Portrait of Pyotr Ivanovich Potemkin (1617-1700), who served under Alexey Mikhailovich, Feodor III, Ivan V and Peter I, by Godfrey Kneller, English painter at the court of three English kings: Charles II, William III and George I
Potemkin was, one might say, a diplomat by inheritance: his grandfather had been one of the envoys to Poland as early as 1584, while Pyotr Ivanovich himself served at various times on diplomatic missions in Spain, Italy, France, Holland, England and Denmark.
Godfrey Kneller, a portraitist immensely popular with his contemporaries, painted very fast and, as is the way with great masters, put his own brush to his works only in part: he usually executed the head or merely the face, while everything else was finished by his pupils.
