UDC

929.733

Authors

Mankov Sergey Aleksandovich
Faculty for Humanities, Saint-Petersburg State University of Aerospace Instrumentation;
State University of Aerospace Instrumentation;
Pushkin Town History and Literature Museum
28 Leont’evskaya St., Pushkin, St. Petersburg, 196601, Russian Federation;
e-mail: mankov21@mail.ru

Abstract

The article provides insights into the life and career of the deaf-mute Russian artist and printmaker N.I. Ivashentsov (1803–1864). This is a unique case of social and professional adaptation of disabled people in the Russian Empire in the first half of the 20th century. The remarkable Russian printmaker Nikolai Ivanovich Ivashentsov was widely known both in Russia and abroad as the illustrator of N.V. Gogol’s Dead Souls, D. Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe and many other works of Russian and foreign classics, as well as the author of a series of portraits of famous Russian cultural figures. It is surprising, though, that an artist with disability was hired by the Russian Defence Ministry to work in the drawing-room of the inspector-general for engineering. The career of this talented illustrator is studied here in terms of his professional fulfillment under difficult social conditions for persons with disabilities in the nineteenth-century Russia. This paper can be seen as a biographical research based on archival documents and other primary sources of the mid-19th century. It sheds some light on the previously unknown and little studied facts of the old Russian noble Ivashentsov family. In addition, the author attempts to correct the numerous errors found in Russian historical literature on the life and work of Nikolai Ivashentsov.

Keywords

Nikolai Ivanovich Ivashentsov, deaf-mute artists, Russian printmaking, Russian art of the 20th century

References

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