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Conference commemorating the centenary of the
birth of Leon Tigranovich Gyuzalyan
On 28 December, 2001, the library of the Department of the East hosted
a conference commemorating the centenary of the birth of Leon Tigranovich
Gyuzalyan.
The conference was opened by Mikhail B. Piotrovsky, Director of the State
Hermitage Museum, who spoke about his personal meetings with the scholar.
He read a fragment from Vladimir F. Levinson-Lessing's diary dated 1934
speaking about Leon Tigranovich Gyuzalyan. Representatives of the Hermitage
Department of the East, Oriental Department of the St. Petersburg State
University and Institute of Oriental Studies of the Academy of Sciences
and Leon Tigranovich Gyuzalyan's colleagues, friends and disciples took
part in the conference. Presentations dealt with the study of objects
of applied art. The second part of the conference was devoted to the personality
of the scholar. Major specialist in the art of Iran and other countries
of the East, connoisseur of epigraphy, well known in the world, he for
many years worked at the Department of the East at the State Hermitage
Museum. Leon Tigranovich Gyuzalyan took part in the creation of the first
exhibition of the Department of the East. His first scholarly publication
that appeared in 1935 dealt with the oldest illuminated manuscript of
Shah-Name; he was also one of the authors and editors of Monuments
of the Rustaveli Epoch. In 1938, in the prime of his life, Leon Tigranovich
Gyuzalyan was arrested; it was only in 1953 that he resumed his work at
the museum. His works published after the rehabilitation were devoted
to a variety of subjects, early Islamic bronze, ceramics of Oren-kala
and Iranian faience of the 12th -13th centuries. He turned every object
examined by him into a valuable historical source. His principal interest
was the thorough examination of monuments of applied art, careful analysis
of images and texts covering them; in deciphering these he was surpassed
by no one. Active as both a researcher and a teacher, Leon Tigranovich
Gyuzalyan had a lively interest in all aspects of the life of the Hermitage.
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Leon Tigranovich Gyuzalyan
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