Portrait of A.I. Novikova (? )

A.I. Novikova — almost certainly no relation to the Novikov imprisoned by Catherine II — was painted by Levitzky in 1794 in what was nearly the final year of his active productivity. The Hermitage canvas is a late-career work produced as the Catherinian era was drawing to a close: in 1794 the empress was in her sixty-fifth year and the world Levitzky had painted since the 1760s was beginning its final transformation. His female portraits of the 1790s show a slight loosening of the tight technical control of his mature period, not a deterioration but a mature simplification — the artist arriving at what is essential. Novikova's portrait represents this last phase, when Levitzky's enormous experience allowed him to produce compelling likenesses with apparently less effort than the laboriously finished canvases of his middle period.

Oil on canvas showing Levitzky's late-career simplification: the face is still carefully modeled but peripheral elements are handled with less finish than in earlier work. The palette retains his characteristic warmth but the brushwork is slightly broader, more confident, less concerned with meticulous surface completion.