Tsvetaev was born 16 May (O. S. 4 May) 1847, in
Shuya, Ivanovo Oblast, the son of Vladimir Vasilyevich Tsvetaev (1818–1884), a village priest. After the early death of his mother in 1859, his father raised him and his three brothers for a life in the priesthood, sending them to the religious school in Shuya, and then to the seminary in
Vladimir. He also studied briefly at the
Imperial Medical and Surgical Academy, but quit, citing poor health, and enrolled at
Saint Petersburg State University instead; following a course in Classical Studies and graduating in 1870 as a "Candidate in the Sciences". The following year, he became a teacher of Classical Greek Studies at a
gymnasium in
Saint Petersburg. This only lasted a short time as, in 1872, he was appointed a lecturer at the
Imperial University of Warsaw, where he presented a
dissertation on
Tacitus to obtain his
habilitation in 1873. In 1874, he travelled to Italy to study the ancient
Italic languages and writings. In 1876, he was called to the
Saint Vladimir Royal University of Kiev. Still, he only a year later was presented with a position at the
Moscow State University as a candidate for the Chair of the
Latin literature department. He married , an opera singer. Under her influence, he gradually switched his interests from Classical philology to
antiquities. After 1881, he worked at the
Rumyantsev Museum, serving as its director from 1900 to 1910. In 1888, he was named an honorary faculty member at the
University of Bologna. By the following year, he had made a part-time return to the academic world as the Chair of Art History and Theory at Moscow University. He also became a contributor to a journal, the ''''. Varvara died in 1890 and he remarried in 1891; to , a pianist. They had two daughters;
Marina and
Anastasia, both of whom became well-known poets and writers. In 1894, at the "First Congress of Artists and Art Lovers", he presented plans for a new museum of fine arts, inspired by a visit to the
Albertinum in
Dresden, where he became lifelong friends with
Georg Treu, the head of its world-famous
Skulpturensammlung. A design competition was organized and the award went to
Roman Klein. In 1897, Tsvetaev was able to secure the wealthy glassware manufacturer,
Yury Nechaev-Maltsov, as the museum's primary sponsor. The
cornerstone was laid in 1899 and the museum was officially opened in 1912. Tsvetaev served as its first director until his death on 12 September 1913, in
Moscow. Originally the "Alexander III Museum of Fine Arts", it is now known as the
Pushkin Museum. ==References==