Family Lanskoy was born to "a Smolensk military officer" in "an impecunious family of the provincial nobility", where he received a modest education and later became a
Horse Guards officer. Sarah Jaques notes that "Lanskoy had grown up at court as a playmate and schoolmate of Catherine's children—
Grand Duke Paul and
Alexei Bobrinsky, her son with
Gregory Orlov." and have been described as "greedy," were showered with gifts, all with
Grigory Potemkin's approval. Lanskoy's male relatives, which consisted of "his cousins Stepan and Paul, were [promoted] to ensign rank in the
Preobrazhensky Guards" with Potemkin's approval, while his sisters, Elizaveta, Advot'ia and Varvara, the first of which was given a house at
Saint Petersburg, were appointed maids of honor, married high-ranking husbands at ceremonies in court
Vasily Lanskoy, a contemporary statesman four years older than Lanskoy, has been erroneously identified as his brother, however he was his cousin, as his only male sibling was Yakov Dmitrievich, who was older than him. It has been speculated that Petr Lavinskii (1776–1844), a governor general of Eastern Sibera, may have been his nephew through one of his five sisters. Additionally, Lanskoy's cousin, Vasily Lanskoy, was appointed president of the Provisional Highest Council, a temporary government, of the
Duchy of Warsaw in 1813, while Vasily's brother, Dmitrii, served as
governor of Vilno between 1802 and 1804. For her part, his niece, Varvara Yakovlevna Lanskaya, married
Paisi Kaysarov.
Introduction to Catherine At age 22, Lanskoy had requested his transfer to a provincial garrison since he "lacked sufficient funds to keep pace with his brother officers" and doing so would entail lower expenses. However, "[h]is application was rejected at the
College of War by [Grigory] Potemkin himself, who then, surprisingly, appointed the young man his personal aide-de-camp." It was Potemkin, who benefitted from Catherine's stable relationship with Lanskoy by having more time to
annex Crimea and build the
Black Sea Fleet, His tenure as favourite caused "[t]he parade [of favorites to] slow slightly" until his death, becoming the only one to serve till death, and the longest tenure since Orlov.
Virginia Rounding calls him "one of the most successful [choices] Catherine ever made," and mentions that "he seemed to love and respect the Empress as much as she loved him." Massie expands that "his devotion to Catherine was based on her role as his teacher as much as her position as empress." As with most of her favorites, Lanskoy was beneficiary of her "strongly pedagogical streak in seeking to cultivate promising young noblemen of mediocre background,"
As Catherine's favourite Unlike other favourites, Lanskoy did not, or at least attempted to not, involve himself in politics, and "encouraged him to correspond in French with Baron Grimm," Massie posits that, just as his successor Mamonov, Lanskoy was "one of the favourites "who showed interest in her intellectual and artistic pursuits [which made them] likely to last longer." He was made a chamberlain and promoted to general, received petitions and accompanied her in travels. He "began to wield great influence in court" and that same year,
Jason Smogorzewski appealed fruitlessly to Lanskoy to intercede with Catherine to name a successor to the
Ruthenian Catholic Archeparchy of Polotsk–Vitebsk. In 1781, Andrei Shuvalov,
Catherine Shuvalova's husband, told Lanskoy rumours that Shuvalov himself had been spreading that Catherine would replace him with
Pavel Dashkov,
Yekaterina Vorontsova-Dashkova's son, who was her closest female friend, causing Lanskoy to turn against both Dashkova and her son. For her part "Dashkova was jealous, did not approve, and universally detested all of [Catherine's] favorites, especially...
Orlov...Lanskoi, and...
