Ivan Ivanovich Shuvalov

Ivan Ivanovich Shuvalov (; 1 November 172726 November 1797) was called the Maecenas (patron) of the Russian Enlightenment, the first Russian Minister of Education and Active Privy Councillor (1773). Russia's first theatre, university, and Academy of Arts were instituted with his active participation. A favorite of Elizaveta Petrovna of Russia; friend of the scientist M.V. Lomonosov. Love affair with the Empress 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 Elizabeth Petrovna ascended to the Russian throne with help from Ivan's powerful cousinsPeter 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.