V.N. Zalesskaya, Dr. habil., was a leading researcher in The State Hermitage Museum’s Oriental Department and a curator of the collection of Byzantine Applied Art. She worked in the Hermitage for 62 years—from 1961 to 2023—first as a museum guide and then as a full-time postgraduate student. She entered the Oriental Department in 1965 as a researcher and was later a curator of the collection of Byzantine Applied Art (between 1984 and 2023). For several years she also held the post of Head of the Sector of Byzantium and the Near East.
Vera Nikolaevna Zalesskaya was born on September 17, 1938 in the city of Morshansk, in the Tambov Region of Russia, to accomplished parents. Her father, Nikolai Nikolaevich Zalessky, was a historian and specialist in the history of Ancient Rome. He worked as a professor at Leningrad University. Her mother, Vera Vatslavovna Zalesskaya, was a doctor who worked at the Filatov Hospital in Leningrad.
Vera began her history education in 1956. After graduating from high school in Leningrad, she was accepted by the Faculty of History into Leningrad University where she received fundamental practical knowledge in the archeology of the Middle Ages. While studying there, she participated for four field seasons of work on the Galicia-Volyn architectural and archaeological expedition led by Professor Mikhail Karger.
Vera began her initial work with The State Hermitage Museum in Saint Petersburg after graduating from the Department of Art History in June of 1961 with honors granted by the Faculty of History of the Leningrad University (named after A.A. Zhdanov). She was then sent by the Ministry of Culture of the USSR to work in The State Hermitage Museum as a museum guide. In August of that year, she was enrolled as a contractor museum guide in the Hermitage Excursion Department.
After this experience, she was accepted as a full-time postgraduate student at the Oriental Department of The State Hermitage Museum in November 1962, specializing in the history of Byzantium. She successfully completed her postgraduate studies at The State Hermitage Museum in 1965. In May of 1965 she transferred from the Excursion Department to the Oriental Department of the Hermitage as a researcher. (Later, after the death of Alice Bank in 1984, she would become a curator of the collection of Byzantine Applied Art). Between 1962 and 1970, Vera prepared a dissertation titled, “Syrian Artistic Metal of the Byzantine Period and its Historical Significance (to the role of Syria in the applied art of Byzantium).” Vera Zalesskaya was awarded the degree of PhD in history by the decision of the Scholarly Council of the Faculty of History of the Leningrad University on December 10, 1970.
Beyond her PhD training, Dr. Zalesskaya’s career continued with additional advanced education and a number of publications. In 1997 she published a compact monograph, Applied Art of Byzantium of the 4th – 12th Centuries (including 59 pages, with 41 illustrations), which she also defended as a dissertation. She was awarded a Dr. habil. degree in 1998 by the Faculty of History of Moscow State University (which was named after M.V. Lomonosov).
In her career, Vera Zalesskaya was the author of numerous articles on the culture and art of Byzantium that were published in Russian scholarly journals, yearbooks, and collections of articles, as well as in English and French. These include several substantial catalogs published by The State Hermitage Museum. Monuments of Byzantine Applied Arts of the 4th– 7th Centuries: Catalog of the Hermitage Collection (271 pages with illustrations) was published in 2006. In 2011 she published Masterpieces of Byzantine Applied Art: Byzantine Ceramics of the 9th – 15th centuries: Catalog of the Collection (254 pages, including illustrations). Byzantine Artistic Metalwork, Ninth-Fifteenth Centuries: Catalog of the Collection (207 pages, with illustrations) was published in 2021.
From 1991 to 2022 Vera was a scholarly editor and co-editor of The State Hermitage Museum’s Proceedings on Byzantium, titled “Byzantium within the Context of World Culture.” From the 1970s onward she participated in the International Congresses of Byzantine Studies, presenting several papers. As a curator at the Hermitage, she took part in various exhibitions on Byzantine art in the Hermitage and other museums of the USSR/ Russia, as well as in museums of Europe and the USA. She was a co-curator of The Road to Byzantium: Luxury Arts of Antiquity, an exhibition at the Courtauld Institute of Art in London, England in 2006.
On July 29, 2023, Dr. Vera Zalesskaya passed away after a brief illness. She is remembered by colleagues for her 62 years as a generous curator at the Hermitage and for her archaeological work at the medieval site at Chersonesos.