- Foreign artist continued to paly a prominent role in court portraiture

- Vigilious Eriksen: Danish artist 

- Picture of Grigory Orlov, in Roman costume

- He was a lover of the Empress Catherine the Great and one of her

  closest advisors.

- The ortraits are oil on large canvases and are known to us chiefly from

   black and white reproductions.

- In 1766, Catherine the Great ordered the first Russian carousel, an

  imitation of the exhibitions of horseback riding

- These portraits hung in the Winter Palace until the reign of Paul I began

  in 1796. They were stored in warehouses for many years, were sent to  

  the Court Stable Chancellery in 1827 and found their way to the

  Gatchina Palace in 1833.

- After World War II they were stored in the Central Warehouse of

  Museum Holdings at the Hermitage.