The Fate of Beauties Based on Famous Portraits by Russian Artists

Lopukhin and Maria’s marriage was unhappy. The couple had no children, and just five years after painting the picture, Lopukhina died of consumption. Since then, the painting has had a bad reputation: it was said that anyone who looked at it would also soon die. It was even rumored that the girl’s father, Ivan Tolstoy, a famous mystic, had transferred the girl’s soul into the portrait. At one time, the painting was kept away from human eyes in order to protect itself from misfortune, until Tretyakov himself found it.

“She has neither rivals nor friends,
Our pale circle of beauties
“He disappears in his brilliance…” wrote Alexander Pushkin. But the poem is not dedicated to the heroine of the painting, Giovanni Pacini, but to his mother, Yulia Samoilova.

Reproductions of Bryullov’s vibrant canvas hung in every apartment. The painting was commissioned by Yulia Samoilova, the artist’s longtime mistress – her name is written on the dog’s collar.
Samoilova’s first marriage failed and after her husband’s death she moved to Italy. Briullov followed her. There Julia became the mistress of the famous composer Giovanni Pacini. Her daughters, Amazilia (the youngest) and Giovanina, became her adopted children. It is curious that, according to the documents, the composer had only one daughter…
Yulia Samoilova died in poverty in Paris and the fate of her students is unknown.

The artist painted this picture in the midst of a terrible illness: a spinal cord tumor. As a model, Kustodiev invited the famous Moscow Art Theater actress Faina Shevchenko to pose for him. Theater critic Markov wrote about her at the time: “Dazzling in simplicity, brilliant, filled inside, with a powerful temperament and an open heart.”

In response to an offer to pose nude, even for a famous artist, the actress exclaimed: “What are you talking about! I, an actress of the Art Theater, will sit naked?! And then thousands of people will see me, what a pity!” But she eventually agreed.

In the photo, the exhausted merchant’s wife lies on a bed among down pillows. At the exhibition, the model and the artist met again. Shevchenko noted: “Very big!” The artist replied: “What is it?” And kissed her hand.
Faina played many roles in film and theatre and died at a very old age.

What they didn’t say about this portrait, what assumptions they made! A beautiful woman, alone, stares with defiance and disdain. Nothing but a kept woman.
And yet, the most likely hypothesis as to who posed for the master is Sophia, the daughter of Ivan Kramskoy.

Very little is known about her, only one thing is certain: “unreliable”, repressed.
Sophia was a talented artist and was her father’s favorite model since childhood. Vera Tretyakova, the same age as Sonya, remembers her: “Sonya was ugly, but with an intelligent face, energetic, lively, cheerful and unusually gifted in painting… At the age of 16-17, Sonya became prettier, her hair became longer. Her figure became long and slender. She danced beautifully. Her cheerfulness, wit and charm attracted many admirers to her.

When the time came, Sonya fell in love with the young doctor Sergei Botkin. Things were heading towards marriage, when, literally the day before, Sergei broke off the engagement and married Sofia’s friend Sasha Tretyakova. Sophia remained alone for a long time, enduring the betrayal of her beloved, and married, only after becoming a famous artist, at the age of 35, with lawyer Georgy Juncker. Unfortunately, most of the paintings did not survive after the Civil War and the revolution. Due to the fact that after the revolution, Sofya Kramskaya helped some of her acquaintances from the old nobility, she was arrested in 1930 and accused of counter-revolutionary propaganda. She was sent to prison, and although a year later Sofya Kramskaya was pardoned, she died a year later.

An angelic-looking child looks at us from Orest Kiprensky’s painting “Girl in a Poppy Wreath”: there is a poppy wreath on her head, a gentle blush on her cheeks, a slight half-smile on her lips… Few people know what really connects the artist and his young model.

The baby’s real name is Anna Maria Falkucci and her nickname is Mariuccia. Kiprensky met her by chance in Italy while looking for a model for the painting “The Tomb of Anacreon”, which was never completed. During his work, the artist became attached to the black-eyed baby, whose sickly beauty deeply touched him. Mariuccia became Orestes’ pupil: he actually bought her from her mother, who was involved in prostitution.

Kiprensky and Mariuccia separated when the artist left Rome in a scandal: the man was accused of the murder of his model. He paid for Anna-Maria’s stay at the Refuge of the Restless: the girl lived there for 15 years, until Orestes returned to Italy. He found her and proposed to marry the now adult girl, and Mariuccia accepted. The marriage lasted only a short time: three months later, the artist died of pneumonia.

Anna Maria gave birth to a daughter, Clotilde, shortly after his death. A few years later, Mariuccia left Rome: her new husband took her to his hometown. According to historians, after this, “all ties between the compatriots and the widow and daughter of Kiprensky were broken forever.”

The painting depicts Elizaveta Mikhailovna Martynova, born in 1868 in St. Petersburg in the family of a doctor. Since childhood, Elizaveta attended painting classes and dreamed of becoming a professional artist. At the age of 22, this became possible: in 1980, women were for the first time allowed to take entrance exams to the Imperial Academy of Arts.

Few became students – after the first class, only 14 students and volunteers entered the Academy, including Martynova. During her studies, she met Konstantin Somov, who painted her portrait.

Already during the creation of “Lady in Blue”, Martynova began to be treated for consumption: her pale skin and dark circles under her eyes showed that the girl was not feeling well. The canvas was painted slowly – due to Elizaveta’s illness, Somov was forced to take long breaks. At the same time, Martynova became a model for another artist: Philip Malyavin began to paint “The Sick Woman” with Martynova in the guise of a sick woman in bed.

Martynova asked Somov not to sell the portrait – when the artist received an offer from the Tretyakov Gallery, she wrote: “Tonight I woke up and did not sleep because of a boring and painful thought: I posed for you for you, for pure art, and not for you. They received money for my sadness in my eyes, for my soul and suffering.

Somov did not listen to Elizabeth’s opinion: in 1903 he sold the painting – it is still in the Tretyakov Gallery in Moscow. Elizabeth died in 1905 – she was only 27 years old.

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