RusPortraits_v2-134_Le_comte_Pierre_Grigoriewitch_Tchernycheff

Count Piotr Grigoryevich Chernyshev (; 24 March 1712 – 20 August 1773) was a Russian Imperial nobleman, diplomat, privy counsellor, chamberlain, and senator. A member of the Chernyshyov family, he was the son of (1672-1745) and Avdotya Rzhevskaya (1693-1747) and thus brother to

Zakhar Chernyshev Zakhar Grigoryevich Chernyshev (172231 August 1784) was a Russian noble, courtier to Catherine the Great, Imperial Russian Army officer, and Imperial Russian politician in the 18th century. After made a courtier to then-Princess Sophie of Anha ...

and

Ivan Chernyshyov Count Ivan Grigoryevich Chernyshyov (1726 – 1797; russian: Граф Иван Григорьевич Чернышёв) was an Imperial Russian Field Marshal and General Admiral, prominent during the reign of Empress Catherine the Great. Life and ...

. He married

Ekaterina Chernysheva Ekaterina Chernysheva (russian: Екатерина Андреевна Чернышёва; 1715-1779) was a Russian courtier. She was the daughter of Andrey Ushakov and married the diplomat count Peter Chernyshev, Russian ambassador to Denmark, ...

and was the father of princess

Natalya Golitsyna Princess Natalya Petrovna Golitsyna (; (Чернышёва); 28 January 17411 January 1838) was a Russian nobility, noblewoman, lady-in-waiting, socialite, and Dame (title), Dame of the Order of St. Catherine's first degree. Born into the noble ...

(1741-1837), inspiration for Pushkin's '' The Queen of Spades'', and of Countess Darya Saltykova, a friend of the French painter

Élisabeth Vigée Le Brun Élisabeth Louise Vigée Le Brun (; 16 April 1755 – 30 March 1842), also known as Madame Le Brun, was a French portrait painter, especially of women, in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. Her artistic style is generally considered part o ...

. His father was a close friend of

Peter the Great Peter I ( – ), most commonly known as Peter the Great,) or Pyotr Alekséyevich ( rus, Пётр Алексе́евич, p=ˈpʲɵtr ɐlʲɪˈksʲejɪvʲɪtɕ, , group=pron was a Russian monarch who ruled the Tsardom of Russia from t ...

, who was also Piotr's godfather. Piotr enlisted in the

Preobrazhensky Regiment The Preobrazhensky Life-Guards Regiment (russian: Преображенский лейб-гвардии полк, ''Preobrazhensky leyb-gvardii polk'') was a regiment of the Imperial Guard of the Imperial Russian Army from 1683 to 1917. The Pr ...

as a child and from 1722 to 1727 served under the young

Charles Frederick, Duke of Holstein-Gottorp Charles Frederick, Duke of Schleswig-Holstein-Gottorp () (30 April 1700 – 18 June 1739) was a Prince of Sweden and Duke of Schleswig-Holstein-Gottorp and an important member of European royalty. His dynasty, the Dukes of Schleswig-Holstein-Gott ...

(1700-1739) as a page, Kammerpage and finally lieutenant-captain. In 1741, during the reign of Empress

Anna of Russia Anna Ioannovna (russian: Анна Иоанновна; ), also russified as Anna Ivanovna and sometimes anglicized as Anne, served as regent of the duchy of Courland from 1711 until 1730 and then ruled as Empress of Russia from 1730 to 1740. Much ...

, he was made ambassador extraordinary to Denmark and soon afterwards ambassador extraordinary to the Kingdom of Prussia, then ruled by

Frederick the Great Frederick II (german: Friedrich II.; 24 January 171217 August 1786) was King in Prussia from 1740 until 1772, and King of Prussia from 1772 until his death in 1786. His most significant accomplishments include his military successes in the Sil ...

. Next, in 1746, he was posted to London, assisting at the Congress of Aix-la-Chapelle at the end of the

War of the Austrian Succession The War of the Austrian Succession () was a European conflict that took place between 1740 and 1748. Fought primarily in Central Europe, the Austrian Netherlands, Italy, the Atlantic and Mediterranean, related conflicts included King George's W ...

between April and October 1748. He helped edit the treaty between

Louis XIV , house = Bourbon , father = Louis XIII , mother = Anne of Austria , birth_date = , birth_place = Château de Saint-Germain-en-Laye, Saint-Germain-en-Laye, France , death_date = , death_place = Palace of Vers ...

and the maritime powers that resulted from the Congress, signed on 18 October 1748 - it settled the succession question and maritime questions and was recognised by Silesia and Prussia. He died of

dropsy Edema, also spelled oedema, and also known as fluid retention, dropsy, hydropsy and swelling, is the build-up of fluid in the body's tissue. Most commonly, the legs or arms are affected. Symptoms may include skin which feels tight, the area ma ...

Saint Petersburg Saint Petersburg ( rus, links=no, Санкт-Петербург, a=Ru-Sankt Peterburg Leningrad Petrograd Piter.ogg, r=Sankt-Peterburg, p=ˈsankt pʲɪtʲɪrˈburk), formerly known as Petrograd (1914–1924) and later Leningrad (1924–1991), i ...

and was buried at the

Alexander Nevsky Lavra Saint Alexander Nevsky Lavra or Saint Alexander Nevsky Monastery was founded by Peter I of Russia in 1710 at the eastern end of the Nevsky Prospekt in Saint Petersburg, in the belief that this was the site of the Neva Battle in 1240 when Ale ...

in the

Lazarevskoe Cemetery Lazarevskoe Cemetery (russian: Лазаревское кладбище) is a historic cemetery in the centre of Saint Petersburg, and the oldest surviving cemetery in the city. It is part of the Alexander Nevsky Lavra, and is one of four cemeterie ...

. His tomb inscription reads "His life was cut short by multiplying diseases, to the extreme sorrow of his neighbours and to the sincere grief of his friends and admirers". The later historian

Pyotr Vladimirovich Dolgorukov Prince Pyotr Vladimirovich Dolgorukov (russian: link=no, Князь Пётр Владимирович Долгоруков) (1816–1868) was a Russian historian and journalist known for his genealogical research and as a critic of the Imperial Ru ...

wrote that "He was an intelligent and talented man, but immensely arrogant, unusually vain and intolerably arrogant; nobody loved him." Записки князя Петра Долгорукова. — СПб, 2007.- 604 с.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Chernyshyov, Pyotr 1712 births 1773 deaths Russian diplomats 18th-century people from the Russian Empire Counts of the Russian Empire Burials at Lazarevskoe Cemetery (Saint Petersburg) Ambassadors of the Russian Empire to Prussia Ambassadors of the Russian Empire to the United Kingdom Ambassadors of the Russian Empire to Denmark Ambassadors of the Russian Empire to France