Levitsky Dmitry G.
(1735-1822)

The appearance of Levitsky, with its slightly jaundiced and passionate person.
history of Russia in the people - so to speak briefly about the artistic heritage Dmitry Levitsky, painter rare gift whose brush paintings of the era reflected in the XVIII century. Kings and courtiers, philosophers and secular lions, cold beauty and writers, industrialists and diplomats, aristocrats and merchants, government officials and the military, parents and children - their portraits speak of the past are much more significant than any words. Hundreds of people wise and foolish, good and evil, sensual and cold, face the so-called gallant century. That no person - character. That no person - biography.

It's not just the representatives of Catherine century, they did impersonation, they did the creators. The artist completed his mission painter full stories (though not created any historical pictures) and for that of his contemporaries initially offered up on a pedestal of glory, and then safely forgotten, absorbed their affairs, intrigues and calculations. And it is not known under what mound at the old Smolensk cemetery buried man, who managed to immortalize their guises.

Levitsky life path began in a small Ukrainian village in Poltava in the old priest's race, leading from start priest Basil nose. Father Dimitri, Gregory K., educated and talented people, thirteen years spent in Poland, where it perfectly the engraving business and has become the largest Ukrainian schedule. From abroad, he returned not only a mature master, but with a new name Levitsky, settled in Kiev, and his parish rented on hiring other priests. His creative life is often intertwined with the activities of the Kiev Theological Academy and of Kyiv-Pechersk typography. Kirillovitch The family of Gregory and his wife Agafi, nee Levitskaya, grew four sons and a daughter. The eldest, Dmitry inherited his father's gift of a unique composition, perfect figure and a solid performance from nature. Growing up in the circle of Ukrainian artistic intelligentsia and clergy, he was well-educated, well-read, confident in my abilities and undeniably very talented. Perhaps even in the years 1752-1755. Levitsky met the famous artist A.P.Antropovym , who then painted the St. Andrew's Church in Kiev. In 1758 Dmitri arrives in St. Petersburg, and not only became a disciple of the renowned master, but lives in his family for almost six years. As an assistant Antropov in 1762, he served as painting Triumphal Arch on the occasion of the coronation of Catherine II. Two years later, the young artist has restored this building alone, and in 1767, together with V. Vasilevsky created two of the iconostasis and 73 image for Catherine and Kiroioanovskoy churches and achieved a very high pay of their work. unknown if there were other teachers at Levitsky, but even in the first portraits of his style radically different from Antropovo. His manner of independent and more in harmony with its Western European ease scale tones, glazing, softening the intensity of color and the characteristic light and medium. Besides time and for the flourishing of arts was unusually warm: here and the construction of grandiose palaces, here, and a good selection of invited foreigners who gave latest designs of the western schools, then the whole amazingly colorful diversity in aesthetics and together health, integrity of mind, then it's health, which (according to Benoit) and created our Levitsky and Rokotoff , artists, "different moment in art tremendous value - vitality." Time is rigidly determined his future step in the society. Where and how to live Levitsky? In the glow of diamonds, among those who ruled nation, and is - a strong psychological dissonance. On the one hand, the aristocracy was an artistic material, no more than the other - the dependence of the "material" of the nobility, the position in relation to it was not very different from the situation of dependency and a watchmaker or a good cook.