Rovinskii, Dmitrii

Born Aug. 16 (28), 1824, in Moscow; died June 11 (23), 1895, in Bad Wildungen, Germany. Russian liberal jurist, art historian, and art collector. Honorary member of the St. Petersburg Academy of Sciences (1883) and the St. Petersburg Academy of Arts (1870).

Rovinskii graduated from the Law School in St. Petersburg in 1844. He worked in various law firms and in 1866 became the procurator for the Moscow judicial region. He was an active participant in the judicial reform of 1864 and called for the abolition of corporal punishment. In 1870 he became a senator in the criminal court of appeals.

Rovinskii collected engravings, including lubki (illustrated broadsides) from the 1840’s, and later, was the first to systematize a large body of material on the history of Russian engraving. He also collected and studied engravings by Rembrandt, A. van Ostade, and other Western European masters. Rovinskii’s work, highly esteemed by V. V. Stasov and other progressive figures of Russian culture, contained extremely rich documentary information that even today retains much of its value. Rovinskii gave his collections of engravings and other works of art to the Hermitage, the Rumiantsev Museum, the Public Library in St. Petersburg, and the Academy of Arts.