The so-called Preobrazhensky Series is an artistic masterpiece from the time of Peter the Great, and a priceless part of the Russian Museum’s collection. They amaze with their rough expressiveness, monumentality, and remarkable distinctness.

This group of portraits painted during Peter the Great’s reign, with large and striking inscriptions on their upper margins, have attracted the attention of art historians for a long time. Traditionally, they were called images of Peter the Great’s jesters. The title “Preobrazhensky Series” was not suggested until 1965. The portraits must have played a special role in an entertaining and allegorical performance, a particular mystery play called the Drunken Synod of Fools and Jesters, which people who made up the inner circle of the young tsar participated in, and it is most likely that it was Peter the Great who initiated their creation. All historians agree that the “Synods” started taking place in late 1680s – early 1690s. It is possible that the first portraits of this series were painted during this time.

Researchers discovered mentions of the portraits, which were housed in the New Preobrazhensky Palace, “the one over the Yauza River,” in the famous palace inventory, which is believed to have been written in 1739. The Inventory was first published in a supplement of the History of the Life Guards of the Preobrazhensky Regiment.

According to the Inventory, almost all of the pictures that are of interest, the “paintings with no frames, on hoops,” were kept in the Foyer: “Portrait of Prince Fyodor Ramodanovsky. Portrait of Nikita Zotov. Picture of Ivan Buturlin. Portrait of the Foreigner in His Estate. Portrait of the Ottoman Sultan, and a picture of his wife. Large painting above the doors with three subjects in a black frame. Portrait of Matvei Naryshkin. Portrait of Andrei Besyashchy (the Maddening Andrei). Portrait of Alexei Lenin and a Kalmyk. Portrait of Yakov Turgenev. Portrait of Timokha the Fool.” However, it seems as if there were more portraits of this kind. We know about portraits of Ivan Shchepotev, Verigin, and Zhirovoi-Zasekin; there were also “two male portraits” and “Neptune’s head”. But the 1735 inventory also mentions some other portraits.

It seems like the portraits were housed in the Preobrazhensky Palace until the middle of the 18^th century, and were then moved to St Petersburg, where they became part of the collection of the Imperial Hermitage. In 1780, they were transferred (or given as a gift by Catherine II) to the recently built Gatchina Palace of Prince Grigory Orlov, former favourite of the empress. In 1929, almost the entire Preobrazhensky Series was donated to the Russian Museum. Two years later, the portraits of Stolnik (Cupbearer) Ivan Shchepotev and an unknown man in a brown fur coat were transferred from the State Russian Museum to the State Tretyakov Gallery. The Portrait of an Unknown Man in a Fancy Dress of Neptune was received by the State Tretyakov Gallery in 1931; it arrived straight from Gatchina Palace.

The dating of all these famous portraits is mostly based on a historical fact: pictures of bearded boyars, such as the portraits of Turgenev, Naryshkin, or Verigin, had to have been painted before August 26-30, 1698, when Peter the Great started cutting off beards of his boyars, who had gathered to meet the tsar in the above mentioned Preobrazhensky Palace, with his own hand. By early September, none of the men present at the gathering, which took place at Lefort’s house, had beards. Pictures of the “beardless,” such as Portrait of Alexei Lenin and a Kalmyk, Portrait of a Man with Pipe in Hand, and Portrait of the First Soldier Bukhvostov, have to have been painted in the early 18^th century.

But the most difficult problem related to the Preobrazhensky Series to solve is the question of authorship. For many years, some of the paintings have been attributed to such artists as Johann Gottfried Tannauer, Ivan Odolsky, and even the Dutchman Caspar Netscher. However, most researchers believe that the portraits of this series were painted by Russian craftsmen, painters of the Armoury, whose services were used by Peter the Great, and on a particularly massive scale in the 1690s and early 1700s. There is a theory that the Portrait of Andrei Besyashchy might have been painted by Vasily Poznanasky, who was one of the Armoury artists. The Preobrazhensky Series became a turning point in the formation of the Russian painting of the New Era.

The majority of these paintings, both those mentioned in the Inventory of 1735 and those included in the series later on based on similar inscriptions and stylistic similarities, belong to the collection of the Russian Museum.