On 27 March 2019, the Hermitage hosted the latest session of the seminar “Heraldry – an ancillary historical discipline”.
The programme for the meeting included a talk by Viacheslav Vadimovich Savelyev on “Johann Simon Beckenstein’s Introduction to Heraldry (1731): the Hermitage’s copies and the historical context”. It was devoted to the first work on heraldry to be published in Russia – a scholarly handbook written by the German-born law professor of the Russian Academy of Sciences. It was originally planned for the instruction of the young Emperor Peter II but became the most readily accessible source of heraldic information and subjects for a Russian readership on into the middle years of the 18th century. The talk examined the specific historical conditions and cultural situation that led to the appearance of this book and also the most distinctive individual features of the copies of the work that belong to the heraldic collection of the Hermitage Research Library.
