The portrait of Nun Olga Talanova is ascribed to an unknown artist who was a pupil of the first provincial school of painting in Russia. As a rule, identification of authorship of works created by the artists of the Stupin School of painting is regarded to be a really challenging task. It is actually a nearly impossible feat because as a rule, an author was a serf. A lot of their works still remain nameless even nowadays. A serf painter was devoid of the majority of civil rights, including the authorship, so he could not sign a painting with his name. 

In 1802, in the city of Arzamas, Nizhny Novgorod Governorate, artist Alexander Stupin founded a school of painting. It was a rare example of implementation of the academic model of art education in a county town. Stupin’s initiative helped spread professional art education throughout Russian provinces. As Pyotr Kornilov, an art historian and bibliophile wrote, an educational institution was “the only hotbed of artistic knowledge for serf talents.” Artworks of the Arzamas school graduates made a significant contribution to development of domestic art in the early-mid of the 19th century.