Аллегорическая программа «Портрета царевен Анны Петровны и Елизаветы Петровны» из Чинарового кабинета дворца Марли в Петергофе

Abstract

This paper is the first to bring together and analyze the data from scholarly literature, as well as from publications and archives related to the three portraits of Peter I’s children from the Chinar Study in the Peterhof Marly palace. They were a double portrait of young Tsarinas Anna and Elizaveta and two paired portraits of single boys depicted as Cupids. These paintings were lost in fire in 1901. Louis Caravaque mentioned these three portraits in the list of his artworks and stated that they were created in 1721 for ‘the Chinar Study in the new Mon Plaisir in Peterhof’. The paper covers versions offered in different publications regarding the persons portrayed in two of these paintings depicting a little boy (Tsarevich Petr Petrovich? Tsareviches Petr Petrovich and Aleksei Petrovich? Allegorical compositions with no portrait likeness?). However, the final conclusion cannot be made based on materials available. The photo of the Chinar Study from the Peterhof State Museum Reserve archive is published for the first time. It was made before Marly’s restoration in 1898–1899, and captures the corner of the study with the one of the paired Cupids and the portrait of Tsarinas Anna and Elizabeth which have so far been known from written sources only. This photo makes it clear that the portrait of Tsarinas Anna and Elizaveta deposited in the Museum of Fine Arts in Petrozavodsk, Republic of Karelia, is a copy of their portrait from Marly. The photo demonstrates the remarkable artistic quality of the original portrait.