The artist is Nikitin
In the 19th century, the portrait was considered the image of the hetmans: and. With. Mazepa, p. L. Half -cut, and. And. Skoropadsky, d. P. Apostle. Researchers suggested that the Portrait was presented by the Lithuanian hetman Count Casimir Yang Sapga, Marshaklek Polish, Field Marshal of the Russian Army, located in the mid-1720s in St. Petersburg. The unconditional identification of the depicted is difficult. The rank indicated in the inscription on the portrait (floor hetman) is more likely not for Ukraine, but for Poland and Lithuania, where at the beginning of the XVIII in. There were posts of the crown hetman (commander in chief) and the Polish Hetman (his deputy). The Russian Museum. From the icon to the present. 2005. With. 76.
In recent years, the assumption has been suggested that the “portrait of the floor hetman” was Ivan Nikitin’s self -portrait. In 1762, the portrait entered the Imperial Academy of Arts from the old wooden Winter Palace in St. Petersburg, on Nevsky Prospekt, near the police bridge, which is confirmed by its inventory: “On the above the catalog of this year, paintings and portraits of the following unknown portrait of the hetman were filled with an unexplored taken-up taken. From the palace without frames “. Determination of authorship and. N. Nikitin was first done at the end of the 19th century, in the future was not disputed and was confirmed by technological research. In the portrait of the unknown, an almost tragic image, who is alone with him, thinking of the bitter thoughts of man appears. His sunken eyes with reddened eyelids peered tensely in the distance, but deep into themselves. Nikitin in the creation of this image acts as a great master, who is under the power of complex psychological characteristics.
