Portrait de Maria Iermolova

Serov painted this in 1905, the year Russia erupted in revolution, and his sitter was no accident: Maria Yermolova, the tragic star of Moscow's Maly Theatre, whom the radical young had long treated almost as a figure of conscience. The portrait was commissioned to mark 35 years since her stage debut and paid for by the city's writers and artists. Serov set her standing in black, seen slightly from below so she rises like a column, with a mirror behind catching the room. She posed for 32 sittings in her house on Tverskoy Boulevard. There is nothing of the theatre in the picture, no costume and no grand gesture, only a woman holding herself very still and very straight.