Konstantin Flavitsky

Konstantin Flavitsky was a Russian painter who is considered the father of Russian domestic genre painting. He was influenced by the works of William Hogarth, whom he admired for his social criticism and realism. Flavitsky received his art education at the Imperial Academy of Arts, and was a student of Professor Fyodor Bruni. He received silver medals from the Academy for drawings and sketches from life. In 1854, he was awarded a small gold medal for his painting The Court of Solomon. He graduated from the academic course (1855), receiving the title of the artist. He received a large gold medal from the Academy of Fine Arts for his work Jacob’s Children Sell His Brother Joseph, which allowed him to travel to Italy to study between 1856 and 1862, as a pensioner of the Academy. He returned to Russia in 1862. The following year, he was recognized as an honorary free member of the Academy for the large painting Christian Martyrs in the Colosseum, made in Rome. At the exhibition in 1864, the painting Princess Tarakanova brought him the title of professor at the Academy of Arts and attracted the attention of art lovers and the public. The artist died at the age of 35. His health was severely undermined by tuberculosis. The disease developed in the conditions of the Saint Petersburg climate. His most famous painting is Princess Tarakanova, in the Peter and Paul Fortress at the Time of the Flood based on the legend of the death of Yelizaveta Alekseyevna Tarakanova, the self-styled daughter of Aleksey Grigorievich Razumovsky and Elizabeth of Russia in her prison cellar during the flood in Saint Petersburg.