The Portrait of Sergei Uvarov by Orest Kiprensky as a Refl ection of the Aesthetic and Social Views of the Depicted
The article examines one of the central works of the portrait genre of the 1810s - the portrait of Sergey S. Uvarov by Orest A. Kiprensky. This painting is invariably the focus of all major monographs on the artist's work, however, this article offers a different view of the image created by Kiprensky. The task of this study is to analyse the idea of the work, to switch attention from the “general” to the “private”, to try to see the “characteristic” and the “individual” in the portrait. Kiprensky's idea is seen in an effort to refl ect Uvarov's intellectual pursuits through a few (but very vivid) details of commenting signifi cance. The relevance of the chosen topic is connected with the disclosure of the main features of the portrait genre of the “era of Romanticism”, emphasising the substantial complexity of the portrait image; this feature of the portrait of the fi rst half of the 19th century is still insuffi ciently researched in art studies.