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