The artist is Gzel
Bourgeois Nikolai (Bourgeois, Borzhua, Bourgeois) (168?–1724). Frenchman, giant and strong man (height 2 m 27 cm). He was hired by Peter I in 1717 during a foreign trip in the city of Kale and brought to St. Petersburg, where he served as the tsar’s guide. At the order of Peter, his “for experience” married a high growth “Chukhonka” to obtain a tall offspring. After the death of the bourgeois, his skeleton and internal organs were transferred to the Kunstkamer, where they are exposed to this day. Then, in 1724, to.-B. Rastrelli ordered to make a mobile figure-maneken giant made of wood, covered with his skin. This exhibit until the end of the 18th century was in the Kunstkamer.
Peter I. Time and environment. SPb, 2015. With. 124.
Traditionally considered the work of g. Gzel. Association of authorship was first expressed in the catalog of the portrait exhibition of 1870. In 1724 after the death of the bourgeois to.-B. Rastrelli made a mobile figure of a giant man-made of wood, covered with his skin (until the end of the 18th century was in Kunstkamer). The portrait may be written from this figure, and not from nature. Thematically “strong man” fits well into the “Preobrazhensky series” – portraits of participants in the “All -Life Cathedral” were created under Catherine I.
Peter I. Time and environment. SPb, 2015. With. 107.