Zubov." In 1782, he and Potemkin collaborated to remove
Count Orlov from court. The same year, Lanskoy's brother, Yakov, eloped with a foreign mistress, from Dresden to Paris, On August 31, 1782, Lanskoy accompanied Catherine, Potemkin and
Anna Protasova en route to visit a sick
Ivan Betskoy and stopped at the recently unveiled
Bronze Horseman. Later that December, both Lanskoy and Catherine were sick themselves "[having] come down with nasty colds," however, they received the recently elected
Marshal of the Nobility of Moscow,
Pyotr Sheremetev, and with Potemkin "and a handful [of other] of the empress's intimates [sat] up till late in the evening playing cards, chatting, and reminiscing about the old days." During June 1783 Lanskoy was part of Catherine's retinue that left
Tsarskoye Selo when she travelled to and held a three-day negotiation with
Gustav III at
Frederikshamn. In mid-1783 he intervened twice in
Samuel Bentham's courting of Countess Sophia Matushkina,
Alexander Mikhailovich Golitsyn's niece, which Golitsyn's forbidding of was a scandal, On the initial occasion, which might have been at Catherine's prompting, Lanskoy tried unsuccessfully to persuade Golitsyn's wife and Sophia's mother on Bentham's behalf by explaining that "the Empress thought they did wrong to oppose the young Countess's inclinations." However, Catherine, who had been aided in taking the throne by Golitsyn and who was one of her closest confidants, eventually ordered Lanskoy to intervene a second time to terminate the relationship. In April 1783, upon hearing of the death of Grigory Orlov, whom she had taken care of after his descent into insanity following the death of his wife, she commented on Lanskoy's support that "'[he] is tearing himself apart to help me bear my grief, but that makes me melt even more.'" However, during "Catherine's care and concern for [Orlov], and the time she was prepared to devote to him, appear[ed] to have offended both Potemkin and Lanskoy, who took to their beds in high dudgeon."
Illnesses and death Between July and August 1783, he suffered a fall from a horse, "an English animal that had already kicked him once before," which caused him to be ill for six weeks. Catherine always worried about his health and would take leave of governmental duties whenever this occurred. This also carried itself onto other's actions, as Potemkin, who was forced to "[delay] his final orders to
Suvorov" to develop a Russian presence in
Persia, nonetheless, it was cut back and a smaller expedition sent later on. Between 1780 and 1781, James Harris, the British ambassador, wished to strengthen
Anglo-Russian relations, with
George III having written a personal letter to her to arrange an alliance between the two nations, however Potemkin had to explain to Harris ""[y]ou have chosen an unlucky moment. The favorite [Lanskoy] lies dangerously ill; the cause of his illness and the uncertainty of recovery have so entirely unhinged the empress that she is incapable of employing her thoughts on any subject, and all ideas of ambition, of glory, of dignity, are absorbed in this one passion. Exhausted, she avoids everything involving activity or exertion."" By March 1782, Harris thought that Lanskoy would not last as favorite, and would be removed, taking as evidence the purchase of a house for him and "the preparation of the usual magnificent leave-taking presents", however, this did not come to be, On Wednesday, 19 June, Lanskoy came down with a sore throat and "[o]n that day he came to me the moment his throat began to hurt him, and he told me that he was about to have a severe illness from which he would not recover I tried to banish this idea from his head..." His death was caused by
diphtheria, but rumors claimed his health had been weakened by
aphrodisiacs. These, some of which were noted by John Parkinson after a dinner in 1792, alleged he died "in place", "his legs had dropped off" after death and was poisoned or that was actually assassinated because he represented a threat to Potemkin. Dashkova, who derided Catherine's favorites, stated of his death that "[he] ... quite literally burst — his belly burst." however he did aid Catherine in overcoming her subsequent depression. Catherine grieved by "[taking] refuge in her apartments, disappearing from public view for months, until she emerged, with Prince Potemkin's help, in September," during which time government activity had ceased. Though, Rounding points out that "[s]he nevertheless continued to carry out the most urgent business of the Empire, giving the necessary orders when required."
Alexander Vorontsov, "who had no connection with Lanskoy [regretted] his passing when [he] learned of its impact on Catherine [writing to his brother,
Semyon Vorontsov] 'The preservation of the empress is too interesting to us all.'" Rounding considers that his death was the "first time in her life, [she] was incapacitated by grief," while Sebag Montefiore states that "[h]er courtiers had never seen her in such a state." This was made worse by the fact that during the previous winter her beloved Greyhound, Sir Tom Anderson, died However, "[s]he personally wrote [to Lanskoy's] mother the day after his death." The first three weeks of her grieving, she did not leave her bed, and after that she did not go out, nor were there any entertainments. She was not seen for a month and a half by the court or in public, only Bezborodko and Potemkin, whose initial sympathy was perceived initially as insulting by Catherine, at the beginning, and then by
Fyodor Orlov. She "continually [asked] about her lover's body, perhaps hoping his death would prove a lie." Dixon mentions that Lanskoy's corpse was taken from "Tsarskoye Selo to the house Quarenghi had designed for him in Sofia." Then the body was taken "'with due honour' to Charles Cameron (architect)|[Charles] Cameron's
new cathedral on the morning of Thursday[,] 27 June and immediately interred in the neighbouring cemetery following a funeral service [which Catherine did not attend] Another author whom gives a different date for Lanskoy's death is E. F. Petinova, however, John T. Alexander considers it part of a series of "slips in dates" from Petinova's part.
