Portrait of Sergei Volkonsky

Sergei Volkonsky was one of the Decembrist conspirators who attempted to overthrow Nicholas I in December 1825, and Tropinin painted him in 1824, a year before the failed uprising that would consign Volkonsky to Siberian exile for thirty years. The portrait thus captures a man on the cusp of a transformative historical moment — the young prince in the last months of his ancien régime existence before the events that would define him in Russian cultural memory. Tropinin, who moved in similar Moscow noble circles without sharing his sitters' political radicalism, painted Volkonsky as a young aristocrat of military bearing and assured social confidence, unaware that within a year this sitter would be leading an armed revolt. The Hermitage's holding of the canvas gives it institutional weight as a document of Russian Romantic-era portraiture.

Oil on canvas with the young prince's military dress providing the formal vocabulary. Tropinin renders the uniform and decorations with his characteristic warm palette, differentiating the metallic surfaces of orders and buttons from the matte fabric of the coat and the luminous skin of the face.