Early Life, Family and Training Saint Petersburg, 6 January 1719. Ivan Belsky enters a world where art is becoming a structured pillar of the Russian state. He is born into the Belsky Dynasty, a lineage of painters that will define much of the eighteenth century. This familial connection to the brush is not a coincidence; it is a professional inheritance. His brother, Alexei Ivanovich, moves through the same circles, ensuring the fami…