(Rome 1755–1831)
Portrait of Prince Sergei Fjodorowitsch Galitzin (1749–1810),
oil on canvas, 53.5 x 42.5 cm, framed

Provenance:
Private Collection, Austria.

Certificate by Sergei A. Podstanitsky, 9 September 2021 is available on request.

We are grateful to Dr. Olga Sugrobova-Roth for her scholarly advice.

Giovanni Battista Damon Ortolani studied in Rome with Domenico Corvi and then in Florence. From 1787 he was a member of the Accademia di Belle Arti Florentine. From the early 1800s he worked in Moscow and produced a number of important portraits of the Russian aristocracy.

The distinguished military Prince Sergei Fedorovich Galitzin (1749-1810) wears a uniform of the Preobrazhensky Regiment of the Life Guards and the mantle of the Order of St Andrew (the Order was awarded to him in 1802) with the Cross of the Order of St George II Class (awarded in 1791). On the table are the insignia of the Orders of St Stanislaus (1787), St Vladimir I Class (1794), St Alexander Nevsky (1792), St John of Jerusalem, the Polish White Eagle (1787) and St Anne I Class. The armchair bears the coat of arms of the Dukes of Galitzin.

The present lot is a preparatory work for a large portrait of the Prince, which was located in Zubrilovka, the Prince’s country estate in the province of Penza and was destroyed during the Russian Revolution of 1905. Another portrait of S. F. Galitzin (in civilian clothes) by Damon-Ortolani is in Moscow in the museum of V. A. Tropinin and the Moscow artists of his time (inv. Ж-13).