Natalia Nikolaevna Kovalenskaia

Born May 4 (16), 1892, in Moscow; died there July 4, 1969. Soviet art historian and doctor of the arts (1945). Became a member of the CPSU in 1945.

In 1912, Kovalenskaia graduated from the Bestuzhev Advanced Courses for Women. She completed her graduate work at the Russian Association of Scientific Research Institutes of Social Sciences (RANION) in 1929. From 1929 to 1935, Kovalenskaia worked at the Tret’iakov Gallery. During the 1920’s she developed new methods of museum management, in collaboration with A. V. Bakushinskii. She taught at Moscow State University until 1955. In a number of basic monographs, Kovalenskaia sought to present a Marxist-Leninist interpretation of the key problems of Russian plastic arts of the 18th and the first half of the 19th century.