Portrait of a nobleman, half-length, in a blue velvet jacket and white stock, wearing the sash of the Order of Saint Stanislaus and a red mantle, before a draped curtain

We are grateful to Ludmila A. Markina of the State Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow, for confirming the attribution to Johann Batpist Lampi the Elder, praising this work as a particularly fine and characteristic example of his portraiture (personal communication, 31 May 2013). Trained in Salzburg and Verona, Lampi became the preferred portraitist of two Imperial courts, and one royal -- those of Vienna, Saint Petersburg and Warsaw, respectively. With the death of his Russian patroness, Catherine the Great, Lampi brought to a close a long and lucrative period in the Russian capital and returned to Vienna in 1797, where he was ennobled by Francis II, thereafter signing his work 'eques' (knight), as here. Dated 1804, this portrait must have been painted in Vienna, but represents a knight of the Order of Saint Stanislaus, established in 1765 by the other of Lampi's great monarchic supporters, Stanislaw August, last King of Poland. The sitter is therefore most likely to be an important figure of either the Polish or the Russian court, as many of the latter were also awarded the Order by the Polish King. It has been suggested that it may be Prince Nicholas Borisovich Yusupov, possibly the richest man in Russia, entrusted with a number of important diplomatic missons and administrative posts, including, from 1796-1799, the directorship of the Hermitage. Yusupov was close both to Lampi and to King Stanislaw August, and was portrayed by Lampi several times circa 1795, almost invariably wearing the Saint Stanislaus as his only decoration; he is known to have undertaken an extended trip in Europe in first decade of the nineteenth-century, and may have been in Vienna in 1803-1804.