Demidov, prince of San Donato, Paul Pavlovich

Biography

Paul Pavlovich Demidoff was the heir to the fortune and art collection of his uncle, Anatole Demidoff, Prince of San Donato, the younger brother of his father Paul Nikolayevich Demidov [1798-1840]. Paul Pavlovich Demidoff was a collector in his own right, and although he had not lived there, spent the 1870s restoring the family villa at San Donato to the glory it had known during his uncle's lifetime, before abruptly selling much of the collection in 1880. He and his family had settled in the Medici property of Pratolino in 1872, where he died in 1885. He married twice, and had six children, whose descendants owned the remnants of Anatole Demidoff's collection.

Anatole Demidoff [1812-1870] was a member of the Russian family that had acquired great wealth through mining and iron production in the 18th century. Anatole was educated principally in Paris, where his father, Nicolas, had taken the family after Napoleon's defeat. After his father's death in 1828, Anatole returned to the villa in San Donato, near Florence, that Nicolas had begun building, and proceeded to enlarge it, eventually transforming most of it in 1836 into a workshop for the manufacture of silks. He continued to live mainly in Paris, travel widely, and enlarge the art collection begun by his father. In 1837 he organized an expedition to the Crimea and South Russia of French artists, journalists, scientists, and archaeologists, the result of which were various publications that appeared in the 1840s describing in detail the journey, and the area's cultural and natural history.

On 1 November 1840, Anatole married Contessa Mathilde Bonaparte de Monfort, daughter of Jérôme Bonaparte [1784-1860], King of Westphalia, by his second wife, Catherine of Württemburg [1782-1835], and niece of Napoleon I. The marriage, however, failed, and in 1848 Tsar Nicholas I arranged the terms of the separation. Demidoff spent much of the rest of his life traveling, but until he returned to Paris in around 1860, his life centered on the villa and collection in San Donato, for which he continued to purchase works of art. Like his father, he also established along the way numerous charitable institutions, and created a prize of 5,000 rubles at the Academy of Sciences in St. Petersburg for the best work published each year in the Russian language.

Bibliography

1976

Esper, Thomas. "Demidov Family in the Nineteenth Century," in Modern Encyclopedia of Russian and Soviet History. Gulf Breeze, Florida, 1976: 51-54.

1976

Hudson, Hugh D., Jr. "Demidov Family in the Eighteenth Century," in Modern Encyclopedia of Russian and Soviet History. Gulf Breeze, Florida, 1976: 9:46-51.

1994

Francis Haskell, "Anatole Demidoff and The Wallace Collection," in Anatole Demidoff: Prince of San Donato (1812-70), London, The Wallace Collection, 1994: 28-29.

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