The artist is Ust -Ruditskaya
Ekaterina II Great (Sofia Augusta Frederick Anhalt-Tserbstskaya, Ekaterina Alekseevna, April 21 / May 2, 1729, Stettin −November 6/17, 1796, St. Petersburg) − The daughter of Prince Christian Augusta Cerbact Dornburg and Johanna Elizabeth, Princess Golstein-Gottorp. From 1742 the wife of Grand Duke Peter Fedorovich. Came to power in 1762 as a result of the palace coup.
Reigned from June 28 / July 9, 1762 to 6/17 November, 1796.
The 400th anniversary of the Romanov house. SPb, 2013. WITH. 110.
Ekaterina II (Great; 1729-1796)-nee Princess Sofia Augustus Frederick the Angalt-Tserbst. Born in the German city of Stetin. In 1744, she arrived in Russia as the bride of Grand Duke Peter Fedorovich, the future Emperor Peter III. In the same year she accepted Orthodoxy with the name of Ekaterina Alekseevna and was married to Peter Fedorovich in August 1745. In 1754 she gave birth to an heir, future emperor Paul I. She did not work out with her husband, and Peter III intended to send his wife to the monastery. In the summer of 1762 she headed the guards and overthrew Peter III, becoming an empress.
Mosaic virtuoso recruited was presented to the Empress on September 22, 1763 "for a festive coronation holiday". Master Matvey Vasiliev took part in its creation. The Empress is depicted in a profile, in a pale-rope steam dress, on which a golden-yellow mining mantle is covered.
The portrait was executed in the workshop m. IN. Lomonosov, who in the second half of the 1740s began to work as a technologist on glass and an artist-monitor. Having discovered for himself the mosaics in the Sofia Cathedral of Kyiv and the temples of Novgorod, the scientist for many years was looking for a secret to the manufacture of smalt (colored vitreous masses of various shades). In the first chemical laboratory in Russia, he developed the technology and production of smalt production, and since the beginning of the 1750s he began creative practice.
