Nikolai Semyonovich Golovanov’s collection includes a painting by Mikhail Vasilievich Nesterov called “The Elders-Anchorites and Ever-Sinless Maidens”. It was named after the opening lines of Alexander Pushkin’s poem, which was inspired by Ephrem the Syrian’s prayer, used during the Great Lent.

Mikhail Vasilievich Nesterov (1862–1942) was a Russian artist, painter, and member of the Society for Traveling Art Exhibitions and the “Mir iskusstva” art movement. The artist was born into a patriarchal merchant family in Ufa. In total, 12 children were born in the family, and only two of them survived — Mikhail and Alexandra.

In 1874, at his father’s insistence, the future artist moved to Moscow, and in 1877, following Voskresensky’s advice, he entered the Moscow School of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture. Three years later, Nesterov moved to Saint Petersburg, where he entered the course taught by Pavel Chistyakov at the Academy of Arts.

Nesterov received the order for the painting “The Elders-Anchorites and Ever-Sinless Maidens” from Golovanov. Nikolai Semyonovich wanted to give the painting to his wife Antonina Nezhdanova as a birthday present. At the conductor’s request, the artist painted a copy of the eponymous work that he had created in 1932, which is now kept in the State Tretyakov Gallery. There are two more versions of the picture: one of them, painted in 1932, is housed in the Tretyakov Gallery, while the other, created in 1934, is in the State Art Museum in Khanty-Mansiysk. All three versions of the painting differ in composition, and some of the details of the images are also interpreted in different ways. Nesterov himself made self-deprecating jokes about the fact, “Obviously, all Nesterov’s anchorites and maidens are gathered here on this canvas.” The work also features recognizable images of a wanderer from “Holy Rus” and “The Hermit”, as well as young women from “The Great Taking of the Veil”.