Ekaterina Ivanovna Tyutcheva and priest Fyodor Maltsev in front of the eastern entrance to the manor house

This image is poignantly tragic and profound when viewed with the hindsight of the twenty-first century. Ekaterina Ivanovna Tyutcheva and the priest Fyodor Maltsev are inviting us to enter the house, the epitome of noble estate culture and, in the end, its memorial. In the far background of the perspective formed by the front rooms, as if at the end of a tunnel, the guests are greeted by the footman A. Gornostaev. His figure, frozen in the light-filled doorway, seems like an abandoned and forgotten vestige of a bygone era…