Description of the picture:
Portrait of a floor hetman – Ivan Nikitich Nikitin. 1720s Canvas, oil. 76×60
Ivan Nikitich Nikitin (circa one thousand six hundred eighty – not earlier than 1742) is one of the founders of Russian secular painting. Until the 18th century, the pictorial tradition in Russia took shape exclusively in line with iconography. Nikitin, a priest’s son by birth, became the favorite court painter (as he was called at that time, the “hoffmiler”) of Peter I and was sent to study in Italy. His brushes belong to portraits of many prominent statesmen of the Petrine era. After the death of the patron emperor, the fate of the artist was unsuccessful. In 1732, according to a denunciation, he was first imprisoned in the Peter and Paul Fortress, and then exiled to Tobolsk.
Portrait of a floor hetman – a unique example of an image of an 18th-century man without a wig customary for the era embroidered with gold camisole. Before the viewer appears the image of a brave warriors. With a stern look, an expression of the tired face of his hero, the artist conveys his biography."
