| |
Among the first to imitate Briullov was
Konstantine Dmitrievich Flavitskii, 1830-1866. He learned to paint from Bruni,
but he deserted his professor when Briullov became famous and overshadowed all
others. Flavitskii's paintings on biblical subjects are of very little interest
and his name would have been forgotten if it were not for just one picture, the
"Princess Tarakanova," painted in 1864. The painting shows a
beautiful young woman, dressed in a long velvet robe, flattened against the
wall of a cell in the St. Peter and Paul Fortress in St. Petersburg, and
looking with horror at the water of the Neva river that runs in through the
iron-barred window, bringing her certain death. The would-be princess was
presumably the daughter of Empress Elizabeth Petrovna and Count Razumovskii.
There is substantial indication that Elizabeth did marry in 1742 Alexei Razum,
a son of an Ukrainian Cossack and former shepard and singer in the palace
chapel, the future favorite and Field-marshal Count Razumovskii, and that they
had a daughter. The young princess, if she ever existed was supposedly sent to
Italy for her education. To avoid any repetition of the trgjic case with
Tsarevich Dimitrii and eliminate an eventual pretender to the throne, Catherine
II brought the Princess to Moscow, where she took the veil in the Ivanovskii
Convent under the name of Dosifea - Augusta Tarakanova. The fact is that a nun
of this name did live in the convent and that she died in 1810.
Despite all precautions taken by the St. Petersburg court, history repeated
itself and again the Polish aristocracy played the main role, this time in the
conspiracy of the pseudo-Princess Tarakaneva. The fact is that one day in Rome
there appeared a young woman who soon was recognized as the Princess
Tarakanova, supposedly kidnaped from Russia by Polish Count Karl Radzivil. The
real identity of this young woman remains an insoluble mystery, as did her name
- Tarakanova, which translated from Russian means Cockroach. There is no
information at all as to who created a beautiful female with such a vexing
identification - Princess Cockroach - and why. Some more considerate historians
and writers, though, call her Anna Petrovna, Princess of Vladimir. The sudden
appearance of the pseudo Princess in Italy, greatly alarmed Catherine II, and
she lost no time in dispatching Count Alexei Orlov there, the same Orlov who in
1762 led the guards in the assassination of Catherine's husband, Emperor Peter
III. There were five brothers Orlov who all were known as lovers, starting with
Grigorii (Gregory) who was Catherine's favorite. Alexei contacted the
pseudo-Princess and soon pretended to be deeply in love with her. She accepted
an invitation to visit one of his ships, without knowing that this one was
going to St. Petersburg. She learned that she had been shanghaied when the ship
left Italy. Upon her arrival in Russia, she was incarcerated in the St. Peter
and Paul fortress, where she died in 1775 of galloping consumption. It is this
pseudo-Princess that we see in Flavitskii's painting.
|
|
