Alexander Andreevich Ivanov was born in 1806 in St. Petersburg. His father, Andrey Ivanov, was an artist, the professor of the Academy of Arts . It was his father who first taught Alexander art, and since 1817 till 1824 he studied in the Academy of Arts. One of his first notable works, made while in the Academy, was Priam Asking Achilles to Return Hector's Body (1824). For the picture Joseph Interprets the Butler's and the Baker's Dreams in a Prison (1827) he was awarded a Major Gold Medal by the Society for the Promotion of Artists and sent to Italy as a pensioner of that society.

In 1830 Ivanov received a grant to go to Italy. On his way to Rome he visited the Dresden Picture Gallery, where he was most strongly impressed by Raphael's Sistine Madonna. "Here for the first time I was struck by the effect of the elegant brush of Raphael," he wrote.

In Rome Ivanov started with copying. For his first copy he chose the figure of Adam from one of Michelangelo's frescoes. But as he was irresistibly drawn to Raphael, he zealously copied individual figures from the works of the great master. He took particular interest in The Miracle, of the Mass at Bolsena because it showed a massive crowd of people swept away by spiritual inspiration.

He travelled all over Italy, studying the masterpieces of art. The lessons of classical Greek art, which Ivanov so deeply imbibed, are palpably manifest in the painting Apollo, Hyacinth and Cypariss Singing and Playing Music. The young Hyacinthus is playing the flute, Cypress is drowsing, while Apollo, as the supreme representative of the Muses, is directing this wonderful action. The group is depicted against an open background pierced with the rays of the southern sun.

The Appearance of Christ to Mary Magdalene (1835) was warmly welcomed in St Petersburg and won Ivanov the title of Academician. The artist himself, however, was not happy with the painting, referring to it as merely a "corn-cob." Yet in a fascinating preparatory drawing for it, he conveyed Mary's feelings in a freer and more natural manner.

Throughout this period Ivanov consistently pondered over the theme of The Appearance of Christ to the People. His huge painting an this subject took about twenty years to complete, and became, with time, synonymous with Ivanov's entire career.

In Rome Ivanov met Nikolay Gogol, befriended him and corresponded with him.

He highly appreciated Gogol's intellect and keen power of observation..."One should examine and study all that one sees; should subjugate everything to one's brush and be able to discover in everything an inner meaning and, above all, to grasp the high mystery of creation." These lines from Gogol's story, The Portrait, can be referred to Ivanov as well.

At about 1833 Ivanov conceived a plan to paint a large picture The Appearance of Christ to the People (1837-1857). This picture truly became the work of his life, he worked on it for twenty years. Over 100 sketches, numerous detail drawings, and large-scale designs, most of them in oil, preceded the monumental composition. Its size is 540 x 750 cm (18' x 25'). In the foreground of the picture there is a number of male figures, some already undressed, awaiting to be baptized in the Jordan River by John the Baptist. While John the Baptist, in his garb of animal skin under a long mantle, a crosier in his left hand, turns and raises his arms dramatically towards the lone figure of Christ, who appears on a rocky rise in the middle ground, behind him a broad plain and distant mountains.

Ivanov also painted several genre pictures such as ‘Ave Maria’ (1839), ‘ Bridegroom Buying a Ring for His Fiancee’ (1839) and very beautiful landscape studies: Olives Near Cemetery in Albano. New Moon (1842-1846), A Tree Branch (1840s-1850s), Via Appia (The Appian Way at Sunset) (1845), ‘Water and Stones Near Palacculo’ (1850s).

In his landscape studies, Ivanov turned to simple, unpretentious spots of nature. Once, on a gloomy day at Albano, near the graveyard of the capucines, he recorded and immortalized a modest, even ungainly motif (‘Soil near the Graveyardof the Capudnes at Albano’. 1840). At another spot, on the slope of a hill, Ivanov'sgaze was arrested by several young olive-trees which loomed against the background of a distant valley. The picture is painted with minute attention to every detail of the foliage and soil. The bleak outlines of the moon imply approaching evening (‘Olive-Trees by the Albano Churchyard. New Moon’. I 840). In all of Ivanov's studies, the viewer can precisely guess at the time of day.

Three landscapes. ‘The Appian Way at Sunset’, ‘A Tree Branch’ and ‘Tree in the Shadow Above the Water in the Vicinity of Castel dandolfo’ (all late 1840s), all rank among Ivanov's masterpieces. In the foreground of ‘The Appian Way at Sunset’, we see a heath treated in a somewhat generalized manner: in the middle ground is a small hill, then a group of ruins, and behind them, at a distance, the buildings and dome of the Cathedral of St Peter depicted on a very small scale.

None of Ivanov's works reveals so clearly the course of his researches as the study, Seven Boys. In this study, the artist, without relying on his flair or imagination, attempted to solve en plein air the problem of illuminating a multifigurc group, which he waste recreate in his ‘Appearance of Christ to the People’. Ivanov knew how to dissolve the colour patch into its complementaries and in this respect he anticipated Impressionism, which developed much later in France. Working en plein air, he enjoyed the opportunity to reproduce new aspects of reality with a completeness unprecedented in classical art.

In the 1850s, he conceived another grandiose plan to paint a series of large frescos illustrating the Bible, in a palace specially built for this purpose. In preparation to this project he painted dozens of sketches in watercolour with various scenes from the Bible. As ever before, Ivanov felt an urge to penetrate the innermost truth of biblical legends. After studying The Life of Christ by David Friedrich Strauss, he set out to devine the human message of the biblical legend and to reveal the poetical framework of biblical texts. His series of drawings, the so-called Biblical Sketches, is remarkable for its austere character.

During the last years of his life Ivanov became close friends with Alexander Herzen, Nikolay Chernyshevsky and Vladimir Stasov, the progressive figures of the time.

In 1858 Ivanov returned to St Petersburg and died from cholera in St. Petersburg two months later.