Somov i Bashnia V. Ivanova: portret-terziny-frontispis

Using testimony of contemporaries and archival sources, the article re- constructs the history of relations between the artist Konstantin Somov and Vyacheslav Ivanov, Lidia Zinovieva-Annibal, Mikhail Kuzmin and the circle of the St. Petersburg «Tower». Some of the fundamental issues concern Somov’s conception of a portrait of a writer and the dialogue between poetic and artistic images in St. Petersburg Symbolism. The problematics that arose in Somov’s close interaction with the «Tower» in the spring and summer of 1906, as well as the artist’s very personality, are reflected in Zinovieva- Annibal’s story «Thirty-Three Abominations». Somov’s initial and final frontispiece to Ivanov’s book Cor Ardens is interpreted.