The mosaic portrait was executed in the workshop of M. V. Lomonosov, who in the second half of the 1740s began working as a glass technologist and mosaic artist. Having discovered mosaics in the St. Sophia Cathedral of Kiev and the temples of Novgorod, the scientist for many years was looking for the secret of making smalt – colored glassy masses of various shades. In Russia, this secret was lost, and in Western Europe it was kept secret.
In the first in Russia chemical laboratory organized by him, Lomonosov developed the technology and equipment for the production of smalt, and from the beginning of the 1750s began to practice creatively. In the Koporsky district near Oranienbaum, near the Ruditsa river, they established a glass-making Ust-Ruditsky factory, which produced its first artistic products in 1754.
For the set, Lomonosov used the smalts of a rather large size – up to 2 cm. The mosaic portrait of Elizaveta Petrovna is distinguished by its exquisite polychrome, the texture of objects, the softness of fabrics are brilliantly conveyed. The moire ribbon of the Order of St. Andrew the First-Called consists of blue, azure, blue smalts, wonderfully matched by sound.
Elizaveta Petrovna – Russian Empress since 1741. The younger daughter of Peter I and his second wife Catherine Alekseevna, nee Martha Skavronskaya, from 1725 – Empress Catherine I.
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