The portrait of Elizaveta Ksaveryevna Vorontsova by the famous Austrian artist and engraver Josef Eduard Teltscher is a jewel in the art collection of the National Pushkin Museum.
The portrait depicts the daughter of Count
Franciszek Ksawery Branicki and Alexandra von Engelhardt (Potemkin’s niece). In
1819, Elizaveta married a war hero, future Governor-General of Novorossiya and
Viceroy of Bessarabia, Count Mikhail Semyonovich Vorontsov. According to
Vladimir Alexandrovich Sollogub,
Elizaveta Ksaveryevna was… one of the most perfect women of her time. Her whole being was imbued with such a soft, charming, feminine grace, such affability, such rigorous panache that it is clearly understandable how people like Pushkin… Raevsky and many, many others madly fell in love with Vorontsova…
During his stay in Odesa, Alexander Pushkin often visited her salon. The prominent literary critic Georgy Makogonenko believed that Vorontsova and Pushkin’s love story was “a myth created by the Pushkinists.” Nevertheless, it is understood that the poems “All’s Finished: You and I Are Fractured…” (1824), “A Burnt Letter” (1825), “Thirst for Glory” (1825) and others were dedicated to Elizaveta Vorontsova. Before the poet’s expulsion from Odesa, Elizaveta gave him a ring. Pushkin is depicted with it in the famous portrait by Vasily Tropinin. Two poems by Pushkin are associated with this gift. One of them is a well-known masterpiece — “Guard Me, My Talisman” (1825). The other — “Talisman” — was written two years later, in 1827.
Countess Vorontsova also presented the poet with her portrait in a gold medallion. Perhaps the lines written in 1824 in Mikhaylovskoye reference this gift:It is crowned with the
love of beauty
It keeps her features locked in treasured gold
And secret
letters, a reward of great affliction,
But in the quiet hours of painful
separation
Nothing, not a thing can please my eyes,
And not a single gift
of my beloved,
The holy pledge of love, the joy of tender sadness —
Cannot
heal the wounds of mad, hopeless adoration.
Point your smartphone camera to open in the app
