Graphic artist, critic and historian, Lukomskii studied in the Architectural School at St. Petersburg's Academy of Arts. In 1909, a solo exhibition of his work was held in the editorial offices of the important art periodical Apollon, and his Italian sketches appeared alongside the first publication of Aleksandr Blok's "Verses on Italy" in Apollon (1910, No. 4). After the February revolution in 1917, he helped Alexander Benois convert the royal palaces of Tsarskoe Selo into museums. He emigrated to France in 1924 and continued to write in the West on Russian culture. His advocacy of the neoclassical revival in Russian architecture at the beginning of the 20th century is apparent in this pastel of an Italian collonade.