Golitsyn, born in Saint Petersburg, was the son of Prince Alexei Ivanovich
Golitsyn and Princess Daria Vassilevna
Gagarina. In 1754 he was appointed at
Collegium of Foreign Affairs. In 1760 he moved to Paris, where he made the acquaintance of
Diderot,
Voltaire,
d'Alembert, and
Claude Adrien Helvétius. After the coup in 1762
Catherine the Great appointed him ministre plenipotentiair to France. In 1764 he introduced
Étienne-Maurice Falconet to the tsarina and acquired
The Return of the Prodigal Son (Rembrandt) for the Hermitage Museum. It was through Prince Dmitri that Catherine purchased the destitute Diderot's library (1766), with the stipulation that he take care of the 2900 books, at an excellent salary. Though nominally an Orthodox Russian, he accepted and openly professed the principles of a rationalist philosophy. Golitsyn was one of the first Russians that promoted the ideas of the
Physiocrats. Golitsyn was involved in the
Polish question and recalled to Russia as it seems to discuss another appointment. Passing through
Aachen, he met the Countess
Adelheid Amelie von Schmettau, the only daughter of the Prussian Field-Marshal
Samuel von Schmettau. The nineteen-year-old Countess had accompanied Prince
Augustus Ferdinand of Prussia (brother of Frederick the Great) and his wife
Margravine Elisabeth Louise of Brandenburg-Schwedt to the spa. An unpublished story by
Diderot,
Mystification, recalls how Gallitzin used the French author and an alleged Turkish doctor to intervene with a former mistress before the marriage to retrieve portraits of her lover. After her mother's consent they married in a chapel at
Aix-la-Chapelle (Aachen) on 28 August 1768. On honeymoon the couple proceeded to St. Petersburg. Gallitzin acquired for the Hermitage many paintings from
Heinrich von Brühl (1768), and in the following years from François Tronchin (1770) and
Louis Antoine Crozat (1772).
Holland In 1769 Prince Golitsyn was appointed
ambassador to Holland. He left the Russian capital; en route they stopped in Berlin, where their first child, Princess Marianna was born (7 December 1769). Their second child, Prince
Demetrius was born on 22 December 1770 in The Hague. In July 1782
Tsarevich Paul and his wife came to visit and were received by Golitsyn. In December 1782 the Ambassador had to leave The Hague. His capacities as a diplomat during the
First League of Armed Neutrality were not estimated as much as his scientific interest in mechanics and minerals. In 1783 he left Turin and returned to the Dutch Republic. Golitsyn owned one of the biggest
electrostatic machines, made of his own design. He corresponded with
Comte de Buffon and cooperated with
Jean Henri van Swinden. In spite of serious illness, the prince took his work seriously. Before his death, Golitsyn gave his collection to the Mineralogical Museum in Jena (a weight of 1850 kg, received in December 1802), and requested to place the samples according to the system of
René Just Haüy. ==Recognition==