Dmitry Levitzky

• 1. Introduction

  ›

  Dmitry Grigoryevich Levitzky walked into the Imperial Academy of Arts in 1770 with six portraits, and walked out a famous man. Before that exhibition, he was a freelance artist working in Saint Petersburg, largely unknown outside professional circles. Afterward, he was an academician, a professor, and one of the most sought-after portrait painters in the Russian Empire. How did a priest's son from Kiev rise to that height? And what did he paint when Catherine the Great herself came calling?

• 2. A Priest's Son Learns to See

  ›

  Levitzky was born in Kiev in May 1735, the son of a priest who was also an amateur painter and engraver. That father was his first teacher, and the household was one where making images was a natural activity rather than a luxury. The combination of religious learning and visual craft shaped the young Levitzky long before he encountered any formal institution.

  In 1758, he left Kiev for Saint Petersburg. The immediate reason was practical: Aleksey Antropov, a Russian artist, had traveled to Kiev to create decorative paintings at the Cathedral of St Andrew, and Levitzky followed him back to the capital to study under him. He also trained with Giuseppe Valeriani during this period, giving him exposure to more than one tradition of painting.

  By 1764, Levitzky had struck out on his own as a freelance artist. That independence came six years before anything made him famous, suggesting a confidence in his abilities that would prove well-founded.

• 3. Six Portraits, One Exhibition

  ›

  The 1770 exhibition at the Imperial Academy of Arts changed Levitzky's professional life in a single moment. He showed six portraits, and among them the one that drew the most attention depicted Alexander Kokorinov, an architect.

  The Academy responded by naming Levitzky an academician, then going further by appointing him professor of the portrait painting class. He held that teaching position until 1788, a span of roughly eighteen years during which he shaped the next generation of Russian portrait painters.

  The recognition was unusual in its speed. Portrait painting was a competitive field in the Russian capital, and the jump from freelance artist to academy professor in a single exhibition reflects how forcefully those six works landed.

• 4. Catherine's Commission

  ›

  Between 1772 and 1776, Levitzky worked on a project unlike anything else in his career. Catherine II commissioned him to paint a series of portraits of pupils at the Smolny Institute for Young Ladies, a privileged women's educational establishment in Saint Petersburg.

  The resulting portraits show the girls performing dances, music, and theatrical plays. This was not the usual formal pose of aristocratic portraiture. The decision to depict the students in active, performative moments gave the series a liveliness that set it apart from the stiffer conventions of the time.

  The commission came from the empress herself, which tells us something about Levitzky's standing at that point in his career. He was no longer simply a professor within the Academy; he was trusted with a project of direct personal and political interest to the Russian court.

• 5. Failing Sight and Final Years

  ›

  Toward the end of the 1790s, Levitzky's eyesight began to deteriorate. For a portrait painter, the loss of reliable vision was a professional catastrophe, and he rarely painted as a result.

  He returned to the Imperial Academy of Arts in 1807, though the nature of his role by that point had been changed by his condition. He died on the 16th of April 1822 in Saint Petersburg, having lived through the reigns of multiple Russian rulers and witnessed the transformation of Russian court culture across nearly nine decades.