Gravestone Depicting Bust of Man

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This sculpture portrays a bust of Vitali Petrovicha, a man about whom little is known. The artist responsible for his tomb remains unclear. The State Museum of City Sculptures was established in 1932 with the aim of studying, restoring and protecting city sculptures and gravestones. It oversees the upkeep of numerous famous St Petersburg sculptures. The museum operates several branches across St Petersburg but its main locations are situated within the former Aleksandro-Nevsky Lavra grounds, which were granted to it at its inception. The Tikhvinskoe Cemetery in Aleksandro-Nevsky Lavra was founded in 1823 and named after the Our Lady of Tikhvin Church, constructed between 1869 and 1873. In 1931 the church closed down, and by 1932 the cemetery had become a branch of the State Museum of City Sculptures, known as the Necropolis of Culture's Masters. This branch is so called because many prominent figures from Russian culture are buried here, including writers Fyodor Dostoevsky, Nikolai Karamzin and Ivan Krylov; composers Aleksandr Borodin, Mikhail Glinka, Modest Musorgsky, Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov and Pyotr Tchaikovsky; and artists Boris Kustodiev, Ivan Kramskoy and Ivan Shishkin, among numerous other notable names.