Ivan Vladimirovich Tsvetaev was born in 1847 in the village of Drozdovo, near the city of Shuya in the Ivanovo region. He was born into the family of a poor priest. He received his primary education at the Shuya Theological School, where he had a very good Latin teacher who he remembered his entire life. He then studied at the Vladimir Seminary. After the seminary, he enrolled in the Imperial Medical-Surgical Academy, but later transferred to St. Petersburg University, to the classical department of the historical-philological faculty. He graduated from the university in 1870 with a gold medal and remained at the university to prepare for a professorship.
After graduating from university, Ivan Vladimirovich developed a dream: to create a museum of sculpture in Russia, so that all students could see world masterpieces with their own eyes.
He wrote: "...The idea of this museum is to give the university and our youth a new, ideally elegant institution. In this lies all the reward, all the ambition, the highest pleasure."
In 1894, at the first congress of Russian...