Portrait of Lomonosov: description

Mikhail Lomonosov has long been called a textbook personality. Every schoolboy from a young age knows about an outstanding scientist or even about his existence and learns his face in the portrait.

Mikhail Lomonosov: a portrait of a scientist, made by the drawing of Schulze

In the paintings of the XVIII century, paintings with the depiction of people were in great demand. In many respects this was due to the need of people to leave a trace in history and to convey to descendants information about how the outstanding minds of their time looked. Such an individual as an outstanding scientist, a pioneer in many fields of science, an encyclopaedist, poet and just an excellent man with extraordinary physical strength could not do without the attention of artists.

Portrait of Lomonosov all familiar from childhood. Few people know that this familiar image of the scientist has several interpretations and it is sometimes very difficult to discern the hand of the masters. Among the many works of interest to art historians is engraving portrait of Lomonosov, written by M. Schreier on the drawing of his colleague and teacher H. Schulze.

The composition of the work differs little from that of Thessar, but you can see that Schreier brings in a number of interesting details. The scientist does not hold both hands on the table, but sits in an open pose, exposing his chest in a home-like, slovenly caftan. In one hand Mikhail Vasilievich keeps records, and in another pen. His expression betrays an extreme reverie, but one can catch a note of enthusiasm in his eyes. Before the viewer appears a portrait of Lomonosov, who is busy with the thought process and at the same time tries to fix everything carefully on paper. The books open before him lie in a working negligence.

Unexpected fact about engraving

The engraving of Schreier, depicting the portrait of Lomonosov, has one peculiarity over which art historians are still racking their brains. It is assumed that the work is written in the drawing of Schulze, but he was born in 1749, which does not correspond to the date of engraving - the end of the XVIII century. With a detailed examination of the picture, you can see that in the open book in the foreground is the name of Peter I, and not Elizabeth, in the days of which Lomonosov lived. The general composition is stylistically constructed in the spirit of baroque, although the end of the 18th century is considered to be the period when classicism dominated painting. On the basis of these discrepancies in the art world, there is a suggestion that the portrait of Lomonosov's hand Schreyer passed several stages of its development, and the artist himself personally did not contact the scientist. Originally, a portrait of Mikhail Vasilyevich was created, then Schulze made a drawing with him. At the last stage, Schreier created his famous engraving on the grounds of a pencil sketch of his teacher and colleague.

Stylistic features of engraving

The above-mentioned baroque style in the painting, which was not the place in the 18th century, is explained by the artistic technique that came to us from the times of the Roman Empire. Having set as his goal to write an engraving depicting an outstanding scientist, Schulze, and after him, naturally, Schreyer also found a suitable prototype of the painting, where Jean-Jacques Rousseau was portrayed. And, taking it as a basis, they "planted" Lomonosov's head on the thinker's body. It is this fact that explains the stylistic discrepancy in the engraving of Schreier with the canons prevailing in painting at the end of the XVIII century.