Portrait du jeune prince N. B. Ioussoupov

In 1851 the young prince Nikolai Yusupov sat for this portrait, and he wanted to be seen as thoroughly modern. He was 24, heir to one of the richest families in Russia, and he posed as a fashionable dandy in a London-cut tail-coat, snow-white shirt and spotless waistcoat, one arm draped over an armchair in his study. The painter was Vincenzo Petrocelli, a Neapolitan, which places the sitting in Italy, where wealthy Russians travelled and had themselves painted. Tsar Nicholas I liked the result enough to buy it for the imperial collection. Nikolai turned out to be the last man of the ancient Yusupov line, which carried on only through his daughters.