The Portrait of the Grand Duchess Elena Pavlovna in her childhood by Dmytro Levytsky

The aim of the article is to clarify the attribution of the portrait of Grand Duchess Elena Pavlovna in her childhood by an outstanding Ukrainian artist Dmytro Levytsky. The issue of expert attribution of the work from the collection of the Kyiv Picture Gallery National Museum is specified.The creative manner of D. Levytsky has been analyzed, his technique of an artistic portraying of the person and his authorship has been proved. The emphasis was made on artist’s approach to plastic modeling, processing light, shadowing, coloring, and glazing. The change in the name of the portrait is justified, given the well-known iconography of the daughters of Paul I—the Grand Duchesses Alexandra, Elena, Maria and Catherine.Portrait images of the Romanov gallery, presented in Ukrainian art collections, now require a thorough study and refinement of attribution, since during the last 100 years they were on the periphery of domestic art studies. In this connection, the inheritance of the national artist Dmytro Levytsky, the son of the prominent Ukrainian engraver of the Baroque era, Grygory Levytsky-Nos, is especially important. A comprehensive analysis of the portrait of the Grand Duchess Elena Pavlovna from the Kyiv Picture Gallery National Museum confirms the affiliation of Dmitry Levytsky’s paintings.