Portrait of a Child with a Fiddle


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Unknown artist of the mid-XVIII century



Portrait of a Child with a Fiddle

Oil on canvas. 88 õ 67,5




SRM
Inv. Æ-10077

Received in 1979 from DCSS (KGB), Leningrad; earlier in the collection of I.S.Osipov, Leningrad.
Pair-portrait to the «Portrait of a Child with a Dog» (SRM. Inv. Æ-10076).
The last owner thought the children of the Earl P.I.Yaguzhinsky to be portrayed on these two paintings. However, this is unlikely. P.I.Yaguzhinsky in his first marriage (broke off in 1724) had two daughters and a son, who died in his babyhood, and three daughters in his second marriage. It is hard to identify the sex of the sitters, because in the XVIII century boys and girls up-to the age of 2-3 wore the same kind of dress. We can only guess about it using the minor signs. Thus, a child with a fiddle must be a boy, as far as in the XVIII century the fiddle was a «male» instrument, while a child with a flower and a dog is presumably a girl. Some specific details of the cut of the dress as well as some technical and technological features permit to date this portrait mid-XVIII century. And so the proposal, that the portrayed are the children of Cabinet-Minister Yaguzhinsky, who died in 1736, lacks significant arguments.






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