Alexander Nikolaevich Benois

Acquired by the grandparents of the present owner in Paris in the late 1920s

The present set design relates to the 1920 Bolshoi Drama Theatre production of William Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice, designed and directed by Benois. Founded in 1918, in revolutionary Petrograd at the initiative of Maxim Gorky and Maria Andreeva, the Bolshoi Drama Theatre was conceived as a Soviet theatre of the classical repertoire, focusing on three main genres - tragedy, romantic drama and Commedia dell'arte, all of which later became classics of the Soviet theatre. Benois joined the theatre as a director and stage designer in October 1919, gradually turning it into an outpost of the World of Art movement.