Ivan Shuvalov

Ivan Shuvalov
Ivan Shuvalov in 1760, as painted by Fyodor Rokotov
Born	(1727-11-01)1 November 1727 Moscow
Died	14 November 1797(1797-11-14) (aged 70) Shuvalov Palace, Saint Petersburg
Occupation	Russian Minister of Education
Partner(s)	Empress Elizabeth Petrovna
Parent(s)	Ivan Menshoi Shuvalov Tatiana Rodionovna

Ivan Ivanovich Shuvalov (Russian: Ива́н Ива́нович Шува́лов; 1 November 1727 – 14 November 1797) was called the Maecenas of the Russian Enlightenment and the first Russian Minister of Education. Russia's first theatre, university, and academy of arts were instituted with his active participation.

He was born in Moscow, the only son of Ivan Menshoi Shuvalov, an army captain who died when the boy was ten, and Tatiana Rodionovna. The Shuvalov family fortunes changed drastically in 1741, when Empress Elizaveta Petrovna ascended to the Russian throne with help from Ivan's powerful cousins – Peter Shuvalov and Alexander Shuvalov. The following year, they had the fourteen-year-old Ivan attached to the imperial court as a page.

In July 1749, when Ivan was visiting his brother-in-law Prince Galitzine at his country estate near Moscow, the Shuvalov brothers arranged his meeting with the Empress, who was making a pilgrimage to the Monastery of St. Sabbas. The Shuvalovs were not disappointed in their calculations: the 40-year-old Empress took notice of the handsome page, who was 18 years her junior, and bid him accompany her in the upcoming pilgrimage to the New Jerusalem Monastery.

Three months later, Shuvalov was appointed a kammer-junker, and his liaison with the Empress began. Although the cousins planned to use him as a pawn in their court intrigues, Shuvalov refused to get enmeshed in their machinations. As his biographers like to point out, Shuvalov was "mild and generous to all" and "had no enemies whatsoever".