Forensic experts in St. Petersburg have confirmed that bloodstains found on a sofa on which the famed 19th-century poet and author Alexander Pushkin is said to have died were indeed left by the poet.

“The results of our medical research allow us to state that it is the poet’s blood on this historic sofa,” Yury Molin, deputy head of the Leningrad region’s legal and medical department, said at a news conference in the city’s Pushkin Apartment Museum earlier this month.

Pushkin died on Feb. 10, 1837, at the age of 37, after a duel with the French-born Georges d’Anthes. He was shot in the stomach and died at his home on the Moika River, now the Pushkin Apartment Museum, two days later.

Research proved that the blood on the sofa was located on the exact spot where Pushkin’s wound have been bleeding.

“For that purpose the researchers put a paper model of Pushkin’s body on the sofa, and then put the waistcoat Pushkin was wearing during his fatal duel on the model. The bloodstains on the waistcoat matched the place where the bloodstains were found on the sofa,” Molin said.