Brief Biography-Pyotr Basin was born in Saint Petersburg in 1793. He was a student at the Imperial Academy of Arts and spent eleven years in Italy studying old masters while painting religious and historical pieces. In Saint Petersburg, he became an Academician and taught at the Academy. In addition, he painted allegorical works to restore the Winter Palace after the fire of 1873. However, he is famed mainly for his religious paintings, of which there are several in the churches of Saint Petersburg, most notably in Saint Isaacs Cathedral. Basin sadly lost his vision in 1870 but continued to work in an advisory capacity. Kārlis Hūns and Nikolai Nikolaevich Ge were two of his most famous students. He died in Saint Petersburg in 1877.