New Information in the Attribution of “The Table of Princess Sophia”

Despite the longtime research of Russian furniture art, the area of ancient monuments still requires in-depth study. The existing attributions of monuments, carried out in the 19th and 20th centuries, do not have convincing justifications. The least studied is the furniture belonging to the pre—Petrine heritage, which traditionally dates back to the 16th — 17th centuries on the basis of either the time of the owner’s life (whose name was often preserved as a documented unconfirmed legend) or the date of creation of the architectural structure (the place of discovery). The author believes that these artifacts should be considered as an object of art, included in the context of the development of European styles, and, respectively, their attribution should be carried out on the basis of methods adopted in art criticism practice — descriptions and analysis, which together give the most objective result. To test the proposed method, the article considers a monument from the furniture collection of the State Historical Museum (SHM) — “The Table of Princess Sophia”. To date, it has been attributed twice: in the inventory book of the SHM’s Department of Wood and Furniture — as a sample of furniture of the late 17th — early 18th century; and in the dissertation of the curator of this collection Z.P. Popova — to the 1690s. The results obtained show that the written sources used in the article, the discovered analogues, and the analysis of the constructive and artistic solutions of the subject allow us to attribute this monument to the work of domestic masters and determine the time of its creation in the 15th — first half of the 16th century, as well as to use it as a reference subject for attribution. At the same time, the analysis of the provenance of the Table shows that there are no grounds for confidently asserting its former belonging to the sister of Peter I. The preserved legend should rather be used in a subjunctive sense, and the main memorial component should be considered a connection with the past of the Novodevichy Monastery.

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