Vishniakov, Ivan

Born 1699; died Aug. 8 (19), 1761, in St. Petersburg. Russian painter.

In 1727, Vishniakov became a pupil and apprentice of L. Karavak in the Bureau of Construction and from 1739 headed its “painters team,” which did the wall and ceiling paintings in palaces and churches of St. Petersburg and its environs. In his portraits (for example, of S. E. Fermor, c. 1750, Russian Museum, Leningrad, and of F. N. Golitsyn, 1760, Tret’iakov Gallery) the conventional postures and gestures of the formal portraits of the early 18th century are combined with a lively portrayal of the models’ characteristics; the flatness of the figures, which stems from the 17th-century parsuna (portrait), is combined with subtle colors in the rococo spirit.