
Wikimedia Commons • Public Domain
Jean-Marc Nattier completed this portrait of Prince Alexander Kurakin in 1728, capturing the Russian nobleman in the elegant Rococo style that made Nattier the most fashionable portraitist of eighteenth-century France. The oil on canvas measures 64 by 48 centimeters.
Prince Alexander Kurakin (1697-1749) was a Russian diplomat and nobleman who spent time in France during the reign of Louis XV. Nattier was renowned for his flattering and elegant depictions of his sitters, often portraying ladies of the French court in classical mythological attire. This portrait demonstrates his ability to capture aristocratic refinement in male subjects as well.
In 1715, Nattier had traveled to Amsterdam to paint Peter the Great and Empress Catherine, declining an invitation to relocate permanently to Russia. The portrait of Kurakin entered the State Hermitage Museum in 1923 via the State Museum Fund from the collection of S.V. Panina in Petrograd.

Claude Monet
State Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg

Leonardo da Vinci
State Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg

Rembrandt van Rijn
State Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg

Tintoretto
State Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg
Other masterpieces from the Rococo movement

Jean-Honoré Fragonard, 1767
Wallace Collection, London

Thomas Gainsborough, 1770
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François Boucher, 1752
Alte Pinakothek, Munich

Joshua Reynolds, 1776
National Gallery, London

Jean-Honoré Fragonard, 1770
National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.

Thomas Gainsborough, 1787
National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.

François Boucher, 1742
Louvre, Paris, Paris

Jean-Antoine Watteau, 1719
Louvre, Paris, Paris
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