拍品專文
The present lot is a copy after the painting by Mikhail Shibanov (active second half 18th Century) of 1787, now in the Russian Museum, St. Petersburg. Dated 1797, the present picture is a posthmous portrait of Catherine II, who had died the year before in 1796. Drozhdin had begun his studies in the icon painting workshop of the Troitso-Sergeev Monastery, then under A.P. Antropov in St. Petersburg, and was later a student of D.G. Levitskii. He was accepted into the Academy of Arts in 1776, and elected Academician in 1785. His use of an established prototype seems to have been a standard working practice for the artist; portraits by him are known of Paul I and his wife, Maria Feodorovna, as well as of Catherine II from 1787 and 1788, all of which are versions of prototypes by Shibanov.