Master of Painting. 325th Anniversary of Ivan Vishnyakov’s Birth

Ivan Vishnyakov is one of the leading artist of the 18th century, portraitist, mural painter, restorer and teacher who headed a team of painters from the Ministry of Construction for twenty years (1739–1761). He was a talented leader and contributor to all the painting works in St Petersburg, Moscow and the court residences. The system of training in the painting team developed by Andrei Matveyev and improved by Ivan Vishnyakov allowed to train such masters as Ivan, Alexei and Efim Belsky, Alexei Antropov, Mina Kolokolnikov and many others.

The artist worked in close contact with architects Francesco Bartolomeo Rastrelli, Mikhail Zemtsov and decorative painter Giuseppe Valeriani, participated in the decoration of the Winter Palace, the Summer Palace and many other royal residences, the Triumphal Gate in Moscow, the Peter and Paul Cathedral in St Petersburg, opera houses, palaces in Peterhof and Tsarskoye Selo.

However, not much of the artist’s vast legacy, the result of thirty years of untiring creative activity, has survived to the present day. All the more valuable are the ten surviving portraits in the collections of the Russian Museum, the Tretyakov Gallery, the Museum of Vasily Tropinin and Moscow Artists of His Time, art museums in Tver and Rybinsk.

In addition, it is planned to present seventeen restored paintings by Ivan Vishnyakov from the iconostasis of the Holy Trinity Cathedral, painted in 1755 together with Dmitry Mikhailov (Russian Museum). The fully preserved iconostasis of the Holy Trinity Cathedral (27 icons) is a unique example of 18th-century monumental painting.

Age restriction: 0+