Igor Emmanuilovich Grabar

ISTORIIA RUSSKOGO ISKUSSTVA. V OBRABOTKE OTDEL'NYKH CHASTEI PRINIALI ALEKS. BENUA ... 1-3 & 5-6 .

Moscow, 1909 - 1915.
4to [30 by 23 cm]. [6], 514; 480; 584; 416; 536 pp. + 20 plates (of which 4 in colour tipped-in). Numerous text illustrations.
Publisher's gilt decorated morocco-backed boards. All edges gilt. Original silk markers preserved.
First edition. An older basic history of Russian art and architecture.
Volume 1-3 are entirely devoted to architecture.
Contents: volume 1, Architecture up to the time of Peter the Great; volume 2, Architecture of Moscow and the Ukraine up to the time of Peter the Great; volume 3; Architecture of St. Petersburg in the 18th and 19th centuries; volume 5, Sculpture; volume 6, Painting up to the time of Peter the Great.
Table of contents at end of each volume.
Pages 1-104 only of volume 4 (Moscow architecture in the Baroque and classical periods) was ever published (1914).

"Grabar's monumental history, although interrupted by World War I ans superseded by the new enlarged edition (1953-68), remains indispensible for the clarity of the reproductions" (Hamilton).
* Arntzen & Rainwater I404. G. H. Hamilton, The art and architecture of Russia (1975), p. 317.