If you are in Central London on Tuesday or Wednesday, be sure to look into Sotheby's on Bond Street. The art collection of the late Mtislav Rostropovich, considered one of the greatest cellists of the last century, and his wife Galina Vishnevskaya is on display. The 450-odd lot of paintings, ceramics and objects d'art were due to go under the hammer tomorrow, but the auction was canceled when Russian billionaire Alisher Usmanov made a successful pre-emptive bid for the entire collection yesterday. Sotheby's says that the offer was "substantially higher than the highest pre-sale expectations" -- in other words, well over the 20 million pound catalogue valuation of the collection. Russian art sales at Sotheby's have risen twenty times since 2001; this year alone the London-based auction house has sold over $101 million worth of Russian art, with another major sale planned in London on November.

Rostropovich and Vishnevskaya were passionate collectors of Russian art. Both exiled from the Soviet Union in 1974 for dissident sympathies, the couple must have felt that surrounding themselves with the finest artifacts of their homeland brought their London, Paris and New York apartments a little closer to the home they left behind in Moscow. Though they had mighty arguments over what to buy, their collective taste was impeccable. Almost all of the finest names in Russian painting are represented, from major works by Ilya Repin and Zinaida Serebyakova to Boris Grigoriev's epic and mesmerizing painting "Faces of Russia". They also had a wonderful eye for bronzes, early-19th century Imperial Porcelain Factory vases and miniatures.

Uzbekistan-born Usmanov, 54, owns major steel factories and heads a subsidiary of state-controlled energy giant Gazprom. A son of the prosecutor-general of Soviet Uzbekistan, Usmanov studied at Moscow's elite Institute for International Relations before joining the Communist Youth League (Komsomol) Propaganda Department in Tashkent. He spent six years in jail in the 1980s on charges of economic crime. According to Forbes magazine he is Russia's 23rd richest man, with estimated wealth of $5.5 billion; he also owns Kommersant, one of Russia's leading newspapers.

Usmanov has pledged that the Rostropovich-Vishnevskaya collection will return to Russia. A spokesperson for Galina Vishnevskaya sais that “We are delighted that the Collection is being acquired in its entirety. It is especially meaningful for our family that the new owner will bring it to Russia.”