01 work, PORTRAIT OF A LADY, Christina Robertson's Princess Zinaida Nikolayevna Yusupova, with Footnotes. #133

Christina Robertson

Princess Zinaida Nikolayevna Yusupova, c.1840

Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow, Russia

Princess Zinaida Nikolayevna Yusupova (2 September 1861 – 24 November 1939) was an Imperial Russian noblewoman, the only heiress of Russia's largest private fortune of her time. Famed for her beauty and the lavishness of her hospitality, she was a leading figure in pre-Revolutionary Russian society. In 1882, she married Count Felix Felixovich Sumarokov-Elston, who served briefly as General Governor of Moscow (1914–1915). Zinaida is best known as the mother of Prince Felix Yusupov, the murderer of Rasputin. She escaped revolutionary Russia and spent her remaining years living in exile. 

There was an old belief about the curse of the Yusupov clan. Their ancestors - the sons of the Tatar Murza Yusuf even in the time of the Golden Horde converted to Orthodoxy and were cursed for apostasy. According to the curse, of all those born in the same generation of the Yusupovs, only one will survive to twenty-six years, and this will continue until the complete destruction of the clan. It came true rigorously. No matter how many children the Yusupovs were born, only one survived to twenty-six. More on Princess Zinaida Nikolayevna Yusupova

Christina Robertson RSA or Christina Saunders (17 December 1796 – 30 April 1854) was a Scottish artist who became a Russian court painter. She was the first woman honorary member of the Royal Scottish Academy.
Sanders was a successful portrait painter and she rapidly established a flow of commissions initially from Scottish patrons for her miniatures but later for oil and watercolour paintings. By 1823 she was married to James Robertson and exhibiting at the Royal Academy. The following year she became the first honorary woman member of the Royal Scottish Academy.

She worked in Paris in the mid 1830s and she was tempted to St Petersburg. Robertson was in St Petersburg from 1839 to 1841 where she carried out full length painting of Empress Alexandra and her three daughters - Maria, Olga and Alexandra. In 1841 she was made an honorary member of the Imperial Academy of Arts.

Robertson died in Saint Petersburg. More on Christina Robertson

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