Dmitry G. Levitsky takes pride of place in Russian portraiture of the 18th century. In his works, he masterfully combined the character of the portrait and the spirit of the times. The works belonging to the brush of Dmitry Grigoryevich are vital, colorful and, most often, realistic, they are characterized by color intensity and richness of shades. Dmitry Grigorievich was not only an artist, but also he himself taught classes in the portrait class of the Academy of Arts for 17 years, and was an adviser to the Academy of Arts since 1775.
Dmitry Levitsky made many variations and original copies of the painting ‘Catherine II as Legislator in the Temple of the Goddess of Justice’. It is interesting that the empress herself may never have posed for Dmitry Grigorievich for her portraits. At least, there is no evidence of this. Moreover, she was not the customer of these works. Her state secretary Alexander Andreevich Bezborodko for his new home in St. Petersburg commissioned the allegorical portrait of the empress. However, the metropolitan high-society audience liked him so much that the author was repeatedly asked to reduplicate it.
