Sergey Ivanovich Makovey was born in 1951 in Kostroma. In 1973, he graduated from the Art and Graphic Faculty of the Nekrasov Kostroma State Pedagogical Institute, three years later he began taking part in exhibitions.

The artist taught at the Kostroma Architectural College, and worked in the Kostroma branch of the art fund of the Union Russiaт Artists. According to his biographical reference, he was Kostroma’s leading artist, and later became a “free artist”.

In 1999, Sergey Makovey created the first private art gallery in Kostroma called “Perpetuum Art”. During the seven years of the gallery’s existence, Makovey organized 80 exhibitions of artists, sculptors, photographers from different Russian cities.

In his work, Sergey Makovey often turned to the works of famous masters of the past and gave them a modern spin. Thus, the work “Italian Reminiscences” contains references to the works of great Italian artists: Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo Buonarroti, Piero della Francesca, and Sandro Botticelli. Makovey came up with the idea for the painting during his trip to Europe in 1985.

The artist recalled:

Since Sergey Makovey was a student, he admired the frescoes of Piero della Francesca and was infatuated with them. So in his “Italian Reminiscences” he, among other things, turned to the famous Renaissance pair portrait “The Duke and Duchess of Urbino Federico da Montefeltro and Battista Sforza”, also known as the “Urbino Diptych” by Piero della Francesca.

In the right part of the “Reminiscences” Sergey Makovey depicted a portrait of Federiko da Montefeltro — the duke of Urbino, and in the left — a generalized portrait of his wife Battista Sforza. Besides that, the left part of the pair portrait shows the columns of the Temple of Castor and Pollux — the oldest temple of the Roman Forum, at the top is the wing of Leonardo da Vinci’s aircraft and a fragment of Michelangelo Buonarroti’s sculpture “Night”.