Portrait of S. S. Yakovleva Ivan Vishnyakov 1699-1761 After 1756 Oil on canvas 90.5 x 72 cm This is the young wife of Mikhail Yakovlev, son of the rich St. Petersburg merchant S. Y. Yakovlev, who commissioned one of the leading artists of the time to paint a pair of portraits of the young couple. The youth and ingenuousness of the subject are striking. Some constraint in the representation of the body, the flattened dress, and precisely conveyed details, reveal Vishnyakov's links with the traditions of 17th-century Russian art.