This is one of the first photographs of Leo Tolstoy. It was taken in the photo studio of Karl Peter Mazer, a Swedish artist and photographer. The daguerreotype method was the earliest and cheapest photographic technology that relied on reactions of silver iodine. The pictures taken using this process look more like a reflection in a mirror than a photo.

At the beginning of 1851, Mazer opened a daguerreotype establishment in the house of Lanskaya, which was located in Gazetny, now Kamergersky Lane. Leo Tolstoy and his older brother, Nikolai, came there to get their photo taken when Nikolai came home for vacation from the active army in the Caucasus. There are different versions of when exactly the picture was taken.

It remains unclear as to the date of this picture. In a letter to his nanny, Tatiana Yergolskaya, dated May 8, Tolstoy asked if she had received the portraits and if she liked them. Meanwhile, Tolstoy’s sister wrote to him on March 3 of the same year that she had received a portrait of him with his brother Nikolai:

In this picture, Leo Tolstoy is depicted sitting with a cane in his hands. His gaze is piercing, somewhat restless. Leo Tolstoy is 22 years old in this photo. He had already dropped out of university and started writing the short story “Childhood”, which would soon be published in the “Sovremennik” magazine. The young Tolstoy was fond of gambling and could barely pay off his debts, so he accepted Nikolai’s invitation to go to the Caucasus with him.