Portrait of Princess Ekaterina Romanovna Dashkova

Ludwig Philipp Tischbein (1744–1806) (?)

Partial repetition of the painting by Dmitry Levitsky (1735–1822). 1780s (?). Oil on canvas

The portrait of Princess Ekaterina Dashkova is a partial repetition of the portrait painted by Dmitry Levitsky around 1784, which was commissioned after Dashkova’s designation as the director of the Russian Academy of Sciences. In the picture, Dashkova is wearing an Order of St. Catherine uniform, and a token of friendship and countenance from Empress Catherine II: a portrait-miniature of the empress, attached to a blue moire bow, decorated with diamonds.
The same attire and orders are present in the picture displayed in the Kadriorg Museum, but the face differs considerably. Levitsky’s portrait depicts a beautiful, fairly young woman; Tischbein’s portrait shows a lady at a more mature age, with features less consistent with the classical ideal of beauty, which, in fact, coincides more with the descriptions that Dashkova’s contemporaries wrote of her appearance. The portrait used to belong to descendants of Dashkova’s, and was displayed at the 1905 exhibition “Historical Portraits” at the Tauride Palace in St. Petersburg; the catalogue of the exhibition states that Dashkova’s contemporaries considered the portrait to be very true-to-life. After the revolution of 1917, the portrait had no owner, and arrived in Estonia among other works of art purchased by the State Treasury.