Nikitin I.N., (circa 1690-1742), Artist

Categories / Art/Fine Arts/Personalia
NIKITIN Ivan Nikitich (c. 1690-1742) artist, one of the founders of secular painting in Russia. In 1711, he was sent from Moscow to St. Petersburg as a master of the Armoury. In 1716-20, he was sent to study in Italy by order of Peter the Great. From 1720, he was an artist of the Imperial Court, and the court portraitist. He painted portraits of Tsarina Natalya Alexeevna, sister of Peter the Great, executed sometime before 1716, the Crown Princess Elizaveta Petrovna in the 1720s, a series of portraits of Peter the Great from beginning of the 1720s, and Peter the Great on His Deathbed, painted in 1725 - all of them are exhibited in the State Russian Museum. His portraits also include those of Baron S. G. Stroganov, while Hetman, painted in the 1720s, is acknowledged to be the best work achieving a harmonious beauty in graphic structure while simultaneously revealing psychological depth of character. From 1725, he lived in Moscow. He was arrested in 1732 in connection with a lampoon of the vice-president of the Synod, Feofan Prokopovich and spent five years under investigation in St. Peter and Paul Fortress, before being sent to Tobolsk in 1737. He died on the way from the exile.

References: Лебедева Т. А. Иван Никитин. М., 1975; Андросов С. О. Живописец Иван Никитин. СПб., 1998.

O. L. Leikind, D.Y. Severyukhin. Elizaveta Petrovna, Empress
Feofan Prokopovich (lay name Eleazar Prokopovich)
Natalia Alexeevna, Duchess
Nikitin Ivan Nikitich
Peter I, Emperor
Stroganov Sergey Grigorievich, Baron
Лебедева Т. А. Иван Никитин. М., 1975
Андросов С. О. Живописец Иван Никитин. СПб., 1998 Russian Museum, State
Synod
St. Peter and Paul fortress
St. Peter and Paul fortress