Peter Alexandrovich Saburov (22 March O.S./3 April 1835 – 28 March O.S./10 April 1918) was a Russian diplomat, collector of ancient Greek sculpture and antiquities, and an amateur

chess Chess is a board game for two players, called White and Black, each controlling an army of chess pieces in their color, with the objective to checkmate the opponent's king. It is sometimes called international chess or Western chess to disti ...

player and patron of chess tournaments, as an honorary President of the St Petersburg Chess Club. As the Tsarist Russian envoy to Greece, he assembled a collection of

Ancient Greek sculpture The sculpture of ancient Greece is the main surviving type of fine ancient Greek art as, with the exception of painted ancient Greek pottery, almost no ancient Greek painting survives. Modern scholarship identifies three major stages in monument ...

Tanagra figurine The Tanagra figurines were a mold-cast type of Greek terracotta figurines produced from the later fourth century BC, named after the Boeotian town of Tanagra, where many were excavated and which has given its name to the whole class. However, the ...

s, painted vases and other Greek antiquities, which, at the end of his subsequent embassy to Berlin from 1879 to 1884, he then sold to the Antikensammlung Berlin, where the collection was catalogued by

Adolf Furtwängler Johann Michael Adolf Furtwängler (30 June 1853 – 10 October 1907) was a German archaeologist, teacher, art historian and museum director. He was the father of the conductor Wilhelm Furtwängler and grandfather of the German archaeologist Andr ...

, who thereby established his reputation as a master of Greek terracottas, and where it occasioned an acute lack of space that spurred additional construction. Among the prize works was the headless bronze of an ''Apollo'' or ''Dionysus'' found in the sea off the coast of Salamis. During his retirement in Saint Petersburg, the

Hermitage Museum The State Hermitage Museum ( rus, Государственный Эрмитаж, r=Gosudarstvennyj Ermitaž, p=ɡəsʊˈdarstvʲɪn(ː)ɨj ɪrmʲɪˈtaʂ, links=no) is a museum of art and culture in Saint Petersburg, Russia. It is the list of ...

purchased part of the remainder of his collection, about 1909 including 233 molded terracotta statuettes, which he bought in the 1870s when treasure hunters had plundered the necropolis of ancient

Tanagra Tanagra ( el, Τανάγρα) is a town and a municipality north of Athens in Boeotia, Greece. The seat of the municipality is the town Schimatari. It is not far from Thebes, and it was noted in antiquity for the figurines named after it. The ...

(Boeotia). Saburov was born on the estate of Veryaevo in the district of Elatma in the Government of Taboff. His brother Andrei held for several years the portfolio of the Minister of Public Instruction. Petr Alexandrovich graduated from the Tsarskoye Selo Lyceum, in 1854, gaining a first gold medal. After employment in the Chancellery (1857–59), he worked in Munich, and then in England, where he stayed for eleven years, moving in upper-class British society. In 1870 he went to Karlsruhe, and subsequently moved on to Athens, where he stayed until 1879. In the summer of 1879 he went to Constantinople, where he was appointed Russian Ambassador, although he never entered upon the official duties. Then he was posted to Berlin from 1880 to 1884, which involved him at the center of the secret negotiations that led to the unpublished pact, the

League of the Three Emperors The League of the Three Emperors or Union of the Three Emperors (german: Dreikaiserbund) was an alliance between the German, Russian and Austro-Hungarian Empires, from 1873 to 1887. Chancellor Otto von Bismarck took full charge of German foreign po ...

.J.Y. Simpson, ''The Saburov Memoirs, or Bismarck & Russia: Being fresh Light on the League of the Three Emperors 1881'' (Cambridge University Press, 1929) translated, with the cooperation of Saburov's son, Peter Petrovich, Saburov's ''Ma Mission à Berlin 1879-1884'', filled out with a review of his career. In 1884 he left the diplomatic service and returned to Saint Petersburg. During the last decade of the century he became a financial and economic advisor. He listed his pastimes as pomiculture, architecture, the piano and chess. His son Alexander Saburov, the former Civil Governor of St. Petersburg, was arrested by the Bolsheviks in Moscow in 1918 and shot in 1919. In the early stages of the

Russian Revolution The Russian Revolution was a period of Political revolution (Trotskyism), political and social revolution that took place in the former Russian Empire which began during the First World War. This period saw Russia abolish its monarchy and ad ...

, Saburov was a senator but was dismissed upon the accession of the

Bolshevik The Bolsheviks (russian: Большевики́, from большинство́ ''bol'shinstvó'', 'majority'),; derived from ''bol'shinstvó'' (большинство́), "majority", literally meaning "one of the majority". also known in English ...

s. Following a short illness he died in Petrograd.

Notes

External links

(Chess History): Edward Winter, "The Saburovs"
{{DEFAULTSORT:Saburov, Peter Alexandrovich 1835 births 1918 deaths 19th-century chess players Diplomats of the Russian Empire Members of the State Council (Russian Empire) Russian chess players Tsarskoye Selo Lyceum alumni