Short answers, pulled from the story.
Alexander Andreyevich Ivanov was a Russian painter born on the 28th of July 1806 in St. Petersburg. He trained at the Imperial Academy of Arts under his own father and is best known for The Appearance of Christ Before the People, which he spent twenty years completing.
Ivanov worked on The Appearance of Christ Before the People from 1837 to 1857, a period of twenty years. He completed the work in Rome, where he spent most of his adult life.
Ivanov earned the description because he devoted twenty years of his working life to a single painting, The Appearance of Christ Before the People. The phrase reflects both the scale of that commitment and the fact that no other work dominated his career in the same way.
The most comprehensive collections of Ivanov's work are at the Russian Museum in St. Petersburg and the Tretyakov Gallery in Moscow. His preparatory sketches for The Appearance of Christ Before the People have also been recognized as masterpieces in their own right.
Ivanov won the Big Gold Medal of the Imperial Academy of Arts in 1827 for Joseph Interprets the Butler's and the Baker's Dreams. He had previously received a gold medal in 1824 for Priam Asking Achilles to Return Hector's Body.
Ivanov died of cholera on the 3rd of July 1858 in St. Petersburg. He was originally buried at the Novodevichy Cemetery, then reburied in 1936 at the Tikhvin Cemetery of the Alexander Nevsky Lavra.