Portrait of a lady in the interior of the museum

Natalia Shkurenok

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Memorial apartment of Samoilov actors St. Petersburg

(From the archives of the museum "Memorial Apartment of Samoilov Actors"

The exhibition “Portrait of a Lady in the Museum Interior” presents only part of the huge collection of one of the most famous St. Petersburg collectors, Valentina Mikhailovna Golod.

Both during her life and after her death, secrets and rumors swirled around her collection of objects of noble life of the 18th - early 19th centuries and herself. For example, she hid her age. And once, in honor of her centenary, a magnificent ball was held with a fashion show: young gentlemen led Valentina Mikhailovna arm in arm (she could no longer move independently), expensive furs lay on her shoulders. And only during Golod’s funeral it became known that she was born in 1916.

The value of her collection has been both understated and exaggerated. A commission working with the deceased's estate last July valued the 801 items (excluding the less valuable library) at nearly a million dollars, although some experts say their value is much higher. The pearls of the collection are almost forty miniatures with portraits of secular beauties of the late 18th - early 19th centuries, and the portrait of "The Lady in Pink" by Rokotov. His apartment V.M. She turned Hunger into a museum: all the rooms were decorated in her favorite style - Empire style. Foreign guests came here on excursions; Valentina Mikhailovna had a special journal for recording visitors. She bequeathed the collection to the Committee for Culture of the St. Petersburg Administration, making the committee chairman V.P. as executor. Yakovleva. Upon completion of the renovation in the halls of the Sheremetev Palace (Fountain House), the collection can be seen in interiors close to those in which Golod lived and created this collection.