Alexander Ivanov

Alexander Andreyevich Ivanov (1806–1858) was born in St Petersburg, the son of the art professor Andrey Ivanov. He entered the Imperial Academy of Arts at eleven, studying in his father's class alongside Karl Bryullov, and won the Academy's Big Gold Medal in 1827. In 1830 he left for Germany and then Italy, and he spent most of the rest of his life in Rome, where he befriended Gogol and was influenced by the Nazarenes. He held to the waning tradition of Neoclassicism and found little sympathy among his contemporaries. His Christ appearing to Mary Magdalene, finished in 1835, was a success in both Rome and St Petersburg and earned him an honorary academic degree. He then gave twenty years to The Appearance of Christ Before the People, and many of the sketches he made for it are now valued as works in their own right. He died of cholera in St Petersburg in 1858. Here: Christ's Appearance to Mary Magdalene after the Resurrection.