Fyodor Rokotov. Portrait of Catherine II

Fyodor Rokotov painted this oval portrait of Catherine II in Moscow in 1786. The empress is shown in an ermine mantle, with a laurel wreath in her hair and wearing the insignia of orders.

Rokotov (1735/36–1808) was a portrait painter of the age of Catherine the Great. In 1763 he was invited to Moscow to paint Catherine II's coronation portrait. The empress liked it so much that she ordered that her likenesses be painted from Rokotov's originals from then on.

In 1765 the artist became an academician of the Imperial Academy of Arts, and at the end of 1766 he moved from St Petersburg to Moscow, where he lived for the rest of his life. The portrait of 1786 belongs to this Moscow period of his work.