The portrait miniature of Empress Elizabeth is based on a portrait by Caravaque painted at the time of her accession in 1741. Prior to the establishment of the Academy of Arts as an adjunct to the Academy of Sciences in 1724, Louis Caravaque ran an informal school of painting, based in the St Petersburg Post Office. Peter the Great had contracted him ‘to teach painting to such persons of the Russian nation as His Majesty shall send to him’, this contract was upheld by both Empresses Anna and Elizabeth. One such pupil was Ivan Vishniakov (1699–1761), who produced a very similar portrait of Elizabeth, now in the Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow. Another of Caravaque’s pupils, M.A. Lopov (b.1723), produced a signed miniature of 1747, not dissimilar to this work, now in the State Russian Museum, St Petersburg.

Elizabeth Petrovna reigned as Empress of Russia from 1741 to 1762 after a coup d’état. Her reign was characterised by her advocacy of pro-Russian domestic policy, and her rejection of many of the German diplomats and artists who had enjoyed the patronage of her predecessor, Anna Ioannovna.

Text adapted from Russia: Art, Royalty & the Romanovs, London, 2018.