Georg Gsell (1673-1740)

• Was a Swiss Baroque painter, art consultant and art dealer.
• Gsell was born in St. Gallen.

• He married his first wife in 1697, Marie Gertrud von Loen of Frankfurt am Main.

• They moved to Amsterdam in 1704.

• His wife died and he remarried Anna Horstmans, but divorced her in 1715, when he married a third time to Dorothea Maria Merian, the daughter of Maria Sibylla Merian.

• The couple was recruited by Peter the Great in 1716 and went to Russia.

• In Russia he became first curator of the Imperial art gallery founded in 1720.

• His wife, Maria-Dorothea, became the curator of the Kunstkamera. 

• Gsell died, aged 67, in St. Petersburg and his wife survived him by three years. 

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