Count Alexei Sergeevich Uvarov

Count Alexei Sergeevich Uvarov presented a collection of Cypriot antiquities, bought from the Russian consul Yusefovich, to the Moscow Archaeological Society on 27 April 1877, with a paper that the catalogue records as the first mention of Cypriot antiquities in Russian literature¹.

Uvarov was born on 28 February 1825, the only son of the philologist and minister Sergei Uvarov. He studied at St Petersburg University, which he entered in 1845, and worked in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and later the Ministry of Home Affairs¹. His own excavations were in the Crimea, at Olbia, Chersonesos and Neapolis, between 1850 and 1854¹. Wikidata gives the new-style date, 12 March 1825³.

The Moscow Archaeological Society first met at his house in October 1864, and he is counted as its founder¹. In 1869 he took part in the International Archaeological Congress in Copenhagen¹.

The Yusefovich collection

At some point in the 1870s Uvarov acquired a group of Cypriot antiquities from Yusefovich¹. The catalogue that records the purchase says Yusefovich is reported to have dug tombs near the temple at Golgoi-Agios Photios in 1870, the same year and place as Luigi Palma di Cesnola¹. No findspots were recorded for the pieces, and it is not known whether Uvarov bought them in Cyprus or in Moscow, or whether he ever went to the island.

On 27 April 1877 he submitted the collection to the Society and read a paper that divided Cypriot art into three periods: primitive, Phoenician and Greek¹. It was printed in 1880 as "Antiquities from Cyprus" in Drevnosti².

The collection runs from the Bronze Age to the Roman period and includes pottery, terracotta figurines, glass, lamps and bronzes¹. Its size is given as about 200 pieces in the State Historical Museum's account and as several hundred in the Pushkin Museum's¹. Only the Bronze Age vessels are firmly identified as Cypriot; the glass, red-slip vessels, lamps and bronzes have no documentation¹. Four Base Ring female figurines, among them SHM 56, are labelled as coming "from Cesnola"¹. The catalogue's authors consider that Cesnola, not Yusefovich, was their source, an inference from the label and not a recorded sale¹.

After Uvarov

In 1883 Uvarov, who had initiated the Historical Museum in Moscow and headed its founding commission, gave many items from his own collection to its opening exhibition; the source does not say whether any were Cypriot¹. He died in Moscow on 29 December 1884, before the Cypriot collection was published¹. Wikidata gives the new-style date, 10 January 1885³.

His widow, Praskovja Sergeevna Uvarova, inherited the collection and took no interest in it¹. The collection was housed at the family estate at Porechye, near Moscow¹. In 1927 it was nationalised and divided between the State Historical Museum and the Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts in Moscow¹.