Romanov, Nikolai Ilich

Born July 15 (27), 1867, in Moscow; died there June 17, 1948. Soviet art scholar. Professor from 1912.

Romanov attended Moscow University from 1885 to 1889. He taught there from 1900 to 1911 and at the Moscow Institute of Philosophy, Literature, and History from 1938 to 1941. From 1910 to 1923 he was curator of the fine arts department at the Rumiantsev Museum, and from 1923 to 1928 director of the Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts, where he took an especially active part in organizing the museum’s collection of engravings. Romanov’s principal works were devoted to Western European art, mainly the art of the Italian Renaissance. They are distinguished by refined stylistic analysis and profound historical and artistic conclusions. Romanov also dealt with Russian art, including the work of A. A. Ivanov, P. A. Fedotov, and V. D. Falileev. As a teacher, he had considerable influence on the development of the Soviet school of art criticism (M. V. Alpatov, B. R. Vipper, V. N. Lazarev).