The role of portrait accent in the creative approach of V. L. Borovikovsky in the 1790s

The article is devoted to the consideration of two works by V.L. Borovikovsky – “Portrait of E.N. Arsenieva” and “Portrait of Skobeeva”. Comparative analysis of these portraits is almost always present in monographic studies about the artist, but it seems insufficiently detailed: the historiographical tradition is marked by the definition of external differences in the images but lacks the identification of their artistic features. The aim of the article is to compare two paintings with obvious similarities in order to identify the accents of portrait characteristic in the master’s work, demonstrating the variation of his artistic canon in the second half of the 1790s, which determines the relevance of the study. The main conclusion of the study is the statement about the variability of the artistic canon in the work of V.L. Borovikovsky in the 1790s, who within the framework of one strict compositional scheme implies different accents of portrait characteristic depending on the appearance, character and biography of the model.

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