Keira*

While looking at the beautiful film Anna Karenina, starring Keira Knightley, I suddenly had to think of the world-famous painting ‘Portrait of an unknown woman’ (1883) da the Russian painter Ivan Kramskoy, which is to be admired in the Tretyakov State Gallery in Moscow. I had made a copy of this particular painting some years ago.

Kramskoy was a contemporary of Leo Tolstoy, whom he also portrayed. In those days it was alleged that the ‘unknown woman’ was meant to be Anna Karenina.

In my turn inspired da the film, I have dato the woman in the portrait of Kramskoy the face of the ‘new’...