Page:Benois - The Russian School of Painting (1916).djvu/44

 and glow, the whole outward "manner of living" of the beau-monde of his time, and at the same time he created a series of superb specimens of painting, hardly inferior in their technical perfection to the best works of Western schools. One easily identifies Levitzky's works in a mass of other paintings by the totally peculiar "keenness" of the eyes of the persons presented, by their wholly distinct, slightly mocking smile, and finally, by the celebrated mastery with which silks, laces and jewels are painted. This son of a provincial clergyman, who received a wholly practical artistic education in the studio of Antropov and under the guidance of Valeriani, must have been possessed of an unusual artistic temperament to assimilate to such a degree all the splendours of the technique of the most brilliant epoch in the history of European painting. True, he was a native of the Government of Kiev, i. e., of that part of Russia where Western culture was implanted long before its appearance in Muscovy, and where it had had time to get more firmly rooted. Yet, in the matter of art, Southern Russia in the eighteenth century was not favourably distinguished from the middle and northern sections. The local engraving school, of which Levitzky's father was a representative, presents almost no artistic interest, as it was a poor imitation of German etching; and to consider such an accomplished