A portrait painter and decorator, who also painted icons and, by his own testimony, made enamel miniatures. Alexey Petrovich Antropov was born into the family of a private in the Semyonovsky Leib-Guards Regiment. In 1732 he was enrolled as an apprentice to the Building Office in Petersburg and in 1739 was admitted to its "Painting Command". He studied under L.Caravaque, A.Matveyev, M.Zakharov and I.Vishnyakov. In the late 1750s he took lessons from P.Rotari. In the company of these leading masters of decorative painting he participated in the decorating of palaces and churches, in the making of stage sets and in painting portraits. The collective nature of artists’ work of that time and the versatility of their skills provided a fine schooling for the young painter. From 1752 to 1755 Antropov painted the murals in St Andrew’s Cathedral in Kiev. He had then D.Levitsky as his understudy. In 1758 he returned to Petersburg to the "Painting Command". In 1761 he was made overseer of the painters (of icons and secular pictures), working for the Synod, a post he kept to the end of his days. In 1762-1763 Antropov took an active part in preparing the coronation festivities of Catherine II in Moscow. As earlier in Kiev, he was again assisted by D.Levitsky. In the late 1750s-1760s he painted a number of fine chamber portraits which determined the development of this popular genre in Russia for years ahead. It gave him a wide renown in the royal court circles. The emotional impact of Antropov’s portraits is achieved by a combination of a uniquely opulent color scheme and the soberly objective characterization of his models (see "The Portrait of A.M.Izmailova", 1759) . In his final years Antropov derived great satisfaction from his teaching activities at his private art school where he worked with gusto with his many pupils. Antropov died from a "high fever", as commonly diagnosed in those days and was buried at St Alexander-Nevsky monastery in Petersburg.