The article is devoted to the history of the creation of one of the most famous images of the Russian Field Marshal General G.A. Potemkin‑Tavricheski by the Austrian artist J. B. von Lampi the Elder (since the 1940s, the portrait has been kept in the State Hermitage Museum). The author examines in detail the circumstances of the artist’s arrival in the autumn of 1791 in the capital of the Moldavian Principality, the city of Iași, where G.A. Potemkin’s military headquarters were located during the Russo Turkish War of 1787–1791, and later in St. Petersburg. It is shown that the literature contains different views on the year in which and the location where the Austrian master painted the portrait of the Russian military leader. A solution to this issue is proposed on the basis of a wide range of sources, some of which are being introduced into scholarly circulation for the first time. It is noted that although J.B. von Lampi could have found G.A. Potemkin alive, he in fact arrived in Iași after the death of the field marshal general. It is argued that in Iași J.B. von Lampi painted a small posthumous portrait of G.A. Potemkin (probably on the initiative of the head of the field marshal’s diplomatic chancellery, Baron K.Ya. Bühler), which eventually served as a sketch for the canvas later (most likely in the mid–1790s) commissioned from the artist by A.N. Samoilov, the nephew of the deceased. It is emphasized that the assistance in J.B. von Lampi’s arrival in Iași, provided by the Chancellor of the Holy Roman Empire, Prince V.A. Kaunitz‑Rietberg, at the request of G.A. Potemkin, should be considered within the framework of the allied relations between the Russian and Holy Roman Empires and the cultural ties between the two powers.
G.A. Potemkin‑Tauricheski; J.B. von Lampi the Elder; Catherine II; K.Ya. Bühler; A.N. Samoylov; V.A. Kaunitz‑Rietberg; Iași; post‑mortem portrait; State Hermitage Museum.