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Serfs were essential to the Sheremetev palaces and their arts. From the 200,000 census serfs the Sheremetevs owned, several hundred were selected every year and trained as artists, architects and sculptors, furniture makers, decorative painters, gilders, engravers, horticul-turalists, theatrical technicians, actors, singers and musicians. Many of these serfs were sent abroad or assigned to the court to learn their craft. But where skill was lacking, much could be achieved through sheer numbers. At Kuskovo there was a horn band in which, to save time on the training of players, each musician was taught to play just one note. The number of players depended on the number of different notes in a tune; their sole skill lay in playing their note at the appropriate moment.⁵¹

The Argunov family had a vital role in the development of the Russian arts. All the Argunovs were Sheremetev serfs. The architect and sculptor Fedor Argunov designed and built the main reception rooms at Fountain House. His brother Ivan Argunov studied painting with Georg Grot at the Imperial court and quickly established his reputation as one of the country's leading portrait painters. In 1759 he painted the portrait of the future Empress Catherine the Great - a rare honour for a Russian artist at a time when the court looked to Europe for its portrait painters. Pavel Argunov, Ivan's eldest son, was an architect who worked with Quarenghi at Ostankino and Fountain House. Yakov Argunov, Ivan's youngest son, was well known for his 1812 portrait of the Emperor Alexander. But the most important of the three Argunov brothers was the second, Nikolai, who was indisputably one of Russia's finest painters of the nineteenth century.⁵²

The position of the creative serf was complicated and ambiguous. There were artists who were greatly valued and rewarded by their lords. Prized chefs and singers were the highest paid in the Sheremetev world. In the 1790s Nikolai Petrovich paid his chef an annual salary of 850 roubles (four times the amount paid to the best chefs in English houses), and his best opera singer 1,500 roubles. But other serf artists were extremely poorly paid: Ivan Argunov, who was placed in charge

of all artistic matters at the Fountain House, received a mere 40 roubles a year.⁵³ Serf artists had a higher status than the other household staff. They lived in better housing, received better food, and they were allowed to work sometimes as freelance artists on commissions from the court, the Church, or other noble families. Yet, like any serf, they were the property of their master and they could be punished just like any other serf. Such servitude was a dreadful obstacle to those artists who strived for independence. As the artistic manager of the Fountain House, Ivan Argunov was responsible for supervising the frequent changes to the palace's interior design, for organizing masquerades and costume balls, for painting sets for theatrical productions, for firework displays, as well as countless menial household tasks. His own artistic projects were constantly abandoned so that he could perform some minor duty on his master's summons and, if he failed in this, the count would have him fined or even flogged. Ivan died a serf. But his children would be freed. According to the will of Nikolai Petrovich, twenty-two domestic serfs, including Nikolai and Yakov Argunov, received their liberty in 1809. Nine years later Nikolai Argunov was elected to the Imperial Academy of Arts, the first Russian artist of serf origin to be honoured by the state.⁵⁴

One of Argunov's most memorable portraits represents another former Sheremetev serf: Countess Praskovya Sheremeteva. Argunov painted her in a red shawl with a sparkling miniature of her husband, Count Nikolai Petrovich Sheremetev, suspended from her neck (plate 1). At the time of this portrait (in 1802) the marriage of the count to his former serf, the prima donna of his opera, was concealed from the public and the court. It would remain so until her death. In this prescient and moving portrait Argunov conveyed their tragedy. It is an extraordinary story that tells us a great deal about the obstacles confronting the creative serf and about the mores of society.

Praskovya was born to a family of serfs on the Sheremetev estate at Yukhotsk in Yaroslav province. Her father and grandfather were both blacksmiths, so the family had been given the name of Kuznetsov ('blacksmith'), although Ivan, her father, was known by all the serfs as 'the hunchback'. In the mid-1770s Ivan became the chief blacksmith at Kuskovo, where the family was given its own wooden house with a large allotment at the back. He sent his first two sons to train as