Portrait of Alexander Kokorinov

Alexander Filippovich Kokorinov was the founding rector of the Imperial Academy of Arts in Saint Petersburg, the institution that Levitzky himself attended and where he later taught. The 1769 portrait of Kokorinov, held at the Russian Museum, is one of Levitzky's earliest major works and already demonstrates the full command that would define his career. Kokorinov was both architect — he designed the Academy's building on Vasilievsky Island in collaboration with de la Mothe — and the first director of the institution that would train Russian artists for the next two centuries. The portrait thus commemorates a foundational figure of Russian art education at the hands of one of his most distinguished students, a coincidence that gives the canvas exceptional art-historical resonance. Kokorinov's subsequent fate was tragic: dismissed amid financial irregularities, he died in apparent despair in 1772, just three years after Levitzky painted him at the height of his institutional power.

Oil on canvas in the grand-manner portrait tradition, Levitzky demonstrating the European training he received partly under Kokorinov's own institutional auspices. The large format accommodates the architectural plan or document that Kokorinov holds, an attribute referencing his role as architect and administrator. The palette is more firmly controlled than in later female portraits, with cooler overall tones appropriate to an official academic subject.