The State Tretyakov Gallery possesses a unique collection of Russian art which includes masterpieces which span a period of a thousand years. The Gallery was founded by a Russian merchant and patron of the arts Pavel Tretyakov. He donated his collection to the city of Moscow in 1892. The State Tretyakov Gallery has since become a world-famous museum. Nowadays it contains more than 170,000 works by Russian artists from early religious paintings to modern art. The genealogy of Pavel M.Tretyakov can be traced only to the third generation, as all the archives of the town Maloyaroslavets, from where his ancestry originated, were burnt down in 1812, during the retreat of the Napoleon’s Army. The Tretyakovs was an ancient, but not wealthy merchant family. In 1774, at the age of seventy the Third Guild merchant Elisei Tretyakov, a great-grandfather of Pavel Tretyakov, came to Moscow with his family, consisted of his wife Vasilisa and two sons - Zakhar and Osip. The family settled down in the neighborhood of St. Alexis Church between Tverskaya and Nikitskaya streets.