Career
As the Tsarist Russian envoy to Greece, he assembled an outstanding collection of Ancient Greek sculpture, Tanagra figurines, painted vases and other Greek antiquities, which, at the end of his subsequent embassy to Berlin (1879-1884) he then sold to the Antikensammlung Berlin, where the collection was catalogued by Adolf Furtwängler, who thereby established his reputation as a master of Greek terracottas, and where it occasioned an acute lack of space that spurred additional construction. Among the prize works was the headless bronze of an Apollo or Dionysus found in the sea off the coast of Salamis. During his retirement in Saint St. Petersburg, the Hermitage Museum purchased part of the remainder of his collection, about 1909including 233 molded terracotta statuettes, which he bought in the 1870s when treasure hunters had plundered the necropolis of ancient Tanagra (Boeotia).
Saburov was born on the estate of Veryaevo in the district of Elatma in the Government of Taboff.
Petr Alexandrovich graduated from the Tsarskoye Selo Lyceum, in 1854, gaining a first gold medal. After employment in the Chancellery (1857-1859), he worked in Munich, and then in England, where he stayed for eleven years, moving in upper-class British society.
In 1870 he went to Karlsruhe, and subsequently moved on to Athens, where he stayed until 1879. In the summer of 1879 he went to Constantinople, where he was appointed Russian Ambassador, although he never entered upon the official duties.
Then he was posted to Berlin (1880-1884), which involved him at the center of the secret negotiations that led to the unpublished pact, the League of the Three Emperors.
In 1884 he left the diplomatic service and returned to Saint St. Petersburg. During the last decade of the century he became well known as a financial and economic advisor. He listed his pastimes as pomiculture, architecture, the piano and chess.
In the early stages of the Russian Revolution, Saburov was a senator but was dismissed upon the accession of the Bolsheviks.
Following a short illness he died in Petrograd.