In 1764 Catherine II issued a decree to establish a school in St. Petersburg for girls from aristocratic families — the Smolny Institute, a boarding school for young ladies, the first ever educational establishment for women in Russia. It was the Empress’s pet project reflecting important ideas of Europe’s Age of Enlightenment. The tsarina hoped that educated young ladies would help reform the environment in their families and among friends, soften public mores and create ‘a new breed of people’.

The Smolny School prepared the daughters of the nobility for life in society and service at the court. Admitted at six, the girls stayed in school for 12 years, and parents had to give a written pledge not to claim their daughters back before the end of the term. The Smolny students were taught foreign languages, etiquette, to sing and to play musical instruments. They danced and acted in theatrical performances.

In the 1770s, the Empress commissioned artist Dmitry Levitsky to paint a series of portraits. His sitters were the best students of the Smolny School. All of the girls were painted full length and life size. Almost all of the Smolny girls wear theatrical or allegorical costumes, which is another thing common to the series. Abstract landscapes and backdrops add to the feeling that the female characters are on a theatrical stage.

On the right is Feodosia Rzhevskaya, the daughter of Lieutenant-General Stepan Rzhevsky. She is in a dark blue dress worn by the Smolny students of the “second age group”, i.e. aged from nine to twelve. Feodosia was one of the best students graduating from the boarding school with Catherine II’s monogram (‘cipher’), a bejeweled mark of distinction worn by ladies-in-waiting.

Nastasia Davydova on the left is a Georgian princess. Her father was Major-General Mikhail Davydov, governor of Tambov. The girl is wearing a brown dress, the uniform of girls in the ‘first age group’ — six to nine. She could be the same Princess Davydova who is known to have acted in the Tambov theatre in the 1780s.

The portraits of Smolny students were kept at the imperial palace at Peterhof. In 1917, the series was transferred to the Russian Museum. The paintings turned out to be in a poor state, with the canvases being damp and the backs mouldy.