Pavel Korin

Pavel Korin was born in Palekh, a village in the Ivanovo Oblast of the Russian Empire, to a family of professional icon painters. He studied at the School for Icon Painting at Palekh and received a formal certificate as an icon painter. He moved to Moscow in 1908 and worked at the icon shop of the Don Monastery. He met Mikhail Nesterov, who invited him to assist him with the frescoes of the Cathedral of the Holy Protection at the Marfo-Mariinsky Convent. He also met Grand Duchess Elizaveta Fyodorovna, the Mother Superior of the convent, who became his patroness and asked him to paint her tomb in the crypt of the cathedral. He studied at the Imperial Academy of Arts in Saint Petersburg, where he showed his talent for portrait painting. He painted his adoptive father Adam Shvalbe, who married his mother and gave him his surname. He also painted portraits of famous Russian writers, such as Alexander Pushkin, Vasily Zhukovsky, and Mikhail Lermontov. He traveled extensively in Europe, especially in Italy, where he was influenced by the works of Raphael, Titian, and Anthony van Dyck. He also painted historical and genre scenes, such as Prince Dmitry Donskoy after the Battle of Kulikovo and Jesters at the Court of Anna Ioanovna. He was one of the pioneers of Romanticism in Russian art, and his style was characterized by expressive brushstrokes, vivid colours, and emotional intensity. He married Praskovya Tikhonovna Petrova, a disciple of the Marfo-Mariinsky Convent, in 1926. He worked as the Head of the Restoration Shop of the Museum of Foreign Art (later Pushkin Museum) from 1931 to 1959. He restored many paintings by old masters, such as Leonardo da Vinci, Rembrandt, Rubens, and Velazquez. He also created his own paintings, such as the triptych Alexander Nevsky and the Portrait of Marshal Georgy Zhukov. He is most famous for his preparational work for the unimplemented painting Farewell to Rus, which he started in 1934 and continued until his death. He intended to depict the history of Russia from the 9th to the 20th century in a monumental composition of 600 figures. He made hundreds of sketches, studies, and portraits for this project, but he never completed the final version. He died in 1967 in Moscow and was buried in the Novodevichy Cemetery. His works are widely regarded as masterpieces of Russian portrait painting and are displayed in many museums, such as the Tretyakov Gallery, the Russian Museum, and the Hermitage.