Posthumous events Catherine left Tsasrkoye Selo on 5 September, however, her grief prevented her from staying at her apartments, wishing to reside at the Hermitage. her court medalist, design and engrave the 'On the Death of General Alexander Lanskoy' medal struck, which was a silver medal with a "reddish-golden patina" bearing his wigged likeness facing left on the obverse and on the reverse "[f]our trees surrounding a memorial obelisk [with the inscription "From Catherine, to friendship]," Additionally, Catherine had a plaque, with Lanskoy's gilded coat of arms above, an inscription that read "What great pleasure for noble souls to see virtue and merit crowned by praise form all", and "a large version of Lebrecht's medal" However, Jaques asserts that Cameron erected the monument, that if she died at
Tsarskoye Selo she wished to be interred by Lanskoy's side at the cemetery at Sofia. On the occasion of his death, Catherine wrote, in a letter "too personal to have been written by a secretary" and which has been considered "a masterpiece, a truly pre-romantic expression of existential void and pessimism", After Lanskoy's death, Catherine "immersed herself in work on her universal etymological dictionary," To aid her in her grief, the private physician of George III in Hanover,
Johann Georg Ritter von Zimmermann, whom Catherine had previously invited in vain to Russia, sent her his
Solitude considered with respect to its influence upon the mind and the heart. Catherine's journey to Crimea was partly put in doubt by Lanskoy's death, however, it was postponed and eventually carried out in 1787. The position of favourite was vacant for a whole year after his death, After Yermolov tried to orchestrate Potemkin's downfall, and brought about his own because of it, Catherine replaced him with "someone she believed was another Lanskoy[,]
Alexander Mamonov." However, he did not provide the same care as Lanskoy and carried out a clandestine affair and impregnated Princess Darya Scherbatova. As with all her favorites, she gifted him vast amounts of land and money, the latter amounting to an alleged "tune of several million rubles." the estate Catherine had bought for him in
Pskov province" and had her gardener, the Scotsman James Meader, go "there to plan the park." Nevertheless, he willed the whole of his fortune that he had acquired as favorite "which included artworks and library to Catherine", and added them to the Hermitage Library. Of the gifts he received from Catherine one was a still extant table dessert service by
Giuseppe Valadier. This "
surtout de table," which she acquired, with Grimm's help, from
Louis Auguste Le Tonnelier de Breteuil, is "[o]ver several feet in length, the
surtout feature[s] Roman buildings and monuments in gilded bronze and gemstones." Jaques notes that Lanskoy possessed a "discerning eye and interest in art [proving] the perfect companion. This collection totalled "119 Flemish and Dutch pictures" one being the
Portrait of Jeremias de Dekker and another
Pallas Athene as well as six
van Dycks. he was the other of her favourites she would spend hours with "[poring] over her collection of carved jewels" and when Lanskoy died "she packed the trinkets away, heartbroken, and wrote to her dealer, who happened to be Grimm: "As for carved stones, tell those who offer them to you that I never bought them for myself, and... I will not buy any more. My grief is extreme, such as I have never felt..."" This only lasted a year though, as the next year "[Catherine] acquired Lanskoy's collection from his heirs, including his gems and casts." When informing Grimm of his fall from a horse, Catherine mentioned that "[w]hen...Lanskoy heard that you had let go of a collection of antique stones without buying them, he almost fainted, and was nearly suffocated by it." However, it has not been determined without a shadow of a doubt whether a specific specimen in the Hermitage, probably designed by
James Wyatt and made by Samuel Roach or Roake of London, is one and the same. In 1784, one of the first
Neo-Gothic churches in Russia was built, the now-demolished St. Nicholas Church, in an estate gifted by Catherine to Lanskoy in Posadnikovo. It is possible the church was designed by
Yury Felten, who as court architect was working on a building in St. Petersburg for Lanskoy. It was at this "[Felten]-designed residence on
Palace Square facing the
Winter Palace" that "Lanskoy displayed his new [collected] artworks." In 1786.
Pyotr Sheremetev commissioned
Ivan Argunov "to paint a portrait of his deceased friend Aleksandr Lanskoy using the most recent engraving of his likeness." Lanskoy's private collection was one of the earliest large, private art collections that "entered the Hermitage after the death of their owners," others of note being those owned by Potemkin and
Grigory Teplov. Lanskoy's own brother, Yakov, commissioned a painting of the Last Judgement, where Lanskoy was portrayed "burning below in the fires of
Gehenna," while the rest of the family was in heaven. == Personality ==