Beketov, Platon Petrovich

Platon Petrovich was born in Simbirsk on November 11, 1761 in the family of the local landowner Pyotr Afanasyevich Beketov and his first wife, born Repyeva. Having entered into a second marriage with one of the daughters and heirs of the millionaire I.S. Myasnikov , Beketov Sr. became the owner of a colossal fortune. His brother N. A. Beketov served as governor in Astrakhan.

Plato studied at a local hostel and in Kazan together with his cousin, fabulist Ivan Ivanovich Dmitriev ^[3] . In the fall of 1773 , in connection with the approach of the army of Emelyan Pugachev , the Beketov family moved to Moscow . In 1774 - 1776 he studied at the famous Moscow hostel of Professor I. M. Shaden ; ^[3] there, his friend was Nikolai Mikhailovich Karamzin , with whom he was distantly related ^[2] .

On September 2, 1776, Beketov joined the Semenovsky Life Guards Regiment with the rank of sergeant . On January 1, 1788, he resigned as Prime Minister and in 1791 entered the Heroldmeister Office under the Governing Senate ^[3] .

Since 1798 he lived in Moscow , where he became interested in collecting and publishing portraits and books. In 1801, he opened his own printing house , considered one of the best in Moscow . A number of publications by Russian authors were printed here, including M. M. Kheraskov , I. F. Bogdanovich , N. I. Gnedich , V. A. Zhukovsky and others, moreover, they were carefully edited by the publisher himself. In 1801 and 1811 , despite the ban, he published the works of A. N. Radishchev ^[4] . In book publishing, he partially sought to continue the line of N. I. Novikov ^[4] . At the Beketov printing house, the journal "Friend of Enlightenment" (1805) was printed , the magazine "Painting on books printed by the dependent printing house of Platon Beketov" ( M. , 1806) was published ^[2] .

Nevertheless, Beketov was most interested in iconography . Thirsting for the idea to publish a collection of portraits of prominent personalities of Russia , he spared no means to purchase genuine portraits, picturesque and engraved, and as a result gathered a huge collection of several hundred copies. To engrave them, Platon Petrovich organized a school of dotted engravers, which included Alexey Agapievich Osipov (1770-1850) ^[5] and the serfs Beketova under his supervision: his own and bought from other landowners . They engraved in a dotted manner over 300 boards, very mediocre in artistic terms, but extremely successful in terms of iconography, which was facilitated by Beketov himself, who selected the originals. He failed to publish all of them. In 1801, he released the Pantheon of Russian Authors (4 notebooks of 5 portraits per sheet, with the text of Karamzin, M. , 1801) and only 20 years later he was going to publish the “ Collection of portraits of Russians famous for their deeds, military and civilian, scholarships, writings, talents, or whose names why another became known to the world, with the application of their brief biographies ” ( M. , 1821-1824). The publication was divided into 4 parts of 50 portraits in each, but only the first part was published, dedicated to figures of the XVII - beginning of the XVIII century . This publication was not accepted by readers and was published in a very small print run. After the death of Beketov, his precious collection of 306 copper boards was purchased for 8.5 thousand rubles by the Kireevsky brothers. However, they published only a small part of this collection ^[2] .

In addition to portraits, Beketov also published “A Description in the Persons of the Celebration that took place on February 5, 1626, during the marriage of Sovereign Tsar and Grand Duke Mikhail Fedorovich with Sovereign Tsaritsa Evdokia Lukyanovna of the Streshnev family” ( M. , 1810) ^[6] . Classes in iconography, presuming to a certain degree knowledge of history and archeology , created Platon Petrovich a reputation as a scientist, and such that in 1811 he was elected chairman of the Moscow Society of Russian History and Antiquities . A total of 12 years, until 1823 , Beketov held this position. According to Academician P. M. Stroev , for society he was a “soul and engine” ^[2] .

Platon Petrovich Beketov died on January 6, 1836 in Moscow at his dacha in Simonova Sloboda ^{[2] [7]} . He was buried next to his father in the Novospassky Monastery . The tombstone was destroyed after the revolution.