In style and technique it can be ascribed to a group of works by West European masters who worked in both Russia and the Ukraine. Probably, the portrait is a fragmentary repetition of the portrait from the collection of the Yaroslavl Art Museum.

Pyotr Petrovich Tolstoy (second half of the 1680s–1728)
Count, youngest son of Pyotr Andreyevich Tolstoy (1645–1729) and Solomonida Dubrovskaya (?–1722), who was the daughter of Stolnik (Cupbearer) Timofei Dubrovsky. Like his father, he received his title on the coronation day of Catherine I. Served in Little Russia. In 1719 he received the title of Colonel in the Nezhyn Cossack Regiment (1719–1727). Tolstoy was married to Anastasia (Yuliana) Skoropadskaya (1703–1733), the daughter of Ivan Skoropadsky who was Hetman of Little Russia, and Ivan's wife Anastasia Markevich. In 1727 Tolstoy was dismissed following the order of Alexander Menshikov. After leaving Little Russia, he settled in the village of Yakovlevo, near Moscow where he died in October 1728.