Mar 5, 2024
A full-length portrait of Nicholas I of Russia in 1802. By Pietro Labruzzi.
The bust on the right of the image is inscribed with ‘Alexander the first, of all of the Russian Empire’, referring to Nicholas’ elder brother Alexander I (Emperor of Russia 1801-1825).
Dressed in traditional Greek dress, Nicholas wears Greece’s blue and white national colours. His type of trousers, gilet and slippers were likely commissioned to commemorate the establishment of the oligarchic Septinsular Republic under nominal Russian and Ottoman sovereignty in the Ionian Islands in 1800.
(Drouot)