A Simbirsk doctor Pyotr Muzalevsky was the husband of Ivan Goncharov’s younger sister Anna. An unknown painter created oil paintings of both spouses. The portraits are currently housed by the Ivan Goncharov Historical and Memorial Center Museum.

Pyotr Muzalevsky was born in Simbirsk in 1801. At first, he intended to become a priest and entered the Kazan Theological Seminary, but then in 1821, he transferred to the Moscow branch of the Imperial Medical and Surgical Academy. Either in 1825 or 1826, Muzalevsky received the rank of a doctor. According to the official documentation, he was appointed a military doctor in the Ust-Kamenogorsk battalion, but in fact, his superiors made him a resident doctor at the Omsk military hospital.

In 1832, Pyotr Muzalevsky became a regimental surgeon and was transferred to the St. Petersburg lancer regiment, and in 1835, together with his colleagues, he moved to Simbirsk. There he worked for two years in the Alexander town hospital, during which he met Anna Goncharova and married her. Anna’s nephew, the son of her brother Nikolay, reminisced,

On April 12, 1837, Pyotr Muzalevsky was appointed chief physician of the Simbirsk hospitals. He supervised all medical institutions and was in charge of private and garrison doctors of the governorate. In 1848, Muzalevsky helped to fight the cholera epidemic, and a year later he was appointed an attending physician at the Elizavetinsky Women’s Institute for the next fifteen years.

In 1864, the Muzalevskys moved to Moscow, where their daughter had already lived for some time. There they spent thirteen years together until Pyotr Muzalevsky died on May 31, 1877. He was buried in the cemetery of the Donskoy monastery.