Ladies‐in‐Waiting in Waiting: Picturing Adolescence in Dmitry Levitsky's Smolny Portraits, 1772–76

Sense and Sensibility: The Theme of Friendship in the Russian Portrait Painting of the Enlightenment Era

“…Alongside with Academy of Fine Arts (which was established by Elizaveta Petrovna, but was given imperial charter by Catherine) an important role in the process of modernization of society was assigned by Catherine to Vospitatel'noe Obschestvo Blagorodnykh Devits. Among Dmitrii Levitskii's series of portraits of smol'nianki [10] there are two double pictures and one of them -"Portrait of Feodosiia Rzhevskaia and Nastasia Davydova" (1771, State Russian Museum) -can loosely be linked to the ideas of friendship as admiration of younger girls for older ones (Davydova and Rzhevskaia were about eight and eleven years old judging both by physical appearance and the colors of uniforms meant for certain ages) and their aspiration (with a touch of competition) to achieve the same refinement in manners and arts. This is one of rare samples of portraits transmitting the idea of friendship as extra-familial relationship.…”

“…In Russian art of the Epoch of Enlightenment friendship portrait appears to be inseparable from family portrait. There are very few exceptions and all of them are connected with corporate friendship of young people (both male and female) inside closed educational institutions which introduced several important new phenomena into Russian social life (including, for instance, the notion of adolescence concerning ladies as R. P. Blakesley convincingly proved) [10]. Still, many portraits of brothers and sisters can be ranked among friendship portraits as they correspond to European iconography of friendship.…”