Dmitry Grigorievich Levitsky is one of the people who glorified Russian art. "One of the most famous Russian artists, who was once the first portrait painter" - this is how the president of the Academy of Arts A. Olenin spoke about him in 1824, two years after the death of the master. He escaped the sad fate of many Russian painters of the XVIII century, for a long time and unfairly forgotten: this name did not disappear from the memory of descendants. For many generations of viewers, his work became the personification of the entire Russian portrait school of the 18th century, the highest achievements of Russian culture, not inferior to the best Western European models.