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A Rich Market for Russian Icons
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Four months ago, Elizavetin said in an interview, he paid a private collector in Switzerland nearly $1.5 million for a 14th-century icon called "Descent into Hell." Six months ago in Berlin, he said, he acquired an entire private collection of 110 icons for what he described as "considerable millions."
Prices of icons are doubling and tripling each year.
"It's fantastic," said Vladimir Studenikin, a Moscow dealer who makes regular trips to London to bid at auctions for himself and private Russian buyers.
The booming market has also spawned skilled counterfeiters who retouch primitive but old icons to make them seem like masterpieces. Complicating matters is the fact that some apparently ancient icons are forgeries made in the late 19th and early 20th centuries -- a period when there was also a lively black market in counterfeiting. Distinguishing a 19th-century fake from a 14th-century original can be extraordinarily difficult, art experts say.
For some Russians, icons, particularly those that predate the early 17th century and are uninfluenced by Western motifs, are the truest form of Russian art. Icons made for the last czars and their families are also particularly valued. Their possession dovetails with a renewed sense of nationalism and religious identity among the elite of President Vladimir Putin's Russia.
"The soul of ancient Russia is expressed most clearly in an icon," said Nadejda Bekeneva, head of the Department of Ancient Art at the State Tretyakov Gallery. "It's a wonderful thing that our businessmen are returning our wealth to the motherland."
Mikhail Abramov, also a construction magnate, said he experienced a religious awakening three years ago when he turned 40 and had made his fortune. He began to collect icons, first for his home. Two years ago, when he had acquired nearly 400 of them, Abramov opened a private museum, a common move by Russian tycoons these days. (Elizavetin also is planning to open a private museum for his collection.)
"I get a lot of offers, but I believe I don't have a right to sell them," Abramov said. "They belong to Russia."
The Tretyakov will hold an exhibition of Elizavetin's and Abramov's collections next month. The show will be called "Returned Treasures."
