Daniil Stepanov
The role that Daniil Stepanov played in forming “the Pre-Raphaelites of Samarkand” was as important as it was paradoxical and difficult to pinpoint. In comparison to the gigantic figure of Kuzma Petrov-Vodkin, the impressive oeuvre of Alexei Isupov, and even the relatively modest body of work left by Usto Mumin, Stepanov’s legacy seems minute. However, he was not simply the owner of the garden where the “Pre- Raphaelites” had their meetings but, more importantly, he was the link that connected the first incarnation of the circle (when Petrov-Vodkin arrived in Samarkand and Isupov was preparing to leave) and the later one (when Usto Mumin joined the group). Very little is known about the artist’s life. Stepanov was born to an aristocratic father, who was a painter and a Slavophile with monarchist views. According to family sources, he was educated at the Sorbonne, took classes from French medalists (in the late 1890s), and later studied fine art in Rome, where he specialized in restoring Renaissance paintings (1900–1902/1903). On his return to Russia, he worked as a restorer in the Kremlin. In 1911, he became the chief medalist at St. Petersburg’s Print Yard. According to his family, in the years that followed the Revolution, Stepanov was twice arrested and detained at the Petrograd headquarters of the secret police. He was later released with the help of the People’s Commissar for Education, Anatoly Lunacharsky. Stepanov designed one of the first Soviet medals and taught in an art school in Penza. Having moved east and away from the capital, from 1920 to 1924 he headed Samkomstaris, a commission created to oversee the restoration and preservation of medieval buildings in Samarkand. It was under Stepanov’s direction that Alexei Isupov, Aleksandr Nikolayev (Usto Mumin), Kuzma Petrov-Vodkin, Alexander Samokhvalov, Viktor Ufimtsev, and Nikolai Mamontov worked for the commission. In the evenings, the artists gathered in the garden of Stepanov’s dacha, where they formed a circle with a distinctly “Pre- Raphaelite” aesthetic program.
Along with his extensive practical experience and knowledge of the techniques used by the Italian Old Masters, Stepanov introduced to the circle his own approach to painting, which involved the use of photography to capture details for the future work and determine its composition. Photographs that served as the basis for at least two of his works (Prayer, 1925 and Suzani Seller, 1921–1925) have been preserved and allow us to see how carefully Stepanov documented his surroundings, despite the minimalist composition, poetic nature, and Italian-influenced style of his paintings. We know from a memoir that it was also Stepanov who taught the tempera technique to Usto Mumin. But Stepanov was also receptive to the work of his friends, and several of his paintings show the influence of the imagery and “spherical perspective” that Petrov-Vodkin developed in the 1910s and 1920s.
In 1925, Stepanov went on a working trip to Paris and never returned to the Soviet Union. After emigrating he no longer made use of “Pre- Raphaelite” motifs, despite the fact that his Samarkand works were exhibited at the 15th Venice Biennale in 1926.
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