N. V. Sultanov

In 1886, a N.V. Sultanov published the first major scientific research on Khmer Art in Russian, in the Bulletin of the Imperial Academy of Arts (Xмерское искусство). Soviet and Russian historians have never identified the author so far. Our guesswork is that he might have been N.V. Sultanov, the acclaimed architect and architecture historian, who would have been 36 years old then.

Nikolai Vladimirovich Sultanov (Султанов Николай Владимирович, 28 Jan. 1850, Prudki, Russian Empire — 15 Sep. 1908, Wiesbaden, Germany) was a Russian architect, architecture historian and restorer. 

A member of the Saint Petersburg Institute of Civil Engineers, his main work as architect-in-chief was the Peter & Paul Cathedral in Peterhof (1894−1905), designed to the forms of the 16^th-17^th centuries Moscow architecture, and the St.Vladimir Church (1902). He studied Ancient Russian architecture, in particular in the essay Samples of Ancient Russian Architecture in Miniature Images (Образцы древне-русского зодчества в миниатюрных изображениях), and translated into Russian the book of the French theorist and historian of the architecture E. Viollet-le-Duc, L’Art Russe.