Orest Adamovich Kiprensky

Orest Adamovich Kiprensky (born March 13 [March 24, New Style], 1782, Koporye village, near St. Petersburg, Russia—died Oct. 5 [Oct. 17], 1836, Rome [Italy]) was a Russian artist and pioneer of Romanticism who was a master of portrait painting and the father of Russian portrait drawing. Kiprensky’s birth was the result of a casual affair between a nobleman and a servant, and it would have been unremarkable had not a serf married the pregnant woman...